Villainous Valour / Literature

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• A recurring theme in 1632. Sure, the villains often have superior numbers, but they also tend to be massively outgunned. The first real battle (not counting a pair of skirmishes on the first day that, while important to the plot, involve a downright tiny number of combatants by pike-and-shot standards) involves an advancing mercenary formation armed with pikes and matchlock muskets being fired on at a distance of 100 yards, from behind cover, with modern repeating rifles and an M-60 that Frank Jackson smuggled back from Vietnam:
  Mike was amazed at the reaction of the soldiers taking that incredible punishment. He had expected them to break immediately. Instead, the tercio was stubbornly pushing forward. If anything, the pikemen reacted to the horrendous losses by stiffening their determination. The men in the rear ranks were stumbling over the bodies in front of them, but they were still coming on. Some of them even tried to dress their formation.
  [...]
  Say what you will about those bastards. Murderers and thieves and rapists, some of them. But don't ever say they lack courage.
• In the Dale Brown novel Air Battle Force, several scenes are dedicated to the Taliban detachment's brave struggle against their numerically and technologically superior enemies.
• Elizabeth Bear's All The Windwracked Stars: "... The heroic old woman in her frayed brown sweater, indomitable, uncowed before the armored witch on her iron beast of Hel." Guess which one's the hero.
• The Belgariad: Out-Gambitted and realizing he is not walking out of a situation alive, High Priest Ctuchik chooses not to roll over, but gets into a duel with a seven-thousand years old arch-mage who also happens to be Ctuchik's religion's Satan-analogue, and matches him blow for blow for quite a while. He's only destroyed when in a fit of panic he tries to unmake^note The rules of magic in the series explicitly forbid someone from trying to destroy anything outright — they can kill, pulverise and transform to their heart's content but if they try to literally try to make anything vanish from existence the force rebounds and obliterates the user instead. the Cosmic Keystone rather than let it fall into the hands of the Amnesiac God.
• Book of Genesis: In a particularly unsympathetic example of brazenness, the Sodomites, in contrast to the hospitable Abraham, who humbly begged God Himself for their lives, stubbornly refuse to change their ways even when blinded by one of God's messengers. They die trying to assault said messengers, as well as Lot and his family, even without their vision.
• The final act of A Box Of Nothing by Peter Dickinson involves the heroes trying to catch up to an expedition sent into the desert by the Big Bad to search for a "black hole" that will let whomever reaches it first define the shape of a new universe. As the heroes close in, they find the corpses of more and more mooks who have succumbed to the harsh journey. Finally, they come within sight of the black hole and see a last surviving mook trudging towards it, more dead than alive. The mook spots them, and starts sprinting for the black hole, forcing the heroes into a final, desperate race to beat him to it.
  That rat, he knew, had crossed hundreds of miles of desert. Its companions had died, and so had its lizards. It had traveled on foot over the burning cinders for a whole long day. And still, somehow, it was managing to run. General Weil didn't deserve to have a rat like that exploring for him.
• In the poem "Cliche Came Out Of Its Cage," Christian writer C. S. Lewis compares modern forms of "paganism" (Communism, secularism, etc.) to their ancient forebears (Lewis being a big fan of mythology):
  Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
  Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
  Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
  Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
  Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs.
• In Captain's Fury, the fourth book of Codex Alera, when Gaius Sextus unleashes a fearcrafting on Kalarus' Legions the entire force is instantly routed. Many simply die of fright, and the rest are panicked to collapse and flight. However, one single legionare resists the mental assault and actually raises his sword in defiance. Amara feels pity for him and regrets that the reward for his courage, which was greater than the entire rest of his Legion, is to be killed effortlessly by the First Lord
• In Freedom there's one part where the Major is trying to escape the wrath of Daemon operatives who have already captured or killed his partners. The odds are quite against him and he has quite a few close calls, so you can almost want him to make it. Unfortunately, he does and it comes back to bite the heroes in the arse.
• Mustafa, the leader of the Salafi Ikhwan in A Desert Called Peace. As a devout (and extreme) Muslim terrorist chieftain, he genuinely is willing to suffer and die for his faith. By contrast, most of the Western progressives and leftists who support and abet the terrorists in the book are venal, cowardly and hypocritical in the extreme.
