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High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)

2020-11-23T13:30:41Z

2601:283:4780:8790:2810:5C9D:5863:9C8A: /* Relations */

[[File:HighElfMono.png|thumb|right|400px|Long hair? Excellent posture? Sharpe jaw line? A burning aura of self importance? Yep, that's a High Elf.]]
{{Topquote|Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.|William Pollard}}
{{Topquote|Have you heard of the High Elves?|The Eldar Scrolls IV: Oblivion}}
Like every fantasy setting out there, Warhammer Fantasy could not be without its faction of arrogant, snobbish "high" elves who are only "high" on their own egos. However, taking a page out of Tolkien's book, these elves are dying, surrounded on all sides by enemies and their greatest foe may just be each other.

And if that doesn't tell you how fucked the High Elves are in this setting, then you will see all the proof you need below.
==A brief overview==
In [[Warhammer Fantasy]], the High Elves are the original [[elves]] and live on their Atlantis doughnut [[Ulthuan]] where they sang, built statues and temples, grew their hair, throw softcore orgies and rode monsters into the sunset and out of the sunrise again, all the things one would do in a perfect paradise made just for them.

[[FAIL|Then it all went to shit]].

The causes of this are threefold: Because the [[Old Ones]] didn't clean up after themselves, or lost a war against Chaos, or it's all according to plan, or whatever. [[Chaos]] flooded out like a pierced beer can into the world and were going to destroy it without a problem. The first Phoenix King, Aenarion, got his shit together and closed the gate thereby saving the world. Then a bunch of shit happened. Eventually his son Malekith got butthurt over not being picked the next king over some guy named Bel Shanaar and started the [[Dark Elves (Warhammer)|Dark Elves]]. Because the Dark Elves are the Sith of Warhammer they pushed really far into Ulthuan, but then Caledor the first came and Cosgrove'd Malekith back to the northern reaches of the New World. (Which means Canadians are Cenobites.)

Caledor the second pissed off the Dwarfs, doing his bit to ensure that they didn't go too long without being bullied, but then he got himself killed and left his fancy [[Hats|hat]] behind, which is just bad play. Then Malekith came back and fucked shit up good so the High Elves elected Caradryel who realized that keeping colonies and making war on Dwarfs when you're about to be wiped out is stupid and ordered all non-Dark Elves to come home and defend the motherland, but the colonists who discovered pot and treefucking had better ideas and retreated into the woods, becoming Wood Elves. (Which means the Swiss are Ithorians.)

The High Elves as we know them today are a dying race where every citizen is a soldier because there's so few left they can't support a standing army. (Although they still have high enough birth rate to make up for losses, because GW says [[Derp|there are always as many or as few elves as the plot for the book in question demands]]. So apparent consistency can suck it.) They're still the strongest force in the world, and if they get wiped out then the kinda dark and sorta grim Warhammer Fantasy becomes [[Grimdark|grimdarkness]] of Warhammer 40k. So yeah, they're kind of important if you aren't playing Daemons or Warriors of Chaos (or Beastmen goddammit!).

Of course, most High Elves are [[That guy|douchebags]] and most of the rest of the world are too, so don't worry: everyone has a reason to fight each other.

== New army book ==
8th edition High Elf book is out, and the summary is that while some notoriously overpowered things (Teclis, Book of Hoeth) were nerfed, they weren't nerfed into the ground. Better yet, with the light and medium cavalry being core again and the points and powers adjusted, the only thing that's still (relatively) useless is Shadow Warriors (although even they can be made viable at times) and possibly Eltharion. Matt Ward wrote the new book, but has unexpectedly not had the fluff raped or had characters made rapists. Females were even (re)added, the Everqueen and her servants!
Overall, we got off very well and are possibly a bit stronger than before. But what did you expect from the only Fantasy army with Marines?

== In Age of Sigmar ==
Unfortunately, the High Elves (or Aelves, but not even Age of Sigmar players call them that) were arguably the faction with the most damage done to them in the transition between the two systems, being split up into five subfactions (Eldritch Council, Swifthawk Agents, Lion Rangers, Order Draconis, Phoenix Temple) for no particular reason. So far, none of these subfactions have been reconsolidated back into one faction, expanded into their own distinct model range, or even given faction rules in the General's Handbook.

UPDATE: New battletome announced! They’re being souped in with all the other order factions GW likes to forget exist ([[The_Empire_(Warhammer_Fantasy)|Empire]], dwarfs, other elves) but better than nothing.

UPDATE 2: Oh no. Massive squat of order models just happened, and as of the time this is being written, high elves have 4 units left, and they're all "Last Chance to Buy". The High Elves are going the way of [[Bretonnia]] and [[Tomb Kings|Nehekhara]].

UPDATE 3: The above is still basically true, but they're not entirely gone, we still have the Phoenix Guard, Flamespyre/Frostheart Phoenix kit, and the Shadow Warriors (I'd guess the Shadow Warriors are gonna be added to Shadowblades or something since they're the only Swifthawk Agents left? Idk). Anyway, according to the Cities of Sigmar preview from Gen Con, all the Last Chance to Buy units will be made into a Warhammer Legends PDF like the Dark Elves got a while ago, which means warscrolls for the whole faction from Fantasy, but unfortunately no Matched Play points.

UPDATE 4: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=977qaeqBTzw they're coming back, and they're pointier then ever]

UPDATE 5: The official new name for the High Elves in AOS are the [[Lumineth Realm Lords]], created in Hysh by the big man Teclis after screwing up with the Deepkin. Which is not to say this draft was a slam-dunk. In fact, pride and jealousy lead to a civil war that ended up letting chaos into Hysh. These days, they take a dim view of emotion. Never touch the stuff, instead using realmstone to bottle up their inner darkness. The Lumineth are a forward thinking-civilisation, so of course their long term strategy is "bottle it up and hope for the best".

==History==
The High Elves are proud civilisation with a long history, which they happen to measure in an abritrarily convaluted way. Rather than adopt some standarised metric like 'years', they divide ages by the reign of the Phoenix Kings. And it's not like they have term limits, some eras are shorter than others as a result and rarely do they end peacefully. They do this so they can pretend they're superior to everyone else.

=== {{anchor|The Golden Time}} The Golden Time (a.k.a. The 80s) ===
'''Imperial Calendar ≤ -4498'''

The Golden Time was before the Phoenix Kings. There isn't much [[fluff]] on it, as it is supposed to be the lost age of myth. Only that [[Ulthuan]]'s kingdoms were run by the [[Everqueen]] alone who lead out a positive if hippy-driven jive. Then the warp gates at the world poles collapsed and chaos attacked, immediately going after the Elves and fucking their shit up. The Everqueen's magic was mostly for peaceful shit and her soldiers had never faced anything worth mentioning before. The High Elves prayed to their head god, Asuryan, to help them.

=== {{anchor|Aenarion}} Aenarion, the Defender ===
'''Imperial Calendar -4498 to -4419'''

Aenarion was a world traveler, back in the days when that meant something. He heard some crazy shit was happening at home so he went back, and shit was way more crazy than he heard. Everyone figured the world was ending, and everything that had ever been was pretty much being turned to Swiss cheese by Slaaneshi Daemon cocks while the Bloodletters stood back and called them horsefuckers.

So Aenarion went to the Shrine of Asuryan to pray. But they didn't do a god damned thing (primarily since every god who wants to do good also has an antethesis, so there's a permaban on screwing with mortals which gives Asuryan more time to sit on his ass and contemplate his navel). Aenarion said the High Elf equivalent of YOLO and jumped into Asuryan's sacrificing fire, which is a bit like running up to the pope, snatching his staff of office from his hand and beating yourself over the head with it. However, according to Fantasy that is a valid form of religious protest because god-daddy-bossman actually DID get off his ass for once as Aenarion was imbued with the power of Asuryan. He went outside the shrine, saw some [[Daemon|Daemons]], and slew the biggest Daemon he could find with a surprise left. Then Aenarion put some armour on and killed another with a right-hook. THEN Aenarion drew his spear and ran a Greater Daemon of Nurgle through with it. THEN he got on his pet-fucking-dragon and slew the entire war-host before Slaanesh could even jizz in her pants.

Elves all over suddenly saw someone with balls and promptly started cosplaying him, and because all elves look alike Daemons started taking psychology checks every time they saw pointy ears. Caledor the Dragontamer, who was like the first Teclis (but not anemic) swore fealty to Aenarion and gave him the death star plans to fucking over Chaos by making a black hole of magic somewhere so Daemons couldn't manifest in the world. He saved Astarielle, the Everqueen at the time, and they fell in love and wed. Soon everyone else asked to be on team Aenarion and gave him whatever shit they had that wasn't full of cockholes until the elves decided there'd be two rulers of their race from that point on, the elected king and the hereditary queen (one of the perks to being king is he bangs the Everqueen for a year until she gets a daughter to inherit the throne after her, but after that point they go back to their spouses and pretend it wasn't the best year of their life).

However, Chaos attacked Avelorn where the Astarielle lived, and killed her in a way that is apparently beyond description, and the children of Aenarion and the Everqueen were lost. Aenarion was ''[[RAGE|pissed]]''. So he went to a far off island and drew the sword from the stone. Except this sword was Widowmaker, a [[sword]] (or a [[spear]], or an [[axe]]) of Khaine. Khaine is kind of like Rule 63 Khorne but with a penis, and unlike in 40k where he's a giant robot the Eldar use to fuck shit up, he's pure douchebag unleaded and likes fucking with elves more than Daemons do. So Widowmaker, <strike>which apparently shapeshifts to whatever kind of weapon you'd like to use the most (Aenarion gets points for the damn thing not turning into a katana or something else stupid, and then promptly loses them for not turning it into a dragon-mounted demolisher cannon)</strike> curses you to a really bad end which follows your entire line. Fun, huh?

So Aenarion sets off to get it, and along the way everyone (except his dragon), INCLUDING the Chaos Gods and the ghost of the Everqueen let's him know this ain't it, chief. But Aenarions has other ideas and claims the weird evil sword that enourages him to kill everyone, [[Fulgrim|a plot point which has definiftely never turned out poorly for anyone in any Warhammer IP]].

The most fucking crazy of the elves follow him to the Westernmost part of Ulthuan where he forms a new kingdom built and fed on bloodletters and severed Slaaneshi cocks. Along the way he rescues a witch named Morathi from some Slaaneshi fighters and promptly marries the chick (whether or not she was pregnant beforehand isn't known, but she gives birth to a son he names Malekith). The Nagarythe court becomes all kinds of fucked up, to a degree nobody knows about fully. Caledor, sick of waiting for the torture orgies to end, packed up and went to actually finish beating Chaos. Ever level-headed, Aenarion started a civil war in revenge for not participating in said orgies, but then the biggest Chaos invasion ever seen set up on the other side of the map and everyone knew everything was fucked 40k style.

