Examples of Fatal Flaws in Literature.
- The animals of Animal Farm were far too trusting. Benjamin the donkey is too cynical and refuses to voice out his concerns about the Rebellion's aftermath.
- The Apprentice Rogue: Falita is consumed by her greed and steals Leona's necklace, which leads to tragedy. She even takes the hemp string on the necklace, despite recognizing that it was worthless, because it was part of the necklace. The narration notes that she might have gotten away clean if she didn't take the string.
- In the novel Bone China, Hester Why has two — her temper and her desperate need to have other people need her. When her employer seemed to be freezing her out by hiring a nurse to take care of her during her pregnancy to stop her miscarrying again, Hester is so incensed that she brews together a tea that she knows would terminate the baby, only to backtrack on this when she realises what she's doing, but by then it's too late as another maid has already delivered the tea.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses: Rhysand has two:
- Secrecy. Rhys has a very bad habit of keeping his plans and thoughts from even his allies, which has done nothing to quell the rumors about his maliciousness. His actions also inevitably end up hurting the people he cares about when they come to light this way than if he'd just been honest outright.
- Also self-sacrifice. Rhys would give anything for his people, to downright unnecessarily suicidal lengths. Because of this, he ended up a Sex Slave for fifty years and made himself the most hated man in Prythian.
- In The Dresden Files, Harry saves people. It's just what he does. At one point, someone immediately figures out that he's harboring a fugitive because that's Harry's schtick; people come to him for help, he helps them. Even if the person is someone he doesn't like, he will help them.
- In the Backup Novella a "client" deliberately plays the part of damsel in distress complete with kidnapped child to get Harry's help as part of her plan. Thomas steps in without Harry knowing to save him.
- His other fatal flaw is probably his temper. When he gets mad enough, he'll do almost everything in his power to destroy the bad guys with little regard for the consequences. He reevaluates this outlook in "Ghost Story", after the destruction of the Red Court throws the world into chaos.
- Earth's Children:
- Broud's greatest flaw is his ego. He can't stand any perceived damage to his pride, no matter how small, and it directly fuels many of his negative actions, especially towards Ayla. His arrogance also means he tends to do whatever he wants, dismissing the opinions of others (especially if he has personal grievances against them, regardless of how useful they might be).
- Jondalar's biggest flaw is his struggle to control his emotions (especially anger) and process them properly. People often say he "feels too much, too strongly", which has been known to push people away who find him overbearing or causes him to make impulsive poor decisions rather than stopping to think. He feels he constantly has to hold himself back (and thus keep people at arm's length) because he's afraid of overwhelming them by being vulnerable.
- The Enormous Crocodile: The titular crocodile is overconfident to his detriment. He thinks of several cunning plans to eat the local children, but he thoroughly screws himself over by boasting to the other animals about what he intends to do without thinking that they might try to stop him — which is exactly what happens, and culminates in his own death when Trunky the elephant throws him into the sun by his tail.
- Fangirl: Cath’s social anxiety and bad communication skills cause her to nearly lose her Love Interest Levi. And despite being a gifted writer, her tendencies to hold herself back makes her come dangerously close to failing a major assignment. Luckliy, she overcomes this after some advice from her teacher.
- A Frozen Heart: Despite exploiting Anna and Elsa's flaws in the film, Hans here is unaware that his own weakness is ambition. He becomes too desperate in getting what he wants while ignoring the consequences when he takes unethical routes. At times, he knows what he's doing is wrong and even scolds himself, yet he impulsively goes through it. Being abused by his family for his ineptitude slowly becomes the breaking point and ultimately pushes him into desperately attempting to win his distant family's respect. Hans corrupts his own morals while serving as his father's gofer, committing things he once hated. As such, the time he spends prepping up on going to Arendelle is wasted because he can't contain his issues and goes to the extreme of attempting regicide. Only at the end does he have a Heel Realization, but by then, he's in damage control mode as he's being sent back to the same hellhole he wanted to escape from.