• The Dresden Files: Besides his other Noble Demon traits, Chicago's crimelord John Marcone has this in spades. Sure, he's set himself up to be nearly untouchable by mundane means and over the course of the series wises up to and takes working precautions against supernatural threats as well — that's only sensible in his line of business, after all — but from keeping his cool while hanging over a pit as intended werewolf fodder over going into battle right alongside his hired mercenaries to the ups and downs of his relationship with Harry Dresden (possibly the man best qualified to take him down if it ever comes to that) himself, the man also just plain appears to know no fear whatsoever.
• In the first trilogy in S. M. Stirling's Emberverse, Dark Action Girl Tiphaine Rutherford (later Tiphaine d'Ath) performs a daring rescue/kidnapping on the good-guy Mackenzies' own land, finds herself outnumbered four-to-one in a confrontation with a quartet of Rangers, and is betrayed by a member of her own band, who attacks while he's in full armor and she's in her civvies. She's not a nice person, and her objectives are often questionable at best, but it's hard not to applaud the combination of courage, dexterity, and quick-wittedness with which she consistently beats the odds.
• In the old chinese classic Fengshen Yanyi, many of the villains are actually generals of the Shang Dynasty genuinely convinced that they're doing the right thing and their gratitude towards King Zhou may be wasted, but is genuine nonetheless. As such, many of them bravely face death to repay His Majesty's grace, either by refusing to kneel before their victor or by fighting to the bitter end. Even King Zhou himself, decadent and morally bankrupt as he is, refuses to go down without going all out in a ferocious battle pitting himself and three other loyal generals against a small army of enemies. By the end of the novel, Jiang Ziya himself quotes their loyalty and bravery as they reason why most of them, despite being opposed to the Will of Heaven,earnt them the right of receiving a divine rank.
• In Margaret Sidney's Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, little Phronsie Pepper interrupts a burglary. One of the burglars rushes at her, "his arm upraised", but the other one grabs him, shouting, "Stop!" They flee, leaving her unharmed and the loot behind.
• Apex Cybernetics CEO Walter Simmons, somewhat, in the Godzilla vs. Kong film novelization. As insanely arrogant, reckless and Too Dumb to Live as he is, he at least knows he's putting himself in mortal danger in his efforts to realize his selfish ambitions to usurp Godzilla, and he's at peace with that.
• The Guns of the South: Despite their less than admirable qualities, many characters acknowledge the AWB men as quite fanatical in battle. During the final battle between the Confederates and the AWB, a wounded Benny Lang gets caught with a walkie talkie; rather than handing it over to his captors, he defiantly smashes it to pieces against a nearby rock. Nate Caudell wonders to himself if he would have been brave enough to do the same thing had the roles been reversed.
• In the His Dark Materials series, the fact that many of the villains consider themselves soldiers of God makes them extremely willing to sacrifice themselves. In the first book, the narration (which is a mixture of omniscient narrator and Lyra's own thoughts) describes the Bolvangar guards (who are involved in the most horrifying process imaginable) as "magnificently brave" for the way they maintain discipline and keep firing even as a massive armoured bear is charging towards them while their bullets bounce off.
• Cato in The Hunger Games. Faced with a pack of vicious, genetically engineered wolves and armed with only a sword, does he freak out and run? No, he calmly and smartly fights back, taking quite a few down until he is finally overwhelmed.
• Inheritance Cycle: Even when he's surrounded and on the brink of defeat by Varden forces, he pulls a Taking You with Me rather than surrender.
• Iron Warriors: Averted. At one point, an Imperial Guard soldier mentions offhandedly that he has to credit the bravery of the Chaos Mooks, only for a Space Marine to shut him down hard, telling him that the Mooks are only charging the walls so unflinchingly because they're more afraid of their masters than of the fortress. That said, the Iron Warriors themselves do occasionally demonstrate bravery, or at least a grim refusal to ever back down that can pass for it in poor lighting.
