Its Personal / Literature

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• The 39 Clues: Amy and Dan don't just want to beat Isabel in the clue hunt, they want to do it because she murdered their parents.
• Subverted in The Acts of Caine. For the main bad guy (the Blind God) and his minions, everything is impersonal, and that anonymous hunger is their defining trait. There are lots of side characters (Raithe, Kierendal, Orbek, Avery Shanks) with personal grudges against the main character, since Caine has a tendency to ruin people's lives. But the protagonist himself doesn't count, despite the horrible things done to his family and friends, not because he doesn't take their vengeance personally, but because he takes every single fight personally. Something as trivial as getting drunk and shouting at him is enough to get your jaw broken, minimum.
• Animorphs:
  • In the novel The Andalite Chronicles, Visser 32 (the future Visser Three), promises Elfangor that he will kill Elfangor for all of the crap Elfangor has put him through, and that he would make it personal. Very personal. Visser Three kept his word in the first book of the main series when he turned into a horrible monster and ate Elfangor alive.
  • Marco and Jake when the Yeerks went after their families. Marco, in particular, battled his way through half the Yeerk Pool with the rest of the group helping him, to save his mother. He also took on several hork-bajir and human controllers singlehandedly to save his father, although Rachel showed up for backup partway through.
  • Don't forget David and Rachel. After two books with no interaction, Rachel swears to kill David after he almost kills Tobias. David in turn makes Rachel his number one target after she jams a fork into his ear and threatens to kill his parents.
  • Rachel also almost killed Taylor after she tortured Tobias, and only Tobias's pleas stopped her. Tobias got one of his own when his mother was being targeted by the Yeerks.
• Older Than Feudalism: In The Bible, God promises to punish all who harmed and will harm His children.
  • An infamous and brutal example in Genesis 34. Shechem, prince of Shechem, rapes Jacob's daughter Dinah, and then has the audacity to ask for her hand in marriage. Dinah's brothers say sure, but first you and the entire male population of Shechem have to be circumcised in accordance with our tradition (at this time, the "kingdom" of Shechem was probably a small city-state with a few hundred people). Shechem and the males agree, and are circumcised. With the newly circumcised men too sore to do anything, two of Jacob's sons, Levi and Simeon (and probably a number of servants and retainers of Jacob's family, making it the size of a small tribe), enter Shechem and kill all the men, enslave the women and children, and loot the town.
• A Brother's Price has this in spades. First, some bandits are stupid enough to wound and leave for dead a soldier of the crown on Whistler land, which means that the Whistler family is bound by law to help the soldier. Then, six years ago in time, but revealed later in the novel, there is the poisoning of the Prince Consort, and the bomb that kills half of the royal family. And then the villains who were behind all of the previous kidnap Jerin, who is at this point engaged to the princesses, which makes it very personal to all of the five adult princesses and their mothers, the very big Whistler family, and enrages every loyal subject of the Queens. Those villains do have chutzpah.
• It pops up with a vengeance, complete with Disposable Woman, in the second Amber novel. A minor character murders one of Corwin's casual flings. It's not a good idea to cross Corwin.
  Corwin: I spoke not a word when I unhorsed him, nor afterward, and I did not use my blade, though he drew his own. I hurled his broken body into a high oak tree, and when I looked back it was dark with birds.
• In Michelle Paver's "The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: Oathbreaker," Torak swears he will avenge his cousin Bale and kill Soul-Eater Thiazzi. However, when he finds Thiazzi (staying in the tree Torak was born in, no less), he has to break his oath in order to save Renn, who is trapped inside with a fire and who is quickly running out of breath.
• In Coiling Dragon, when Linley discovers that the Radiant Church killed his mother, he makes it his life's goal to destroy them (and, along the way, gathers a group of followers that want to do the same).
• Yerrininae from Companions Codex didn't take the death of his beloved at the hands of Dahlia well. The only thing stopping him from cruelly killing her are the plans of Lolth and first priestess Berrelip for Dahlia to become Matron of the next incarnation of House Do'Urden. They don't stop him from having a good time hitting Entreri sensless multiple times a day, though.
• Constance Verity Saves the World: While Apollonia is too much of a Consummate Professional to seek vengeance, she holds a personal grudge against Connie for throwing her brother in a vat of acid when she tried to shut down the weather-control device he had designed.
