Insurrectionist Inheritor

Another test.

Harry Dresden: Servant, I don't like that word. I suggest that you consider where you stand and choose a different term. My Queen. And you will be gentle with that girl, or so help me I will make you regret it.
Mab: Finally, a Knight worth the trouble.

— Cold Days

The badass has achieved high rank: king, CEO, crimelord, whatever. He's done so by sticking up for himself and what he believes in, and never taking abuse from anyone. He's pretty settled in when he notices a problem: he's surrounded by gutless yes men. They're weak. They crawl before him. They can't possibly take over his role if he were to step down.

Except that one guy. Who hates his guts. And quite possibly has tried to kill him.

That's his new sole heir.

It doesn't have to go as far as hate and murder. Just being willing to defy, correct, and generally stand up to the power figure can qualify.

Since standing up to someone when you're supposed to is easy, this may involve a Secret Test of Character. But the strongest evidence is when the rebellion happens entirely unprompted.

See also Hire the Critic, The Consigliere, and Honest Advisor. Compare The Puppet Cuts His Strings, for when the "inheritor" (in whatever form) actively escapes control.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• One Piece: Hannyabal, Vice Warden of Impel Down, is so ambitious about being the Chief Warden that he sometimes calls Impel Down as "his", and generally is boastful about it. The Chief Warden, Magellan, is sometimes annoyed at Hannyabal for this, but he also believes that Hannyabal's a worthy successor for the position - no less because the latter's actually sincere in his efforts in keeping the criminals from harming the public. After the Time Skip, Hannyabal eventually gets promoted.

Comic Books

• Blake and Mortimer: "The Time Trap" sees Mortimer sent a letter by his former enemy Miloch Georgevitch (the Non-Action Big Bad of "S.O.S. Meteors"), asking him to continue Miloch's scientific work (a working time machine) in his stead as Miloch was dying of radiation poisoning and deemed Mortimer the only scientist able and worthy of doing so. The time machine works, although the trap the title refers to is that Miloch deliberately sabotaged it, intending to strand Mortimer in the past. Mortimer only makes it out because he manages to set the coordinates to just before Miloch's sabotage, and even then only because he was monologuing about it.

Fan Works

• Ghosts of Evangelion: After Ryuko has called her harsh attitude out during an argument, Asuka grumbles that nobody talks to her like that. Then Asuka hugs her daughter because she is proud that Ryuko is willing to speak her mind, whether her mother likes her words or not.

Fairy Tales

• In Muslim folktales, humans are God's children and heirs precisely because we can defy Him, unlike angels, who are perfect and therefore mere servants.

Literature

• Joe's World: Merchant Prince Etienne Avare in The Philosophical Strangler leaves his entire fortune to the first great-grandchild to assassinate him.
• Uncle Enzo in Snow Crash regrets that none of his lieutenants "would ever volunteer to go get his legs shot off in the jungle, just to piss off his old man. They lack a certain fiber. They are lifeless and beaten down."
• Cornelius Stuyvesant, the richest man in the world, in The Grimnoir Chronicles makes Francis his sole heir, saying "You're the only one worth...a bucket of warm piss...in...in the whole lot". Their previous conversation was when Cornelius disowned him for taking a moral stand against the Imperium.
• The Diamond Age centers around an "attempt to add an element of subversion to our institutions" so that the next generation will contain people like this.
• The War Gods: One of the reasons Tomanak selects Bahzell as a champion is that Bahzell is willing to argue with him about anything. This tends to upset those who worship Tomanak in a more conventional fashion.
• The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden wins the respect of Queen Mab, and to a lesser extent Donar Vadderung aka Odin this way.
• Hercule Poirot: In the novel Cat Among the Pigeons, Honoria Bulstrode, headmistress of Meadowbrook school, asks her chosen successor what she would change about the school. The would-be successor answers, "Nothing," disappointing Miss Bulstrode, who doesn't think the school should be run just out of tradition. Miss Bulstrode then asks another teacher the same question, and the other teacher says that there are lots of things she thinks should be done differently. It is this that persuades Miss Bulstrode to change her mind and name the second teacher as the new headmistress.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Legends of the Brethren Court: When Sri Sumbhajee learns that his seven-year-old half-brother has been trying to poison him and their other brother to become Pirate Lord, he beams with pride and makes the boy his new official heir (their other brother is The Creon anyway) on the condition that he halt his assassination attempts until he's at least eighteen.
• The Shadow: In The Road of Crime, Reformed Criminal Graham Wellerton's Evil Uncle is mortally wounded during a robbery attempt. Before dying of his wounds, he changes his will to leave his entire $10,000,000 fortune to Graham out of respect for how Graham became an even bigger crook than him (from a certain point of view) and gave him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech while he was dying (emphasizing that he intervened with the robbery to get revenge on the robbers, his old gang, rather than to save his hated uncle).
• The Wheel of Time: Aviendha, a trainee Wise One, finds herself assigned a long series of ever more pointless and embarrassing tasks until she snaps and tells her mentors either to acknowledge her as a Wise One or send her away. They then reveal that she's passed the final test: a Wise One needs to exercise her own judgment and not accept anything unquestioningly, even from her peers.
• A Desolation Called Peace: The Emperor is very pleased that her heir is an "annoying" independent thinker who investigates and draws his own conclusions, even when they contradict her. In the end, she is grateful to him for intercepting and replacing her own orders to the Fleet.

