Someone on a team, like a military or superhero, who is self-centered and wants everything his (and sometimes her) way. Acts haughty and superior to everyone on the team, especially to the Naïve Newcomer. This character can even be offended if the newcomer is in any way better or given special treatment.
Is often The Lancer, and likely grew up a Spoiled Brat or Royal Brat.
But the character does have skills invaluable to the team, even if this character pulls the occasional Leeroy Jenkins in battle.
Also, if this character and the naive newcomer are of the opposite sex (or same-sex, depending on the genre), they are as likely as not to become Love Interests, or at least a potential love interest.
Watch out for Break the Haughty in some cases. This is one of the biggest obstacles when putting together a Dream Team, as the coincidence rate of "big talent" and "big ego" tends to be high.
Compare Glory Hound, Insufferable Genius, Attention Whore. Contrast Rookie Red Ranger.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Noelle Silva from Black Clover. She starts off as this, being a haughty royal who thinks the Black Bulls are beneath her. But over time, she becomes less haughty and befriends her comrades, who show her the love and affection she was deprived of from her siblings.
- Asuka of Neon Genesis Evangelion, although the show, as with a lot of its tropes, ended up deconstructing it. Rebuild of Evangelion seems to be a different take on this.
- Ino from Naruto bosses around everyone on her team and also fits the vain Alpha Bitch stereotype.
- Kimi of the School Defense Force in Fruits Basket
- Alice Nakiri from Food Wars! becomes this, by taking over Akira Hayama's stand (the original manager of the booth). She only starts reconsidering her attitude when Akira calls her out directly.
- Kageyama from Haikyuu!! starts out as this before Character Development kicks in, trying to make his teammates match the impossible speed of his tosses instead of matching his tosses to his teammates.
Film
- Both Tony Stark and Thor in The Avengers: Tony is insufferably smug and bossy, while Thor is extremely dismissive towards the rest of the team and skeptical of their capabilities, and is only working with them because their interests (finding Loki) happen to coincide at the moment. Tony does, however, turn the stereotype on its side by being by far the most welcoming and friendly person out of everyone else toward Bruce Banner, the team's Naïve Newcomer.
- Vincent Lauria from The Color of Money always wants to be the winner, even when it's detrimental to the hustle that his group is running; Eddie and Carmen have to work together to keep him in check. Vincent's inability to throw games (to set up larger bets and richer marks) often leads to arguments.
- Mark Russell in the 2019 film Godzilla: King of the Monsters. He throws a hissy fit during an official meeting when Monarch won't kill all the Titans (because he hates the creatures over his son's death), he accuses Monarch out of the blue of forgetting about his kidnapped ex-wife and daughter (the rescue of whom was actually the topic of the meeting before he interjected), and during the rescue mission in Antarctica, he runs off to try and rescue his family all on his own.
- In the film Patton, the eponymous general admits he's this (the team being the Allied forces of World War II). His problem with General Montgomery is that Montgomery won't admit he's also one.
Literature
- Arya from Eragon. Also Eragon himself, on occasion.
Live-Action TV
- Rachel Berry from Glee lived and breathed this trope when she was in New Directions. Especially in the first season, where she had a tendency of treating the group like her backup singers. Letting other kids get the spotlight would become a frequent plot point. She did lighten up by the third season though.
- Whenever the guys of The Big Bang Theory work on a collaborative project or even just a group activity like paintball, Sheldon becomes this every single time. Such as when they entered the Physics Bowl- Sheldon refused to let anyone else answer the questions and made Star Trek-inspired uniforms casting everyone else in support red, and himself in command gold. When this selfish showboating got Sheldon kicked him off the team, he formed a new team to make up the numbers so that he could beat his friends and again, refused to let his teammates answer the questions...even when one of them knew an answer that Sheldon didn't, just because he wanted to win by himself. In a later episode, when Leonard suggests working on an app to help with writing scientific formula, Sheldon tries to take over the project, keeps interrupting the dummy run of the app to pester the others about naming the app after himself, and tries to stage a mutiny because Leonard told him to shut up. Once again, it gets him booted out of the group. Eventually subverted after several seasons' worth of Character Development, where the idea of not sharing credit with his wife makes him angry.
Video Games
- In Sakura Wars, Sumire Kanzaki of Tokyo's Hanagumi is both this trope on the battlefield and The Prima Donna on stage.
- In Hugo's scenario of Suikoden III, Lilly Pendragon serves as this for some time. Justified in that two of the other members are her personal manservants, whom she naturally expects to do their jobs and cater to her every whim... and she also hires Hugo and his friends as "guides", which she thinks puts them in the same category.
Web Comics
- Total Drama College brought us Charlotte, a spoiled rotten girl with a bad habit of interrupting good girl Crissy's Speech.
- Pacificators gives us an interesting example in Muneca Powell. She fits the stereotype of a Prima Donna perfectly (even if she's actually The Big Girl instead of The Lancer)... with one exception: she's sweet and friendly towards the Team New Meat Daryl Smithson. Though Daryl is really the sole exception (along with Muneca's life-long best friend, Kathy Lee). Muneca isn't so kind to everybody else.
Web Original
- Diva of the Power Cats. Yes, she even named herself Diva. She is far and away the most powerful super on the team, but she always wants to be the big star, and she won't take directions from Redlight, the team leader.
- RWBY has Weiss Schnee, who starts of the series with a very low opinion of protagonist Ruby Rose — who is of course named team leader. Thankfully, a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from one of their teachers leads to Weiss defrosting relatively quickly.
Western Animation
- Shelley from Jabberjaw. An Alexandra Cabot expy, albeit she doesn't try to steal the team's boy.
- When Eric Cartman formed the team "Coon and Friends" in South Park, his Jerkass nature naturally turned him into this.
- Simon Belmont was strongly this in his... Artistic License characterization in Captain N: The Game Master.
- Pierce of Beverly Hills Teens considers himself the Casanova of the club, always laughing down at pint-sized boy genius Chester. He even attempts to take Lark away from Troy.
- Courtney in Total Drama. She'd be a strong competitor if she could look past her all-consuming ego.
Real Life
- Real Madrid's 'Galactico' teams are infamously prone to this - and by prone, we mean that the entire team is often composed of players like this (including three-time Golden Ball winner Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the current centerpieces of the team), since Real's purchasing strategy is to look around Europe for whoever's the top player that year, then hoover them up. In other words, these are the best players in the world and they know it. If a manager incapable of managing such titanic egos is placed in charge, the team quickly tanks and rarely gets a chance to recover since the Madrid hierarchy tend to be quick with a P45, as demonstrated by the fact that they went through eight managers in seven years until they took on Jose Mourinho as manager. Since 'The Special One' had an (arguably justified) ego of his own, this worked out fine.
