Nothing motivates a plot quite like a noble desire to balance the books for past affronts1. Some might denounce such efforts as unreasonable, even deranged. However, none can deny these campaigns are entertaining.
Herewith, five works featuring vendettas.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1846)
Jealous rivals frame young Edmond Dantès for treason. Edmond is detained and cast into the grim island prison Château d’If. Edmond loses his freedom, livelihood, and most importantly, his beautiful fiancée Mercédès. A promising life wasted, unjustly confined in a dank prison.
However! Fellow prisoner Abbé Faria provides Edmond with a detailed education, then the means to escape, along with the location of a vast treasure. Edmond reinvents himself as the dashing Count of Monte Cristo. Many people in Edmond’s position might put the past behind them and simply revel in their new wealth and status. Not Edmond. He channels his wealth and drive into an impressively convoluted plot to deliver his persecutors to appropriate fates.
I know Count is generally not thought of as science fiction2. On rereading it a number of years ago, I was surprised to find that part of the Count’s program is facilitated by his innovative use of then-novel technologies such as Chappe’s semaphore. As well, while this possibility is eventually ruled out, some of the Count’s new acquaintances initially wonder if he is, like Lord Ruthven, a vampire.
Drowned Ammet by Diana Wynne Jones (1977)
Outraged at the loss of his farm thanks to a predatory tax collector, Mitt’s father joined the Free Holanders to fight against the Earl for freedom and justice! Mitt’s father was swiftly betrayed, arrested, and executed. Mitt’s mother, certain she knows who to blame, raised Mitt to pursue one goal: vengeance on the surviving Free Holanders, the confederates responsible for his father’s death.
Mitt’s plan to assassinate Earl Hadd, get himself arrested, then confess under torture to the involvement of the Free Holanders runs into two small snags. First, his bomb does not kill the Earl (although a sniper’s bullet does). Second, on reflection, allowing the Earl’s men to torture Mitt into confessing does not sound pleasant. Best to simply flee the region in a stolen boat. However, Mitt’s choice of boat to commandeer is unfortunate and brings its own complications.
It is a tough call whether Tanith Lee or Diana Wynne Jones made the strongest case in favour of being an orphan. In this case, for example, Mitt’s mother tries to turn Mitt into a weapon and the Earl is such an unpleasant grandfather and his son so useless a father that the Earl’s grandkids decide to flee the earldom… in the very boat that Mitt steals.
Arcane, created by Christian Linke and Alex Yee et al. (2021)
As an impoverished girl, young Jinx—then known as Powder—relentlessly strove to prove herself to her found family. Tragedy followed. Powder suffered a series of tragic bereavements. She was verbally abused, then seemingly abandoned by her older sister Vi and reduced to living in her city’s gutters.
To say Jinx does not handle rejection well would be an understatement. Adopted by social visionary Silco, Jinx’s talent for violent terrorism is matched only by her volatility and vindictiveness. Indeed, Jinx is as much a danger to her allies as she is to those she decides are her enemies. But at least her efforts move the plot along sharpish.
It is safe to say that the feedback and support Jinx receives from her doting adopted father Silco is heartfelt but profoundly unhelpful. It’s not so much that Silco is a bad dad, although he does have some noteworthy flaws, but that his policy of encouraging and supporting his beloved daughter fails to take into account the fact that Jinx is profoundly mentally ill and extraordinarily homicidal.
A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard (2023)
The Ten Thousand Flags Uprising provided Prefect Tinh Đức and General Tuyết an opportunity for rapid, merit-based promotion. The uprising was crushed. Those deemed guilty—or at least, as in the case of scholar Dã Lan, injudiciously frank—were condemned and discarded out of convenient airlocks. In the decades since, the prefect and general have enjoyed immense rank, power, and wealth.
Newcomer Quỳnh is a wealthy but seemingly unremarkable social climber. Or so it seems. Quỳnh is a reinvented Dã Lan, back to exact revenge. In short order, Quỳnh ingratiates herself with the prefect. Victory will surely be Quỳnh’s…were it not for another mastermind’s plot, one that will present Quỳnh with uncomfortable choices.
I could have used this for an essay featuring five books that were clearly inspired by another book without being derivative of that book. A Fire Born of Exile definitely has The Count of Monte Cristo in its lineage3, but is in no sense a recapitulation of the earlier book.
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo (2024)
The declining Qing Dynasty is just four years from collapse and cannot offer its subjects justice. Grieving mother Snow will have to make her own justice. Snow blames photographer Bektu Nikan for her child’s death. Snow will do whatever it takes to track down Bektu and kill him.
Snow’s quest might be futile if she were the mortal human woman she appears to be. Snow is in fact a fox woman, with certain supernatural gifts that will prove useful in her vendetta. It’s alarming that the household to which she attaches herself already has a resident fox person, and beyond inconvenient that the photographer has fled China for Japan. However, Snow is a very determined woman.
Readers keen on novels where everything is tied up in a nice package by the end of the book should be aware that vengeance may not provide the tidy closure either reader or mastermind expect. The results can be very messy, ambiguous, or even disheartening. It’s almost as though there is some essential flaw in the concept of relentless vendettas, although I cannot see what it could possibly be.
This being a short list and vengeance being terribly popular, many fine examples are omitted in the list above, The Princess Bride being just one4. Feel free to mention your favourites in comments below.