Earn Your Happy Ending / Literature

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• 2666:
  • Archimboldi had to fight in World War II, survive multiple injuries, change his identity, and forge his new career as a writer in post-war Europe. It's never revealed if he won the Nobel Prize, but he certainly earned it.
  • Played with in regards to the fate of Klaus Haas. After getting locked up, he devotes all his time and efforts towards expanding his power base, clearing his name, and helping with the case. In the last few pages, Archimboldi heads for Mexico to get him out of prison, but it's never revealed if Klaus makes it out alive.
• The Abandon Trilogy: Pierce manages to destroy all the Furies coming after her and John, but she Can't Stay Normal and has to stay with John having spent the night with him. She mentions wanting to get a time-share for them on Isla De los Huesos and wants to raise a family.
• Angel Child, Dragon Child: The school's Vietnamese fair raises enough money to bring Ut's mother to the United States, and the whole Nguyen family is reunited at last.
• In Animorphs, after years of unimaginable pressure and War Is Hell torment, the kids become the greatest heroes in the history of humanity. However, only Marco, Cassie, and Ax get to profit from it - Jake's clinically depressed due to his actions aboard the Pool ship, and Tobias struggles to live a solitary existence in the woods.
• Arcia Chronicles: The two characters who get the happiest endings in the first duology are Shander Gardani, the Stoic Woobie who performs several Last Stands and is magically tortured for months by the Big Bad, and Princess Ilana, whose ambitions lead her to become the Big Bad's personal plaything and to lose everyone she loves. The two end up surprisingly Happily Married and found a dynasty that endures uncorrupted for many centuries.
• The Black Arrow: Dick Shelton goes through of months of bloody battles, betrayals and conflict during which he escapes from his treacherous lord, joins a band of outlaws, crashes a wedding...until his father's murder has been avenged, and he and Joanna Sedley are free to get married. And it is said that "Thenceforth the dust and blood of that unruly epoch passed them by. They dwelt apart from alarms in the green forest where their love began."
• The Blade of the Flame: The evil wereshark plot is foiled and Makala is no longer possessed, but Asenka is dead, Makala is still a vampire, and the two male leads and their Love Interests are forced to go their separate ways.
• A Brother's Price: After betrayals, tumult, reconciliations, kidnapping, deaths, waterfalls, combinations of Virgin Tension and aversions of STD Immunity, the book ends on a wedding and the line
  Surely, the gods were merciful and loving. Surely they smiled upon this union, and he and his wives would live happily ever after.
• The Calf of the November Cloud: Konyek is wounded by a group of cattle riders while he is taking care of his father's herd, and left for dead for his traitorous cousin who slanders Konyek before their tribe. After recovering from his wounds, Konyek gets his favorite calf -the eponymous November Cloud- back from the thieves, survives in the wilderness together with the calf, makes it back to his hamlet, and confronts his cousin and his lies. After clearing his name, Konyek is given ownership of November Cloud in reward for his bravery.
• The Candy Shop War is surprisingly dark for a kid's book, and features, among other things, a Jerkass witch-hunter, a Bad Future, a ten-year-old getting trapped in an And I Must Scream scenario, and enough Body Horror for five books. However, it ends with all the kids back to normal, everyone friends, good changes on the horizon, and the Big Bad herself rendered harmless as a friendly little girl.
• Catch-22 is an Only Sane Man story in a Crapsack World, but still has a very uplifting ending.
• Choose Your Own Adventure: You do have to go through a lot to get to even the good endings.
• The Chosen (1997): There's some melancholy and uncertainty but the ending is largely hopeful for the long-suffering protagonists. Rashel and Quinn both decide to start putting aside their anger and bitterness, work together to save the kidnapped girls and flee to join Circle Daybreak. They both have trauma to work through, and Nyala and Timmy are even more unstable, but they hope that with Circle Daybreak they can all start to heal. Quinn and Rashel also at least have each other for support and affection. Rashel never did get revenge on Hunter Redfern, but she has decided there are more important things to focus on, like protecting other people from what she suffered.
• Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain: Taran becomes the King of Prydain and marries the girl of his dreams, but only after losing several friends (and many others leaving forever) and having his idealistic image of a 'hero' shattered. Not only that, all the magic in the world is disappearing, leaving him to rule a much-more-mundane kingdom. Even then his ending isn't that happy, but the afterword seems to indicate that he at least accepts it, as his fading into legend would indicate an ending that may not necessarily be happy but at least positive.
• Each of the The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant play this trope so well that by the time readers have reached the climax it's nearly impossible to believe there could even be a happy ending. Not only are there happy endings, but the happiness of the ending to each story arc also escalates along with the scale of the threats and suffering the heroes are forced to contend with. And they put up with a lot.
• Mary Higgins Clark often has her characters go through all sorts of strife and trauma, only to get a happy outcome - or at least a sweet-leaning bittersweet outcome - by the story's conclusion.
  • Daddy's Little Girl: Ellie not only confirms that Rob Westerfield was her sister's killer but also exposes that he murdered another girl; as a result he's sent back to prison and the innocent man convicted for the crime is exonerated. Ellie's book on Rob's crimes is a bestseller, she marries Pete Lawlor, reconciles with her father and gets to know her half-brother, and finally forgives herself over her sister Andrea's death.
  • I Heard That Song Before: After being suspected of murder for over two decades and nearly going to prison for life, Peter is finally exonerated once and for all, Kay's love and faith in Peter is vindicated, the real murderer of Susan Althorp, Jonathan Lansing and Grace Meredith is caught, and Peter and Kay live happily ever after with their baby son.
  • Let Me Call You Sweetheart:
    • After eleven years, Skip is exonerated of murdering Suzanne and gets to marry his long-time girlfriend, Beth.
    • Kerry proves Skip's innocence and finds the real killer without buggering up her chances of judgeship; the novel ends with her being sworn in as a judge and it's implied she and Geoff will become a couple.
  • Moonlight Becomes You ends with Maggie's investigations playing an integral role in catching Nuala's killer and saving other women from the same fate; she narrowly escapes suffocating to death and finally starts a new relationship with Neil (after being widowed several years before).
• Averted, Subverted, and Justified at the same time in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. After journeying for untold years to reach the Dark Tower (and consequently losing the greater number of his friends, lovers, and followers along the way) Roland finally reaches the Dark Tower. However, upon reaching it he finds out that his existence is a cycle; he has made the journey to the tower an unknown number of times before this one. He is made to repeat his journey again and again until he finally learns his lesson (which is up to the reader to decide). He is, literally, sent back to the beginning of the series with no memory of what just happened. The trope is potentially played straight, however, by the fact that Roland may well be able to finally complete his quest this time round. Stephen King even warns readers who have reached the last chapter to stop reading if they want to have a conventional happy ending. The real ending divided fan opinion...just a little bit...
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In Hard Luck, Fregley becomes one of the popular kids after demonstrating his ability to chew gum with his belly button.
  • In The Deep End, the Heffleys have to endure living in Gramma's basement for months, a bear encounter, being sprayed by a skunk, teenage hooligans, the sewage tank in their RV backing up, inconsiderate campers, being trapped at a campsite with no food, and nearly getting swept away in a flash flood, among many other mishaps, but after that, with all the other rude campers gone from the campsite, they are able to have a pretty good vacation.
• The main characters in the Discworld books. Sir Pterry directly stated in several interviews that he uses this trope quite consciously and systematically.
• The Divine Comedy ends happily with the protagonist having risen above the darkness of Earth, the torments of Hell, and the fires of Purgatory to fully encounter God. The last canto is taken up with Dante apologizing for his inability to describe how perfect the Love of God is and using every device he can to praise that One who is Three.
• Stephen R. Donaldson's books are invariably like this.
• The story underpinning Dragoncharm. Charm is dying and may stay dead if the Seed of Charm isn't planted beyond the stars. Mantle is able to do that, but the Basilisk wants to destroy it, Wraith wants to own it, and it's all too possible that dragons will die in the crossfire. As the book goes on, staying alive becomes harder and harder.
• The cast in Dragons in Our Midst go through hell and back for their happy ending. And no, that's not speaking metaphorically, a few of them literally go through hell.
