Well-Intentioned Extremist/Literature

• Many of the villains in the various Dragonlance novels are this. Two of the most famous are the Kingpriest (whose goal was to eradicate all evil from the world and resulted in the Cataclysm) and Mina (whose desire to restore gods to the world after they vanished again caused the War of Souls debacle).
• In the Honorverse, Rob S. Pierre and (to a much-lesser extent) Oscar Saint-Just, both of whom pretty much embraced tyranny in order to keep Haven from collapsing under the strain of a losing war that their predecessors had started, but that they could not themselves end. One of the filksongs from the CDs puts it perfectly:

"Rob, you are riding a tiger; how are you going to stop?"

• • Word of God is Mesa is this. They have a very good point that Transhumanism is the best solution to many issues, and that Beowulf is horribly conservative due to cleaning up the Final War's biowar. The problem is they went into hiding for so long that they lost touch with reality and think they have to convince the galaxy with force that they are right.
• In Micah E. F. Martin's The Canticle, Jonathan Servitor is an inquisitor tasked with rooting out heretics and the undead in the last city on Earth. Given, there are high stakes, but Jonathan is nothing short of brutal in his pursuit of justice.
• Inspector Javert just wants to uphold the law and catch criminals. Fair enough. His obsessive nature and strict "by-the-book" attitude are what ruins it.
• Tam Lin in House of the Scorpion attempted to assassinate the prime minister of an unknown country, presumably the United Kingdoms, judging by his accent and appearance, but ends up taking out twenty young children on a school bus who were too close to the blast. He never forgives himself and later commits suicide by drinking wine that only he knew was poisoned.
• Literary example of a Tragic Hero who takes his mission much too far: Alexandre Dumas' character Edmond Dantes, in The Count of Monte Cristo. The self-styled Count, having escaped prison after many years of undeserved confinement, devotes himself obsessively to taking revenge on those enemies who framed him and ruined his life. For most of the book, Edmond is able to ignore the fact that the grand machinations of his vengeance are heaping danger and grief on numerous Innocent Bystanders as well as the guilty.
• Captain Vimes from Discworld spends much of his time trying not to become this.
  • His ancestor, Old Stoneface was this trope. Of course, he lived in a time when a Well-Intentioned Extremist was sorely needed. In case anybody wonders, he was modelled after Oliver Cromwell. Plus, his birth name was 'Suffer-not-Injustice' Vimes. It seems that he lived up to it.
• In Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind, the Gunnery Officer of the Scree-Wee cares about honor more than life and attempts to force the final battle into being fought despite the fact that it could easily be avoided. On the other side, Johnny has to spend a long time persuading Kirsty to try to talk to the aliens instead of simply shooting them all.
• The antagonist corporation in Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy, who plans to kill everybody to allow nature to take over. Did anyone else notice how hypocritical they were, though? Planning to pollute just as much, but since they would be the only ones left, it wouldn't matter? Clark has them stripped of all gear and left to die in the jungle. Protests ensue from the villains. His response? "You wanted harmonize with nature. Go harmonize."
• The Cavazan Empire, aka the "Saints", in the Prince Roger series by John Ringo and David Weber fit this trope. Hardcore deep-ecologists who keep the majority of their populations penned up in cities operating at low tech levels to avoid "despoiling Nature", who carefully ration everything, including medical care, to "control pollution" (read: control population), and who want to force the rest of the Galaxy to live the same way. To facilitate this, they are willing to conduct generations-long terrorism/subversion campaigns against all their neighbors. And, of course, their (hereditary) leaders live much safer and more comfortable lives than the common "Citizens" of their polity.
• Help Earth in the CHERUB books and Force Three in Alex Rider (although this turns out to be just be a cover) are both terrorist groups dedicated to helping the environment.
  • A straighter example from the Alex Rider series is Damian Cray; his plan is to hit various places with missiles, killing thousands of innocent people...in order to destroy the drugs fields. His rationale being that he will kill thousands to save millions.
• Kurda Smahlt of The Saga of Darren Shan does this when he plans to use the night of his investiture as the night of the Vampaneze invasion and take-over of Vampire Mountain, all in order to bring the two warring clans together, even killing one of his best friends in the process. He is found out and stopped, though. If Darren hadn't found out about the plan, however, chances are that the whole War of the Scars would've been averted.
• The young Albus Dumbledore and his good friend Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter books. After a tragic accident, Dumbledore revised his attitude. Grindelwald never did.
  • Dumbledore can still be considered to be one, given his acceptance of Harry's home life in order to teach him humility and prevent him from growing up with his fame. Even after that, his Gambit Roulette with the Elder Wand relied on some pretty extreme measures to pull off, despite it going wrong from the start.
    • Dumbledore accepted Harry's home life because the Blood Magic that protected Harry from direct attack from Voldemort's forces would only work if Harry was living with his mother's sister Petunia. Dumbledore even rebukes the Dursleys for their abuse of Harry in Book 6.
  • This can also be said of Salazar Slytherin's fear of Muggle-borns due to how, during his time, Wizards were facing a great deal of persecution. He feared that Muggle-borns or their relatives might turn on them, so it was better to not teach them.
  • Chamber of Secrets had Dobby performing magic in Harry's house, blocking the entrance to Plaform 9 3/4, and enchanting a Bludger to go specifically after Harry. All to keep him out of Hogwarts, so Riddle's memory couldn't harm him.
• Clemael, one of the protagonists of Hand of Mercy. The plan to undo all the evil in the world isn't bad, exactly, but Clem isn't bothered that this will destroy all of linear time.
• Akasha in The Vampire Chronicles wants to create a peaceful world by killing almost all males.
• The Birds of Prey from The Princess 99 commit brutal murders against wizards through the entire book. But then you consider that they are trying to give Nons (non-magical people) civil rights in a world that pretty much considers them lower than animals. Of course, this doesn't excuse what they did to Axel.
• The Bible frequently portrays God this way in the Tanakh/Old Testament, where, by divine sanction, direct intervention, or post hoc justification by his followers, thousands of people are brutally killed for angering God. Considering that God is often believed to be all-knowing and all-powerful, one would think that he could devise a better solution for dealing with sin than to resort to bloodshed. This would especially be true if one believes God to be all-loving, just, and merciful. Historically speaking, though, the Israelites were never a major military force, and more powerful civilizations were frequently conquering and enslaving them, so many of the violent sentiments expressed in the Tanakh may have amounted to nothing more than wishful thinking.
