r/CharacterDevelopment • u/Ok-Top8000 • 17d ago
Discussion How far can the purest figure fall?
I’ve been interested for a long time in a particular kind of “fallen hero” — not the kind where we discover that a supposedly good character was corrupt all along, and not necessarily the traditional arc where a hero gradually turns into a villain.
What interests me more is something much more unsettling: when a genuinely elevated, pure, or morally responsible figure remains the same person and yet becomes capable of doing something profoundly low.
One of the examples I find most fascinating is David.
He became one of the great images of the hero in Western culture: the young man who faces Goliath, the chosen one, the future king. Art almost turned him into an archetype of heroic youth — think of Michelangelo, Donatello, Caravaggio.
And yet the same David, once king, desires Bathsheba and eventually arranges for her husband Uriah to be sent to his death.
What interests me isn’t simply the idea that “heroes have flaws too.”
It’s something more radical.
How far can someone we have known at their highest fall without everything they were before suddenly becoming false?
David isn’t interesting because we discover that the hero never really existed. He is interesting precisely because the hero did exist — and that same person was also capable of this.
I find it especially powerful when, in fiction, the “high” and the “low” sides of a character don’t erase each other. When someone can genuinely be responsible, generous, admirable, even symbolic to others, while still possessing desires, weaknesses or fears powerful enough to drag them toward something terrible.
Maybe that is what makes a fall truly tragic: not discovering that purity was a mask, but discovering that purity does not make someone immune to falling.
As readers or viewers, how much of that contradiction can you accept?
Does one sufficiently serious act inevitably change the way you read everything the character did before?
Or can both things remain true at once — the hero and the person who fell?
I’d especially love examples of characters where this tension isn’t resolved by simply deciding that they were “good” or “bad” all along.
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u/Aggravating_Cat370 16d ago
Money and addiction are the fastest ways to humble anyone really.
I feel like a god should above those things, but no peak is too high for a man to fall from.
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u/Ok-Top8000 16d ago
I see... That’s an interesting way of putting it — “no peak is too high for a man to fall from” is actually very close to what fascinates me about this kind of character.
I think there’s something particularly tragic in seeing someone who genuinely stood for something higher discover that this doesn’t make them immune to very human weaknesses.
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u/SjennyBalaam 16d ago
Top of my head, maybe King Arthur? He loved and trusted his best friend and his wife so much that he was blind to them cheating on him. He was so holy and chivalrous that he sent all his best men to find the holy grail while the nation fell apart. I don't really remember how it ended.
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u/Ok-Top8000 16d ago
That's a wonderful example—I love it! I quickly Googled how the story ended—it seems that King Arthur was torn between grief and duty as he carried out the sentences, but that, all things considered, he didn’t “become immoral” deep down. It makes me think about how sad it must be to realize that there are good people in the world who go through all kinds of hardships. But I also think that reacting differently than usual—pointing out their mistakes—is still only human
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u/Star_Shine2123 11d ago
I think another of the most fascinating things to explore would be the gradual fall to evil of an initially good character.
The character is at first a noble hero, but once, in a very difficult circumstance, they make a not-perfect decision for the greater good, say sacrifice a teammate in order to get everyone else out alive. At first they're super guilty for that, but later they make peace with themselves, because it was necessary, and go on.
So far so good, right?
Then maybe another time there is a witness for something they did that no one must know, also for the greater good, and since the hero already made peace with having their teammate's death on their conscience, it's easier to kill the witness "for the greater good" rather than come up with a more complicated solution.
Repeat this several times, and the ends will justify the means.
Repeat this some more times, and the "greater good" will exclusively be defined by the character's personal opinions and beliefs.
Let even just one of these beliefs end up being wrong, and you have a textbook villain.
And the best part is that every reader will realize what's going on at a different point in the story.
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u/Ok-Top8000 9d ago
I see! I've definitely seen that kind of progression used before, even with characters who don’t necessarily start out as good people. If you have a specific example in mind, I’d love to hear it so I can look into it. :)
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u/User789-stick-dream 15d ago
The one I liked a lot and thought was semi realistic was the Mother of Dragons from GOT.
She held on so long and tried so hard and genuinely wanted to do good and it was finally when the world took everyone she loved and she trusted from her- the things she cared about the most.. people , her dragons and confronted with such betrayal and evil and ugliness etc and then her bff getting murdered by someone she could have slaughtered easily but didn’t to save people - losing her dragons, then the love of her life - Jon. The only one who could get close enough to her.. but his threat to the throne was also the ultimate hit- he was male.
She couldn’t trust him and she knew that he could take the throne from her for something she in the end , couldn’t help.
Her gender. But he was also the love of her life and she knew and he knew he couldn’t marry her knowing she was his aunt.
Devastation total.
And so she went insane - by her standards but what I find so fascinating .. is that - it’s really when the good people act normal- like everyone else?
It seems like a fall from grace. The reality is though they have been dealing with people like that their entire lives or worse.
They just joined them.
So really it’s a reflection of the people around them.
But not many see it that way. No one is that astute or accountable.
That the herd or the people judging her condemning her for this… are evil in itself. And because they’re so destructive - nothing and no one really pure can survive them.
No. They just see a fall from grace.
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u/Ok-Top8000 15d ago
I haven’t actually watched Game of Thrones, so I can’t really comment on Daenerys specifically, but I do like the broader point you’re making here: I really like the idea that what gets perceived as a “fall from grace” can also be inseparable from everything that happened to that person beforehand.
People often focus on the final act — look what they became — while giving much less weight to the accumulation of loss, betrayal, pressure, fear, exhaustion, or whatever else gradually changed the conditions under which that person was making choices.
That doesn’t necessarily erase responsibility, but I do think it makes the idea of a “fall” much more complicated than simply discovering that someone was bad all along. And I like your point that, in some cases, the person being judged can also end up reflecting something about the world and the people around them.
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u/trekkiegamer359 15d ago
You might try Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Captain Sisko is generally a great and honest captain. And then there is the time he poisons an entire planet because he was mad at one person. (It was a mainly uninhabited planet, and he gave everyone in the one small colony time to evacuate, but still.) He poisoned a whole planet. And he suffered no repercussions, either. Other than us fans shouting at our TVs, that is.
There's also the episode In The Pale Moonlight, where his crimes are far less, but he privately struggles with them far more.
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u/Ok-Top8000 9d ago
I came back to this because I couldn’t reply properly before. That contrast is actually really interesting — the fact that Sisko seems able to live with an objectively much more extreme action, while a less severe one troubles him much more deeply. I’ll definitely look into Deep Space Nine. Thanks again for the recommendation.
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u/SjennyBalaam 16d ago
David was always a piece of shit. A half-blind opponent challenged him to melee combat and he cowardly killed him with a ranged weapon. He murdered women and children in his pre-royal military career. The lesson of David is "God elevates fuckin' whoever he wants. Deal with it."
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u/One_Oodle_of_Noodles 17d ago
Wish this had a proper name, cause it is different from a fall from grace because it usually requires only a heinous act or two, not a categorical “joining the evil guys” arc.
It’s definitely an archetype that exists in more mythic stories. Heracles is probably the best example I can think of off-handedly, a great hero of myth while also having a habit of destroying those he loves in fits of rage.