Any good books whare the protagonist's ideals, while right, are considered wrong?

[moonfly7]

I had a heck of a time finding a title for this thread let me tell you, and I still messed it up pretty bad.
I'm looking to read books where the protagonist is trying to do the right thing, and preferably actually is doing the right thing(I personally don't enjoy stories where the protagonist ends up being wrong or being worse than the antagonist), but to most, if not all other people, appear to be doing the wrong thing.
I guess to some it up in a still imperfect way I'm looking for some quality books where the protagonist is considered by many to be the antagonist(I know this is bad terminology since pro and an tagonist just depends on perspective, but I basically mean good guy is falsely seen as bad guy).
I know it's probably not an easy thing to suggest, considering how hard it's been to find any Thing that fits thats actually good, but I hope somebody has some good suggestions.

[Tvtyrant]

I had a heck of a time finding a title for this thread let me tell you, and I still messed it up pretty bad.
I'm looking to read books where the protagonist is trying to do the right thing, and preferably actually is doing the right thing(I personally don't enjoy stories where the protagonist ends up being wrong or being worse than the antagonist), but to most, if not all other people, appear to be doing the wrong thing.
I guess to some it up in a still imperfect way I'm looking for some quality books where the protagonist is considered by many to be the antagonist(I know this is bad terminology since pro and an tagonist just depends on perspective, but I basically mean good guy is falsely seen as bad guy).
I know it's probably not an easy thing to suggest, considering how hard it's been to find any Thing that fits thats actually good, but I hope somebody has some good suggestions.

What do you mean by right and wrong here? Like "is vindicated by the end of the story" or "matches modern notions of morality?"

Practical Guide to Evil is a big one for both, where the good guys hate the main character but one by one the major players admit she is right (or give up trying to change her.)

[Dargaron]

The sixth book of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality book is set from the POV of Satan (the primary antagonist for the previous five books) and gives a lot of context for his actions in the previous five books. He's still a fairly bad person, but there are enough Pet the Dog moments to potentially sway the audience. From his perspective, he's trying to "do the right thing" while still being the Incarnation of all evil and stuff.

[The Glyphstone]

Repeated from your previous thread, the Dire Saga is about a Dr. Doom-like supervillain who's determined to fix the problems and injustices of a broken society. Pretty much everywhere she goes she leaves behind people who are healthier, happier, and more secure but the 'Heroes' of the world are invested in the status quo and oppose her at every turn.

[Dienekes]

Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird seem the most obvious examples. A lot of classic dystopia like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 coming to mind. I think a lot of the newer teen dystopias sort of touch on this, but then the vast majority of people end up agreeing with the protagonist against a smaller government body so it's not really the whole society.

Worm skirts around the edge of this, with a main character who seems to sacrifice basically everything she can think of to do what she thinks is right. Whether she is or isn't is debatable depending on which part of the book you're talking about. But by the end I think she gets there.

[Tyndmyr]

Pretty much most villain perspectives are this. Usually, in order to make the MC not detestable, they are at least not wholly wrong, and we can empathize with their ideals, even though they do not match societies. There's been a couple of excellent recommendations above, but I'd like to add The Metropolitan Man, which shows the battle to save humanity from alien invasion from the perspective of the true hero, Lex Luthor.

[moonfly7]

Repeated from your previous thread, the Dire Saga is about a Dr. Doom-like supervillain who's determined to fix the problems and injustices of a broken society. Pretty much everywhere she goes she leaves behind people who are healthier, happier, and more secure but the 'Heroes' of the world are invested in the status quo and oppose her at every turn.
That would be a great suggestion, accept I read that sucker at the beggining of quarrantine in under 2 weeks, so now I'm looking for other good stories. It is a great series though, I'd suggest it to anyone who likes these kinds of stories. also, apparently, the concept was created on this site during a big roleplaying game. Not sure if your the one who told me that or not(It was someone on this site).

Pretty much most villain perspectives are this. Usually, in order to make the MC not detestable, they are at least not wholly wrong, and we can empathize with their ideals, even though they do not match societies. There's been a couple of excellent recommendations above, but I'd like to add The Metropolitan Man, which shows the battle to save humanity from alien invasion from the perspective of the true hero, Lex Luthor.

Got any good villain perspective books then? didn't actually know that was a genre.

[Tvtyrant]

Magneto in some depictions fits into this. In others he is a genocidal monster, take your pick.

[Precure]

A Song of Ice and Fire.

[Jan Mattys]

Not a book, so I'm a bit off topic, but anyway.

My own unpopular opinion: Dead Poets Society.
The principal is right. Mr. Keating is wrong and morally responsible (at least in part) for young Neil suicide.

Sure, his dad is a very closed minded and controlling parent, and Neil Perry, for all his talent, has a lot of weaknesses and insecurities. But Mr. Keating's teachings lead to confrontation instead of resolution, and ultimately to tragedy.
Welton Academy is presented as a prison, and all other teachers as horrible persons who don't care about the boys. Almost robotic in their adherence to the rules. But once you think about it you can see that's a very twisted point of view.

There, I said it.

[DeTess]

Dalinar's perspective in the 'Stormlight Archive' by Brandon Sanderson would probably count as this. He's trying to reform a warrior-society that's sliding into decadence and backstabbery, and is widely regarded as someone playing a subtle game for power at best, and as either crazy or a hypocrite at worst. He is only one character in a large fantasy-epic though, so if you're only looking for a story about one specific character it might not be for you. Otherwise it's a pretty good series though!

[Murk]

Maybe I'm understanding wrong - but isn't this basically every book where the hero tries to improve (or change) society?
Like, every story about feminism, the fight against slavery or segregation, every book about peasants fighting the tyrannical nobles; all of these have heroes that do good things but are considered wrong by most others, right?