• Dragons of Requiem has The Dragon War trilogy, which has a surprisingly uplifting ending with no major casualties on the heroes' side, compared to the other trilogies' endings. Frey and Shari Cadigus are both dead, along with Leresy, who redeems himself before dying. Erry discovers who her real father is and lives with him and her half-sister. Valien is crowned king of Requiem and marries Kaelyn. And Tilla and Rune head back to their hometown Lynport, rebuild the town, and spend the rest of their life in peace.
• Surprisingly, especially for an H.P. Lovecraft story, "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" has this. The protagonist dispels Nyarlathotep's deception and narrowly avoids his doom, before waking up in the beautiful and architecturally extraordinary city of Boston, USA. Nyarlathotep then admits defeat, making this probably the happiest ending to any story in the Cthulu Mythos.
• In the second Empire from the Ashes book, humanity suffers heavy losses against the genocidal Achuultani invaders, destroying the entire wave at the cost of many heroic sacrifices galore, the destruction of most of the military — including Colin's big damn reinforcements — and a death toll on Earth exceeding 500 million people.
• In Brandon Mull's Fablehaven, the books get worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, culminating in the fifth book where, despite all their efforts otherwise, the demon prison opens and thousands of demons are released into the world. However, thanks to a Batman Gambit by the Fairy Queen, a lot of powerful allies, and some well-placed magic, the demons are reimprisoned, this time for a much, much longer era, the good guys win, and the ending is completely and utterly happy.
• The Faerie Queene: Una has her kingdom attacked by giants, has her true love renounce her for something she never did, and has to wander uncivilized Britain alone fending off monsters and knights before she can come back home safe and sound. But when she does, she is welcomed by her mother and father, is married to the Redcrosse Knights, and is allowed to live the rest of her days in security and happiness.
• Forever After: Subverted. It seems as though the four great artifacts are kept in separate guarded locations so that when there is a great problem that needs the help of mighty heroes to solve they must go on grand quests and become better people for the experience. Actually, the artifacts just tear up the fabric of reality by being together for too long, and anything difficult for heroes to deal with will also be difficult for anyone else who wants the artifacts.
• The Gormenghast series practically defines this trope. Titus goes through Hell and back, losing almost everybody he cares about to take down Steerpike, but in the end, he has a world to explore, a world to win.
• Harry Potter goes through hell and loses several friends along the way, but in the end, he is able to defeat Voldemort through The Power of Love.
• Honor Harrington:
  • The title character really has to do this in one case especially. Over the course of "In Enemy Hands" and "Echoes of Honor" she is forced to surrender a ship captained by one of her oldest friends, with that friends' birthday party on board, captured, put into the hands of someone who is basically Himmler without the intelligence to not believe the propaganda, has her empathic and emotion — sharing treecat permanently crippled (found out later — he can no longer speak to other treecats), has her artificial eye and half her face electrocuted, is sentenced to death, sees her sworn retainers die in the (barely) successful escape attempt, loses an arm, lands on a prison planet, takes over said prison planet, builds a navy from all the ships stopping by at the prison planet, steals transports for all the people on the prison planet, and finally arrives back in the nearest friendly system to discover everyone thought her dead - and they'd held the funeral, and named ships after her, and she had a brother and sister that were planned to inherit her title. And somehow the whole thing is worthwhile in the simple sentence: "She was taking them home, and they were taking her home, and that was all in the universe that mattered." Yes, all that happens in between her leaving on an escort mission and getting home again.
  • On a grander scale, this happens to the Manticoran-Havenite wars. The restored Republic of Haven has a duly elected President, fully realized Congress, and an all-over mostly-functional government which has signed a binding peace and mutual defense treaty with the Star Empire of Manticore... but it took two revolutions, a cruel and oppressive regime, millions of deaths (many of them unnecessary), and the most titanic space battle in history up to that point to get them there. Meanwhile, Manticore (and Grayson) has signed a peace and mutual defense treaty with its longtime enemy, has the most skilled, battle-hardened, and technologically-advanced military in all of human-settled space, and is finally on the way to taking down the perpetrators of Oyster Bay — but it took millions of lives, several assassinations, and a titanic battle in their home system that could have been prevented if they'd only known about the Onion sooner to bring them to that point. The Grand Alliance is probably the best thing that could have ever happened to any of the three-star nations involved, but it was born in blood, fire, and decades of warfare — which makes its formation all the sweeter.