• Debt of Honor:
  • It's revealed at the beginning of the novel that Yamata's reason for starting a war with the United States was because he was orphaned during World War II when his family chose to commit suicide during the invasion of Saipan rather than be captured by the Marines.
  • Ron Jones says this of his motivation for fighting against Japan, as the son of his mentor when he was a sonarman aboard USS Dallas was aboard USS Asheville when it was sunk.
• Discworld:
  • A dramatic literary subversion, from Terry Pratchett's novel Men at Arms:
    Samuel Vimes: He killed Angua. Doesn't that mean anything to you?
    Carrot Ironfoundersson: Yes. But personal isn't the same as important.
  • In a later book, Jingo, Carrot decides to go to have a nap while pursuing Angua's kidnappers by boat, on the basis that if he stayed awake fretting about her, he would be useless when they caught up to them.
  • Partially subverted in Thud!!. The baddies and the Summoning Dark try to get the main character Vimes to make it personal multiple times. Whether they succeed is subject to discussion (though it does seem so in the end).
• In Dreadnought!, when Piper's friend Merete reveals herself as The Mole for Rittenhouse, she explains that the motivation for both her and one of the captains most loyal to Rittenhouse to join him was from when Orion pirates attacked a passenger ship that both her family and the captain's son were on. The Orions butchered everyone except Merete, who was a child and able to hide from them. Their grief and anger has simmered ever since then, making them both easy to bring to Rittenhouse's side although Merete genuinely likes Piper and the book's events have shaken her trust in Rittenhouse, and Piper is gradually able to make her see that she doesn't matter to him and bring her around.
• For the first eleven books of the Dresden Files series, Harry fought vampires, necromancers, werewolves, faeries and God knows what else because it was his job and because he helps the helpless. The twelfth book, Changes (whose very name is a change from the Idiosyncratic Episode Naming of the rest of the series), has the monsters bring the fight to Harry. The first line promises a rampage to end all rampages. And it was. It was spectacular. Fuck with Harry Dresden's family, and he will be willing to sell his soul to get back at you. Not that he does, but it's close:
  Harry Dresden: I answered the phone, and Susan Rodriguez said, "They've taken our daughter."
• In The Falconer the protagonist kills faeries because they killed her mother.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry's conclusion of Dumbledore's reasoning for Harry's position as The Unchosen One. He doesn't really have to do it, but of course Voldemort killed his parents. And a whole mess of other people, and screwed up many more (Cedric and Neville's parents are two of the many, many examples that Harry thinks of when Dumbledore poses the question to him).
  • Bellatrix Lestrange also makes things personal for Harry as well when she murders his godfather, Sirius Black. She also makes things personal with Neville due to the fact that she tortured his parents into permanent insanity. However, neither of them are the ones that kill her in the end — what ultimately does her in is that she makes things personal for the wrong witch.
• Honor Harrington:
  • The titular heroine is quite willing to make peace with the people she's fought for most of her career in a sometimes very vicious and brutal war that has cost her many friends, because they were only doing exactly what she would have done in their place. The sneak attack on Manticore that kills most of her extended family (as well as several million other civilians) by the Mesan Alignment, on the other hand — that has her out for blood.
  • Queen Elizabeth III had it out for Haven because their agents assassinated her father. She's since discovered that the Alignment, ultimately, was the reason for Haven's expansionism which led to her father's death, and is not at all pleased. The Havenites aren't too happy about the revelation either; the Alignment's manipulation re-started military hostilities and resulted in the death of the President of Haven's lover and de facto husband. And when Eloise Pritchart carries a grudge against someone, that someone is going to die. Painfully. The only thing that can make the Alignment's situation worse is having Manticore and Haven join up in a military and political alliance — which they do.
  • After discovering all of the above, the Alignment does the only thing it can do: get the hell out of Dodge. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they'll be able to get out fast enough...
• The Hunger Games, President Snow murdered Haymitch and Johanna's loved ones for petty reasons. They later join District 13 to put a stop to his reign.