- The Grace of Kings: Mata Zyndu's Black-and-White Insanity. He lives like a warrior out of legend, distrusts any deviation from that ideal, and is quick to assume he's being betrayed. This repeatedly causes him to turn against his dearest friends and confidantes, and ultimately costs him his empire and his life.
- Harry Potter:
- Harry's "saving people thing" gets him into trouble. He's willing to do anything in order to save the people he cares about, and he has a martyr complex that keeps him from asking for help or back-up at times when it would really be a smart idea. He does this to keep the people around him safe but it tends to really work against him. Voldemort uses this to manipulate him into doing things that lead to Sirius's death. This also makes it very easy for Harry's enemies to lead him into traps.
- Voldemort's fatal flaws:
- Pride and an inflated ego. It's not so much petty, plain-old narcissism and arrogance than it is outright full-blown megalomania, and Sanity Has Advantages. He's in the top three for the smartest and most powerful wizards in the world and he knows it, so he tends to go out of his way to add a flair of grandeur and grace to his plans while attempting to achieve his objectives in the way he thinks will be more terrifying. For example, he challenges Harry to a duel in the graveyard purely to show off to his Death Eaters, when the most pragmatic option would be to simply Avada Kedavra Harry right there and then while Harry was still tied up, wandless, and helpless. This extends to his Horcruxes — while he was smart enough to put some very nasty protections around them, his obsessive desire to collect trophies made him only create Horcruxes out of unique and personally meaningful objects like artifacts from the Four Founders and hide them in places that held personal importance (e.g. Marvolo's ring in the Gaunt shack), making them comparatively easy to track down by people who knew his past, while Harry immediately notices that they would be much harder to find if he'd just chosen random objects and hidden them in random locations. He also has a tendency to think that other people weren't able to do things he did, such as find the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts.
- Inability to understand compassion. Voldemort is aware about what love is in theory, but in practice he tends to miss connections between loved ones, such as not realizing that Snape was no longer trustworthy after Voldemort killed his crush Lily, and that Narcissa Malfoy was loyal to her husband and son over him.
- Thanatophobia. Voldemort is also so terrified of death that he doesn't believe that there could be anything worse. And Word of God states that Voldemort's boggart would look like his own corpse. His quest to cheat death forever, combined with his other flaws mentioned above, ultimately condemns him to a Fate Worse than Death, with his soul forever in pain and stuck in limbo, between the boundaries of life and death. Moreover, all of his major defeats come about because his adversaries prove that they aren't afraid to face death: he died in the First Wizarding War because Lily Potter willingly sacrificed herself to save her son Harry, his plan to claim the Elder Wand fails because Dumbledore willingly lets Snape kill him, and he ultimately dies in the Second Wizarding War because Harry willingly dies to destroy the Horcrux inside him.
- Sirius Black's recklessness; he's a Leeroy Jenkins.
- Severus Snape hangs on to the past to the point that he makes seemingly irrational choices simply because of some event or another that happened a long time ago. Case in point: the reason he bullies Harry (aside from house pride) is because he resembles his Jerk Jock of a father, so Snape thinks that Harry must be like James in personality, which couldn't be farther from the truth.
- When he was young, Dumbledore had a whopping case of Pride, planning to create a "new world" with Grindelwald in which wizards would rule over muggles. He snapped out of it with the death of his sister and spent more than a century deliberately avoiding powerful positions because he didn't trust himself. He refused the position of Minister of Magic, for instance, even though it isn't hard to see that, pride or not, he'd do a far better job than someone like Fudge. As an adult, it's more like a combination self-loathing/regret (wanting to see his sister to apologize in the resurrection stone is how he gets the curse that kills him) of being Lonely at the Top.
- Ron's jealousy and inferiority complex, which causes several falling-outs between him and his friends.
- Hermione's Pride. She's smart, but she's not omniscient, and at times this makes her a Know-Nothing Know-It-All (the rest of the time she's just a regular know-it-all), and when called on it, she gets stubborn and refuses to admit that she's wrong. She also has a fear of failure, and her boggart is Professor McGonagall failing her.