• The title character of Horatio Hornblower. From midshipman to admiral, he risks death daily, witnesses men die in horrible ways, loses a ship, loses several good officers, his first two children die of smallpox, he gets typhus in Russia, and his career is put at risk many times. Most of all, his "accursed unhappy temperament" prevents him from ever enjoying his many accomplishments because he'll always figure out a way to think of himself as a failure. But in the short story "The Last Encounter," Hornblower is retired, long since Happily Married to Lady Barbara, and finally happy and content for possibly the first time ever.
• In The Hunger Games, Katniss is forced to do this three times! And the second time she fails-badly. In the end, the Games are abolished and the war/rebellion ends, but many well-liked characters (many of them Katniss' friends, family, and companions) die horrible, tragic deaths. They include but are not limited to Rue, Prim, Finnick, Cinna, Mags, Wiress, Cato, Snow, and Coin. And even then, she and those who return home with her spend any number of years barely able to function. The fact it takes quite a number of years to finally regain some bit of normalcy shows that she earned that ending the hard way.
• Inkmistress: Asra goes through many dangers along with deep heartache but by the end she's found a kind boy whom she loves, raising their adoptive son together and has insured the future of Zumorda will be better.
• In the The Iron Teeth web serial Blacknail the goblin goes through a lot more hardship, anguish, and grief than is really necessary.
• Jane Eyre: "Reader, I married him." Jane Eyre had to struggle a lot before she could marry her one true love and enjoy a happy family life with him.
• After all the horror of their lives in The Kingdom of Little Wounds, Midi and Ava escape court, raise Midi's daughter together, and become wise women so they can be independent of all the men who have used them.
• Les Misérables: After 2000 pages leaning very, very hard to the cynical side, Valjean dies redeemed in his own eyes and Marius's, confident that he's kept his promises to Fantine and Bishop Myriel, and confident that his beloved Cosette will be happy.
• Life's Lottery: Life is hard and plagued with horrors, but if you make the right choices, it's possible to end a plotline with a clear heart, success, love, and hope for the future in many of the plotlines. Arguably the best ending is hidden away between the accessible chapters of the story: after spending eons trapped inside your own mind with nothing to do but imagine your life in all its possible permutations, you finally awake from the coma and can live your life in the real world.
• The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali: Rukhsana goes through rejection and abuse by her parents over being a lesbian, getting forcibly matched with a guy, breaking up with Ariana, her beloved girlfriend thinking it will never work out because of how they are then her gay friend/fiance Sohail killed by bigots too. She nonetheless manages to repair all this and her parents realize what they did, reconciling with her by accepting her lesbianism, with Ariana becoming her girlfriend again.
• Pretty much everyone in Loveless. Georgia learns to be happy about her lack of romantic or sexual attraction, Pip and Rooney start going out, Sunil decides to take up a Masters Degree in Music, and the whole gang moves in together.
• Maurice by E. M. Forster gives the same-sex couple a happy ending in a novel written in 1913 in England when sodomy was still a crime, which was why the book was not published until 51 years after it was written (and a year after Forster's death).
• Mistborn — both the first and third books, actually. The second is more of a Downer Ending, since the Big Bad just escaped its imprisonment thanks to the heroine.
• Several characters in The Night Angel Trilogy get their happy endings, but the cost is very high in a very dark setting. Word of God is that the contrast and suffering are what makes choosing the right thing meaningful.
• John Taylor and Suzie Shooter from Simon R. Green's Nightside series. Though given how things work in the Nightside in general, and relating to John and Suzie both together and individually, bittersweet is almost more than they or pretty much everyone in the series would expect/hope for. Though in the Nightside, Bittersweet IS happy when you put things in perspective. Of course there's still one final book left to finish the series, so it's possible they might not even get that.
• Melina Marchetta's spectacular On the Jellicoe Road (just Jellicoe Road in the US and UK) is an example of Earn Your Bittersweet Ending. Just about everybody who survives to the end has lost at least one loved one (often more), and the ending is still incredibly sad and unbelievably heartwarming.
