Okay, so we can all agree that the Inheritance Cycle is filled with terrible characters. Almost all of the cast eventually becomes deeply unpleasant people at best, and that is just the ones who weren’t terrible people, to begin with. Worse still, they are never called on it.
Now here is a bit of a harder question:
What is the worst character in the Inheritance Cycle?
And for an encore:
Which character do you hate the most?
They don’t need to overlap.
As for my own answer for the first one, I’d say the worst character for me is probably Angela. She breaks all the established rules of the setting, has no real backstory or motivations or reason for anything she does, is really annoying and hogs the spotlight constantly. Her personality does not seem to have any defining characteristics, nor her actions any basis on reality. All of which can, of course, be said for the other primary contender on this list, Eragon. Yet the thing which makes Angela worse for me is that she is totally superfluous to the plot. She doesn’t do anything other than spoil the ending with a needless prophecy. All the foreshadowing regarding her character really doesn’t come to anything. I’m not sure you can even call it foreshadowing since I’m convinced Paolini made the story up as he went along.
Say what you want about Eragon, at the very least I couldn’t see things unfolding exactly the same way as in canon if he was eaten by a wolf before he could so much as touch Sapphira’s egg. Now granted, that would probably be a much better world we’re looking at, but the fact still remains that Eragon has made choices which greatly affected the fate of Alaegasia. Of course, his ‘choices’ were mostly choosing to be a complete tool, both in the sense of being an asshole and of being the unwitting pawn of literally everyone he talks to for more than five minutes.
Still at the very least all his screen time did not altogether waste our time.
The same cannot be said for Angela. When a character gets a lot of screen time, doesn’t add anything to the plot, has no consistent characterization or motives, and blatantly breaks the established rules of the setting without even being the main protagonist, you know you have a contender for worst character.
Now for the second question, I’m going to go with Eragon.
Partially because he is a really horrible person, for reasons which would only be redundant to speak of here, but that isn’t the only reason. The reason I hate Eragon is because I had to get stuck in his head for two and a half books, listening to his self-righteous, self-congratulatory idiocy nonstop. Of all the petulant monsters in the Inheritance Cycle, he is the one I had to put up with the most.
Actually, you know what, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg is it?
Eragon feels entitled to the universe. And he gets it. That alone is a reason to loath him. People hail him as the second coming of Christ, when his actions should result in horror and alienation. He leads a hostile army to the dwarves homeland, brings the son of their hated enemy Morzan with him, smashes their most holy relic and that is just how they meet! And what is the dwarves reaction? They ADOPT HIM INTO THEIR ROYAL FAMILY!
He never learns from his mistakes, because he never acknowledges that he makes them. Even his efforts to pay his debts are done not out of a sense of obligation, but out of a desire to feel benevolent. He considered a woman dying of cancer to be on a similar level of importance to a fangirl proposing marriage. Now granted he did heal the woman later, but it was done, once again, to make himself feel noble more than any sense of compassion.
If he truly felt a desire to help the sick and the needy, he would take a couple hours out of his day every day to heal those who need his help. He doesn’t do that because he doesn’t really care. Being a ‘champion of the people’ is for him only desirable so far as he can have it as a badge of honor to fuel his ever more corpulent ego.
The closest Eragon ever was to relatable was his genuine friendship with Murtagh in book 1, one of the few relationships which did not ring hollow to me. Even that was mostly all take and no give on Eragon’s fault, but there was something there. It seemed like a relationship that could actually exist in real life. It wasn’t just a prize to make Eragon seem cooler.
Yet as soon as Murtagh seemingly dies, Eragon trades up for a bunch of new friends who praise him for everything. Friends to Eragon are not so much worthy pursuits as badges to make himself greater. In the end, he doesn’t treat his friends much better than those he dislikes. He treats everyone around him like servants, and even ROYALTY is to be regarded with contempt if they don’t bow and scrape to him. The only difference is that he doesn’t give his friends fates worse than death when he’s alone with them in the wilderness. But personally, I wouldn’t put it past him.
