“Literature”, in this case, means anything with a plot. So you can post your favorite cheesy B-movie ending, if you think it’s sufficiently awesome.
My favorite villianous fate happens to Dios the high priest in Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids.
(I gather from the old Discworld book club threads that not all of you like Pyramids as much as I do. There were a lot of unfavorable comparisons to Vorbis in Small Gods. For the record, I find Dios creepier).
It just fits so perfectly. Dios spends all his life trying to stop-up time, to make Djelibeybi live its past over and over again. And so… he ends up in a time loop, doomed to relive his life over and over again. I’d even hazard a guess that it’s only a punishment from the reader’s point of view; Dios, had he remembered his past life, would probably think it was quite fitting. His fate is almost an extension of his personality.
In The Revenge of the Rose, the Rose of the title imposes a nicely karmic punishment on the demon that laid waste to her homeland and people. She enslaves him, and intends to force him to rebuild her homeland and in general do everything possible to make it beautiful and safe; for a malignant servant of chaos, an awful fate.
In the duology Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring, Cesar ends up paying badly for his greed.
He ruins Jean de Florette by damming up a spring on Jean’s property causing him to fail in his farm and die from overwork. When Manon – who discovers what Cesar did at the end of the first movie – dams up the spring feeding the town, Cesar is ruined by his own action – and, in the end, discovers that Jean was his own son, leaving Cesar with nothing.
I almost felt bad for Cesar. The irony was that his motivation was family – he wanted his nephew Uglo (?) to succeed. Cesar was already wealthy. He wanted a more lasting legacy. At least that’s my interpretation. It’s been awhile since I read the book.
For the OP, I got nuthin’. In most of the stuff I read, it seems like the bad guys win.
Mansfield Park: Mrs. Norris, who snubbed Fanny all her life, gets stuck with her favorite niece after they are both outcast from Mansfield Park.
Agnes Grey: After being a pain-in-the-ass flirt, Rosalie finds herself in an unhappy marriage with only the governess she tortured as an unruly teen for a friend.
Little, subtle things where the heroine of the novel doesn’t have to do a thing to come out on top.
Some people find it a little too convenient, but I found Gollum’s fate in the novel The Lord of the Rings fitting – and quite well foreshadowed to anyone who was paying attention. (The film version was more… filmic, but kind of ruined the “karmic” aspect of it.)
Not great literature, but in the Doctor Who episode “Genesis of the Daleks,” Davros creates the Daleks to have no mercy on their enemies and revels in that fact. But his last words before they turn on him and exterminate him are “Have mercy!”
Much of that can be attributed to the eloquent acting of Yves Montand. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the books, and I’ve read them only in translation, but I do remember feeling satisfaction that he got his in the end.