• Swedish writer Simona Ahrnstedt does this in her debut novel Överenskommelser. The poor female lead, Beatrice, has to suffer five years of abuse from her tyrannical uncle. And then he bullies his young niece into a marriage with a man, who's like forty years older than her and treats women like they're dirt under his shoes. So yeah, Beatrice is thrown into the mercy of another creep, who manages to brutally rape and batter her before he suddenly dies! Let's just hope that it was a really painful death... The story ends with Beatrice finally getting married to Seth, her love interest. But as they needed twenty months of suffering to get there, the happy ending sure was overdue...
• Paradise Lost may seem like a Downer Ending at first, but read it again:
  The world was all before them, where to choose
  Their place of rest, & Providence their guide
  They hand in hand, with wadding steps and slow
  Through Eden took their solitarie way.
• In The Pillars of the Earth, the main characters have to cope with and overcome constant setbacks over the decades the book covers. Phillip spends his life defending against violence and political attacks from his archnemesis as he tries to build a cathedral. Aliena is raped, loses her noble status, and has her wool business temporarily destroyed, all at the hands of William Hamleigh. Jack loses his adoptive father and is hampered at every turn by his tumultuous relationship with his step-brother. Several times throughout the book the situation seems completely hopeless, and a resounding success is often followed by a tragic defeat. Up to the very end, the characters struggle to defend the happy lives they've worked hard for, making the happy ending they earn after years of frustration and tragedy extremely satisfying.
• Tim Powers: Few of his characters ever survive their arc without making some major sacrifice along the way, be it of blood, love, flesh, or memory.
• Presidential: Connie and Emily quickly patch things up, after Connie's survival from her assassination attempt, while committing to getting every campaign promise fulfilled. At the end, they're still happily together after Connie's been reelected later, while Emily is basically living in the White House now with her, with it being made clear they'll be married soon too.
• Quantum Gravity: by the end of the fourth book, Lila has been tortured by elves, lost her trust in Sarasilien, the humans she worked with, and generally finds that it's going to be hard to grow up. She also literally goes through hell. Zal goes through hell, and then things get worse. But by the end, they're together, and Lila has figured out how to Be Herself. It's...less sappy in context.
• All of Ayn Rand's fiction, except for We The Living. Howard Roark gets his skyscraper, recognition of his artistic genius, and the girl in The Fountainhead; John Galt gets America, and the girl and the heroes are setting out to rebuild a second golden age in Atlas Shrugged; and Equality 7-2521 escapes, gets the girl, and sets out to rebuild the world in Anthem.
• Robin Hobb's later fantasy, like the Realm of the Elderlings trilogies, The Liveship Traders, and The Tawny Man, go through an incredibly dark journey and emerge to a more or less happy ending.
• This is how most Redwall books turn out. They're all happy endings but a lot of friends are lost, and it's never easy.
• The Reluctant King: By the end of the third book, Jorian has settled down with Estrildis' maid and became a respected clockwork artisan and father.
• Repeat: After living a long succession of increasingly miserable lives, Brad figures out that he can only escape the cycle by finding a life he can be satisfied with; so, on his next iteration, he decides to live his personal history exactly as he did originally without trying to change anything, eventually meeting his future wife, getting married, starting the same family he had in his first life, and winding up back in the same faltering job he had at the start of the story - and he finally wakes up on the morning after his fortieth birthday. Then, just as it looks as if the story's going to end on a slightly bittersweet note, Brad is called to a meeting with his agent, who reveals that his project has gotten a second chance and the animated show he was writing for has been renewed, allowing him some much-needed cash and another shot at original success. Plus, thanks to the infinite loop, Brad has a ton of inspiration...
• Both Sabriel and Touchstone in Sabriel are put through the metaphysical wringer. By the end, they've both lost their entire families and a lot of their friends to Kerrigor's undead minions. In the end, though Sabriel is saved from death by relatives in the beyond telling her it's not her time, and she and Touchstone are well on their way to a happily ever after. They even managed to save Mogget.
• Tony Wayland in the last two books of Julian May's Saga of the Exiles.