Caledor and his bros turned an island in the middle of Ulthuan into a magic drain, but it put them outside time forever in an ''I Have No Mouth and Must Scream'' kind of way (although Caledor exists outside it immortally making sure nobody buttfucks the mages while they're standing there in magical amber). However, Aenerion got a mortal wound during a faceroll against the four Avatars of the Chaos Gods themselves. So he ran back to where he got The Sword of Khaine and puts it back in the rock. From there, his body is never found. He's presumed dead, unlike everyone else that kind of thing happens to. For three days Ulthuan gets the New Orleans treatment from the weather, and most of the elf race dies. But then it turns out the children of Aenarion and the Everqueen lived! Her last act was to make some unknown deal with nature, which resulted in Dryads being bros with elves and carrying the kids away where they'd be safe. Yvraine succeeded her mother as the Everqueen, and Aenarion's firstborn son Morelion declined the right to be the Phoenix King, which (incest aside) probably would have avoided ''so much trouble'' in the setting. Instead, he chilled in his sister's court where he married one of her maids. Thanks to Aenarion's dick move with the sword, all his descendants have an innate burning desire to seize Widowmaker, which is a less useful inherentiance than you'd expect from being the great-great grandkid of the first Phoenix King.

=== {{anchor|Bel Shanaar}} Bel Shanaar, the Explorer ===
[[Image:butthurt2.jpg|thumb|right|A picture of Malekith after Bel Shanaar was named Phoenix King]]'''Imperial Calendar -4419 to -2749'''

So a year after Aenarion died, the Princes of Ulthuan started deliberating over who to elect to be the new king. Malekith, who had become a badass Fighter/Wizard and knew how to cheat at chess, was the top candidate from an outside perspective; but since Nagarythe torture orgies weren't exactly socially acceptable, nobody was too keen on the idea. Also Yvraine, one of the kids that the Dryads saved was the new Everqueen and was Malekith's half-sister. The Council thought it would be a bit fucked up since by law they had to produce a daughter (despite the fact that law was passed like five minutes ago in elf-years) who would be the next Everqueen and they didn't want the line of Everqueens to become the Habsburgs. So Malekith pinkie swore that he just wanted to be king because it'd make his pappy proud, but said he'd be alright with not being picked.

So naturally they elected a war hero who was known for not wanting to slap his dick on everything for his own glory, an elf named Bel Shanaar who was from Tiranoc. Morathi went ballistic about her son (who she may or may not have been fucking at this point) not becoming King, but Malekith managed not to cry and went as far away from Ulthuan as he could by becoming an explorer like his father. He took all his whining over to the New World and set up a bunch of colonies, went Orc hunting on safari, and discovered Dwarfs. Bel Shanaar visited the Dwarfs too, and signed a peace treaty that was supposed to last for the entirety of the history of the two races. Yeah, we know how well that went, especially since Malekith was appointed ambassador (though he was actually quite bro-tier and became good friends the Dwarf King, which went to shit after said Dwarf died).

The elves reconstruct Ulthuan and repopulate it (in other words, an enormous amount of time passes). It's about this time that the Cult of Pleasure begins to appear. It was a Slaaneshi cult that was into crazy Slaaneshi things like sacrifice, torture, and wearing fursuits. Malekith came home to stamp that shit out since it was supposedly based in his home kingdom of Nagarythe. He found out his mother, Morathi, was a member and when he confronted her about it she revealed she was the founder and high priestess. Which overall wasn't much of a surprise to anyone. He turned them all in to everyone's surprise but then had the message spread that a meeting was needed at the shrine of Asuryan immediately to discuss how awesome he was for turning them in, so the survival of the smartest went into effect as the Princes who didn't have much going on upstairs went, as well as Bel Shanaar since he had no choice. Malekith had the doors sealed, then told everyone Bel Shanaar was actually three very slender dwarfs in a robe and poisoned him before he could say "wut?" then turned around expecting to be made Phoenix King on the spot. The Princes immediately moved to hold a vote on whether or not Malekith should investigate himself for being a cultist, so Malekith assured them everything was cool and walked into the sacrifice pyre like his father did. Asuryan was disappointed. So after coming back as a piece of elf-shaped bacon his followers killed everyone, and took off running back to Nagarythe where they sealed him in full plate armor to keep his dumbass alive, complete with removable codpiece at his mother's request. That's when Malekith became the Witch King. What a douche.

=== {{anchor|Caledor I}} Caledor I, the Conqueror ===
[[File:HighElfvsDarkElf.png|thumb|right|450px|All this over who get's to wear the bloody crown.]]'''Imperial Calendar -2749 to -2198'''

Prince Imrik (not the one from the current day, this is the first one) never liked Malekith. As a result he was one of the only Princes not at the Shrine when Malekith killed everybody, and since he was Caledor's grandson he took on that name in honor of his ancestor. However, despite how much he and a bunch of other High Elves didn't like Malekith lots of elves loved him. So a super fantastical fun Civil War started. It went back and forth, but lots of important folks turn to Malekith's side. Hotek, a priest to the elf god Vaul, stole the super awesome Hammer of Vaul and runs off to join Malekith. This is probably around the time the Ring of Hotek is made, which took a lot of douchebaggery to form. The elves of Nagarythe went so evil, they started worshipping Daemons and renamed themselves Druchii (or as the Mon'keigh call them, the Dark Elves) to distinguish themselves from the Asur (High elves).

Caledor fought really hard, and chased a lot of Dark Elves back to Nagarythe itself. That's when Malekith pulled a 'Just as Planned' and started to mess with the Vortex in the middle of Ulthuan, which caused a lot of the Nagarythe to panic and rejoin the High Elves. What Malekith's wizards planned to do is tear a hole directly to the realm of Chaos, where the Daemons would for some reason not rape them and eat their souls and instead help them and salute Malekith as God Emperor of Elfkind (kids, don't do meth. You make decisions like this). What it really did is sink most of Nagarythe, and lots of the kingdom to the south Tiranoc. The world was rocked so hard, the Dwarfs felt it and decided to make a bone and cat leather mural of it.

Laughing, the majority of the Dark Elves load up in their ships made out of mountains (how does that work? A wizard did it; more like several wizards) and head West. Some Dark Elves remain, and continue to mess up the High Elves like the Viet Cong. Due to this, the High Elves stopped talking with their colonies in the new world due to having more important shit to do. Malekith suddenly got a boner for the Widowmaker (and he's had one ever since) and the High Elves skirmish with the Dark Elves on the high seas and on the island itself. Caledor has a series of unbreachable fortress gates erected in Ulthuan to ensure that it's a fucking BITCH to try to invade, each named after one of the possible mounts High Elves can be seen on (Griffon, Eagle, Phoenix, Dragon, and Unicorn).

Caledor does some mopping up, pushing the last of the Dark Elves off Ulthuan, finally coming to the Blighted Island himself to give Malekith the middle finger. He stood in the Altar of Khaine for awhile staring at the Widowmaker, then went "Naaaaah". Apparently the sword's charms aren't so powerful, and Aenarion is just the kinda guy who goes for one pringle and eats the whole can. On the way back though, a freak storm hits and some punkass Dark Elf pirates ambush him and light his ship on fire. But instead of being captured, the magnificent bastard decides to jump into the ocean fully dressed in his armor. He dies, of course. But the Emo Elves didn't get him. The kingdom he came from, the name of which was forgotten, was renamed in his honor for such badassery.

=== {{anchor|Caledor II}} Caledor II, the Warrior ===
'''Imperial Calendar -2198 to -1599'''

Caledor II was the kid of Caledor I and totally forgetting what the last son of a Phoenix King turned out like, the Princes elected him. However, as all kids are, he was a jackass. The Dark Elves shut themselves up in Naggaroth while Malekith plotted a scheme for epic lols. About this time, contact with the Old World and the Dwarfs was reestablished. They heard there was some crazy civil war going on, but they didn't really understand why something like that would happen since Dwarf logic is "all Dwarfs do everything their fathers and the guy with the whitest beard say without question, and all fathers and white beards follow the king without question" ([[Chaos Dwarfs|while pretending that Dwarfs who do deviate from this don't exist]]), so as far as they're concerned, the king is the voice of the hivemind.

What Malekith decided to do was fuck with the Dwarfs. But not only did they attack the dwarfs, they dressed up like High Elves and stole everything that the Dwarfs would miss (so the anvils (also known as female Dwarfs), and booze). This left the Dwarf King, Gotrek Starbreaker, sending envoys back to the High Elves asking, "What the fuck, dude?" Caledor II, though, ignored them. Completely. Finally the Dwarfs began to demand stuff, which got their diplomats shaved. Gotrek swore if the Dwarfs didn't get the money equal to what had been stolen or it's price in Elfblood, he'd shave himself which caused the entirety of the Dwarf race to more or less make the same oath. The largest force of Dwarfs ever seen before or since gathered and began their assaults on the Elven colonies in the Old World. This starts what is called "[[The War of the Beard (The War of Vengeance)]]". Its during this war that the item "Cloak of Beards" is created.

Caledor II sends the entirety of the High Elf armies to kill Dwarfs. Both sides underestimated each other, and it was a complete loss on both sides. Dwarfs decide that all trees are evil and start clear cutting to piss of the elves, which gives some a sad but not to the extent the Dwarfs thought it would. When the Princes of Ulthuan vote to tell Caledor II he's a gigantic fuckhead, Caledor II screams like a 3 year old and tells everyone to fuck off. High Elves start using Dark Elf tactics like poisoning Dwarf water sources and desecrating shrines. After awhile Caledor II crosses the sea and tries to push the Dwarfs away from the colonies. He kills Gotrek's son and thinks he's a badass all of a sudden. At this point it's all downhill for the High Elves. Caledor II's bro gets killed by a Dwarf whose last name is changed to "Elfbane" after the feat, and the colony of Athel Maraya is wiped off the map. The Elves try and attack a few 'Dorf Fortresses, but are obliterated and sent scurrying back to their colonies, pursued by a single souped-up Dwarven miner.

A few hundred years later Caledor II comes back and launches an attack that's supposed to kill off the dwarfs. That didn't really go according to plan. In a battle with King Gotrek himself, Caledor II is obliterated. They take the Phoenix Crown forged by all the Princes and Nobles of Ulthuan for Aenarion himself for his coronation, and heads back to their mountains. The Elves try to draw them out of the mountains but the Dwarfs refuse. Just as they're lining up to kamikaze Karaz-a-Karak, the 'Dorf capital, they hear Malekith is trying to rape Ulthuan. The High Elves in the Old World are ordered to get their ass back to their island, but some refuse, becoming Wood Elves (who continue to get consistently slaughtered by Beastmen and Dwarfs while fucking with Bretonnians). With the death of Caledor II, the bloodline of King Caledor I was broken, and as a result the people of Caledor began to consider every one of their naturalized citizens to be his descendants. Yep, that's how Caledorians roll.