- Neville's lack of self confidence. He was rather slow to develop as a child and was mocked for it; now, as a student, he's the Butt-Monkey of Gryffindor, which sets him on a vicious cycle of screwing up because of self-doubt, doubting himself more and then screwing up, and so on. When given positive reinforcement, he's capable of surprising badassery.
- Lupin’s “condition” (being a werewolf) has given him a huge case of self-loathing that caused him to be an Extreme Doormat to his friends in his youth. In his adulthood, it manifests itself as not being able to let anyone get close to him because he views himself as being undeserving of being loved.
- Percy Weasley, aside from a desire to improve his family's financial status, displays a blind faith on authority figures. This leads him to choose to believe the ministry when they start slandering Harry and Dumbledore after Voldemort returns, and subsequently estranging himself from his family, even after they're proven to have been right all along.
- Peter Pettigrew's ambition. He wants to be on the winning side, and more importantly, he wants to be a power player on the winning side. While Voldemort did threaten his life, the reason he took the offer instead of informing Dumbledore (who could have certainly protected him) is that he was a footsoldier for the Order of the Phoenix, but as a spy he could be important to Voldemort.
- Petunia's womanly short-temper and jealousy work against herself and her family at certain points.
- Jealousy for Cornelius Fudge. Deep down, Fudge is jealous of Dumbledore and Barty Crouch Sr., constantly asking for their advice. Fudge knows he's a weak man trying to play the strong man, but won't admit it. The result of this envy leads to a number of increasingly bad decisions on his part, which get a lot of people killed in the second half of the saga.
- Winky the House-elf's My Master, Right or Wrong mindset. Dobby says it's typical for house elves, but Winky takes it to the extreme. She helps Crouch Sr. break the law by saying nothing as he and his dying wife busted their son out of Azkaban — something that happened because Crouch Sr. put him in Azkaban — and he subsequently used the Imperius Curse to keep Master Barty under house arrest for more than ten years. Then Bertha Jorkins found out and Crouch Sr. modified her memory to avoid spilling the beans and ruining Crouch's reputation. Both of these actions would lead to the entire Crouch family destroyed and Voldemort's return. If Winky were a tad more defiant and willing to stand up to Crouch Sr. for being a reckless Hypocrite, then maybe he would have thought through his wife's Last Request more thoroughly.
- Although Death Eater Antonin Dolohov's dueling skills are nearly unrivaled, he tends to get distracted somewhat easily which has cost him victory multiple times.
- Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange's sadism. She loves to not only inflict excruciating pain on others, but taunt their loved ones about it. Stopping to taunt an enraged Molly Weasely over the death of her son Fred after having nearly killed her daughter Ginny in the middle of their duel leads straight to her own end.
- The Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen and her consistent "Us vs Them" mentality, not helped by the fact she's not very good with people. She constantly characterises everyone as her enemy unless they prove otherwise (and sometimes doesn't believe them when they're proving otherwise). In the first book she obsesses over Peeta definitely planning to kill her and misinterprets everything he does as trying to make her let her guard down, and doesn't realize that Haymitch has actually picked her as the Tribute more likely to win (and therefore everything Peeta and Haymitch are doing is actually to help her stay alive). In the second book, she's terrible at forming alliances with anyone she doesn't view as someone she needs to protect—she's unable to process that all of the Victors reaped by the Quell are as much victims as she is, an issue that particularly applies to Careers—and without help would've driven off some very useful people. (In fact, Haymitch's conspiracy to break out of the arena specifically leaves Katniss out of the loop because they know she won't be any good at the conspiring part.) She also completely misses a very obvious attempt from an ally among the Gamemakers to tip her off about how the arena works in advance, because she can't recognize that he's on her side.
- The titular Julian has a deep craving for the mystical and incomprehensible. Relying on the insights of a hammy soothsayer isn't wise, especially when you're the Emperor of Rome.
- Les Misérables:
- Jean Valjean has Chronic Hero Syndrome and he will save every person he can even if he screws up other lives in the process.
- Javert's Black-and-White Morality blinded him to the reality that some people can't afford to be as law-abiding as him. He kills himself after letting Valjean (who had saved his life earlier) go and feared he has betrayed his own principles.