• Sans Famille: Remi's misfortune starts with finding out he is adopted. Then he is sold by his abusive adoptive father to a travelling musician named Vitalis, but just when he begins to consider the man a surrogate parent, he loses Vitalis (and many of his animal companions) during a harsh winter. He is then taken in by a loving family named the Acquins but loses them too when the father of the family, Pierre, is sent to jail due to an unpaid debt. He finally appears to find his real family, the Driscolls, but they are cold towards him and even frame him for a robbery. But in the end, he finds his real mother and brother and inherits the family fortune his late father left him.
• The Screwtape Letters is about a devil named Screwtape advising his nephew Wormwood on how to successfully tempt a man, referred to only as "The Patient". The "Patient" takes every temptation Screwtape and Wormwood throw at him, almost turns away from the good side, but makes his way back only to be killed in a bomb blast and wind up in Heaven after all. Due to the Perspective Flip, this is seen as a bad thing.
  Screwtape: Did you mark how naturally—as if he'd been born for it—the earthborn vermin entered the new life? How all his doubts became, in the twinkling of an eye, ridiculous? I know what the creature was saying to itself! "Yes. Of course. It always was like this. All horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a kind of bottle-neck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! you were out of the narrows and all was suddenly well. The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?
• Sharpe: Richard Sharpe has to go through the entirety of The Napoleonic Wars and then some, being wounded many times, endlessly suffering the enmity of snobs due to rising from the ranks and losing a great many friends and lovers but eventually he is able to retire to a comfortable life with wife Lucile and (as revealed by another series by the same author) a son he named Patrick after his best friend who, furthermore, didn't die.
• Compared to some of John Brunner's other works (particularly The Sheep Look Up), The Shockwave Rider might have an ending that qualifies. "Well — how did you vote?"
• In Sing You Home, Zoe and Vanessa fight in court with Zoe's born-again ex-husband Max, for their frozen embryos from their IVF treatment. Zoe and Vanessa want to have a family, and Max wants to give the embryos to his brother. Meanwhile, Max is in love with his brother's wife Liddy and decides to give up the embryos because he doesn't want to see them happily raising his kids. In the end, they have a healthy girl, and Max gets Liddy.
• Matteo in Someone Else's War has lost his home, his entire family, most of his classmates, one of his best friends, and by all accounts, his innocence. But thanks to some craftiness and cooperation from his friends (whom he never would have had had he spent the entire novel as cold and judgmental as he was toward the beginning), he manages to dismantle the world's largest army and send the Child Soldiers home.
• The Son Of The Ironworker: Martín Sánchez is forced to leave his country to escape his evil grandfather's persecution only to become a slave. Nonetheless, he manages to flee from his abusers, gets married to his love's life and ends becoming a rich farmer.
• Harlan Ellison's 1961 novel Spider Kiss is a dark, cynical take on The Power of Rock where all the major characters are morally compromised, but protagonist Shelly Morgenstern manages to redeem himself. Throughout most of the story, Shelly is publicist for sociopathic singing star Stag Preston. This usually means keeping Stag's attempted rapes and drunken rampages out of the press, causing Shelly to become increasingly disgusted with both Stag and himself until he finally quits. Eventually, Stag's career tanks and he winds up singing at a New Orleans strip club, where he has a chance meeting with Shelly. Stag tells Shelly that if they renew their relationship, they could both return to the top. Shelly knows Stag is right, but he also knows that Stag is still a horrible person who doesn't deserve a second chance. Therefore, Shelly leaves Stag in the gutter where he belongs, regaining his self-respect in the process.
• Star Wars: Gara/Lara/Kirney's plotline through the Wraith Squadron books. She goes from an Imperial agent whose loyalty isn't deserved by those she serves, to a potential mole in Wraith Squadron, to a loyal member of said squadron who is in a relationship with a man, Myn, whose squadron she got destroyed when she was an Imperial. It probably comes as no surprise that her identity as a former Imperial Agent is revealed, and Myn ends up trying to kill her. Then she ends up back on an Imperial vessel, posing as a loyal soldier while actually sabotaging the ship for the benefit of the Republic. Then she's forced to fake her own death to avoid execution for treason from either side of the board. And all throughout this, she suffers from Sanity Slippage due to having a Double Consciousness brought on by the stress of her Intelligence background. A (much) later book, Mercy Kill reveals that Myn found her, they got married, and had kids, but she went through a lot to be able to get there.