• In the Hurog duology, the king has the nasty habit of keeping his subjects under control by threatening their relatives. Needless to say, that results in a lot of situations that are this trope. Ward, the main character, is a very loyal friend, brother and cousin. There is also Oreg, some kind of family ghost, who was very protective of the family's daugther. An aunt who slapped her once "never visited again", the implication being that Oreg did worse to her than just make her needlework basket disappear.
• Daine's Roaring Rampage of Revenge in The Immortals. She didn't like Ozorne very much before, but she wasn't gung-ho about doing what the Graveyard Hag wanted... until Ozorne had Numair (fake) killed. Daine promptly unleashes her new necromantic powers and awakens a horde of dinosaur fossils to storm through Ozorne's palace.
• The Invisible Detective: The present-day plot of Killing Time features a crew of zombie pirates who died in a shipwreck going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. However, contrary to initial impressions, they aren't after the descendants of the villagers who deliberately wrecked their ship to claim the salvage, with the captain saying that "they had as much right to trick us onto the rocks as we had to attack merchantmen and raid coastal ports." Their real target is a Really 700 Years Old surviving pirate who betrayed his friends (although he argues he had justification) and stole a treasure that included the mystic watch that has kept him alive and could have saved the others.
• Mr. Standfast, the sequel to The Thirty-Nine Steps. In The Thirty-Nine Steps, it was just business for the villains and just survival for the hero, but the rematch is personal. It doesn't help that the hero and the lead villain both fall in love with the same woman.
• In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, one of the things that keeps the superhero/supervillain fights nonlethal and relatively harmless is that everyone goes to a great deal of effort to keep things from getting personal. Villains who prey on kids or heroes who try too hard to discover supervillain secret identities tend to get "accidentally" killed.
• In the Rainbow Magic series, Rachel takes it personally when Jack Frost threatens to ruin her mom's birthday.
• Redwall: Many antagonists in the series make things personal for the heroes one way or another.
  • In Mossflower, Tsarmina Greeneyes destroys Martin's sword. He promises to slay her for this action.
  • In Mattimeo, Slagar The Cruel abducts Matthias's son Mattimeo, intending to sell him to Malkariss so that he will become a slave.
  • In Legend of Luke, Vilu Daskar murders Luke's wife, and massacres his clan as well.
  • In Lord Brocktree, Ungatt Trunn conquers Salmandastron, which results in the death of many heroes, and forces the title character's father into a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • In Outcast of Redwall, Swartt Sixclaw captures and abuses Sunflash The Mace for several seasons, who ends up maiming his paw when he escapes.
• In the Dale Brown novel Shadows of Steel, being told that Hal Briggs is with the group he is being asked to help convinces Pat to come out of "early retirement" where more nebulous appeals fail.
• In Shadows of the Empire, crime lord Prince Xizor would hate Vader anyway, since they're more or less rivals for power under the Emperor. But Xizor has a special hatred for Vader and wants to kill his son, because there was a hazard lab on Xizor's homeworld, a flesh-eating bacteria escaped, and Vader had the site — and the city around it, including Xizor's family — "sterilized" (ie. incinerated) from orbit. Xizor erased all record of this, but Vader's spies find out about this near the end of the novel.
• The Shahnameh: Rostam has gone to war against the Turanians on many occasions, simply as a patriotic Persian defending his country. But when the Turanians kill the innocent Siavash (Rostam's surrogate son) he goes to war for the sole purpose of killing everyone responsible. Same can be said about king Key Khosro who was Siavash's son and the Persians in general.
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: The first 7 books have almost all the members of the Vigilantes wronged in some way. Naturally, it is quite personal for them. Some of the books after that have the Vigilantes taking action, because one of their friends or loved ones is in trouble.
• In The Southern Reach Trilogy, The psychologist/director used to live in the place that became Area X and her mother disappeared together with everyone else within it when the border came down, which later motived her to work for the Southern Reach no matter the cost.
• Threadbare:
  • One of the primary pieces of advice given when fighting dwarves is don't make it personal. They're quite understanding of the realities of war, and will invoke Nothing Personal on themselves. You can go to war with dwarves, and win or lose they'll be happy to trade with you after. If you do make it personal, however (such as by breaking oaths or claiming that they're the ones who started the war when they didn't), then they will hold a grudge for generations, passing it down from parent to child like a treasured heirloom.