[snowblizz]

The Wheel of Time series revolves in part around this. The world waits on the "chosen one", but also fears them because prophecy says they will also "break the world", and last time that happened it wasn't fun for anyone. It's just the alternative is so so so much worse. There has been plenty of false chosen ones and obviously no one is really prepared to admit that they are living in the "end times".

This of course leads to a tough spot, where on the one hand "good" should be helping and "evil" opposing but people on neither side can really agree even amongst themsleves how and what should happen. One of the major recurrent "conflicts" is the protagonists trying to do the right things (and we as the reader can usually agree), as they see them, while quite a few others are working against them either through ignorance or self-interest or what have you.
One of the more illustrating situations is where two powerful forces for good agree that they should support the chosen one, and one thinks "...but even a target a hand apart may miss it". Sort of. Because both naturally know better how to get to the ultimate goal than the other.

It's a 13 book fantasy epic so it's kinda tricky to explain anything without giving much away. So this is terribly vague. I'd be able to make a much better case by spoilering large parts of the books.

[Vinyadan]

Dystopian books seems to fit. Us by Zamyatin, for example, or Fahrenheit 451.

Books about WW2 Resistance movements. There's a lot of them from European authors. Calvino, Fenoglio, Vittorini would be the biggest names on the Italian side; I'm sure that there are a lot from the French as well. There's a movie about the White Rose in Germany, too.

[comicshorse]

Got any good villain perspective books then? didn't actually know that was a genre.

'Soon I will be Invincible'. Told mostly from the point of super villain who wants to rule the world though, in his own words, 'I don't want to be a **** about it'

[Hand_of_Vecna]

God Emperor of Dune.

The tyrant's goal is to shape humanity to be immune to being controlled prescient would be dictators.

[Dire_Flumph]

Got any good villain perspective books then? didn't actually know that was a genre.

I rather liked the Sundering duology by Jacqueline Carey. While not exactly Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off, it's a take on the same general story, but from the perspective of the Sauron analogue character's side, with the Witch-King of Angmar analogue as the protagonist.

I know it was just recommended in another thread, but the Coldfire trilogy by Celia Friedman is quite excellent. It has two protagonists, the primary one a priest, the secondary protagonist is basically a vampire. Of the sort that has a noble goal and started out with good intentions that he unfortunately took down a very wrong turn into straight up villain territory. His perspective is a big part of the books and possibly the best part. And even Vryce (the priest's) perspective basically falls into the "correct, but viewed as wrong in-universe" category.

[Dienekes]

God Emperor of Dune.

The tyrant's goal is to shape humanity to be immune to being controlled prescient would be dictators.


Isn't this the exact opposite case though? Leto's goal may be seen as right but he was most certainly the antagonist of that book. Duncan was the protagonist.

[jh12]

There are a number of famous one:

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, Anthem, and to a lesser extent Atlas Shrugged
Margret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
George Orwell, 1984

And some not so famous ones:

Eoin Dempsey, White Rose, Black Forest (WWII Germany, has some nice scenes w/ordinary Germans collaborating with Nazis to heighten the tension)
Madeline Miller, Circe (everybody hates on Circe, but she was the good one)
Amy Stewart, Lady Waits With Gun and the rest of the Kopp sister series (fictionalization of one of the fist lady sheriff deputies in America)

[LibraryOgre]

First one that popped to mind? Stranger in a Strange Land. Been a long time since I read it, but the contrasting of "Martian" ideals and only moderately-exaggerated American ideals is a pretty big picture.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Seriously? No one's mentioned Worm yet? ... Well, Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) is a web-serial by Wildbow that totally fits the bill. For that matter, so does his second work, Pact (https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/). The first is about a hero mistaken for a villain, who decides to try to use this to go undercover... before deciding she's capable of doing more good as a villainous boss than as a hero. The second is about a guy who has inherited his family legacy, including a swanky mansion and magical powers. The catch is that as the latest member of a family of diabolists, he also gets a literal karmic debt, everyone hates him, and most people actively want him dead before he can so much as try to unleash anything horrible.

[Vahnavoi]

From Marvel, both Blade and Spiderman occasionally fall into this.

Blade is a vampire hunter. Vampires are, generally speaking, utterly despicable. But when and where the public doesn't know they're vampires, Blade looks like a deranged serial killer. IIRC, there's a scene in the movie where a cop sees Blade gunning for a vampire... and starts shouting orders and shooting at Blade.

Spiderman, while a decent guy trying to do what's right, is a creepy-looking masked vigilante who often causes vast amounts of property damage while trying to stop the bad guys. So he frequently has a public campaign going on against his person (to which he himself contributes to make ends meet...), with even people closest to him buying into it.

[Traab]

The Spellsong Cycle. Main character is an opera singer from earth dropped into a medieval society where music is magic. She is constantly dealing with sexism issues and things of that nature because in that society the majority of women are there for baby making and not to be respected as world leaders. So basically bringing modern sensibilities into an old time setting.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Isn't this the exact opposite case though? Leto's goal may be seen as right but he was most certainly the antagonist of that book. Duncan was the protagonist.


I would say that Duncan's status as protagonist is on par with Siona and Leto is actively shipping them in that book. However one must consider that everything Duncan and Siona do is actually the result of a Xanatos Gambit including Leto's assasination which is only possible because Siona has a mutation that makes her invisible to prescience.

It was also Nayla who took the shot. Nayla was a loyal fish speaker that Leto had commanded to follow Siona's orders unquestionably including giving her intelligence nobody else could. He did this knowing that Siona wanted to kill him.

Aside from his own death Leto's goal was the prolific breeding of Siona and Duncan spreading the genes of prescience invisibility across the universe and with it an immunity to another tyrant on his scale.