• This is one of the reasons a lot of readers find Terry Goodkind so irritating. Every single book of the Sword of Truth series makes it seem like the heroes have earned their happy ending, but the next book always reveals yet another previously-unexplained plot device that the author can use to torture them for another 600+ pages. The reason he does this is to avoid cliffhanger endings, but depending on your mileage, the cure might actually be worse than the disease.
• The epilogue of These Savage Bones shows Esperanza and Alejandro happy and re-settled a year after the events of the story and happily engaged, but the two of them had to go through a lot of crap to get there.
• Timeline-191 has an interesting example of not being a person going through this, but a nation. In this Alternate History novel, the The United States is divided in half by losing the Civil War thanks to interventions from Great Britain and France, faces another crushing defeat of a war, getting pulled into two great costly World Wars (which is now on the North American soil in this timeline), and gets nuked in the second world war. But after all of that, the USA comes out on top as one of the three most powerful countries (with the other two being Imperial Japan and Imperial Germany), has destroyed the Confederacy and finished it off by pushing the British and French out of the Americas, whose involvement caused all of the USA's problems in the first place.
• Tolkien's Legendarium fall:
  • Beren and Lúthien: Beren has to go to the Big Bad's fortress and take a jewel from his crown to marry Lúthien. In the process, he gets imprisoned and tortured, loses one hand and ends up dying just to get this, but he gets better and he and his wife live happily and relatively peacefully until his second and final death.
  • The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn has to become king of two kingdoms for Arwen, and it ends up taking decades for it to happen, with a huge war right before it.
  • The Silmarillion: The only person in the book who gets an actual Happy Ending with no strings attached might be Tuor, who gets to sail to Valinor with his wife Idril, and becomes an honorary Elf by the grace of Ilúvatar.
• The Toymaker's Apprentice: Stefan gets put through a lot over the course of the book. Heck, his mom died before the book starts. However, he's much happier by the end of the story.
• Trapped on Draconica: Team Good goes through a lot of hardship, a lot of pain, and a lot of suffering. Each one of them had a moment where they would have given up if not for the encouragement of the group. They all earn a happy ending.
• In Vampire Academy, Rose finally gets her happy ending after one of her closest friends dying, nearly going insane, the love of her life being turned Strigoi and who gets eventually turned back after Rose nearly killing him twice, being tortured both through the bond with her best friend and actually tortured in person, getting accused of assassinating a monarch and nearly executed before she finds out that one of the people she trusts, likes and admires was the real killer and set her up to take the fall.
• If this trope is a common one for anyone who actually makes it to the end of a Wildbow novel alive and intact, it's particularly the case for Antares (Victoria Dallon, formerly Glory Girl), protagonist of Ward. In fact, she finished the previous work horrifically mutilated, unable to move on her own power, with terrible intrusive mental compulsions. Ward, among other things, is the story of her clawing back to some semblance of a normal, happy life, and dragging the world along with her.
• In the Warhammer 40,000 Black Library novels:
  • The Ciaphas Cain series can fit into this trope. Cain sometimes gets really lucky, but we must recognize luck usually works as many times against him as in his favour, he still has to fight and figure out a way to save his life most of the time, but in the end, when he has managed to save the day (and usually the entire sector), he and his friends can go to a nice place to enjoy some amasec and tanna while tasting some delicacies. He managed to earn his retirement, which is to say something, considering the rate of casualties in the Imperial Guard, and after some decades he saved the world where he was (again), ensuring himself (again) his good retirement.