- Fantine is a Horrible Judge of Character which is why she got pregnant in the first place, then she left her daughter in the care of an Obviously Evil couple who proceeded to maltreat Cosette and extort more money from her causing her to prostitute herself. Her temper also gets her a lot in trouble.
- In Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree Faith's internalized misogyny, causes her guilt and anguish throughout the book, and prevents her from deducing the true killer.
- In The Lord of the Rings.
- Gollum's obsession with the Ring.
- Pippin is Constantly Curious and he tends to act without thinking. He drops a rock into an empty well in Moria just in hear how deep it is, with disastrous consequences.
- Boromir's Pride and his desire to protect Gondor and its people makes him an easy target for the Ring to warp his good intentions into attacking Frodo to take the ring from him.
- Similar to his son, Denethor's flaws is also Pride, along with despair. Despite being competent, he was Always Second Best to captain Thorongil/Aragorn in his youth in the hearts of men and also Denethor's own father and grew to become bitter and insecure, refusing to acknowledge Aragorn as the rightful king. By the time of the War of the Ring, he couldn't bear the thought (whether it was true or not) that he was second to Gandalf in his own son's heart rather than to him. He would eventually lose himself to madness and grief after seemingly losing both his sons and Gondor and would rather burn himself and his still alive son to death.
- Sauron simply cannot understand the goodness of his enemies. This aspect prevents him from ever considering that someone would try to destroy the Ring instead of using it to rule the world.
- The Magicians:
- In the first book, Quentin's obsessive desire for happiness, dissatisfaction with routine and overall childishness all end up destroying his relationships, getting people seriously hurt, nearly handing the Beast an easy victory, and forcing Alice to sacrifice herself to save him.
- In the second, Julia's desire to learn magic and compensate for failing the Brakebills entrance exam ends up sending her on a downward spiral of Sanity Slippage and self-destruction: she abandons perfectly legitimate college choices, falls in with a bad crowd of Hedge Wizards, prostitutes herself to learn spells, and joins up with a group of magical researchers on a very dangerous project... the end result of which is the loss of her humanity.
- Captain Ahab's obsession with revenge against Moby-Dick, which dooms not only himself, but his ship and nearly everyone on his crew.
- Ambrosio, titular character of The Monk, commits the sin of pride long before he starts committing any of his truly deplorable acts. It is his pride that allows him to believe himself holy while he continues to sin.
- In the Nightfall (Series), there is a case of a villain having a 'Fatal Virtue,' which is his greatest weakness. Prince Vladimir is the Big Bad, who has destroyed human civilization and is breeding the survivors for vampire food. However, he is in love with human art and literature, and this is the only thing the heroes can use against him.
- In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, it's explicitly stated that every demigod has a Fatal Flaw which, if not mastered, will lead to their death. Annabeth's fatal flaw is explicitly stated to be hubris (except Percy thinks she says hummus) — she thinks she can handle any situation and make anything better. Percy's is personal loyalty — he will do anything necessary to save the people he cares about, even if that means ignoring the greater good. Thalia's fatal flaw is that she has a weak resistance to offers of power, to the point she seriously considered betraying her friend to become more powerful than the gods (though her conflicting feelings over this were apparent). It's a good thing Mr.D was able to step in otherwise she probably would have given in. Nico and Bianca have the Fatal Flaw of holding grudges, which they inherited from their father just as Thalia did hers.
- The Pillars of the Earth: William Hamleigh is not a hero by any stretch of the imagination, but he is absolutely terrified of going to Hell. It's a flaw because others use it to exploit him and make him do their bidding.
- In the novel The Post Birthday World, Irina's passiveness and need for a man to take care of her is this in both timelines — Her reluctance to confront Lawrence about his odd behaviour means he is able to get away with his affair with Bethany for five years, and her following Ramsey around on tournaments and letting him throw money on lavish things mean she's thoroughly unprepared when Ramsey gets sick and the money disappears.