=== {{anchor|Caradryel}} Caradryel, The Peacemaker ===
[[Image:droopy.gif|thumb|right|Caradryel, wondering why the fuck everyone around him is such a fucking Double Mon'keigh.]]'''Imperial Calendar -1599 to -996'''

See, while the High Elves were fighting the Dwarfs, Malekith took a bunch of his ships and invaded Nagarythe, and built a fortress there called Anlec made out of those mountain-ships. After the traditional one year mourning period ended, the High Elves decided to name Caradryel (a nobody Prince from Yvresse who's qualifications were more or less "nobody hates him") their leader since he was so unlike Caledor II. He was a shit soldier, but had a high WIS score so they figured he'd be good.

Ulthuan fell under attack from Dark Elves, as well as beasties the Dark Elves brought and unleashed in the mountains that have never been wiped out (rumors that they are the inbred children of Malekith and Morathi are unfounded, but probably true). After his first proclamations came out from the Everqueen's bed, that the colonies were to be abandoned and the War of the Beard (as well as the Phoenix Crown) conceded to the Dwarfs, the Princes and Nobles started to complain. Caradryel promptly told them to STFU, said he'd rather lose the crown than the Kingdom, and went back to making a new Everqueen. Since he was smart enough to know he didn't know shit about war and was busy being knee-deep in the best elf democracy can buy, he called on the greatest elves among the Princes to lead the armies of Ulthuan against the Dark Elves (among them the line of Morelion).

Tethlis, Prince of Caledor (the Kingdom, not the wizard or the two Kings), became the greatest of these military-minded men and put the hurt on the Dark Elves (but wasn't able to beat them fully). During this time, most of the modern High Elf military tactics were developed. Caradryel even contributed when he got the idea that maybe giving his troops shore leave instead of leaving them in place until they died at their posts was a good idea! High Elves built a giant navy and became the dominant naval power in the world, and Caradryel eventually died in his sleep, becoming the first Phoenix King to get a happy ending (y'know, not counting that first year they all get).

=== {{anchor|Tethlis}} Tethlis, The Slayer ===
'''Imperial Calendar -996 to -691'''

Remember Tethlis? As a wee babby, Tethlis's entire family was slaughtered in the worst ways by Dark Elves doing a victory lap amongst the citizenry of Caledor after one of their raids overcame the local guards. This ensured he'd be ready to enact a non-expiring WAAAGH against them. Tethlis was a bro of Caradryel and learned how not to be a fuckhead when it came to the civilian side of things. After dragons began hibernating longer and longer, Tethlis wrote essays on military structure and ways to utilize strategies other than "we're better, we will win". After becoming King, he enacted most of those policies into practice and set out a mandate requiring every settlement to provide for the common defense with a citizen levy made up of civilians trained like soldiers, then let back into civilian life like a god tier militia. Each city was required to have the facilities necessary to train said levies from that point onwards. He sent the armies of Ulthuan out with CREEEEEED tier planning and strategy. High Elf armies only fought battles they could win with minimal casualties, towns and cities left entirely undefended were ones that were not in any threat of danger at all.

Several centuries later, even the Shadowlands were reclaimed. At the eve of the assault on Anlec, Tethlis gave the orders that nothing was to be left of the city. No walls, plants, or prisoners. He reclaimed the Blighted Island minutes before the ritual to unlock the Widowmaker to work in Dark Elf hands was completed with the most violently bloody battle the High Elves had ever known prior (picture D-Day but with dragons, giant eagles, wizards, and Lothern Seaguard, but times a thousand). With every Dark Elf they could find dead, Tethlis gave the word the army was going to push straight onto Naggaroth and wipe out the Dark Elf race; but as he went back to his ship, he found himself drawn to the dreaded Altar of Khaine with its Widowmaker. He found Aenarion's armor which was apparently either ignored or unseen by Morathi's witches, but without the body of the hero to go with it. He gave it to one of his companions named Auaralion, who was the descendant of Morelion (the firstborn son of Aenarion and the Everqueen of his time). Auaralion went back to the ship with his awesome new swag, and it was passed down the family to Tyrion in the present day.

So now comes the point of the story that's left in doubt. One account says that Tethlis looked at the Widowmaker and thought he'd read enough TV Tropes to judge it a baaaaad idea (or perhaps he just wanted to look more like Caledor the 1st), and dismissed the White Lions so he could feel the sheer horror of the thing to steel himself for the assault on Naggaroth when a Druchii assassin killed him. The second version is that he decided to /fail and grabbed it. The White Lion bodyguards realized what would happen and teamkilled him with their giant fucking axes right before it was fully free from the base. The third version combines the two, claiming that Druchii assassins were lying in wait but were killed by the White Lion bodyguards who then teamkilled Tethlis when he started to pull the Widowmaker out of the shrine. In support of the latter, Malekith '''did''' send assassins to hide at the shrine and make sure that Tethlis didn't draw the Widowmaker, but the assassins never reported back to him.

Either way, Tethlis died the most heroic and fucking badass motherfucker who ever lived in Warhammer Fantasy. Can you dig it?

=== {{anchor|Bel-Korhadris}} Bel-Korhadris, The Scholar King ===
'''Imperial Calendar -691 to 499'''

After so many years of nonstop war, the High Elves despite for the first time in their history being on the offensive against the Dark Elves, couldn't bear any more war. They elected the most famous mage of that age, who was also a Prince. The Dark Elves had been reduced to just town guards and non-combatants with Malekith and Morathi being the only beings of any power they could call on, and Warriors of Chaos took advantage of their weakness to begin launching raids in revenge for the years that they had suffered as sport game for Druchii nobility, and while the High Elves still had a military force capable of sweeping the entire world clean they had little else as Ulthuan was so devastated by the years of war that 1945's Europe looked like a pristine diamond. Bel-Korhandris called back the invasion force halfway across the ocean, preferring to focus on ensuring the High Elf race would survive rather than ensuring the Dark Elf race didn't (so assuming Tethlis WAS going for the Widowmaker, the result would have been the good of DE no longer being in the game, and the curse of the HE not being supported by GW either). Bel figured the High Elves could defeat the Dark Elves once and for all, but they'd never recover from the effort and the extinction of all elves would be guaranteed as a result. A real "which is worse - punish the innocent, or spare the guilty?" scenario.

Monsters roamed Ulthuan with such freedom that it looked little different from the Chaos Wastes in summer. First order of business; slaughter them all. Bel-Korhadris declared an official age of rebirth, he literally declared a second golden age was about to happen. The White Tower of Hoeth (GW can't into creativity, it's a giant wizard tower) was built using every resource not being devoted to rebuilding everything else. He founded the Loremasters of Hoeth to guard Ulthuan, and to teach everything from swordplay to military strategy to every branch of magic (INCLUDING ways to use CHIM to make coffee!). All forms of knowledge are available in the libraries of Hoeth in books made as much out of magic as they are of paper (read; magic computers). Bel-Korhadris also realized that it takes all kinds to be badass, and manipulated pop culture within the High Elf race to encourage dick-measuring contests amongst the nobility and those on shore leave from the levies and guard posts. As a result anyone who could hold a sword started becoming muder-hobos and killing monsters the Druchii had left.

Finally, he reinforced the Waystones and put thousands upon thousands of small protections made using magic throughout Ulthuan, from making parts of the coastlines unable to be navigated to making non-High Elves unable to find the Tower of Hoeth to weakening the gate between the world of living elves and dead elves to allow ancestors to participate in unseen ways to protect their heirs.

Every place in Ulthuan got an enchantment to protect it, and many places got many more. Shortly before the Tower was complete, he died and unlike most Phoenix King's whose burials are overseen by the Phoenix Guard the body of Bel-Korhadris was overseen by his children and former students, being entombed at the base of the White Tower where his spirit sometimes helps kids with their term papers. Overall, a real bro tier king.

=== {{anchor|Aethis}} Aethis, The Poet ===
'''Imperial Calendar 499 to 1121'''

Now THIS king was a pussy. See, by this point the High Elf Princes and Princesses had some history to look back on, and saw that the best kings came in two flavors. Ones who were badasses known for beating the shit out of Dark Elves and Chaos, or guys with absolutely no military experience that were quietly spoken and unambitious. Since the previous king was the latter and had done a good job they chose another person of that type, a poet from Saphery who's only major accomplishments were being born to a very prominent High Elven family and entertaining the Everqueen's court with his artistic retellings of past glories of the elves (avoiding that awkward pre-coital moment where the Everqueen has to pretend to know his name). As a result of such a life, he knew jack shit about actually being in the military, most of his knowledge coming from the ballads of Tethlis, the two King Caledors, and Aenarion that he had told in the past. He was also a very bad judge of character to boot.

Things went pretty well at first, Dark Elves stopped raiding and had no contact with High Elves for a long period, Dwarfs stopped being pissed at the High Elves and just resigned themselves to having a long grudge that would be resolved by insults spoken whenever possible instead of through bloodshed (this is the first time the High Elves start trying to get a price in gold for the return of the crown), and although the Empire was founded by Sigmar during the reign of Bel-Korhadris the High Elves living in Ulthuan only heard of it in the early years of Aethis.

High Elves started looking back at their own past now that they had a chance to catch their breath, and realized they had lost almost their entire history prior to Aenarion and that there was more unoccupied cities and ruins than populated cities and intact structures. They began to rebuild their culture by stepping up the baby-making efforts, turning the Anulii of Chrace into a giant Mount Rushmore, creating magic items that WEREN'T made for war, composing some of the most beautiful music ever written, painting portraits that moved Harry Potter style of everyone whose face could be seen or still remembered, and generally making themselves the greatest race in the world without question again. Lothern went from some being Innsmouth to being New York. Military outposts were remade to be as majestic and enchanting as anything an invading army had ever seen before. Old weapons of war were decorated with silver and gold inlays, dead trees anywhere in Ulthuan were cut down and disposed of and new ones planted in their place. Now all this sounds really good right? Had that been the only thing Aethis was known for, it'd have been the perfect age.

But that's not how things worked out. As time went on, the Elves became complacent. They began to believe that peace would last forever.

