The thread title says it all. I’m looking for examples of fictional characters making intelligent, good-faith decisions that nevertheless have disasterous consequences.
I’m not talking about things like running up the stairs instead of out the back door when the serial killer breaks into the house; that’s clearly stupid. I’m looking for cases of a characters doing his or her level best to do the right thing, making what looks like a wise, unselfish, well-thought out choice, and that choice turns out to have huge negative repercussions.
Neither the medium (books, short stories, drama, comic books) matters for this discussion; nor does the genre.
Oak, except on football and jury nullfication we generally agree, but I don’t think the first one qualifies, and I’m not sure about the second one. The fact that you use the term candy-ass seems to indicate that you think Picard & Helo could have seen what was obvious to the the viewer. I’m looking for cases in which nothing the character knows or could reasonably have known would have kept him from making the mistake.
And, apropos of nothing, B5 didn’t really have villains. It had characters.
I think Picard and Helo both had enough information to know the Borg/Cylons were formidable foes intent on genocide or worse in the Borg case. They knew they held in their hands the means to end that threat permanently. And they didn’t pull the trigger for moral concerns. They didn’t know that failing to pull the trigger would have the specific consequences shown, but they knew there would be serious consequences. It is possible they both believed that pulling that metaphorical trigger would have damned their immortal souls to Hell for all eternity. You still have to pull the trigger, even if it costs you your soul.
Basically, humanity has become dependent on a system of FLT wormholes linking all of human civilization and maintained by hyperintelligent AIs. Sadly, these AIs have decided to exterminate most of humanity and enslave the remainder. (Don’t they always?) Because the wormhole network is central to the AI plan, Prime Minister Gladstone opts to destroy that network. This prevents the robo-pocalypse, but utterly destroys a human civilization based upon cheap and instantaneous interstellar transport.
I don’t think this quite fits with the OP, though. Gladstone knew precisely what the negative consequences of her decision would be - she just decided that they were the least-bad option. And she was probably correct.
My contribution: The Emperor Claudius, as depicted in Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius”. He comes to realize that by governing wisely and well, he has reconciled the Roman population to Imperial rule - thus dooming them to future tyranny.
How about Gunnery Sergeant David McIntyre (aka King Arthur) from the Prometheus, who actually pulled the trigger on the shot that started the Earth-Minbari War? Or at least his Captain, who gave the order. Gunports Open…to a human, a clear threat. To Minbari, a sign of respect.
I not looking for instances in which both the audience and other characters could have pointed out the flaw in the characters’ actions. I’m looking for cases in which the person seemed to be doing everything right, and yet everything still went to hell as a result of their actions.
Picard’s failing to obliterate the Borg doesn’t fit because other characters (not to mention the audience) had doubts and voiced them; he himself wasn’t sure he was doing the (tactically right) thing.
If Picard had done the obviously pragmatic wise thing–offing Hugh to get rid of the Borg–and doing so had backfired because, say, he didn’t know the Borg were keeping an even worse menace from getting to the Feds, then that woul dbe the kind of of thing I mean.
I apologize if I was vague. I honestly am having trouble thinking of a good example.
ETA: Your B5 example about the beginning of the war, on the other hand, is exactly what I mean. Both Earth & Minbar were doing their level best there; they were just confounded by their lack of knowledge of the other culture.
So how about Bilbo taking the Ring? He won the wager fair and square, no reason not to claim his prize…but had he not done so, Golem might still be eating Sushi and talking to his precious, with Sauron none the wiser…
While Londo certainly did noble things later on, his alliance with Morden was for purpose of subjugating the Narn. I have a hard time called that even a stretch of “good faith”.
I know I have several examples of what the OP is talking about, but I can’t bring most of them to mind right now.
His duty, at the time, was to the Centauri. The Narn were going to be subjugated either way, the only question was how many Centauri would die in the process. His alliance with Morden could be seen as a show of loyalty to Centauri. Still a heinous act, but not necessarily unjustifiable, to him.
How was the subjugation of the Narn inevitable? Prior to the Shadow intervention, the Centauri Republic was a power in decline, and had been so for centuries. The Narn Regime, on the other hand, was aggressively and successfully expansionist. I suppose it is possible that Morden might have reached an arrangement with someone else in the Centauri government - as happened eventually in the series - but it was just as likely that he would reach an understanding with a Narn expansionist. Not G’kar, certainly, but someone.
For that matter, I think there’s a good fanwank reason that Morden sounded out G’kar before Londo - of the two, the Shadows probably would have preferred an alliance with the more-capable Narn Regime.
I recently read Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, where this kind of thing is a major theme. In the sequel, Children of God, some things arguably turn out for the best, but not until after lots of very bad consequences for all involved.
Early in The Sparrow, alien radio transmissions are picked up on Earth. These aren’t intended as messages to other planets, they’re entertainment broadcasts. While the UN is still debating what to do in response, the Society of Jesus puts together a small team of researchers (about 50/50 Jesuits and “civilians”) and sends them off to make contact with the alien civilization and learn what they can about them.
Although things go pretty well at first, the humans misunderstand some significant points about the alien cultures and fail to realize that there are other points on which they are wholly ignorant. I don’t want to say too much because the plot of the first book largely involves learning what went wrong and why, but there were definite violations of the Prime Directive involved. (I guess the Jesuits don’t watch a lot of Star Trek!) It’s not much of a spoiler to say that, due largely to their well-intentioned and apparently reasonable decisions, all but one member of the team die on the alien planet – and the survivor who returns to Earth has been horribly mutilated. A number of aliens also die as a direct result of human interference, and by the second book human influence has helped lead to a full-scale war between two alien cultures.
I’ll give one specific example that doesn’t give away too much of importance in the book. After things go very badly wrong on the alien planet, two of the humans are taken in by a wealthy merchant who had befriended their team. He offers them [alien word], which the human linguist doesn’t fully understand but takes to mean some formal sort of protection or sanctuary. And in fact it does mean this, but the devil is in the details. The linguist accepts the offer on behalf of himself and his companion. What they don’t realize until it’s too late is that this involves ritual cutting that both symbolically and literally renders the recipient unable to fully fend for himself. Due to their different anatomy this procedure isn’t all that damaging to the aliens and isn’t especially risky. For humans, it’s basically a butchering of their hands. One of the humans, already in poor health, bleeds to death after the procedure. The other, the one who lives to return to Earth, never really recovers, although he eventually regains some function with the use of prostheses.
Actually, I think this counts from both the perspective of the human linguist and the alien merchant. The humans didn’t realize what would be involved, but the linguist later realizes that the merchant had attempted to explain it to him. The merchant had no idea the procedure would be so damaging to the humans. He was trying to do right by them. Odds were good the humans would be killed if they weren’t under the formal protection of a prominent local, and this ritual was apparently the only recognized way in this culture for the humans to be considered harmless wards of the merchant.