- In the Liveship Traders trilogy, Althea Vestrit's is Pride. She's a headstrong, spoiled Daddy's Girl at the beginning of the book and is absolutely incensed when her father leaves the family Liveship, Vivacia, to her sister's Jerkass husband, Kyle, instead of her. This leads Althea to storm off after his funeral shortly after Vivacia quickens, missing out on a crucial window to bond with her and imbue Vivacia with her memories and personality, leading Vivacia to be an abused ingene for a good portion of the first book and brings a lot of suffering on her nephew, Wintrow, because Althea couldn't stand the thought of being subordinate to Kyle. It takes a long Break the Haughty in the first book for her to acknowledge that Kyle's point that just because she got to sail with her father as a girl, that didn't make her qualified to be Vivacia's captain and to let her have it just because of a promise would be nothing but Nepotism was actually right. Her pride also means she is in a perpetual Slap-Slap-Kiss with Brashen, an old crew member of her father's, as she (not incorrectly) views his protective treatment of her as patronising and stubbornly refuses to explain herself when they argue. She also repeatedly clashes with her equally headstrong mother, Ronica, and her niece, Malta and her wilful mannerisms lead her to be ostracised in Bingtown for her refusal to conform to societal expectations.
- In the Samurai Kids book Monkey Fist, Niya's flaw is loyalty — he will not abandon a friend for any reason. While this may sound like a good thing, it really isn't. In the novel's climax, Niya's companion, Kyoko, has been kidnapped by a corrupt imperial minister, who offers to release her if the protagonists reveal the location of a group of benevolent monks politically opposed to him. Niya's thought process clearly shows that, had the choice been his, he would have betrayed the monks and let them die if it meant Kyoko's safety.
- Shadow of the Conqueror:
- Daylen's appears to be Anger. His response to a vagrant trying to rob and murder him? Slicing off his hand, stabbing him in several non-lethal areas, dismembering him one limb at a time, decapitating him, and then finally pinning his head to the wall with a dagger. He's disturbed by how easily he slipped into this kind of extreme violence afterwards, but rationalizes that a murderer on the street was definitely an Asshole Victim.
- Ahrek's is Hatred. Even after he believed Dayless was dead, he resented that he didn't get to strike the final blow himself, he couldn't let go of his hatred, and his family was still dead, leaving him to obsess over the man he hated for years on years.
- Lyrah's is Vengeance. She fully embraces The Power of Hate without suffering for it like Ahrek does, but her overwhelming desire for Revenge eventually leads her to risk millions of innocent people's lives for a chance to kill Daylen.
- The Shahnameh: Esfandiar's obsession with becoming king is how he's manipulated into fighting his tutor Rostam, even though he knows it's the wrong thing to do. Going up against Rostam, of course, is as fatal as it gets!
- A Song of Ice and Fire could fairly be described as a dozen or so tragedies going on simultaneously (with several in the backstory). This implies almost every single character having their own fatal flaws.
- A common flaw in the Starks is Honor Before Reason (which could be seen as a form of pride), especially in Eddard and Robb. Eddard's flaw is his undying love for his friends and family, which motivated him to go to King's Landing to help Robert and then lie about Joffrey's parentage to attempt to save his daughters. And Robb's flaw is more of a need to be like his dad.
- Robert Baratheon meets his death thanks to alcoholism.
- The Lannisters lean toward pride with a side of wrath: see Tywin, Cersei, and Joffrey. A big part of Tyrion and especially Jaime's character development is overcoming this. To be more specific:
- Tywin, aside from being overly elitist and ruthless (which makes him a lot of enemies), cannot overcome first impressions. The reason he hates Tyrion so much is because he cannot stop seeing the poor kid as the reason his beloved wife Joanna died, despite Tyrion actually being the best politician of his kids. It also gets him killed when Tyrion confronts him over his abuse of Tyrion's lowborn wife and claims that she was a whore. Up until the end, Twyin never believed that Tyrion would actually kill him.
- Cersei's is short-sighted paranoia, with a side of sticking to first impressions like her dad. She was once given a prophecy that she would be usurped by a younger sibling and replaced with a younger woman, and ever since then she's seen candidates for both those positions everywhere. Anyone who doesn't practically worship her and kiss her ass constantly is an enemy, and her overreactions and cruelty tend to make people enemies even if they weren't before.