The navy was sent to drydock and taken apart for building materials, soldiers were dismissed and expected to take up non-military jobs, weapons and armor from every Kingdom were sold overseas to humans and Dwarfs, and any veteran or soldier who tried to maintain their vigilance and keep Ulthuan ready to defend itself was mocked and manipulated out of power. The last great military commander of this age, Prince Valedor of Ellyrion, wound up stripped of his wealth and reputation by the dandies at the Phoenix Court after he delivered a SHORYUKEN to the face of some poncey noble who tried to take the contents of the Griffon Gate armory to use as props in a theatrical production of Aethis's newest work.

So after 622 years of rule by a guy looking to shore up the pride and pleasure of his race, the Cult of Pleasure unsurprisingly once again surfaced. Fortunately, Bel-Korhadris once again proved his ability to get shit done even after his death. One of his last acts in life was to create The Loremasters of Hoeth order, which included the Swordmasters; all up they're the equivalent of High Elf CIA. The order had been keeping a watchlist for Ulthuan's most wanted and terrorist suspects. During their shadow war against the Cult of Pleasure they came to believe that someone at Aethis's court was a Dark Elf traitor, so the Loremaster of Hoeth at the time (Morvael) sent him a message to be on the lookout. Somehow this letter was mixed up with Aethis's fan mail (because let's face it, who the fuck would write him about ANYTHING else? It's likely Morvael did it on purpose otherwise the letter would never have reached Aethis), and after it was read to the entire court Aethis was assassinated in front of everyone by his Chancellor, <s>Palpatine</s> Girathon, who was a traitor (later retconned to be a Dark Elf double agent. [[Matt Ward|As for Aethis' death, High Elves say it was with a poisoned dagger, Dark Elves say he was strangled with one of his silk scarves]]). So altogether, this was the best of times and it was the worst of times. The most easily preventable fuckups happened in this age, but so did the things that make the current High Elves so glorious to behold. They know it too, the duality of things is big to the High Elves if you hadn't realized that looking at their language. At any rate, if there's a Phoenix King referred to most by High Elves it's probably this one.

=== {{anchor|Morvael}} Morvael, The Impetuous ===
'''Imperial Calendar 1121 to 1503'''

Morvael was from Yvresse, and was the first High Loremaster of Hoeth after the founding of the order. Despite being a fucking genius, he had absolutely no clue how to lead a nation or run a military. In addition, he was VERY emotional and had to stop games of Warhammer 40k to properly mourn each Space Marine mini who was slain each turn. He also had extreme insomnia, constantly having nightmares about Matt Ward fucking up the High Elf 8th edition update. When Malekith found out, he used his magic to troll Morvael throughout his reign with even worse nightmares, such as ones about [[the End Times]].

His first act was to order an attack on the Dark Elves with what was left of the navy. It went along the lines of "We should, um, like... we should... attack... someone. Yeah. Attack someone. Can I fuck the Everqueen now?" The Dark Elves, still rebuilding their offensive forces but having become quite adept at repelling attacks from sea, wiped out the High Elf fleet. The High Elves were not expecting this, having thought the Druchii more or less destroyed. To the contrary, the shoe had been put on the other foot after Aethis's reign. The Dark Elves immediately retook the Blighted Isle, rebuilt Anlec, and push as far south as the Griffon Gate. Morvael shat himself, then called on the citizen levies and increased their quota for troops to almost 100% of the able population. In addition, arms and armor was to be provided for as much by the individual as the nation. Taking a page out of Caradryel's book he then appointed a military-minded man, named Mentheus who was Caledorian, to be supreme commander of the Asur armies. The nation, formerly the single center of wealth in the world against which Dwarfs and Tomb Kings amounted to pennies, was rendered as broke as a Bretonnian meth addict building a new fleet.

Meanwhile, he continued his counterintelligence against the Cult of Pleasure which was recruiting nobility used to lives of excess under Aethis who were easy to recruit into spywork and summoning Daemonettes to wreak havoc in cities. So many execution orders for heretics came to his desk he began to lose his shit on a regular basis, crying whenever he wasn't crawling on hands and knees trying his best not to an hero. He stayed good at his job though, and unlike his predecessor was an excellent judge of character, promoting individuals who knew their shit and finding ways to relieve those unfit or too old to continue to work excellently without pissing them off and turning them to the enemy. Fortresses outside Ulthuan were established, and High Elves began policing the world for Chaos and Dark Elves (High Elves confirmed for Americans in the best way, ironic since Dark Elves live in the geographical equivalent of North America). Mentheus, top general and most trusted adviser also became the only one keeping Morvael going.

Finally it came time for pushing the Dark Elves back off Ulthuan again. Mentheus laid siege to Anlec and personally lead each charge from the back of his dragon companion Nightfang. Meanwhile, Morvael stayed at the Shrine of Asuryan in the protection of the Phoenix Guard. In the final day of the assault, Mentheus was killed and Nightfang flipped the fuck out, slaughtering the residents of the city and turning it to gravel again. As soon as word reached Morvael that his only remaining friend was dead, he walked into the sacrificing fire (still called that even though they don't use it that way anymore) a second time and for two days burned silently until on the third day at noon his ashes were blown by a magic wind into the inner sea of Ulthuan. So even though he may have been a bigger wuss than even Aethis, Morvael managed to get shit done and as long as shit gets done, you're golden.

=== {{anchor|Bel-Hathor}} Bel-Hathor, The Sage ===
'''Imperial Calendar 1503 to 2163'''

So now the High Elf Princes and Princesses were divided on what to look for in a king. Some pointed to the need for a warrior, since the last two peaceful civilian kings were pansies. Some said they needed a peacemaker because warrior kings also have the tendency to fuck up royally, and this was the worst time to gamble on fate. Eventually they compromised and elected Bel-Hathor, from Saphery.

They did this because he was an eccentric dude who tended to, rather than argue, point out all valid points then quickly leave. Everyone figured they could manipulate him to their side. They thought wrong. Turns out he had a 30+ CHA rating, and could convince you after coming to him to demand the 3 month overdue rent for his apartment to instead drop your pants for him to fuck you roughly and you'd walk away thinking you got your way. All the douchebaggery from the powdered-wig elves that was encouraged in the time of Aethis was put a stop to right off the bat. The hawk nobles who wanted to go back to the era of Tethlis and pushed for an invasion of Naggaroth with the High Elf forces didn't get their way. The dove High Elves who wanted to go back to the era of Aethis and use the High Elf navy to get silk sheets from Cathay didn't get their way either. Instead, Bel-Hathor focused on getting shit done the same way the other Bel king, Bel-Korhadris, had.

Suddenly mankind wasn't just some new insect in the jungles somewhere, they were patrolling the seas and dealing with Elves on a regular basis in some colonies. The Warriors of Chaos population had boomed, and were now raiding all the nations of the world. Bel-Hathor had the mages of Hoeth set up a series of magical defenses for the east coast of Ulthuan that move around rocks and islands capable of sinking ships like nothing as well as mists that make you unable to see anything outside your boat and few things within it.

Eventually, humans from the Empire and Bretonnia managed to reach the coasts of Eataine during the beginning of the Age of Exploration (which apparently happens in the middle of the middle ages in the Warhammer Fantasy universe). Bel-Hathor banned all non-Elves (along with the Druchii obviously) from setting foot on Ulthuan under threat of death, but some elves became fascinated about the new civilizations of the humans. In particular, an Eataineian named Finubar set sail with the humans when they departed (see Finubar's entry for details of his journey). Upon returning, Finubar told the court of Bel-Hathor about the wonders he'd seen and the changes in the world and they listened like an audience seeing Star Wars for the first time. Finubar suggested allowing humans into Ulthuan, but with limits to keep them in check. Bel-Hathor agreed and Finubar's hometown of Lothern was shaped to a state that made it impossible to travel inland except by boat, which is one of the hardest things one could attempt if the High Elves don't want you to thanks to multiple giant gates manned by the most disciplined elves and best made Bolt Throwers imaginable.

At the completion of the renovations, Elf mariners were sent to guide humans to Lothern and EVERYONE wanted to go, even a small number of Dwarfs. Lothern went from a large fishing city to perhaps the greatest city in the world within a century. Bel-Hathor died of old age without any major shit going down in his time, and was hailed as one of the greatest Phoenix Kings.

=== {{anchor|Finubar}} Finubar, The Seafarer ===
'''Imperial Calendar 2163 to Present'''

Finubar is the present Phoenix King in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. He was featured in the (damnably non-canon) Warhammer Online MMO game, and as a result we finally have pics of what he looks like. Not that he's going to be getting a mini anytime soon however. During Bel-Hathor's reign humans first landed on Ulthuan, and after being held in lockup at the border security office they were told to GTFO and never return at Bolt Throwerpoint. Some Elves of the nobility were interested in the stretched Dwarfs with the blobby ears and wanted to come with, Finubar among them.

Finubar began his journey in L'Anguille of Bretonnia and observed how the Mon'keigh there had based their entire culture on the ruins of abandoned High Elf colonies (Bretonnian Knights are confirmed as Silver Helm fanboys) which they had hid from Orcs and Daemons in when they were still learning the art of the club. While Elves had all "known" that Humans were incapable of anything other than mud and dung buildings and worshiping Daemons, the reality that the Humans were at the same point more or less that the High Elves had been at during their Golden Age before the first Daemon ordeal. Finubar began making friends with any Human who would speak to him and giving them gifts to ensure that Humans and High Elves would be allies in the future. He ventured into Athel Loren and saw what became of the colonists who refused to return in the years of Caradryel, and how they'd become a race so vastly different from the High Elves, and although Finubar tried to befriend them the wood elves treated the High Elves the same as they did humans; that being "non-Wood Elf, and thus not as smart as us". Finubar was the first Elf since the days of Caledor to set foot in Dwarf Fortresses, where he did his absolute best to try and befriend them again (even going as far as trying Bugman's Light, a feat few Dwarfs have even ever achieved).

Finubar returned to Ulthuan many years later a celebrity and brought thing such as Bretonnian tapestries and Empire bibles and Wood Elf charms and Dwarf ale back for the populous to be amazed at. After Bel-Hathor died, the Princes and Princesses of Ulthuan were left knowing that this was the beginning of a whole new age for their race, and they picked the one elf responsible for setting it all in motion (so it's either his legacy or all his fault). It didn't hurt Bel-Hathor had expressed desire for Finubar to be his heir though.

Finubar seems to have learned from all his predecessors, getting shit done while not making stupid choices. While Finubar isn't some untrained poet (to the contrary, he's a badass in the battles he's been in) he's still more than willing to let other, more badass individuals get shit done. Finubar stays away from the powdered wig elves who play politics over minor things, and instead leaves his seat to young Princes and Princesses he sees promise in (of course while watching them and minimizing any fuckups they might cause), all to train the next generation as a whole to rule with authority and wisdom. He travels the world still, setting up diplomatic meetings with the humans (and Dwarfs) of the world. These two things together caused the Princes of Ulthuan to begin to revolt to depose him early in his reign while he was away having drinks with Thorgrim, and it took the Everqueen to walk into the headquarters of the soon to be rebellion, glare at the assembled nobles, slowly shake her head and crack her knuckles, then walk out to end it.