  • When you're an all powerful God, with power over life and death, killing is about as extreme as knocking someone out with sleeping gas.
  • A sleeping gas that is apparently permanent.
  • Which many would argue isn't the case.
    • Only after the New Testament. Prior to that, the concept of what happened after death wasn't clearly defined.
• Grand Admiral Thrawn really just wants to protect the galaxy (and his people in particular) from all threats. The problem is that he's an imperial trying to crush the New Republic, and he's not afraid to do some truly villainous things to achieve his goals, like oppressing and enslaving an entire race, or attempting to kidnap a pregnant Leia so that she and her unborn twins can get mind raped by an insane dark Jedi. He's more pragmatically ruthless than outright evil, and as we find out more about him, he gets more and more morally ambiguous, but by the end of his career, he definitely isn't a good guy.
  • The novel Outbound Flight shows him as a decent guy whose methods are considered extreme by Chiss standards and their "no first strikes" policy. Then, Palpatine's emissary informs him of an extra-galactic force that threatens the entire galaxy (the Yuuzhan Vong, presumably), forcing Thrawn to become this.
• Abraham Quest and Robur in Stephen Hunt's The Kingdom Beyond the Waves seek to recreate the perfect society that once existed in the form of Camlantis Unfortunately, it requires the destruction of every other society on Earth and their inhabitants.
• The sixth book of the Firekeeper saga, Wolf's Blood, introduces Virim, the sorcerer who created the plague that killed all the world's magic users a century ago. His reasons for doing this rested primarily on the fact that his people were prepared to conquer and kill the Royal Beasts who lived in their colony lands.
• A post-Columbine Young Adult fiction book called After... features a (presumably) government attempt to quell potentially Ax Crazy kids that gets increasingly out of hand. "Grief councilors" who tell the protagonist to throw a game to the victimized school (at the last minute, he decides not to) and "suspend" a student for wearing a red ribbon (the shooters wore red, see) that was honoring her brother who died of AIDS gives way to spy cameras in school TVs and hypnotic emails that render most of the parents blind to what's going on. It's only when the first school's entire student body suddenly disappears and rumors of detention camps in the desert where the young prisoners are being killed for attempting to escape start filtering back does the protagonist and his family decide to get out of town.^[1]
• Any number of characters from The Warlord Chronicles, but Merlin and Nimue are certainly the biggest examples. Eventually, Merlin backs away from the slippery slope. Nimue turns Knight Templar, and is instrumental in destroying Arthur's realm.
• From Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, the Lord Ruler. Turns out, all his crimes stem from an attempt to save the world. Elend gets shades of this in later books, as well. The difference between them is that Elend doesn't inadvertently open his mind to an Ax Crazy Eldritch Abomination. The Lord Ruler did. It drove him mad.
  • Sanderson uses this trope A LOT, Bluefingers of Warbreaker and King Taravangian of The Stormlight Archive also qualify.
• Matthew Sobol from Daemon spent his last days preparing, but his plans didn't actually go into operation until after his death from cancer. And it appears to have worked, although he knew he would not survive to know if it had.
• In the Dale Brown book Act of War, the eco-terrorist organisation GAMMA is not above doing things like using backpack nukes to attack the big businesses it believes is ruining the environment. Then subverted when it turns out that this was the Deceptive Disciple's plan and the group's leader didn't want it to happen.
• Anaria from The Guardians decided that the best way to end a war was to slaughter one of the armies in its entirety. After that, she decided that she was thinking too small and needed to apply her idea to the entire planet, until the only people left alive were the ones who agreed with each other. But don't worry, she'll still respect free will. She'll just make sure that humans have no other options except to choose peace, joy, and love.
• The Vampire Files gives us Federal Agent Merrill Adkins (from A Chill in the Blood). He's perfectly willing to gun down bystanders in his pursuit of criminals.
• In The Dresden Files, Martin will do anything to destroy the Red Court. He frst appears for the purpose of interfering in a duel that may lead to a cessation of hostilities between the Court and the White Council, because they're the most powerful weapon available pointed at the Court, and he's determined that they fire. In Changes, he betrays the Order of St. Giles to gain the Red King's trust, hands Harry's daughter to the Court, and gets Susan to kill him in revenge so that Harry will be forced to kill her and thus obliterate the Court. It worked.
• Alloran from Animorphs, who chose to genocide the Hork-Bajir to weaken their usefulness as the Yeerks' shock troops.
  • By the end of the series the Andalite military in general seems to be this, since they are convinced that the Yeerks have won Earth and are basically planning to do the same thing again.
• Paul Bowman from the Council Wars series has some points about the current state of humanity that his opponents agree with, but they disagree with the conclusions he's drawn and rather violently disagree with the methods and allies who've lined up with him.
• Melisandre of A Song of Ice and Fire, who honestly believes that Stannis Baratheon is Azor Ahai reborn, and is willing to kill as many people as is necessary, including Stannis' own brother, to get him his deserved throne, so he can defeat the imminent Other invasion. Whether Stannis also believes this is up for debate.
  • At least at first, Stannis doesn't seem to truly buy into Melisandre's religious beliefs, and admits that he's merely letting her spread her message because her supernatural powers are useful to him. In fact, he comes across as one of the few true atheists in the series. It's arguable whether or not that changes later on.
  • Either way, Stannis is a Well-Intentioned Extremist in a different kind of way. He's fanatically devoted to his own unique notion of justice: to him, all good deeds must be rewarded, and all evil ones punished, even if they're committed by the same person. One person comments that if Complete Monster Vargo Hoat had been on Stannis' side, Stannis would've given him a lordship for his assistance right before hanging him for his crimes. He's also unflinchingly stubborn, to a point that even he admits that it's a fault of his. These traits lead him to launch a war (and ally himself with Melisandre despite his many misgivings about her) for the throne of Westeros, even though he doesn't even want to be king and admits that he wouldn't be well-suited for the task, simply because he knows that it's rightfully his. In his eyes, it'd be selfish and unjust if he didn't try to win the crown.
• Prince Kieran in Salamander is an Anti Villain variant. Also unusual because he switched to the heroes' side when extremism became no longer necessary.