  • The novel Blood and Fire. The plot is set after the infamous Hive Helsreach battle and features Chaplain Grimaldus coming to the aid of the Celestial Lions Chapter. Bit of backstory here; the Celestial Lions are a Chapter that once took part in a battle against Chaos that the Inquisition ended early by Exterminatus. The Lions were horrified as this killed millions of innocents and they felt they could have saved them, so they call out the Inquisition for it. Even when the High Lords ignore them they don't stop, demanding the Inquisition be held accountable for a massacre. Things gradually turn against them as accidents in battle and disappearances of Chapter command whittle them down, until Armageddon where faulty intel and unusually accurate sniper attacks leave less than 100 of them alive. The last Apothecary in the Chapter is killed just as they reach safety, by someone shooting him in the temple with a drill-las. The Chapter is convinced they are doomed and resolve to die with their fallen brothers. Until Grimaldus says "screw that!" and leads the entire army of Hive Helsreach to support the Lions in avenging their honour against Ork Warboss Thogfang, which the Lions Pride-Leader Dubaku manages to kill. After this he orders the Lions to return to their home and start rebuilding, which is made easier when High Marshall Helbrecht arrives and gives Dubaku, the new Chapter Master, an ancient suit of Power Armour from the Heresy, a Strike Cruiser and an elite detachment of Black Templars to help rebuild this Chapter that put honour and what is right over their own existence. For once in 40k a story where honour and justice prevailed and the guys who did the right thing were rewarded for it, but sweet Emperor did they have to earn it. Additionally, there's the implication that due to the Templar's support the Celestial Lions will be able to rebuild properly, as the Inquisition learned the last time what happens when they mess with a First/Second Founding chapter with the First Battle for Armageddon. Especially when they're a chapter that is extremely close to each other, like the Black Templars and the Space Wolves.
• In Warrior Cats, by the end of The Last Hope, every character has gone to hell and back (sometimes literally), but they still pull through and earn happy endings for themselves and all the Clans. The Clans have survived nearly being taken over by Tigerstar, almost being killed or driven out of the forest by BloodClan, the destruction of the forest by Twolegs and the resulting starvation and journey to the new territories, and the Dark Forest (feline hell)'s attempt at destroying the Clans. Not to mention all the hardships and heartbreak in between.
• At the end of The Wheel of Time books, millions are dead, many hundreds of thousands in the Last Battle alone, but they've defeated or dealt with the all of the Forsaken, crushed the army of Shadowspawn, Darkfriends, and Dreadlords, and Re-sealed the Dark One. They've lost a lot of people on the way, but they have an Age of prosperity awaiting them.
  • Nowhere is this more exemplified than with Rand, who after an absurd amount of It Sucks to Be the Chosen One, he gets to walk away in a new body free of pain or maiming, mostly anonymous, free of the responsibility that was constantly wearing away at his sanity, with new Reality Warper powers at the cost of his old abilities, and begins Walking the Earth.
• Where Are the Children?: After being stuck married to an abusive psycho for seven years, spending another seven years being suspected of her children's murders and then nearly losing her other children, Nancy manages to save her children and her name is cleared. She finally feels some measure of peace and looks forward to a happier life with her family and friends.
• White Fang loses his pack, is forced to pull sleds with a team of dogs who hate him, then is sold to a dogfighting ring, then is rescued by a sympathetic watcher and given to a judge in California, but then he is almost killed by a burglar. The book ends with him recovering from his injuries in the garden, surrounded by the puppies he sired with a neighboring collie.
• World War Z chronicles the entirety of a Zombie Apocalypse, from the dark portents of danger, the manic reaction of humanity, the soulless survival techniques that many resorted to, and the horrors of the living dead. Despite this, it manages to have an undercurrent of hope that gets stronger, running side by side with the cynicism and blackness. After all, Humanity did win the war, in the end.
• In the Xanth this is pretty much the entire schtick behind Good Magician Humphery's missions: Successfully completing a Humphery-given task pretty much guarantees you (and those who helped you) a Happily Ever After. And most who get stuck with the year's service as payment for his answers end up better off for the experience. It's implied that many of Xanth's citizens know this for a fact and that's why so many are willing to give up a year's freedom (at a minimum) to petition Humphery.
  • Question Quest was originally about Lacuna trying for the trope; only thing is, Humphrey had been missing for a little over a decade (since the start of the 2nd Xanth series, Vale of the Vole), so with a little help from Grey (Humphrey's protegé), she tracks him down. Turns out he's been playing a waiting game with the Demon X(A/N)th in a quest to earn his happy ending. They help each other out to earn their respective endings.

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