While most Phoenix Kings deal with one major war in their reign, some none at all, Finubar has to deal with a giant world ending battle every month it seems. Initially there was small skirmishes in which Finubar sent individual High Elf Princes and Commanders to save the good aligned races of the world and to erect more Waystones. But soon came the Great Chaos incursion (which marks the beginning of the modern era for every civilization in the game) where the races of man, Wood Elf, and Dwarf were about to be wiped out by Chaos as well as Orcs; and the High Elves were under attack by the Dark Elves in the single biggest war between the two since the first one that marked the split between their races. Every kingdom suffered greatly, especially Avelorn, and the Everqueen was thought dead. Two of the greatest elves to ever live, the twins Tyrion and Teclis, saved her and won the Battle of Finuval Plain. Rather than become complacent, Finubar announced the High Elves must stay on the alert and the worst was yet to come. The heroes of Ulthuan all became personal friends of Finubar if they weren't before, each left to their own devices to see to the world as they saw fit while still being able to contact one another and send for aid if needed. Teclis, with the great approval of Finubar, went to save the Old World and teach humans disciplined magic where before that was only druidic mysticism gleaned from the Wood Elves. The kingdom of Caledor, which had become complacent and too prideful to participate in any battle that wasn't against the end of the world, suddenly sent word to Finubar that everything from Dragons to Dragon Princes was at his disposal against whatever foe he could find for them.

Skaven began to assault Ulthuan for the first time (each time being beaten to the last rat). Yvresse was assaulted and razed to the city itself by Orcs, with the High Elves barely beating them back and causing the elves of Yvresse to become distant and unwilling to help the rest of their race unless it benefited their kingdom. Morathi once again tried to unmake the rift in the center of Ulthuan with a scheme that involved a mind-controlled Ellyrian Reaver who was abandoned after a raid against Naggaroth, and resulted in the Everqueen almost being killed, Lothern almost falling, the Phoenix Gate being destroyed for the hundredth or so time, and finally the deaths of the best friends of Tyrion and Finubar respectively as the named redshirts needed to give the battles drama (on the plus side, Morathi was driven a bit less focused and a lot more insane, another of Slaanesh's champions was killed in a fuckawesome way by Alarielle, and Malekith's dragon was crippled by Imrik of Caledor for life as well as him losing his magic shield in the shallows of Ulthuan's coastline).

The current development in the Warhammer Fantasy plot involves the kidnapping of Finubar and Alarielle's daughter Aliathra by vampires, upon whom the future of the Everqueen line as well as the High Elves friendship with Dwarfs hinges. Finubar has gone and locked himself in his room for some reason and it's revealed that Tyrion fathered Aliathra with the Everqueen during their first year, making Finubar a cuckold as well.

As of End Times: Khaine, Finubar is dead. Teclis betrayed him by allowing Malekith or a projection of Malekith into Finubar's tower, where one of 3 things happen: 1. Malekith kills Finubar himself; 2. Malekith releases a Bloodthirster into the room that kills Finubar; 3. Finubar commits suicide out of shame having realised that the current line of Phoenix Kings had cheated and stolen the throne from the rightful heir, Malekith. In any case, he dies horribly.

Now that you know the history of the High Elves, you need to get your army and start playing! GLORY TO THE ASUR!

==Regions==

For the most part, the High Elves live on the island/continent of Ulthuan, with ten kingdoms ruling the island together, as well as several colonies around the world.

===Ulthuan===
[[File:Adrian smith high elf warriors.jpg|thumb|right|400px]]
{{main|Ulthuan}}

Fluff paint jobs and armies tend to come from the ten Kingdoms and use their colors and troop choices. Although the regions are called "Kingdoms" and the leaders "Princes and Princesses", in truth Ulthuan is a democracy where the nobility appoint the princes who function as mayors and governors, and the princes elect the king. Oftentimes the same family will hold a position through the years, but the low population of Elves (and rebellious youths trying to re-enact ''Romeo and Juliet'' but without the tragic ending usually) ensure that it isn't hard to get into the family.

The kingdoms are divided into the five outer ones that border the ocean, and the five inner ones that border the inner sea with a large mountain ring that has very few passes separating the inner and outer Kingdoms. The Annulii mountains, as they're called, are a magnet for the worlds magical energy, and as such chaos mutations are not uncommon among the wildlife. Even non-Chaos beasties get buffed magically to Tarrasque levels and come down south for elf snacks, requiring the forces of the High Elves (particularly Silver Helms, White Lions, and nobility who want to make a name for themselves as heroes) to keep such things at bay. No living thing has ever been to the top of ANY of Ulthuan's mountains, and supposedly a realm apart from either the Warp OR the material world has its entrance there (High Elves believe it's the domain of the gods, but who the fuck knows).

All High Elf Kingdom lists can include Archers, Silver Helms, and Spearmen as default in their themes since these are so common to High Elves. Lothern Seaguard can be used as well since every kingdom has a coastline, even if having special marines as troops isn't what they're known for. Representing one kingdom in your army, or two that share a border or similar cultural values makes for a nifty looking army to show off to your friends. Alternatively, you can simply paint every High Elf mini you have in the colors that make the most sense to you (all Reavers in Ellyrion colors, all Silver Helms in Tiranoc colors, all Spearmen in generic High Elf colors, all Shadow Warriors in Nagarythe colors, or even all of your minis from all troop choices to look like an Autumn or Winter gear style, etc.) so if you like to switch strategies a lot and buy lots of minis cheap on eBay, you'll never have a truly mismatched army.

The usual secondary paint jobs are for the five gates, the three fortresses in the world oceans that maintain safe passage for traders friendly to the High Elves, the shrines to the elven gods or mythological beings, and the remaining colonies. Although the days of rampant colonization are long past, Elves still do maintain holdings outside Ulthuan. Primarily these are established to keep watch over enemies, or to maintain a vigil over the important sides and routes around the world. Rarely, High Elves establish themselves in the cities of other races to promote relations or seek a mutual exchange to greater benefit. They may or may not don the local colors of whatever nation they are in, but they always maintain the colors of Ulthuan foremost. Noteable is Marienburg and Altdorf, although with increased relations with Dwarfs a player could field an army in the colors of a Dwarf Fortress as well. In addition, several fortresses are named in the Heraldry book but given no description (so they're a blank check for your paint job of choice).

=== Fortresses ===
Found in the southern parts of the world, these holds are staging and resupply areas for merchant ships, friendly military forces, and also serve to limit how far naval forces hostile to the High Elves can travel.

* Tower of the Sun: A coastal fortress that lies at the southern tip of the Warhammer equivalent of what is either India or Indonesia. The colors of this fortress are white and yellow, with the symbol of a High Elf tower in black on everything.
* Fortress of Dawn: The Fortress of Dawn is located at the tip of the Warhammer South Africa, beyond the impassable mountains that isolate the dead realm of the Tomb Kings. One of the largest Waystones in the world lies at the heart of this fortress. It's colors are light blues and the orange/yellow range, with white. The symbol of the fortress is a sun rising above a black wall or dark blue waves.
* Citadel of Dusk: The Citadel of Dusk cannot be seen from the outside, and only those who are assigned to it or bring supplies can see it. Located at the southern tip of Lustria, it guards the southern routes leading to the Orient. It's colors are black, red, and dark blue. Its symbols are the same as the Fortress of Dawn.

=== Shrines of Ulthuan ===
Shrines are likely to be guarded by warrior priests, or surrounding areas with military strength will have troops that don their symbols and colors. Using Phoenix Guard modified to look like they belong to that particular shrine is useful, otherwise using whatever choices seem to fit the best (LSG for Mathlann, spellcasters and Swordmasters for Lileath, etc). A number of these shrines are, in no particular order:

* The Shrine of Lileath lies in southern Eataine's coast.
* The Shifting Shrine of Loec somewhere on the islands south of Eataine.
* The Shrine of Asuryan where all High Elves of noble birth are expected to travel to once in their lives is north of Eataine on the coast of the Inner Sea,.
* The Circle of Night in northern Eataine's coast.
* The White Tower of Hoeth is technically a giant shrine to Hoeth (also contains a shrine to Lileath as well) while the proper Shrine of Hoeth is in northern Saphery's coast.
* The Shrine of Mathlann is found on an island east of Yvresse.
* Isha's Circle is in Avelorn's deeps and the Everqueen visits this site to pray for High Elf fertility and re-population as well as protection from Chaos.
* The Seven Sisters shrine is on the south eastern Cothique coast.
* The Moonspire Shrine in southern Avelorn's woods, Oakheart's Pyre (unknown purpose, possibly to a treekin?) (Oakheart is what the High Elves called Durthu) in northern Avelorn.
* Lion's March is on Chrace's coast (likely to the first white lion Rahagra).
* The Gaen Vale (an island of amazon elves that can be represented as Sisters of Avelorn, who kill any male to set forth on the island and line the paths with their bones) is located on a large island south of Avelorn and near the middle of the Inner Sea and houses a shrine dedicated to all of the female gods as well as nature itself; all High Elf women are expected to take a pilgrimage to it at least once in their lives to learn a prophesy about their future.
* The Shrine of Khaine lies on the Blighted Island north of the borders of Nagarythe and Chrace.
* The Rock of Galirian lies north of Nagarythe on a large island, the Stone of Ellyrion (likely dedicated to Kurnous) is west of Ellyrion in the Annulii summit.
* The Shrine of Remembrance lies isolated by Annulii from Nagarythe but within it's borders.
* The Shrine of Addaioth lies in Caledor outside the Annulii.
* The Circle of Dawn is found on Caledor's coastline north in the Inner Sea.
* Vaul's Anvil is found within a volcanic island south of Caledor.

=== Miscellaneous sites ===
These sites are named and given locations, but no description. It's a blank check for whatever you want your army to be. Tor Elithis lies in Warhammer Australia, the Gates of Calith lie between the southernmost tip of New Zealand and Antarctica, Tor Elasor lies in the southern Indian Ocean (obviously it is most likely on an island), the Tower of Stars lies in east Africa in the area Somalia would be. The sites of Ulthuan are too numerous to mention, just a glance at the updated map in the newest army book or heraldry book lists almost a hundred sites.