Kieran: If it turns out that the only way of keeping our enemies from learning magery that could be our ruin is to kill a charming young lady, or two, or three, I will do it.

• Safehold provides a protagonist version of this with Merlin Athrawes. His primary goal is to bring humanity out of its enforced Medieval Stasis so they can fight and defeat the aliens that nearly exterminated them hundreds of years ago. However, to accomplish this, Merlin must provoke a religious war already in the making and topple the Corrupt Church that currently rules the world, a war Merlin knows will kill tens of thousands at least, many of them innocent.
  • One of the series' antagonists, Zhaspahr Clyntahn, is especially dangerous because he's a Complete Monster who has himself convinced that he's merely this.
• Jacen Solo's reasons behind his turn to the Dark Side of the Force was because of this trope as well as a Papa Wolf: He saw into the future and saw his daughter, Allana, standing next to Darth Krayt, who was sitting on the Throne of Balance, and became such as a desperate measure to ensure that future did not come to pass, certainly not Allana being aligned with Krayt at least.
• In Poul Anderson's "A World Called Maanerek", Korul Wanen is so loyal to the Cadre that he is pleased that he was dumped, with no memory, on a planet to see what would happen, despite the risk to his life.

1. ↑ Mind, this is a very sympathetic remembering of the plot. When I read it, it was so over-the-top that I thought the villains were some kind of cult or rogue operatives who needed a compound full of kids for something. If I recall correctly, it's never stated exactly who the villains are working for.