- Joffrey's is being Stupid Evil. Everything he does is to satiate his short-term bloodlust, and he angers pretty much everyone in the series who's not Cersei. His sadism is why the Lannisters are at war with the Starks, and he eventually dies when he commits one petty act of evil too many and someone poisons him. No one knows who the murderer was, because there's just too many suspects.
- Theon's could be considered ambition with a side of pride. He gets both beaten out of him by hard experience.
- Jay in the Spaceforce (2012) series is a highly competent agent for the Taysan Empire, fearless, clever and resourceful, with a talent for deception and masquerade that is highly unusual in his species. But he is constantly undermined by his compulsive womanising, which has brought him to the brink of disaster at least twice. It's all the more dangerous because sexual immorality is actually a crime in his society.
- In Sophie Hannah's Spilling Series, Charlie Zailer's fatal flaw is that she is an Insecure Love Interest when it comes to Simon Waterhouse and it has massive ramifications for her in the first few novels, such as in Hurting Distance, Charlie pretends she's seeing someone called Graham to make Simon jealous (which doesn't work), then when she meets a man called Graham on holiday, she jumps on the chance to make it real. Only, it turns out that Graham is actually a Serial Rapist and when it comes out he was dating a police officer, Charlie is forced to resign from her job and she's still reeling over the scandal in both The Point of Rescue and The Other Half Lives. Even in later books after she and Simon are married, she retains some of her insecurity, such as having the rather childish habit of both teasing Simon and trying to impress him at the same time, interrogating him about whether he finds other women attractive and acting like a Clingy Jealous Girl on occasion, such as in Kind of Cruel when she complains that Simon treats Amber more like an equal than a potential suspect.
- Temeraire: The main antagonist, Napoléon Bonaparte, is a visionary anti-villain with genuinely positive goals for his empire, but his ambition drives him always to conquer more territory rather than settle down and rule. This is his undoing when his own wife and minister betray him to the British in exchange for peace, having decided that he would trap the Empire in a Forever War.
- In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo's flaw is his pride. His dad was a lazy deadbeat, and he's afraid of other people thinking that he's like that too. The author Achebe modeled Okonkwo after the heroes of Greek Tragedy, so it's no surprise that his flaw is hubris, leading to the atë (rashness) that caused his downfall.
- Pride for Hollyleaf in Warrior Cats. She believes that she deserves to be a leader of the Clan, and that her devotion to warrior code makes her a better cat than those outside of the Clans. This leads to her downfall, after she discovers that she is not a cat of pure heritage. First, she murders a cat threatening to reveal her origin, when she believes that it prevent her from becoming a leader. Later, when she learns that she is of even more illegal lineage than she thought, she collapses completely and goes on a rampage to punish everyone involved. She eventually abandons her pride and accepts her fate with humility, redeeming herself.
- Most of the Forsaken from The Wheel of Time have at least one which is responsible for their descent into villainy. Most obviously, Be'lal's flaw was Envy of everyone and everything more powerful than he was (he was even known as "The Envious"), and Demandred's was the combination of Wrath and Pride that lead him to hold a vengeful grudge against Lews Therin Telamon beyond all reason.
- In The Witchlands, each of the main characters has a fatal flaw that menaces them throughout the story.
- Safi: recklesness. She rarely stops to think about the bigger picture, and ends up almost dooming everyone.
- Iseult: low self-esteem stopping her from realizing her full potential.
- Merik: inflated self-importance, leading him to ignore truth right in front of him in favour of messianism.
- Aeduen: trust issues. Many of his troubles could've been avoided if he didn't shy away from people.
- Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights holds on to grudges and spends his life getting even with people who were mean to him. He uses his own family as pawns and holds Kathy on such a high pedestal that he refuses to see that everything that happened to him was her fault. He is also blind to the fact that his revenge can never last so when he dies and everything reverts back to normal, it's like nothing happened.
