Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26290
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In fiction there are protagonists, the characters that the writer wants the readers to identify with, and antagonists, the characters who have opposing goals and seek to stop the protagonists from achieving their goals.

There are also heroes and villains in many works of fiction. Heroes tend to be noble and heroic and good and villains tend to be evil. And there are many variations of heroes and villains.

Imagine a story here a child tries to get cookies from the cookie jar without permission and the mother tries to prevent it. It would be equally easy to write a version with the child the protagonist and the mother the antagonist or the mother the protagonist and the child the antagonist. But it would be kind of hard to convince most audiences that either was a hero or a villain.

Now imagine a history book or article written by a modern professional historian. It might describe a conflict of some sort between different leaders and/or groups. But according to the dispassionate tone of most modern historical works it would try to determine causes and effects and motivations and describe the events accurately but not describe anyone as being a hero or a villain. Most modern history works can have protagonists or antagonists but rarely have heroes and villains.

Of course if someone has an ethical code and reads a modern history they can form opinions about where on the scale between total good and total evil various historical characters were based on their actions. If good and evil are real, certainly every person who ever lived had some type of good/evil score, even though we might not have enough information to estimate that score very well.

Of course historical fiction based on historical events is quite common. And it is common for the protagonists and antagonists to be depicted as noble heroes and evil villains in historical fiction. And in different orks of historical fiction different sides in a historical conflict are depicted as the heroes or the villains. In one version of history side A are the heroes and side B are the villains and in another version side A are the villains and side B are the heroes.

Since there are only about three possible outcomes in a conflict, a victory for side A and defeat for side B, or a draw, or a victory for side B and defeat for Side A, and since people disagree about whether side A or side B was the heroes, there are many people who claim that the losing side in various historical conflicts were the heroes and the winners were the villains.

Almost everybody believes that in real life the villains sometimes win and the heroes sometimes lose, and can point to historical examples where in their opinion the villains won and the heroes lost.

So it certainly shouldn't be hard for you to find historical models for fictional fantasy stories were the heroes lose and the villains win.

I may point out that _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_ have more or less happy endings - though marred by various losses - but in most of Tolkien's other Middle-earth stories the heroes and/or protagonists lose.

Original score: 11