• The Lord of the Rings
  • In The Two Towers, when the Éored commanded by Éomer manage to catch up to and attack the orcs that have kidnapped Merry and Pippin, most of the orcs break under the attack and try to run. By contrast, Uglúk was mentioned to be one of the few orcs who maintained formation and showed actual combat skill, as he rallied a group of Uruk-Hai who grimly tried to fight their way into the (false) safety of the nearby forest. Ultimately, Uglúk died in a dismounted duel with Éomer himself.
  • In Return of the King the Haradrim troops keep fighting after Sauron's defeat, and the narration comments that they are brave and noble warriors in their own way, who just happen to be fighting for the evil side.
• Voltan, from David Gemmell's Midnight Falcon, might be a cold-blooded killer and a ruthless enforcer for an oppressive religious order, but when the odds turn against him he shows an admirable bravery in the face of imminent death.
• In The People of the Black Circle of the Conan the Barbarian stories, there's the Evil Sorcerer Khemsa, who defies his masters, the demonic sorcerers of the Black Circle, for the love of his girlfriend Gitara. When the four demons come to punish them, he fights all four of them to a standstill out of his urge to protect Gitara, failing only when one turns its powers on her and drives her over a cliff edge to her death, which gives them the edge they need to blast him down in turn. Even despite his mutilations, a twisted combination of The Power of Love and The Power of Hate compels him to cling to life and to try and claw his way back up the cliff to destroy them for murdering her, and he lasts long enough to give Conan an enchanted protective belt and urge him to use it to slay them. Khemsa is so remarkable that it's probably best the story didn't end in a showdown between him and Conan, because some readers might have found it rather difficult to root for the Cimmerian by that point. (It's not like Conan never betrayed anyone to get what he wanted.)
• Redwall:
  • Vermin leaders are almost entirely Asskicking Leads to Leadership types, but when the time comes to demonstrate this against someone who isn't on their side or entirely defenseless fall into two types: snivelling cowards who run and end up Hoist by Their Own Petard, or actual fighters.
  • The best of the latter type is undoubtedly King Sarengo, a ferret who led an expedition into Mossflower, ended up running into an adder and her children, and when the rest of his army lost their nerve, managed a Mutual Kill against the mother adder (she bit him, he bit her hard enough to break her spine). In addition, his flail twisted itself around the tails of the young adders, binding them together for the rest of their lives and giving Redwall its first hydra.
  • Cluny the Scourge, the series' first Big Bad, spends much of it right in the thick of the action with his warriors. When the final battle with Matthias comes, he fights evenly with his foe despite having a Villainous Breakdown at the sight of the sword and armored mouse he's been dreaming about all through the book and takes multiple wounds (including getting his tail chopped off) as they fight through the Abbey and up the bell tower without stopping, only losing when Matthias manages to trick him and crush him with the Abbey bell.
  • Riggu Felis, a wildcat who was betrayed by his own son, whose loyal retainers tried to keep him out of the throne room. Riggu's response was to throw all three down the stairs before they knew what was happening.
  • Gulo the Savage, an aptly-named wolverine. Give Chase with Angry Natives is a time-honored ploy among Redwallers, running through areas infested with insects or wild creatures to hold off an enemy, and here it worked not because Gulo was afraid of being killed, but because he spent so much time killing the attacking crows that his numbers diminished without him realizing it.
• In Scaramouche, the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr is an honest, intelligent, honorable man who (even though he knows he's outmatched) shows no fear in the face of danger.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms knows Jaime Lannister is an oathbreaker with shit for honor. The reader knows he Would Hurt a Child who knows too much. But even the Northmen — who hate him perhaps most of all — have to admit he seems utterly fearless in combat. In a battle meant specifically to entrap him, when he saw he was surrounded, he attempted to fight his way to the northerners' king, hoping to kill him before being killed himself. Jaime fails, and is captured instead.
  • Clayton Suggs, a knight in service to Stannis Baratheon, is an all-around rotten character with an unhealthy obsession with torture, sacrifice via burning, and invoking Country Matters on women such as Asha Greyjoy, but faced with what could possibly be an entire enemy army, he immediately rips out his sword and prepares to take them all on to give Asha time to warn the rest of the army.
