I like it when the protagonist is built up as this messiah figure only to betray the people who they were supposed to help. Good examples would be Paul Atreides from Dune and Anakin from Star Wars. They kinda do this in Mistborn but its very misleading and doesnt really focus on the whole "good guy turns evil" scenario.
Bonus points if the people who raised/trained them turned out to be corrupt or evil and the MC is really the (anti)hero.
by Mister_Moony
3 Comments
The Count of Monte Cristo kinda fits this not really a messiah but he is a pretty good antihero. Also Code Geass is a manga/anime that fits this theme so well. My fav piece of media with this idea is Code Geass.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson — High fantasy novel, the first in the Masquerade series. The books play with this idea a lot and kind of leave you always uncertain and uncomfortable about the protagonist. The protagonist, Baru, is a savant, a genius. The story is that Baru’s homeland is colonized by an empire and she in retaliation will worm her way into the highest levels of power and destroy the empire from within. But to do that she has to betray everyone she cares about and everything she believes in. At what point does she become worse than the thing she’s trying to break, at what point is she irreparably corrupted by the empire that trained her? Very dark series about identity and colonialism.
Dune: Messiah comes to mind