==Relations==
'''Elves'''
* Asrai: High Elves and Wood Elves tend not to interact much, especially considering the fact that the Wood Elves never leave their forest and the High Elves tend to hate leaving their homeland. There are, however, cases of the two interacting with usually lead to the High Elves being made uncomfortable at the Wood Elves's hedonism and the Wood Elves being put off by the High Elves' prudishness, but they two races of elves do get along much better than the High Elves and the Dark Elves, though that is not a high bar to clear.
* Druchii: High Elves and Druchii absolutely hate each other with a burning passion that makes the hatred that makes the hatred Khorne and Slaanesh feel for each other seem mild in comparison. The Druchii and the Asur have ''always'' been at war, and have never once had anything close to an alliance (barring the End Times, but let's forget that happened.) Druchii constantly raid and pillage the outer walls of Ulthuan, usually losing thousands of soldiers on the great walls of Ulthuan, but they always come again.

'''Humans'''
* The Empire
* Bretonnia

'''Dwarves'''

'''Lizardmen'''

'''Chaos'''
* Warriors of Chaos
* Norsca
* Beastmen

'''Skaven'''

==Characters==
'''Tyrion:'''
{{Main|Tyrion}}

'''Teclis:'''
{{Main|Teclis}}

'''Alarielle The Radiant:'''
{{Main|Everqueen}}

'''Eltharion The Grim:'''
{{Main|Eltharion}}

'''Finubar:'''
The current Phoenix King. Finubar is the modern day Caradryel, making all those silly "common sense" decisions that need to be made (my, what a fantastic age we live in). He doesn't really stand out much compared to the Phoenix Kings of the past, only being present in battles when shit hits the fan and primarily just keeping the High Elves alive through the most fucked up age since Aenarion's. However, there's no shortage of heroes in his era to make up for his behind the scenes work, even the Everqueen shows up on the battlefield every so often to put the fear of mortals into Chaos. Finubar's CHA is off the charts, even the Dwarf King Thorgrim Grudgbearer has begun to consider trusting the High Elves again thanks to Finubar's politics.

Tyrion was a childhood friend of his, as was Eltharion and Imrik. Korhil and him have a bromance (or possibly gay relationship, who knows) going on beyond the "bodyguard/king" relationship and Korhil regularly advises him on courses of action to take when Tyrion isn't around to point at the enemy and get behind something to avoid catching splatter from the ensuing carnage.

''The current Phoenix King doesn't get a model because Tyrion makes him kinda redundant since he's more on Korhil's level of power, and having the king as a hero choice ain't right. To use him on the tabletop, put one of the elves who comes with the Dragon kit on the legs of a Seamaster or else use a similar custom job that sets him drastically apart from everyone else (hard to beat "biggest helmet" as a means of making him special). Stat him as a Seamaster, Tyrion, or a pimped out Prince. He used to have a griffon, then a dragon, but the canonicity of either is dubious at this stage.''

'''Prince Imrik:'''
Current High Prince of Caledor, rides a dragon named Minaithnir. He knows shit about and from dragons (who were the first created race and know shit even the Titans didn't) since he's good at keeping secrets and knows their languages. Like all Caledorians he's a pompous asshole among pompous assholes, but he's somewhat bro tier aside from that and had the common sense to realize that if Caledorians never get involved in battles, they'll have no battles to brag about and thus has begun sending them to do things they'd never even consider doing on their own like patrols and fighting raiding parties.

Minaithnir is one of the highest ranking (living) dragons, and thus commands authority. Dragons sleep for millennia and to wake them up you've got to sing dragon songs (simply knowing them can incinerate you), all of which detail epic battles that happened or will happen, and singing them for days and weeks without moving for sleep or nourishment. On top of that, the songs drain your body of its life so your soul kind of becomes a warm breeze flowing into their nostrils and earholes. You've gotta just keep singing and hoping that the dragons will hear you in their dream hivemind, AND give a fuck. Imrik does this shit ALL THE FUCKING TIME. The dragons have told Imrik that the final battle for the world is approaching, and that whoever wins there won't be any dragons left when it's over; Imrik is bound and determined to ensure the High Elves are worthy to fight alongside them.

Notable accomplishments include saving Bretonnia and acting like a douche about it and beating the shit out of Malekith while Minaithnir beat the shit out of Malekith's bitch tier dragon.

''Although Imrik has an expensive mini, he's really just a proxy with a model for whatever Prince on Dragon you choose to use him as.''

'''Alith Anar, The Shadow King:'''
After the big civil war and the Dark Elves left Ulthuan for Naggaroth, the remaining nobles elected Alith Anar as the successor to Malekith as leader of Nagarythe. Nagarythe was despised because of its role in the Sundering and anyone else would keep their head down, but Alith Anar immediately went to the Phoenix Court and met Tethlis. The Nagarithian nobles must have been thinking they elected someone with more balls than brains, but Tethlis and Alith Anar got on like a house on fire. Alith's entire family had stayed loyal to Ulthuan and were wiped out by Malekith's forces with Alith Anar as the only survivor. Tethlis declared Alith Anar to be the legit Prince of Nagarythe, and with that approval he went to lead the French Resistance against the Dark Elves. Ever seen Saw? That's the kind of shit he did to every Dark Elf he found, racking up a body count of thousands in a few years personally. As soon as Ulthuan was reclaimed, Alith Anar led the Shadow Warriors straight to Naggaroth where they prowled city streets looking for pedo elves prowling the streets. The only Dark Elves they spared were the infants, who they took home to raise as Nagarythe. It sounds fucked up, but Dark Elves started that practice.

Think this sounds badass so far? How about this: Alith Anar has been doing this ever since and is still alive, and elves don't live that long. Nobody knows how he's doing it. Maybe he swore an oath to Khaine so he wouldn't die until Malekith is dead? Some Shadow Warriors believe he really is dead, and that he just sleeps in his tomb when he's not leading them wordlessly against Dark Elves (Alith Anar is a vampire? FUCK YEAH, VAMPIRE COUNTS FIGHTING IN AN EXTRA RANK!) Who knows. But what we do know is that this one time, Alith Anar disguised himself as a Dark Elf, snuck into a fancy Dark Elf orgy where he danced with Morathi (and probably fucked her), stole the Stone of Midnight, a wedding gift from Aenarion, as well as the offical "High Prince" crown of Nagarythe that Malekith took with him when he left so as to legitimize himself as the Shadow King of Nagarythe. He spent time fucking with Morathi's best assassins and leading them in circles, and finally tricked them into drinking blood in which he'd mixed a very powerful poison. That shit was so badass that Lileath broke her father's biggest law and descended down from the peaks of the Annulii to personally give Alith Anar a bow she made herself (and to smell his hair).

Although Dark Elves like to talk a lot of shit, they won't even say Alith Anar's name out of fear he can hear them and will appear to buttfuck them and eat their souls (these are the same elves who summon Daemonettes to do their hair in the morning). Malekith has a prophesy that he fully believes in that only a Dark Elf male sorcerer will kill him (which is why Dark Elf males aren't allowed to learn magic) but he's STILL afraid of Alith Anar.

''There is only one way to field Alith Anar: like a boss. Use any model of him you like, they're all the same basically and they're all glorious. Sadly none of them look like that pic of him holding a severed head in the book.'' The end times reveals that he is the Same Alith Anar from before the sundering, making him as old as Malekith.

'''Korhil:'''
Korhil is Geralt of Rivia, but a bro-tier guy with axes instead of an anti-social magic guy [[What|with a hyperactive sex life]]. He spends all day killing monsters with his friends and spends all night getting drunk with them. He's the head of the White Lions of Chrace (as much as any one person is in charge anyway), and the personal bodyguard of the Phoenix King, who he gets along with ''very'' well and the Everqueen (the latter service is usually left to her Maiden Guard, but the White Lions serve in both capacities).

Korhil fights anywhere he's needed, seeing him pop up anywhere in the world alongside one of the Order aligned armies isn't too surprising. He's so nice, he even helps the whole unit he's placed in cross forests; "remember kids, always look both ways before crossing a glade. Sometimes lion chariots have trouble seeing you. Always make sure someone over 2000 years old is around when you <strike>play</strike> KILL MONSTERS, and never trust strangers that smell like bacon." He dual wields giant axes, one the size of his body that is magical and glow-ey and he pulls this off without looking weaboo. Overall, no matter what kind of High Elf army you're running you aren't really breaking theme to include Korhil.

''Korhil has had several different models over the years, and all are pretty decent. If you're running a special army that would include a young Korhil, no special mini is needed, just equip a giant axe (not both, one was awarded to him upon becoming head of the White Lions) on any old elf (that doesn't have a lion pelt) and stat him as a White Lion, or a Swordmaster even.''

'''Caradryan:'''
When he was a teenager, there was no bigger asshole to be found anywhere. The perfect bully, he started rumors about men who had grown to old age that destroyed their hard lived lives. He seduced noble ladies, and waved around their panties like trophies in front of their parents. He was the ultimate fratboy dick. Like all noblemen of the elves he took his pilgrimage to the Shrine of Asuryan, and brought his friends along with him. To impress them, he thought it would be a good idea to sneak into the secret hidden chamber of the Shrine called the Chamber of Days where Asuryan's grand plan for the High Elves is (cryptically) laid out. When he came out, he walked right past them without giving them a single high five, stood before the captain of the Phoenix Guard of the time, swore an oath to Asuryan on the spot and hasn't said a word since.

Since then he's spent most of his time in that room, interpreting the words of Asuryan and realizing that not everything is set in stone (rather that many things are self-fulfilling prophesies, some of which can be willingly changed by the Phoenix Guard captains). Some thought that he was preparing to go against the word of Asuryan and commit a grave heresy, until the day that the runic name of Asuryan appeared in fire on his forehead marking him as the closest mortal to his god emperor (take that Gill-man!). One day his previous captain received a vision from Asuryan that Caradryan was to be his next mortal champion, and the Phoenix Blade was passed to him.

Caradryan has lead the Phoenix Guard to the most battles they have ever seen in the current age. Whether this is because of the command of Asuryan, or him filling in the gaps of his god emperor's plans of his own volition is only known to him. Like all Phoenix Guard he knows the exact moment he will die and how and is thus unafraid of anything. What is known only to himself is that Asuryan has blessed him with words of power hich he will croak out with his death rattle, words that will change the world forever for the better of the Asur when the time is right. Unfortunately this never comes to pass, as Asuryan dies before Caradyran in the end times. After this, He starts talking all he wants. He eventually becomes the incarnate of fire, and when he is killed his last word is "BURN!" which releases the entire wind of fire into the daemon K'bandha. Which proceeds to do jack shit other than piss the daemon off.