Yet there really is one moment which forever confirmed my hatred of Eragon. Ironically no one else seems to have regarded this moment as anything special. It happens when he realizes that Murtagh has had his very free will stolen from him by Galbatorix. What is his first reaction? ‘Let me kill you.’
That single line of dialogue, more than anything else demonstrated his true nature. Murtagh had beaten Eragon in a fight, destroying the ego trip our not-hero has been on for the whole story in one fell swoop. Then it is Murtagh did not have control over his actions, and was indeed doing everything in his power to resist his instructions, so Eragon can’t just dismiss him as a bad guy. But Eragon can’t show sympathy for Murtagh because to do that he would have to go beyond his little bubble of existence, where everything that exists is only important in how it effects Eragon.
So the only solution is to try and get Murtagh to throw the fight so Eragon can kill him, feel sorry for himself, and be secure in the knowledge that he is some kind of ultimate badass.
Naturally Murtagh has none of it, which is why fans like the character.
The point I’ve been coming to at length is that Eragon does undergo character development. Yet he does so in reverse. The Inheritance Cycle is sort of anti-coming-of-age story. He begins the story somewhat immature, yet grounded in the unselfish desire to feed his family by hunting. As events go by he becomes steadily less mature. Steadily less accepting of the notion that he could be wrong, steadily more deluded in his black and white view of the world. By the end of it, you can’t even say that he goes by the policy that might makes right because Eragon didn’t really get a legit victory over any of his rivals. He had to rely on Deus Ex Machina’s to bail him out every time.
In any proper story, Eragon would be the villain. He might even be a good one. But as the… I’m sorry, I can’t refer to him as a hero. As what Paolini thinks is a hero, he is utterly repulsive. I could go on and on all day, but I think I’ll just leave you with a quote from Draco in Dragonheart:
‘All dragons know that story. What was to be their hope, became their doom. A spoiled ungrateful child was given a great gift, and destroyed it!’
What are your thoughts?
Now here is a bit of a harder question:
What is the worst character in the Inheritance Cycle?
And for an encore:
Which character do you hate the most?
They don’t need to overlap.
As for my own answer for the first one, I’d say the worst character for me is probably Angela. She breaks all the established rules of the setting, has no real backstory or motivations or reason for anything she does, is really annoying and hogs the spotlight constantly. Her personality does not seem to have any defining characteristics, nor her actions any basis on reality. All of which can, of course, be said for the other primary contender on this list, Eragon. Yet the thing which makes Angela worse for me is that she is totally superfluous to the plot. She doesn’t do anything other than spoil the ending with a needless prophecy. All the foreshadowing regarding her character really doesn’t come to anything. I’m not sure you can even call it foreshadowing since I’m convinced Paolini made the story up as he went along.
Say what you want about Eragon, at the very least I couldn’t see things unfolding exactly the same way as in canon if he was eaten by a wolf before he could so much as touch Sapphira’s egg. Now granted, that would probably be a much better world we’re looking at, but the fact still remains that Eragon has made choices which greatly affected the fate of Alaegasia. Of course, his ‘choices’ were mostly choosing to be a complete tool, both in the sense of being an asshole and of being the unwitting pawn of literally everyone he talks to for more than five minutes.
Still at the very least all his screen time did not altogether waste our time.
The same cannot be said for Angela. When a character gets a lot of screen time, doesn’t add anything to the plot, has no consistent characterization or motives, and blatantly breaks the established rules of the setting without even being the main protagonist, you know you have a contender for worst character.
Now for the second question, I’m going to go with Eragon.
Partially because he is a really horrible person, for reasons which would only be redundant to speak of here, but that isn’t the only reason. The reason I hate Eragon is because I had to get stuck in his head for two and a half books, listening to his self-righteous, self-congratulatory idiocy nonstop. Of all the petulant monsters in the Inheritance Cycle, he is the one I had to put up with the most.
