...and claw their way to their goal on their own merits. No secret royalty or connections, not already risen in any significant way, not already possessing any great power. Not a leader or beloved community member. Gutter trash, rejects, orphans. The closer to rock bottom they start, the better. They aren't the chosen one -- they choose themselves.
Loved examples: Cradle by Will Wight She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan Book of the Ancestor trilogy by Mark Lawrence Sam Vimes from Terry Prachett's Discworld.
Dunk from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Blacktongue Thief??
Huma - The Legend of Huma by Richard Knaak - A low ranking knight that becomes a ... legend. Dragonlance novel.
Arlen Bales - The Warded Man by Peter Brett - Son of a nobody farmer that's orphaned after a demon attack. There's other POVs, they're also nobodies.
Alodar - Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy - An apprentice thaumaturge attempts several Get Rich Quick schemes in an effort to woo the Queen. Accidently saves the world.
The NPCs - NPCs by Drew Hayes - After a Total Party Kill in a tabletop game, the NPCs in a tavern take up the dead player's quest.
Frodo, Sam, and the hobbits in LOTR.
Livira and Evar Eventari in Mark Lawrence's Library trilogy (The Book That Wouldn't Burn, etc.).
Keema of the Daware Tribe in The Spear Cuts Through Water. (Simon Jimenez)
Tracker in Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Sogolon in Moon Witch, Spider King. (Marlon James)
Kōrero in The Wayfinder. (Adam Johnson)
All the heroes of the Forever Desert trilogy. (Moses Ose Utomi)
Carl in Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Croaker and crew in The Black Company.
Murderbot.
Frodo, Pippin and Merry are all local upper class, even Sam is the son of a respected man.
Noted nepobaby Frodo. Gets to just inherit Bag End, maybe the best house in the Shire, due to his rich adventurer uncle!
Bilbo already had Bag End prior to adventuring, but - yes.
Yes, but most of the rest of Middle Earth think of Hobbits as nobodies.
Pippin’s Dad is the most powerful Hobbit in the Shire. Merry’s Dad is a good candidate for second most powerful. Seriously at a minimum they would be considered the sons of Dukes in terms of social status.
Good shout for Keema. More people need to read Spear Cuts Through Water. It’s an impeccable work of art.
Taran from Chronicles of Prydain
Not really a nobody, an assistant pigkeeper to an oracular pig!
Few characters embody this request as well as he does, honestly.
Steerpike in Gormenghast is no hero, by a long shot, but he is a protagonist who matches this description very well.
i fucking love everything about these books.
but i imagine steerpike more as the antagonist, with a combination of Prunesquallor, Flay and Titus as protagonists.
but…i’ll admit it’s very hard to ascribe firm labels to anyone. what delightful books!!!
edit: In a grand arc Titus was obviously intended to be the series protagonist (series was supposed to follow him from birth through death), but Titus is a baby in the first book, and Peake tragically got sick and passed away before he could write more. which is absolutely tragic.
Yeah saying that Steerpike is a protagonist is the most confusing and hottest take I’ve ever seen on this sub lmao. I guess my favourite protagonist in lotr is Sauron? 🤷🏼♂️
In terms of narrative structure, Steerpike is absolutely the protagonist of the first book! And a damn fantastically nasty one at that
(Copy pasting my question for op to you as well, because I’m genuinely baffled) :
Out of curiosity, as someone who just recently reread the books, can you elaborate on how the cold blooded, red-eyed, manipulative murderer who’s entire goal is to kill without remorse and manipulate the weak to gain personal power is the protagonist…?
Protagonist =/= hero. A protagonist is just the main character of a story.
Out of curiosity, as someone who just recently reread the books, can you elaborate on how the cold blooded, red-eyed, manipulative murderer who’s entire goal is to kill and manipulate to gain personal power is the protagonist…?
EDIT: who btw also is hunted as, and depicted as, a cold blooded serial killer who randomly murders people with a sling shot.
I am likewise curious where you got the impression that stories were required to only have protagonists who are good people.
Well, that would include pretty much every hero that David Gemmell ever wrote of in the Drenais series but maybe not the Rigante series (but it's still a great series to read nonetheless).
Second this. Waylander immediately came to mind.
House of blades by Will Wight!
[deleted]
He listed Cradle in the OP as a loved example dude.
The main character in Lloyd Alexander's Westmark Trilogy I believe was a nobody.
Simon in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I love his character growth
Tau from Rage of the Dragons started out that way
I considered Tau as well but isn't he like...some kind of (barely) noble? I can't remember exactly what he is, the son of the village leader or something like that. Awesome book regardless!
Paksennarion from The Deed of Paksennarion trilogy by Elizabeth Moon.
The first book is (or was, I think it's often available as the full trilogy in one book now) even called Sheepfarmer's Daughter because that's what she starts as, and at one point gets even lower than that.
It's my absolute favorite series.