'''Sea Lord Aislinn:'''
As prideful as a non-Caledorian can be, Sea Lord Aislinn was the Prince in command of the naval forces of Lothern when the first non-Norseman pirate found his way to Ulthuan. Otto Steinroth, the Red Pirate of Marienburg, destroyed the city of Sardenath and took captives as slaves to be sold to unmentionable forces (take elf slave, wut do?). Aislinn's forces arrived too late. Although Otto didn't know it as he sailed home, he was surrounded by the entire fleet of Lothern which Aislinn brought to ensure that humans knew what happens when you fuck with the High Elves. As soon as Otto's ship was docked Aislinn invaded the city. The Mages of his fleet sent a deadly mist through the city that blinded the humans, and sent Bolt Thrower bolts into every ship in the harbor other than the pirate ship, destroying each of them. The Lothern Seaguard disembarked and slaughtered the defenders (both confused city guard and pirate alike) to the last, and Aislinn personally lead his guard to kill the pirates onboard their ship. They then casually reclaimed all that was stolen, and called all of the High Elves back to the fleet before any looting could be done. As one last "fuck you" to mankind, Aislinn told his mages to cast Fiery Convocation on the harbor, destroying it to near completion. The remaining contents of the warehouses were found and the city rebuilt by ancestors of the current populace of Marionburg.

He returned to the court of Lothern having single handedly pissed off every one of the other nobles of the court, cheerfully said good morning to everyone, then about-faced and went back to his ship to set sail for the Frozen Wastes to burn down some Warrior of Chaos villages. By this point, he was the single least popular noble among the High Elves. Finubar however realized this guy reminded him a lot of another dude he knew, except without the giant sword and the queen draping off one shoulder, so he appointed Aislinn to the rank of Sea Lord, the admiral in command of the High Elf navy.

Ten years later, he sent a captain named Ethelis the White to lead a small fleet to head off Norscans who had traveled to Marienburg to destroy it. The Marienburgers promptly forgot about that past bad business, and High Elf merchants returned to the city to trade with the Empire. Sixty years later he was ambushed while on patrol by the Druchii named Lokhir Fellheart, who mortally wounded him and dumped him into the ocean to drown. Mathlann, the High Elf god of the seas, personally rescued him and healed his wounds leaving not even a scar, then sent him to wash up in his homeland of Eataine. A century and a half later Malekith personally invaded Lothern and wiped out the Lothern fleet. Aislinn himself defended his ship against no less than five Dark Elf boarding parties, sending their ships to the bottom of the sea when a giant Kraken swallowed his ship whole. Once again, a year after the battle, he washed back up on shore with no injures and no memory of what had happened. Now believed to be the mortal champion of Mathlann, he leads the rebuilt fleet of the Asur against Druchii, sea monsters, vikings, and anyone else near the sea who pisses him off.

''Sea Lord Aislinn has no model, and no special rules. But if you field a Lothern Seaguard army, he's going to be one of your Lothern Sea Helms.''

'''Princess Eldyra:'''
So once upon a time, Dark Elves retook the Shadowlands for the thousandth fucking time and the powdered wig elves at Finubar's court thought the "defend the homeland" fund was better spent on snuff and petticoats. So Finubar promptly called Tyrion, who responded with an elf WAAAGH to fuck some Druchii. The battle didn't go well, Druchii had bunkered down for the counterattack and most of the High Elf army failed their break test on turn 2 and ran except a guy called Eldyr, who was Tyrion's buddy. Eldyr and his men held firm and allowed everyone to regroup (and Tyrion to climb his way out of a pile of Dark Elf corpses) but Eldyr's chariot was smashed and DE Executioners cut him to pieces. Then Tyrion, having rallied the rest of the army gave it back to the dark elves twice as hard. An assassin was about to kill Tyrion while he was once again buried in bodies but then Everqueen, who had been schlicking behind a tree, shot the coward with an arrow and disappeared again.

Not long after, Eldyr's daughter Eldyra got her first pube and took up daddy's sword. She walked straight to Finubar's court and presented herself as her father's replacement. Finubar wasn't there, either busy with a pile of the Everqueen's used panties or Korhil. The nobility of the court told her she was a snot-nosed pizza-faced teenager who smelled like fish, and she ran from the court crying. Tyrion heard about the event and went to fix things. He swore to her she would be her father's equal, and lead her back to the assembled court (that he hadn't been to in centuries) where he introduced her as his squire. Since nobody wanted to be impaled by Sunfang, they clapped politely.

Years later, after she'd been taught everything of value Tyrion knows like cleaving through hordes of Druchii, motorboating the Everqueen just the way she likes it, and generally getting shit done (put simply, Tyrion was raising the perfect lesbian) she became a general ranked just under Tyrion himself. Around the same time, Prince Sigvald (the champion of Slaanesh) decided that since High Elves have prettier hair than him, they needed to be wiped out (That's not a joke. That is literally his motivation for the attack). Eldyra harrassed Sigvald at every turn, sniped his Chaos Warrior Champions, raided them, poisoned them, routed their horses and used magic to render every settlement in their path invisible. Sigvald wound up having to play Ork and tactically murder his subordinates to keep them from fighting each other, and in the middle of a duel between Sigveld and another chaos champion Eldyra attacked for real. Her armies made Sigvald's flee (Sigvald himself killed his opponent. Then he retreated because the spilled blood reminded him of a bad bottle of Bretonnian wine he had, so he decided to kill the people who made the brand; that's not a joke) <br/> Since then she's made her lord Tyrion proud securing victory after victory over the lesser races. Also, as of the End Times, she is now a Vampire. An ELVEN FUCKING VAMPIRE. Just let that sink in for a little bit. She could only be more awesome if she had tits and was on fire. (Wait a minute...)

''Eldyra is, simply put, another named option for a generic hero in your army. Slap some boobs on it, it's Eldyra. Best used as a Noble if she's still a squire, a Prince if she's proven herself, and in the current era she should be the General of your army. Hell, use her as a stand-in for Tyrion if you like.''

'''Aliathra:'''
The daughter of Phoenix King Finubar and Alarielle the Radiant. One day she is set to take over as Everqueen and preside over the commune in Avelorn while praying to Isha on behalf of the High Elf race and otherwise just inspiring women to forget that prior to Aenarion, they ruled the High Elf race and men took the backseat. Her first major act in the fluff was to head the meet with the Dwarfs to speak of peace on behalf of her parents. Mannfred von Carstein figured she'd make a GREAT Frank Frazetta style sacrifice and manipulated Kemmler and some Orcs into blitzing the Elves and Dwarfs. They slaughtered everyone and carried her off, leading to the Elves and Dwarfs blaming each other and threatening war.

Apparently Alarielle can sense if her daughter is alive or not (which sort of makes sense, since Alarielle's soul will one day inhabit her daughter's body) and told her past and present flings, Finubar and Tyrion, to save her daughter. Finubar went to make peace with the Dwarfs (possibly leading to a plot development in the Dwarfs book when it comes out) while Tyrion gathered an army and went to kill the fuck out of things like he always does. It didn't work, and she was slain as a sacrifice to resurrect [[Nagash]]. However, due to her secretly being Tyrion's bastard child this also leaves Nagash afflicted by the Curse of Aenarion for a time.

''If you want to field the Everqueen in your army but want your list to be a bit more low profile and free for non-Avelorn options, taking a different mini and calling it Aliathra is a great alternative. If you're lucky enough to have the old Everqueen mini that works fine, otherwise greenstuffing some small boobs onto something else works fine too. There's no canon appearance for Aliathra, so anything goes based on how you imagine her to look like.''

==High Elf Forces==

See [[High Elf Army List]] for more details on the forces given below. What is present on this page is a basic overview of the available elf forces.

===Generic Characters===

* '''Princes:''' Princes represent the highest ranking of the nobility of Ulthuan. A right mixed bag, even the badasses like to engage in politics shit, even during warfare.

* '''Archmage:''' A spellcaster of great renown amongst the High Elves, a more powerful version of your average mage. Between their special dispel rules and access to gear and powerful mounts, they can trash your regular empire wizard.

* '''Anointed of Asuryan:''' Not much fluff to go with these guys, other than they're badasses amongst the Phoenix Guard. They are Asuryan's attempt to troll Tzeentch by getting some of his own pawns in the Warhammer world.

* '''Loremaster of Hoeth:''' While Archmages have specialized in a specific lore, these guys want to learn everything. Basically good at everything, they can chop you up like the Bride from Kill Bill while frying you with magical fires.

* '''Noble:''' Not much to say, they're bluebloods amongst the elves but in your army are probably the bitch to whatever Lord choices you've made, just carrying their flag and looking pretty. They can add some extra pawnage to a unit but then they will just be a great big target to your enemy's mobs.

* '''Mage:''' It's a High Elf spellcaster. Has more magic in his toenails than Empire wizards can even call upon when TRYING to miscast, but on the tabletop he's just a spellcaster. They all study together in a great big tower bigger than the empire state building and the statue of liberty combined.

* '''Dragon Mage of Caledor:''' This pretty much is what it says on the label; it's a freaking mage on a dragon and cheap to boot. A worthy weapon to get around the board edge to hit the enemy in the rear, they can always serve as good distraction carnifexes.

* '''Lothern Seahelm:''' These guys are the commanders of Lothern's forces, and represent everything from the captain of a single ship all the way through the Prince of Eataine (and thus Lothern) himself, Sea Lord Aislinn. A good excuse to fluff yourself as the leader of a motley crew and pretend to be a swash buckling elf captain.

* '''Handmaiden of the Everqueen:''' The queen's personal bodyguards, when she decides she needs a presence on the battlefield but can't be bothered to leave her throne she sends one of these chicks instead. Don't be fooled though, they are as tough as any elf hero (so not so much lol) and can mince an empire captain easily.

===Core===

* '''Archers:''' All elves of Ulthuan from butlers and maids to farmers and musicians all the way through the highest of the high high society high elves (who are sometimes high) serve in the military in some capacity, and draft cards drop on a dime when Finubar gets the chills. That being said, even if they are crap by elf standards, banks of elf archers are better then most human counterparts and given protection can give off a decent amount of dakka a turn.

* '''Spearmen:''' Mostly archers who have earned the right to be armed with full armor and weapons, or guys with really shitty aim who have finished their time fetching the REAL archers water and more arrows. Manly warriors who march up against any horror, they are expensive grunts but useful as a defence buffer.

* '''Lothern Seaguard:''' Final tier of the red shirt elves, these guys (fluffwise only) are masters with bows, spears, and shields; good at slaughtering pretty much [[Skaven|everything]] (compared to the ALMOST mastery the spearelves and bowelves have apparently). They are the motley crews of the elf ships but not the fun type to swig back pints of grog... sigh, might as well go with Dark Elf Corsairs for fun times...

* '''Silver Helms:''' These fuckers are rich enough to own well bred horses and full armor, and when the call of war came simply organized the boy's club hunt this year to, instead of for foxes and magical flying lions and the other standard Ulthuan game, to be for whatever race is currently the enemy. With screams of 'tally ho' they go hunting whatever takes their fancy and hilarity ensures when they get beaten up by tougher foes.