  • Queen Cersei is subject to the "Walk of Shame" — being forced to walk naked through the city — for charges of adultery. This is a humiliating ritual, and a uniquely gendered punishment that no man would ever have to submit to. Cersei intentionally Invokes this idea to get through the experience. The ritual's purpose is to break her pride, and by braving it with considerable resolve, she refuses to give her enemies the satisfaction of seeing her will broken.
• In Soon I Will Be Invincible, Dr. Impossible is a supergenius with mild superstrength and limited invulnerability. The fight scene where he goes from quietly drinking his coffee to fighting off a team of superheroes despite being ludicrously outnumbered and overpowered is one of the best in the book.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's The Spirit Ring, the Big Bad fights an animated red-hot metal statue with a sword. Even the heroine is awed by his courage.
• In Robert R. McCammon's Stinger, the character Mack Cade, a sleazy, selfish used car dealer/chop shop owner involved in organized crime and drug cartels, goes into a junkyard where an alien creature has just brutally killed at least one person, in order to find his dog that had bolted off into said junk yard. Before leaving, he gives his prized Mercedes to one of the protagonists and tells him "You gotta know who your friends are, kid. Gotta stick up for them. Think on these things."
• In the opening chapters of The Three Musketeers, the titular characters and D'artagnan are engaged in a duel with five members of the Cardinal's Guard, the traditional enemies of the Musketeers. After four members of the Guards have been wounded, one fatally, all four of the protagonists turn to the single remaining Guard and ask for his honorable surrender since he is outnumbered four to one. The Guard refuses, however, and is ready to fight all of the Musketeers until his superior officer, who had been wounded earlier in the fight, orders him to stand down. He accepts the order, but breaks his sword over his knee rather than surrender it, and his enemies concede his valor and bravery.
• The Traitor Son Cycle: Jean de Vrailly, while a Jerkass of epic propotions, has a strict code of honour and never strays from it, even if it means switching places with the King after learning about an upcoming assassination attempt or going to what he knows will likely be his death to protect his army.
• Treasure Island:
  • There's a great scene where the pirates all want the map that they think Jim has, which he doesn't. Long John Silver picked the map from Jim's pocket, but he allows the other pirates to go on thinking that Jim knows where it is, because as long as he's the only one who knows where it is, they can't hurt him.
  • In a later scene he admits to Jim that this was actually hedging his bets; his crew is on the verge of turning on him and the other side isn't being even a little bit subtle about the fact that they have some big trick up their sleeve. Protecting Jim means Jim will have a reason to speak up for him later. When the final confrontation comes he protects Jim from the pirates until they're saved.
  • There's another bit at the end, where Long John knows his chances of escape will be improved greatly if he shoots Jim in the head, but he can't bring himself to do it. Jim, unwilling to use John's mercy against him, helps him escape anyway.
    Dr. Livesay: I can almost find it in my heart to hope he makes it.
• In John C. Wright's War of the Dreaming, this role goes to Manannan, king of the Selkies, who knows that if the Great War comes about, his people are going to suffer horrible casualties if the Dark Side wins — and be exterminated altogether if Light wins. He consequently spends the series desperately playing one side against the other in an effort to stave off the war altogether. He fails, but the heroes sympathize with his goal enough to give him One Last Smoke.
• Watership Down: Whatever General Woundwort's flaws, he doesn't lack for courage. When his forces are attacked by a dog that the heroes have baited towards him, instead of turning tail and running he goes at it teeth first. They Never Found the Body, but even if he didn't survive, Woundwort bought time for his troops to get away.
• Worm:
  • This is regularly displayed by supervillains who show up to battle the Endbringers, which are steadily killing humanity as a whole and generally kill one-fourth of the capes that join the fight against them per battle. Villains are generally less coordinated than the heroes, so they take more casualties, but they keep showing up.
  • On a more personal level, there's Skitter, who in one case spends two minutes sparring with Mannequin, a Serial Killer who has turned himself into the perfect counter to her powers and is one of the most deadly people on the planet, in order to protect civilian refugees.

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