# Good characters who do horrible, horrible things **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 15, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504 "2011-04-15T16:33:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![stegon66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee59a6/32.png) [@stegon66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stegon66)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/81 "2011-04-18T12:13:57Z")
“Ivan, did you see the sunrise?” ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/82 "2011-04-18T13:05:41Z")
Belisarius used scorched earth tactics against Link in _The Dance of Time_, something he knew would kill many innocent civilians and regarded as murder, even if necessary. > [@](#): > > Each and every one of whom could, rightfully, have had the words _Murdered by Belisarius_ engraved on their tomb markers. > [@Andy\_L](#): > > Ista didn’t reform - she was a good, decent person throughout the story even before she did the bad thing (she started with the best of intentions and carried on as things went horribly wrong). Also, a point not even she seems to realize; she and everyone involved were under a curse that twisted all virtues and effort towards disaster. It’s no surprise at all she failed disastrously - it’s probably not a coincidence that the guy who finally succeeded _wasn’t_ under the curse. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/83 "2011-04-18T13:21:46Z")
From Eddings’ **Belgariad** : young Garion, who is still very new on this whole “I can do magic ?” thing, choosing to slowly burn a bad guy to a crisp after said bad guy had stopped being a threat and was begging for mercy. To be fair, IIRC Polgara egged Garion on by choosing this particular moment to reveal that the bad guy was the one who had killed his parents. Still, Garion was hella conflicted about the whole thing for a while, even vowing never to use magic again because it was so mean. From the LOTR: Samwise was being very much a gratuitous dick to Gollum the whole time, wasn’t he ? I mean, I know Gollum was a sack of shit to begin with but that’s no reason an otherwise decent hobbit has to be \*uncivil \*towards him, or go out of his way to humiliate him at every turn. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/84 "2011-04-18T13:28:39Z")
Rosemay Woodhouse of Rosemary’s Baby fame. She is a good person who sells out to the coven in the name of mother love, after thinking about throwing the baby and hersel out the window. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/85 "2011-04-18T14:01:03Z")
> [@Satchmo](#): > > **chorpler** , > Many thanks. I know I read _Ringworld Throne_, but did not remember that part. I’ll have to read it again. I suggest you don’t. Larry Niven is a good author who has done horrible, horrible things, and Ringworld Throne is one of them. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/86 "2011-04-18T14:21:56Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Rosemay Woodhouse of Rosemary’s Baby fame. She is a good person who sells out to the coven in the name of mother love, after thinking about throwing the baby and hersel out the window. Well, consider the ending of another Ira Levin novel, _ **The Boys From Brazil** _. At the end, the Nazi hunter chooses NOT to hunt down and kill all the Hitler clones. Is he evil? Is he choosing to let dozens of new Holocausts occur? No… he’s recognizing that, ultimately, nobody HAS to be Hitler! All those boys are human beings, and each is free to be good or bad. In the same way, Rosemary tells herself that the baby is still just that, a BABY. It has an evil father and a decent, human mother. It could go either way, or it could end up (like most of us) somewhere in the middle. But it deserves the chance to grow up and MAKE that choice. Neither the son of Satan NOR a clone of Hitler is automatically destined to be evil. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/87 "2011-04-18T15:02:43Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Aye, I’d say Ozymandias from _The Watchmen_ counts. > > Also, how about Harry Dresden? Specifically, in chapter 28 of _Death Masks_: Harry and Michael and Sanya have Cassius trapped in a hotel room, but Michael and Sanya refuse to kill Cassius after he gives up the demon coin that’s been possessing him and helping him do monstrous, evil things for literally hundreds of years. Michael and Sanya leave the room, but Harry stays behind and: > > And then Harry beats the fucking shit out him with a baseball bat. It’s easily one of my favorite moments of the whole series. 😃 Another Jim Butcher series: Codex Alera. Gaius Sextus, the Frist Lord of Alera, is facing multiple invasions and an insurrection. In order to put an end to the civil war, so he can focus on the invasions, he causes a massive volcanic eruption smack dab in the middle of his rival’s capital city, killing his rival and everyone else nearby. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/88 "2011-04-18T15:21:54Z")
Pretty much every non-villain in the Sigrid Undset’s _Kristin Lavransdatter_ trilogy, with the single exception of Lavrans. (Well, and a few others who die young, but that hardly counts, does it.) ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/89 "2011-04-18T15:26:17Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > hmmm. I think Walt is the quintessential good guy who does horrible things…Jesse even more so. Jesse is a sweetie. > > I guess it comes down to a person’s opinion of at what point do your deeds define you? No way. Walt is an asshole who uses his illness and family as an excuse. His most telling behavior is his consistent dickish treatment of Jesse, who has a genuinely good heart. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/90 "2011-04-18T16:00:37Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Also, how about Harry Dresden? Harry himself would tell you–and, in fact, does tell you in that very quote–that he’s not a good guy. Of course, if we define a good character by good deeds, he’s done an awful lot of good. He’s saved the world repeatedly, and saved a lot of lives more directly as well, invariably at great personal risk and generally at the cost of a lot of personal agony. I’d say that makes him a good guy, even if his motives were sometimes dubious, and some (read: _lots_) of his actions were vicious. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/91 "2011-04-18T16:11:30Z")
> [@Autolycus](#): > > How about Miyo from Order of the Stick? > > [Miko Miyazaki | Order of the Stick Wiki | Fandom](http://oots.wikia.com/wiki/Miko_Miyazaki) > [@Steve\_MB](#): > > True, given that the OP didn’t require the character to be both “heroic” and “sympathetic”. Perhaps - but [spoiler] she doesn’t fulfill the wracked-with-guilt requirement. To the very end, Miko was unable to accept that anything she did had been wrong. Remember, she believed that she was de-paladin’d for not being zealous _enough_, when it was clear that the problem was that she had let her zeal for Law overwhelm her sense of Good. [/spoiler] Miko’s pretty much my favorite character in that strip, I think about her a lot - she is both a shining example and a cautionary tale to me, and I try to keep her in mind as both. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/92 "2011-04-18T16:17:56Z")