Actually, you know what, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg is it?
Eragon feels entitled to the universe. And he gets it. That alone is a reason to loath him. People hail him as the second coming of Christ, when his actions should result in horror and alienation. He leads a hostile army to the dwarves homeland, brings the son of their hated enemy Morzan with him, smashes their most holy relic and that is just how they meet! And what is the dwarves reaction? They ADOPT HIM INTO THEIR ROYAL FAMILY!
He never learns from his mistakes, because he never acknowledges that he makes them. Even his efforts to pay his debts are done not out of a sense of obligation, but out of a desire to feel benevolent. He considered a woman dying of cancer to be on a similar level of importance to a fangirl proposing marriage. Now granted he did heal the woman later, but it was done, once again, to make himself feel noble more than any sense of compassion.
If he truly felt a desire to help the sick and the needy, he would take a couple hours out of his day every day to heal those who need his help. He doesn’t do that because he doesn’t really care. Being a ‘champion of the people’ is for him only desirable so far as he can have it as a badge of honor to fuel his ever more corpulent ego.
The closest Eragon ever was to relatable was his genuine friendship with Murtagh in book 1, one of the few relationships which did not ring hollow to me. Even that was mostly all take and no give on Eragon’s fault, but there was something there. It seemed like a relationship that could actually exist in real life. It wasn’t just a prize to make Eragon seem cooler.
Yet as soon as Murtagh seemingly dies, Eragon trades up for a bunch of new friends who praise him for everything. Friends to Eragon are not so much worthy pursuits as badges to make himself greater. In the end, he doesn’t treat his friends much better than those he dislikes. He treats everyone around him like servants, and even ROYALTY is to be regarded with contempt if they don’t bow and scrape to him. The only difference is that he doesn’t give his friends fates worse than death when he’s alone with them in the wilderness. But personally, I wouldn’t put it past him.
Yet there really is one moment which forever confirmed my hatred of Eragon. Ironically no one else seems to have regarded this moment as anything special. It happens when he realizes that Murtagh has had his very free will stolen from him by Galbatorix. What is his first reaction? ‘Let me kill you.’
That single line of dialogue, more than anything else demonstrated his true nature. Murtagh had beaten Eragon in a fight, destroying the ego trip our not-hero has been on for the whole story in one fell swoop. Then it is Murtagh did not have control over his actions, and was indeed doing everything in his power to resist his instructions, so Eragon can’t just dismiss him as a bad guy. But Eragon can’t show sympathy for Murtagh because to do that he would have to go beyond his little bubble of existence, where everything that exists is only important in how it effects Eragon.
So the only solution is to try and get Murtagh to throw the fight so Eragon can kill him, feel sorry for himself, and be secure in the knowledge that he is some kind of ultimate badass.
Naturally Murtagh has none of it, which is why fans like the character.
The point I’ve been coming to at length is that Eragon does undergo character development. Yet he does so in reverse. The Inheritance Cycle is sort of anti-coming-of-age story. He begins the story somewhat immature, yet grounded in the unselfish desire to feed his family by hunting. As events go by he becomes steadily less mature. Steadily less accepting of the notion that he could be wrong, steadily more deluded in his black and white view of the world. By the end of it, you can’t even say that he goes by the policy that might makes right because Eragon didn’t really get a legit victory over any of his rivals. He had to rely on Deus Ex Machina’s to bail him out every time.
In any proper story, Eragon would be the villain. He might even be a good one. But as the… I’m sorry, I can’t refer to him as a hero. As what Paolini thinks is a hero, he is utterly repulsive. I could go on and on all day, but I think I’ll just leave you with a quote from Draco in Dragonheart:
‘All dragons know that story. What was to be their hope, became their doom. A spoiled ungrateful child was given a great gift, and destroyed it!’
What are your thoughts?
