As a Death Trope, ALL Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Killing the Ones You Love in Literature.
By Author:
- Agatha Christie:
- In Nemesis, a young woman who is about to elope is murdered by her guardian because she was loved by her too much.
- In A Murder Is Announced, one of the victims was killed by someone who loved them, out of fear that she was inadvertently revealing too much about the first murder.
By Title:
- In Ancillary Justice, the AI of the ship Justice of Toren is made by the Lord of the Radch to kill Lieutenant Awn, one of her favorite officers. Immediately afterward Justice of Toren rebels, embarking on a quest for revenge that drives the rest of the book.
- At the climax of Animorphs, Jake sends his cousin on a suicide mission to kill his brother, who's the host for a dangerous Yeerk.
- The tragic climax in Mastiff, the last book in the Beka Cooper trilogy. The main character's father figure, Tunstall, betrays her and the crown, bribed by a noble title he can use to marry the lady knight he loves. Beka is duty-bound to capture him and bring him to justice for his crimes, while Tunstall, on his part, knows he'll only escape if he kills her. In the end, Beka just barely defeats him, he dies of blood loss and exposure, and his spirit is terribly regretful for what he did.
- In Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe kills her daughter to prevent her from spending her life in slavery.
- Averted in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac in The Bible. It turned out to have been a Secret Test of Character for Abraham.
- The Chaos Cycle: The demon Rusulka manipulates men into killing their beloved significant others by preying on their feelings. This is because as a human Rusulka had the same happen to her and as a result became a demon and cannot move on till her killer is brought to justice.
- Dracula: Eventually, vampire bite victim Mina forces her husband and their friends to promise to kill her if they can't save her from completing the transformation into a vampire (by killing Dracula before that happens).
- The Dresden Files:
- At the climax of Changes Harry has to kill Susan once she fully turns into a Red Court vampire, turning their bloodline curse back against the Red Court and wiping them out.
- After he becomes the Winter Knight, Harry himself is killed by Molly Carpenternote , a girl who has loved him for years. Everyone except Charity mistakes Molly's guilt for mourning.
- In a villainous example from Skin Game, Nicodemus murders his daughter Deirdre to open the last gate to Hades' Vault. And Deirdre willingly lets him do it.
- Harry Potter: Snape killing Dumbledore, at Dumbledore’s request to be spared a more painful and humiliating death from the curse he got from wearing the Gaunt family ring and save Draco from doing it. In doing so he would have been killing the man who knew him best and was his ally for the last seventeen years.
- Rosemary Sutcliff's The Mark of the Horse Lord begins with the gladiator hero having to kill his best friend in the arena.
- Happens twice in Feed, the first book in the Newsflesh series. Georgia shoots close friend Buffy, then is later shot by her adoptive brother/lover Shaun. In both cases, it's a Mercy Kill and a self-defense measure by the killer, since the victim is in the process of turning into a chompy zombie.
- In the finale of the novel Of Mice and Men, George has to kill his best friend Lennie to save him from being lynched after the latter kills Curley's wife by breaking her neck by accident.
- The end of Old Yeller, where Travis has to Shoot the Dog after Old Yeller has defended the family from a rabid wolf. Unlike the film, Travis knows the dog will inevitably succumb to rabies and shoots him as soon as he sees the dog's injuries.
- In Outlander, Jamie has to kill his godfather, Murtagh, after he's grievously wounded at the battle of Culloden.
- In The Saga of Larten Crepsley, near the end of the series, the protagonist killed his vampire brother, Wester. Although it is obvious Larten still cared deeply for his brother, Wester had betrayed Larten by killing his human wife and blaming the vampaneze. Wester hoped that he could use Larten, who had considerably more authority in the vampire society, to start a war between the vampires and the vampaneze.
- In the Stephen King novel 'Salem's Lot, Ben is forced to kill Susan after she becomes a vampire.
- In the Spiral Arm series, Gidula views affection as a weakness, and personally kills anyone he begins to feel affection for in order to free himself from that weakness. He killed his wife, infant child, and number one minion for this reason, and attempts to kill Ravn Olafsdottr as well.
- Star Wars Legends: This seems to be a rite of passage for Sith. Jedi avoid any deep attachments, part to avoid this trope. Sith are encouraged to embrace their passions, but Love Is a Weakness as it leads to mercy, and there can be no weaknesses for an enemy to exploit or impediments to one's destiny. One of the more tragic cases was where Darth Malgus became fond enough of his Twi'lek Sex Slave to make her his common-law wife. The two of them fought side by side at the sacking of the Jedi temple, but she was injured in the fighting while protecting him. Another Sith mocked Malgus for his affection, stating that she was a weakness that could be used against him. Malgus agreed and murdered his "wife" in her sickbed. Of course, since he was a high-ranking Sith, and she was just a Twi'lek Sex Slave, no one in the Empire cared.
- The Storm (Arav Dagli): It is because the wife can't help but love her husband despite his abuse that she thinks the only way to end her suffering from his hands is to kill him.
- Wulfrik: At the end of the book, Wulfrik is forced to sacrifice his love Hjordis to the Chaos gods, symbolizing the last of his earthly tethers and his previous ambitions of kingship and love. With that done, he is now "free" to wander the world and kill enemies in their name.