Blood Over Bright Haven: first woman becomes a mage of the highest order. She has privilege from a family supportive of her intellect, but otherwise has a single minded focus on learning as much about magic (and not much else) as possible.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant: after watching her native land be assimilated by an ever-expanding imperial power and her family torn apart because they don't fit the norm, a young girl sets off to tear the system apart from within. She has a mysterious benefactor of unknown political power, but must make her way with intellect and cunning.
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife: the tells invokes its own story. In a quest for survival in a post-apocalyptic world where nearly all women die from childbirth, a midwife strives for survival, and then dares to hope for more.
The Tombs of Atuan: third entry in the Earthsea series, but operates fine as a standalone. A girl is chosen as the incarnation of a priestess. Her name is eaten by elder gods that she must then serve the gods that reside in the catacomb. A wizard appears in the maze seeking treasure. She learns the nature of truth and her role in the religion.
Ruka, the last rune shaman. He probably ate the Chosen one.
Now the chosen one works tirelessly in Ruka's brain prison.
That sounds fucking amazing, what's the book?
Ash and Sand trilogy, from Richard Nell.
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao. It's out in a couple of weeks and comped to She Who Became The Sun I believe
It is SciFi but "Citizen of the Galaxy" by Heinlein is a straight up “rags to riches” tale.
Jimmy the Hand in Raymond Feist's Midkemia novels starts out as a member of the Thieves' Guild.
Not any books come to mind to me right now but if you are interested in TV shows, The Mighty Nein is pretty much perfect for that. Most of the protagonists in it are a bunch of fuck ups, rejects and broken people who are a few bad days away from becoming evil. They have to fight and struggle to become heroes in more ways than one
Tristan in Pale Lights. Admitedly, he is only 1/2 of the POV chapters in the first book, and that drops as the series introduces more main characters.
Prince of Bones
Fate of the Fallen
Scorio from immortal great souls might fit
Ehhhhh. Considering that literally every one of the Great Souls was picked because they were already an epic hero in their original life then Scorio is only unremarkable in that he's an epic hero in a hell full of them.
The main hero of the Frith Chronicles is an orphan apprenticed to a gravedigger.
I remember dropping that series the second I realized it would be a battle between four or five love interests for the hero's heart. It turns out the one who "won" was his apprentice....
ugh. Just, ugh! You couldn't pay me to get invested in that plotline.
I think Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser fits this
Are they heroes? I love them and those stories but they are largely driven by self-interest even if they are sometimes a bit soft-hearted.
The Demon Cycle series by Peter V Brett.
Joe Abercrombie - the blade itself
Logan is a legendary barbarian
That fencing prick is a noble
Glokta was a warhero (also a noble)
Crazy murder hobo is a literal demon or some shit
At this point I'm convinced there's a bot on this sub that recommends this overrated book in EVERY thread.
Redditors when someone enjoys something they don't: BOTTT
This sub in particular when they don't recommended Malazan:
I mean I love Malazan but I agree a lot of fans can be very overzealous
No I just thought it was a solid read. How about the legend of drizzt trilogy… homeward, sojourn, exiled… by RA Salvatore? He’s trained to kill, but rejects his entire race for the scum that they are…
I thought his family was very well off? He had the training of a noble family, rather than being a peasant.
Zaknafein (Drizzt's dad) was the weapons master for a major noble house. So, yeah, Drizzt (which autocorrect wanted to make Drizzle) definitely had a bit of a cushy upbringing - which is actually a major plot point since he was kept purposefully blind of the cutthroat reality of the Drow culture.
Which is... Honestly quite dumb in retrospect.
How is Nona in Book of the Ancestor a nobody?
She starts out being sold into a cage and fights her way up from there.
She is a three-blood, which is extremely rare. Also, she has that instinct for killing from her childhood, so rare in other characters. She does work to get what she wants, but she is not a nobody at all.
I suppose I'm qualifying her that way here because while she has the innate ability you point out, she's not a chosen one and everything she achieves in the story is from her own drive and determination. And there's a pretty big gap between her origins and those of our other protags in the series. She came from dirt.
In the superhero novel Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey, the main character is literally a nobody who is turned into a ghost by a time travel experiment. It’s not a great book but fits the request.
More sci fi than fantasy, but the light novel series "Absolute Isolator" by Reki Kawahara
Sky Pride is what you are looking for friend.
MC starts out as a physically disabled baby thrown into a rubbish pit, yes you heard that right. A DISABLED BABY. In a RUBBISH PIT. He does get a little help in the form of his disembodied voice of a grandfather only he can hear, but you know he's like, disabled so he can't even claw his way up cos he's only got a couple of fingers.
Discworld has a few. There are several flavours:
Going Postal
The Wee Free Men
Guards! Guards!
Fred Saberhagen does a couple, notable in Empire of the East and then in a few of the Swords series (I've read Empire of the East much more recently than the Swords stuff)
Elizabeth Boyer's Sword and the Satchel series
Ferro and The Dogman from The First Law. Possibly West, Glokta, and Logen as well, depending on if you count where they started. From followup books Shivers, Morveer, Shy, Temple, Craw, Gorst, and probably some others all spring to mind. Theyre just the POV characters I can think of off the top of my head.