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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37999
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37999
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

## YES it will be disappointing.

+1 Mark, I think the same; a story is about a main character.

I would add this: Introduce his POV first, he will be assumed to be the MC. Then yes, you can let his sidekicks die, even if they are "leaders". Keep his POV the most intimate, that is another signal of MC, the one that thinks most of love and family, his responsibilities to others, their fate if he dies, his emotional goals. Don't go quite as deep on the doomed characters in their POV, e.g. keep their love interest rather light, for the reader's benefit they can be admired, and even better than the MC in most respects, but you want the reader to intuit these characters have a bit less to lose, their lives are simpler and their deaths won't be quite as devastating.

I would prefer the MC be the only POV, but that can restrict the plots you can write. Mark is correct, I think you must constantly nudge the reader into seeing the lone survivor as the MC.

Look at Tolkien; Frodo is the MC (it seems) in Lord of the Rings; but we have other characters that are far more powerful: Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas. Your MC does not have to be the most fascinating of your characters. Often, the other super-competent characters DO die protecting the chosen one, or choose their death because they are the only one that can accomplish some key element of the mission, and accepting their own death as the price is their contribution to the ultimate success.

* * *

Edit for OP comment:

> But there is no POV it’s all of them as a group.

In that case, broaden POV to mean whomever the narrator seems to be focused on primarily; and your first POV is the first character in Chapter 1. The reader will assume that is your MC, _unless_ (like in Harry Potter) that and other characters are strongly focused on an off-screen character (Harry Potter). Characters focusing on serving another character (even an infant like HP) is a tool to imbue the other with great importance (for another example, consider a show that opens on thugs and cops, the cops want to know where Big Mike is, the thugs are clearly fearful of Big Mike and take a beating without telling the cops anything --- Clearly Big Mike is the focus of this first scene, and very important, even though the audience has no idea who Big Mike is at all).

Even if the narrator cannot get into the thoughts of the characters, we (readers) should still feel like the MC is our main guy. You could make them more expressive, and give them more dialogue, follow them more closely when the group is together.

This story **does** have a main character, the survivor. Obviously this is all my opinion, as is every other answer, but you just can't have an MC that dies with chapters left in the book, that is too much of a break with the laws of (modern) fiction. That is what will happen if you allow the audience to think somebody _else_ is the main character, and that character dies. In your tale, the 3/4 of readers that mistakenly focus on a non-survivor as their MC **will** be disappointed when that char dies, and not in a good way, in a "stop reading" way, because when their hero dies they are done, they no longer worry about what happens to him, they know! He's dead!

That was your question, nobody should reassure you otherwise; the modern audience for fiction has expectations and this would violate them, not in a good way. I doubt it would be taken up by agents or publishers, and if you self-publish, you may sell a few copies but those readers won't recommend it, and may publicly denigrate it as poorly written.

Your MC does not have to be the most powerful; we understand heroes (the other three) dying to protect something important to them. In Star Wars, Obi Wan sacrifices himself to save Luke, Gandalf dies fighting the Balrog to save Frodo, Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. We often see powerful mentors or characters fight and die to protect weaker main characters, or the group, or to prevent failure of their mission.

If your MC **is** the most powerful, the other deaths can humanize him, as failures: He **failed** to protect them, misjudged their opposition, and so on. He can feel guilt and failure in losing friends, even if he is victorious in all his own battles.

Original score: 2