  • The daemon known as Anayse Lay'di, the Big Bad, normally doesn't care one whit about mortals. In fact, her entire motivation is little more than "wouldn't it be funny if I tricked a country into destroying itself?" However, she becomes more and more annoyed at Threadbare, culminating in her ultimate defeat after she had seemingly won. She spent fifteen years working on that plan, only to be foiled by a goddamn teddy bear. Of course, there's more than a little Moral Myopia here; Threadbare never held a grudge against her, he just wanted to keep his people safe.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Hobbit, the goblins of Goblintown who discover Thorin's company and believe they are spies who want to destroy them (even though the dwarves didn't really want anything to do with them), especially after the Great Goblin discovers Thorin's "Orc-cleaver" and orders them destroyed. But when Gandalf murders the Great Goblin attempting to save the dwarves (and Bilbo), the Goblins pursue them after they escape to avenge their ruler. They even believe the dwarves (and the elves and men) are a greater threat with the dead Smaug's treasure, prompting the Battle of Five Armies (when the Eagles join with the dwarves, elves and men).
  • In The Fellowship of the Ring, the surviving goblins turned out to have massacred Moria, including Balin, as revenge for the Battle of Five Armies. They were probably satisfied when the Balrog took the Great Goblin's "murderer" down with him, though they didn't seem to give up until after the Lothlórien elves saved the eight then-surviving members of the Fellowship. And unbeknownst to the Moria goblins, that "murderer" was resurrected later.
  • To take this a little further, the same band of mountain orcs passed Lothlórien completely and followed the fellowship downriver, and joined forces with the Uruk-Hai at Emyn Muil, lampshading the trope by stating they were after revenge. They finally perished at the brink of the Fangorn Forest, when the Rohirrim defeated them.
  • Sauron with Aragorn and Gondor. Aragorn is the last member of the line of Elendil, which includes Elros, Beren, Luthien and Melian, all who have opposed Sauron for thousands of years. Gondor is the last kingdom established by Numenor and Sauron wishes to destroy that line and Gondor with it. So when Aragorn challenges him (to distract him from Frodo and Sam), Sauron felt fear for the first time in a long time, believing Aragorn had the ring and was challenging him for power.
• Universal Monsters: In book 3, Captain Bob says this after Fritz's attack on him wrecks his moped, bought with the money he earned interning at Universal Orlando.
• Villains by Necessity:
  • Sam starts the book under the belief that the Assassin's Guild, the closest thing he has to a family, are all abandoning their trade because it's a much less stable business as evil is being wiped out of the world. After finding out exactly what whitewashing actually entails, he realizes they were forced against their will into leaving their old lives behind, and vows to kill Mizzamir for it.
  • Cited as the reason behind Blackmail's final break with the Six Heroes. When his brother turned evil, he had asked Mizzamir to be merciful... and Mizzamir turned his brother into a warhorse. It's implied that this is the same warhorse he rode and lovingly cared for until Fenwick's men killed it.
  • Valeriana's grudge against Sir Fenwick — the Verdant Company hunted her race to near total extinction, including her husband, daughter, and unborn son.
• Whale Talk: Chris is brain-damaged from being abused by his mom's boyfriend. TJ is also the child of a neglectful single parent who had abusive boyfriends, and feels he could have easily ended up exactly like Chris, so he views any bullying of Chris the same way he'd feel if he was the victim.
• Many of the Forskaken in The Wheel of Time had extremely personal enmity with Lews Therin Telamon, carrying over wholesale to his reincarnation Rand. Ishamael, Lanfear, Sammael, and Be'lal were all noted for this, but Demandred hated him most of all; it's said that nobody ever hated anything more than Demandred hated Lews Therin. Deconstructed when Demandred squanders the most overwhelming military force on the planet tantruming for Rand to come out and fight him, and gets himself killed before he ever accepts that Rand was off taking care of more important business at the time.
• In When Gravity Fails, the killer leaves a message, written in the blood of his last victim, next to the corpse, saying, "Audran, you're next." Up until that point, Audran didn't even know the guy knew he existed. Suddenly, matters become much more urgent.
• In The Winter War by Antti Tuuri, the narrator says he begins to feel this way about the war against the Russians after his brother is blown to pieces by an artillery shell.

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