Live-Action Television

• Angel: Wolfram and Hart are in the habit of promoting people who try to overthrow the firm, culminating in handing CEOship to archrival Angel ("You've earned it").
• Babylon 5:
  • When Centauri ambassador Londo Mollari gets permission from his emperor to divorce two of his three wives, two of them compete to be the most sickeningly sweetly loyal and subservient wives you could ever see. He divorces them both and keeps Timov, the one who found that beneath her dignity and continued honestly expressing her disdain for him, saying, "With you, I always know where I stand". The audience knows it was the right choice, too, since one of the other wives, Mariel, had been behind the attempt on his life in the episode and Timov had given him a life-saving blood transfusion (on the condition the doctor wouldn't tell Londo she saved him).
  • Three seasons later, Michael Garibaldi, as the new CEO of a major pharmaceuticals company, tracks down a bunch of middle managers who had been giving intelligent complaints about the way the company was run and promotes them to the new board of directors. The previous board had tried to murder his wife, so they had to go away.
• The Mentalist: The episode Red all Over features an unintentional example. Media conglomerate CEO Alexander Harrington was forced out of the company in a hostile takeover by his eldest son (the Victim of the Week) but claims to have been proud of him for it, saying it took guts, and proved that his son was a worthy successor.

Tabletop Games

• Mage: The Awakening: The final test for Guardians of the Veil, the Secret Police of Magical Society, is a Hidden Purpose Test of whether the trainee will obey a direct order from a superior that obviously violates the Guardians' code. They only pass if they refuse or Take a Third Option — the Guardians might be Well Intentioned Extremists, but they expect members to understand and commit to their ethos, not blindly follow unconscionable orders.

Visual Novels

• Higurashi: When They Cry: In one of the later arcs, Keiichi realizes that if he truly wants to unite the town to rescue Satoko, he's going to need the head of the Sonozaki family, Oryou, on his side. When he tells her that he's willing to do anything to save Satoko, Oryou asks what he'd do then if she refuses. Keiichi replies, without hesitation, that he'd smash Oryou's head wide open and install his best friend Mion (Oryou's granddaughter and designated heir) as the new head of the family. Oryou reacts how you might expect someone to react to that statement and throws him out, but later Mion tells him that Oryou will support him, and that proclamation of his was what convinced her that he had the spine needed to do this (though she also says it might be unwise for Keiichi to approach her again for a long time, even to apologize or thank her). Oryou is later shown telling her daughter (Mion's mother) to look after Keiichi should she die, as she thinks having him around would be good for the village.

Web Comics

• Girl Genius: Baron Klaus Wulfenbach deliberately makes mistakes in unimportant things to make sure his son and heir, Gilgamesh, is willing to call him on them. Gil finds the testing "tiresome", but he picks up similar habits himself, later promising to promote the one guard who tries to maintain proper security procedures against him.

Web Original

• Quoteth the original Evil Overlord List: "If any of my minions should point out a flaw in my evil plan, rather than kill him for speaking out of turn I shall immediately promote him to my second-in-command."

Western Animation

• In 101 Dalmatians: The Series, Malevola DeVil (Cruella's mother) named Cruella her sole heir when Cruella finally had the guts to tell how much she despises Malevola.
• Transformers: Rescue Bots: Optimus had Heatwave made team leader when they arrived on Earth because Heatwave disagreed with having to remain in disguise around humans. He wanted a leader who would think and be willing to question what was best for his team.

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