Tom Cruise’s character in _The War of the Worlds_ commits premeditated murder with his daughter, aware of what Daddy was doing, in the very next room. Don’t know if he’s a “good” character, but he is the protagonist… ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/93 "2011-04-18T16:52:29Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > I suggest you don’t. Larry Niven is a good author who has done horrible, horrible things, and Ringworld Throne is one of them. As much of a Niven fan as I am, and of the Known Space series especially, this quote is painfully, painfully true. It is a terrible book. If you must keep tabs on the further adventures of Louis Wu, check it out from the library and skim through it until the narrative picks Louis Wu back up again, about 2/3 of the way through, IIRC. The parts with Wu and who will rule the Ringworld aren’t as bad as the first half of the book, though they still aren’t great. The Fleet of Worlds series is quite well done, OTOH, and worth your time. I think they give short shrift to the Pak as adversaries, but the fleshing out of Puppeteer homelife, the back story of the Beowulf Shaeffer stories, and Sigmund Ausfaller’s character more than make up for it. ---
**Author:** ![Satchmo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/satchmo/32/4223_2.png) [@Satchmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satchmo)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/94 "2011-04-18T17:25:10Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > I suggest you don’t. Larry Niven is a good author who has done horrible, horrible things, and Ringworld Throne is one of them. Thanks for the advice, I checked at home and it’s not in my collection. I must have not liked it too much when I first read it. I’ll get it from the library when I finish _Betrayer of Worlds_. Thanks also **Gray Ghost** , I’m almost through the series (so far), but since my roommate moved out, I’m not buying hardly any books anymore. Thank goodness we have a good library system. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/95 "2011-04-18T17:25:25Z")
Tavore Paran from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. [spoiler]She’s the middle child of a Noble family in the Malazan Empire. Her brother, a Captain in the army, joins a revolt that ends up killing the Adjunct, the right-hand women to the Empress. Tavore becomes the new Adjunct to the Empress. To prove her loyalty, she has her 14-year-old sister Felisin arrested and sent to a slave mining camp, where Felisin gets used as a sex slave by the guards. Now, she did try to have Felisin rescued(twice, but both failed and Felisin dies), becoming the Adjunct was a critical step in her plan that eventually saved the world, and she was obviously broken up about Felisin’s death, but that was excessive. Especially when at least the Empress, and one would presume Tavore, knew damn well that Captain Paran hadn’t actually revolted against the Empire.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/96 "2011-04-19T00:13:52Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > What was the atrocity? Being Human UK spoiler The Box Tunnel 20. He and another vampire slaughtering a train car full of innocent people. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/97 "2011-04-19T00:24:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Also, a point not even she seems to realize; she and everyone involved were under a curse that twisted all virtues and effort towards disaster. It’s no surprise at all she failed disastrously - it’s probably not a coincidence that the guy who finally succeeded _wasn’t_ under the curse. Yeah - I should have mentioned that too. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/98 "2011-04-19T00:50:13Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Archer and Phlox lied about the existence of a cure to a disease that was killing off an entire population, and interfered with the aliens attempts to find someone more decent to help them. > > Janeway killed off a moderately interesting character to restore a fairly dull fellow and an actively obnoxious character back to life. > > In the backstory of “Curse of Chalion” Ista, a very decent person > > repeatedly drowned a close family friend, unto death - and she at least recognized her action as evil and made atonement repeatedly. But he _volunteered_ for it, twice. He panicked during the second time. Besides, he wasn’t the man the Gods told Ista about anyways. > [@Andy\_L](#): > > You’re quite right - murdered (after chasing him down while he desperately pled for life). > > Ista didn’t reform - she was a good, decent person throughout the story even before she did the bad thing (she started with the best of intentions and carried on as things went horribly wrong). > > Speaking of Bujold, Miles tacitly ordered the torture of a captive in the first book featuring him. Well, in his defense he was actually discussing it with Bothari, and Bothari more or less volunteered to do it. He didn’t actually know that what Bothari decided to do would be terminal, he thought it was probably something like breaking fingers and beating the guy. > [@raspberry\_hunter](#): > > All these Bujold references, and none to Aral Vorkosigan? > > Aral, an honorable, upright sort of guy, went along with Emperor Ezal in his scheme to kill Ezal’s psychotic son Serg by basically arranging events so that a whole bunch of people were killed and Serg was just one of many. Aral went along with it because the Emperor convinced him it would be better than a psychotic Emperor Serg. But Ezar essentially blackmailed him into doing it. It could have been much much worse. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/99 "2011-04-19T01:02:36Z")
Regarding Miles > [@aruvqan](#): > > Well, in his defense he was actually discussing it with Bothari, and Bothari more or less volunteered to do it. He didn’t actually know that what Bothari decided to do would be terminal, he thought it was probably something like breaking fingers and beating the guy. I think it’s clear that Miles knew enough about Bothari and his background and devotion to the family to have a darn good idea that even discussing the idea would be taken as an order, and that not explicitly limiting the kinds of actions that should be done was a bad idea. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504/100 "2011-04-19T01:09:26Z")
Speaking of Aral Vorkosigan, there’s also the matter of how his first marriage ended, when he killed his wife’s two lovers in duels. The first one was a fair fight, but the second duel, he killed an unarmed man in cold blood when he refused to pick up his weapon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-characters-who-do-horrible-horrible-things/578504.md?page=6)