Beowulf slays the dragon, then dies of its poisonous bite.
Oh, I wasn’t saying that Thor and the Midgard Serpent don’t destroy one another: just that, of all the major Aesir, only Thor comes even close to a victory.
(Yes, I know Vidar kills Fenrir after Fenrir eats Old One-Eye. Vidar’s not a major god, though he probably becomes one in the post-Ragnarok world. )
As for odds: Well, the whole point of Ragnarok is that it represents the destruction of the old order, with the jotuns getting utterly annihilated and the Aesir almost completely so. So naturally most of the battles end with both combatants dying.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t call Tyr an especially close relative of Odin and the Thunderer. His father was Hymir, not Odin.
In A Meeting at Corvallis, third volume of S.M. Stirling’s [url=]Emberverse series, as the armies of the conquering Portland Protective Association and the allies resisting it are facing off for a decisive Mother of Battles, Michael Havel, of the allies, challenges Norman Arminger, the power-mad Lord Protector of the Association, to have it out in single combat. Arminger has zero interest but can’t refuse – because he has created a society modeled on medieval Normandy as imagined by the Society for Creative Anachronism, and he cannot refuse such an honorable challenge in front of his younger knights, who have grown up actually believing in the code. Havel kills Arminger, and shortly dies of his wounds. The result (as Havel intended) is that the allies win – because all they want is not to be conquered, and with Arminger gone none of the Association really want to continue the war.
Chaucer’s “Pardoner’s Tale” tells of three people who kill one another.
I recall the final hero-versus-villain confrontation in a novel, Ben Bova’s Peacekeepers I think, where the villain is a terrorist who has a nuclear bomb wired to detonate if his heartbeat stops. The hero shoots him fatally after finding the woman he came to rescue has been raped and beaten to death and is shot himself by the terrorist leader’s comrades. They both live just long enough for the hero to say “Did you think you were the only one willing to die for his beliefs?”
Spider Robinson wrote a short story set millions of years in the future, where the entire universe has become a near-utopia of nearly perfect beings. The last and best warrior the human race ever produced is in despair because there’s no one left worth fighting, no “just wars” or challenging opponents in a universe of pacifists where there’s no injustice that can’t be fixed non-violently. He’s attacked by the posthuman he’s explaining all this to, and they kill each other as the warrior sends out a warning about the danger, but (spoilers):
It turns out that the posthuman attacking him is the last healer as he is the last warrior, who is attacking him because that is the cure for his despair and because in such a perfect universe “now I too am unemployed.”
In the film starring Charleton Heston, the legendary Spanish hero El Cid is wounded in battle with the Moors. After he dies, his body is strapped to his horse, and sent out into battle at the head of his armies. The Moors flee in terror, believing it is his ghost, and are defeated.
I thought for sure someone would have mentioned Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine by now.
It’s not really a 1 for 1, but a case could be made for Darth Vader and Palpatine.
reviews thread
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!
Uh…Sheriff Eben Oleson and the vampires in 30 Days of Night? Rain Ocampo and the zombies in Resident Evil?
There’s also that triple shoot-out at the end of Reservoir Dogs where … ummm, I don’t remember who all shoots whom! But I think three of them all kill each other in one hail of gunfire.
You could still do that with A defeating Z, then Y defeating A, then B defeating Y, then X defeating B, and so on, until there’s only one left, or have a single mutual-destruction in the last round.
True enough, but it doesn’t make for good poetry, I think.
And Marvel Comics fight surely complain about Loki falling to anyone other than Goldilocks. 