* '''Ellyrian Reavers:''' While Silver Helms are the preppies of the cavalry, the Ellyrian Reavers are the Boyscouts. They are also more rural and even sleep next to their horses when out in the wilds (how primitive sniffs a nearby silverhelm twat). They are light cavalry that have the brains to try to stay back and pepper the enemy with arrows then charging straight in.

===Special===

* '''White Lions of Chrace:''' The only real MANLY elves in the High Elf list, since they can't be called a White Lion before they track down a white lion and kill it with their bare hands. They then get to wear the pelt of the lion and be the bodyguard to the Phoenix King himself. With their big fuck off axes, they chop you up like the wood back home. The pelts always offer extra protections against arrow fire, go figure!

* '''Lion Chariot of Chrace:''' Sometimes White Lions of Chrace find cubs who's mother they killed. Instead of letting them go back to the wilderness, they spay/neuter them and hitch them up to chariots. This is so they can ride mother fucking big lions into battle like some elf version of he-man and say F U to the enemy as they flee in terror.

* '''Swordmasters of Hoeth:''' Intensely trained warriors wielding great swords, they are slightly lesser in strength than the White Lions and lack the fabulous pelts, but they are faster and more skilled. They can cut candle wicks without snuffing the flames out for gods sake. Eager to find the best warriors in the enemy army to challenge, they are held back by the usual elf disadvantages of low toughness and armour.

* '''Shadow Warriors:''' While the civil war of the High Elves/Dark Elves was brutal, the Nagarythe who stayed loyal to the Asur suffered the most. They became completely emo and obsessed with revenge and then spend all their time trying to fuck up the dark elves shit as much as possible. The drawn back is they are barely better then the enemies they fight and may be tainted beyond help.

* '''Phoenix Guard:''' The complete badassess of the elf forces, they know when they are going to die due to their god's special magic chamber but march into battle regardless, ready to give their lives for hope. This makes them a strange mix of heroes and pricks though, as they battle everything and everyone but they knew about Malekith's treachery and didn't know anything to stop it happening. Yes they magically can't speak but still one would think they would have gathered up and tore him a new asshole.

* '''Dragon Princes of Caledor:''' Greater dicks than the silver helms, they have an arrogance in a class of their own and won't really take orders from anyone else then their own, more 'suggestions'. They use to ride dragons, hence their arrogance and given half a chance they would do it again....and may do so in the future.

* '''Lothern Skycytter:''' Since Lothern forces are the "elf marines" they needed a chariot that can fight on both land and water, so at some unknown point in the fluff they used magical boat-shaped chariot wagons and make a roc (not a Giant Eagle, although there's absolutely no creativity on GW's part in the model to distinguish the two) pull one in the air. Zipping through the air, they blow raspberries at those beneath them until they get in the sights of the nearest dragon.....

* '''Tiranoc Chariot:''' Elf chariots, they are the traditional affair pulled into battle by horses. They are more zippy than the lion chariots above and more focused on supporting other units than smashing in by themselves.

===Rare===

* '''Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower:''' The only warmachine High Elves use, both in fluff and on tabletop. It's extremely accurate, each one is probably worth more than is contained within a city of [[The Empire]]. You can have two and most high elf armies worth their salt field a couple of these.

* '''Great Eagles:''' "So why didn't they send an army of Great Eagles to kill the Dark Elves?" The answer is because Great Eagles aren't troops you summon from the barracks and send on patrol (And also Rare choices and you are limited to using at most 25% of your army as rare). They're very intelligent, and very proud. This does mean that such a quality idea would never work and it is all the great eagles fault....

* '''Flamespyre Phoenix:''' Wanting to add a bit more of the mystical element to the High Elves and give them a cool new unit, they went and added phoenixes as rare choices, which is just complete quality. The flamespyre phoenix is a phoenix in it's prime, having a great amount of intense fire to BURN your enemies with.

* '''Frostheart Phoenix:''' The older phoenixes, they absorb heat not generate it and indeed make it snow and freeze. Essentially then a snow version phoenix, they are pretty cool (pun!) but don't have the rebirth ability their younger kin do.

* '''Sisters of Avelorn:''' Bodyguards to the Everqueen, they are chosen from all walks of elf life and it is a big honour to join their ranks. They are great archers, some of the best and fire magic arrows that are particularly burny to chaos things. They were in the older editions and since then have had a massive retooling to update them to modern times.

==Religion==

See [[Warhammer Fantasy Elf Gods]] for a more detailed list.

The High Elves have a large number of Gods and Goddesses, which are divided into two seperate pantheons, the Cadai (gods representing their good sides) and the Cytharai (gods representing their dark sides). GW in the most recent versions have decided to apply a yin and yang motif to the Elf races, in accordance with them being in High (Good), Dark (...Dark), and Wood (Buddhist) flavours. Generally the High Elves celebrate and honour the Cadai and attempt to please and appease the Cytharai.

The gods are divided into their seperate pantheons below:

Cadai:

* '''[[Asuryan|Asuryan, the Creator]]'''

* '''[[Vaul|Vaul, the Maker]]'''

* '''[[Isha|Isha, the Mother]]'''

* '''[[Kurnous|Kurnous, the Hunter]]'''

* '''[[Hoeth|Hoeth, Lord of Wisdom]]'''

* '''[[Lileath|Lileath, the Maiden]]'''

* '''[[Loec|Loec, the Shadow Dancer]]'''

* '''[[Mathlann|Mathlann, Lord of the Deeps]]'''

Cytharai:

* '''[[Khaine|Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God]]'''

* '''[[Ereth Khial|Ereth Khial, the Pale Queen]]'''

* '''[[Nethu|Nethu, Keeper of the Last Door]]'''

* '''[[Anath Raema|Anath Raema, the Savage Huntress]]'''

* '''[[Morai-Heg|Morai-Heg, the Crone]]'''

* '''[[Hekarti|Hekarti, Mistress of Magic]]'''

* '''[[Atharti|Atharti, Lady of Desire]]'''

* '''[[Ladrielle|Ladrielle, Lady of Mists]]'''

* '''[[Estreuth|Estreuth, Lord of Hunger]]'''

* '''[[Addaioth|Addaioth, Bringer of Fire]]'''

* '''[[Eldrazor|Eldrazor, Lord of Blades]]'''

* '''[[Ellinill|Ellinill, Lord of Destruction]]'''

* '''[[Hukon|Hukon, the Sunderer]]'''

* '''[[Drakira|Drakira, Queen of Vengeance]]'''

==Misc Fluff==
High Elves believe in the concept of duality in all things. Their language is built so that every happy word is also sad, every angry word is also friendly, and so on. Makes learning the language a bitch, makes subtleties of speech a lifetime study, and makes it so anyone can misinterpret what you're saying entirely based on their mood. Although in the past they only had a queen, current elves can't accept the idea of a single leader; disagreements are almost encouraged and dissenting opinions welcomed. This means that their political system is a non-fucked up version of the fucked up politics in the real world.

Dark Elves usually disregard this aspect of elven culture (Only the Druchii deal in absolutes!) except the smarter ones, who generally think of things in terms of "having fun and alive" and "not having fun and dead". Wood Elves complicate it even further than High Elves, with there being a billion different fucking things to learn about every single word and all their aspects based on the time of day. (Good morning on a Monday is a marriage proposal, good morning on Tuesday is a declaration of war, and they'll say it both days knowing full well just because they're crazy like that).

The way high elves keep Chaos from destroying the world is by taking the warp energy (AKA magic) that is attracted to Ulthuan and shooting it back into the warp. (A world that has achieved magic homeostasis apparently can't manifest Daemons). They accomplish this via waystones, which are white monoliths with inset gems and elf writing of varying sizes from small mountains through to mantelpiece decoration. These channel the winds of magic through specific points like bodies of water all the way through the world into the Annulii and further into the center of Ulthuan. Slann used their magic to help the elves from afar erect them in the first place, but the only one who knows that is Teclis and mages loyal to him since everyone else screams HERESY when he brings it up. Elves protect the waystones at all costs; they've gone to full-scale war to prevent Wood Elves from carving their names into them, they've saved all of Bretonnia from Daemons just to protect one, (they didn't tell the mon'keigh that of course), and they've established dealings with Tomb Kings in order to erect more in order for each to be less important.

But, you know, peace is never an option. Orcs see them as an insult to statues of Gork and Mork (or Mork and Gork?) and smash them every chance they get, humans think the jewels are spiffy and otherswise move them around because a giant floating elf rock in the town square really brings in the tourists, Tomb Kings remake them as statues of themselves and the forces of Chaos and Evil usually play with them as magic-enhancing tools like altars or the Dark Elves mess with them to troll the High Elves.

==Crunch==
Alright, this is the fun part. High Elves get some very nice special rules. Almost all High Elf options have the Always Strikes First rule. <strike>What's even better, is that this isn't modified by the weapon speed so a High Elf with a Great Weapon STILL Always Strikes First (all you lesser races go after we've had our turns)</strike> (sadly no longer true in 8th edition).

Then, they also have "Valour of Ages" which means whenever they go against Dark Elves, they may reroll any failed psychology test, which is awesome.

Many High Elf troops have the new rule "Martial Prowess" which allows models that have that rule to fight or shoot in one extra rank, which is cumulative with any other rule that lets them shoot in extra ranks (long story short, fuck you we're better and we're gonna stab and or shoot you until you believe it).

Spellcasters get a rule called "Lileath's Blessing" which adds a +1 to casting attempts from the Lore of High Magic, the High Elf specific lore.

Also, it used to be the case that you needed less core units and could take more rare and special units. This is no longer the case since the arrival of 8th edition, but errata from GWs website says you can have as many multiple units as you like (other armies are now limited to two identical special or rare units in games of less than 3000 points). High Elf horses can get the "Ithilmar Barding" option, which increases armor like regular barding but doesn't affect movement speed. Finally, if you wanted Flame Attacks you've got them in spades.

==See Also==
* [[Warhammer/Tactics/8th Edition/High Elves|8th edition Tactics]]
* [[Warhammer/Tactics/6th Edition/High Elves|6th edition Tactics]]

==External Links==
*[http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/ Ulthuan.net, the main High Elves army forum.]

==References==
*Warhammer Armies: High Elves; Adam Troke, Rick Priestly, Bill King; Games Workshop; 2007; ISBN - 978-1-84154-846-3

{{Playable Factions in Warhammer Fantasy Battle}}

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]
[[Category:High Elves]]
{{Template:High Elves}}

List of Mary Sues

2020-11-23T01:26:05Z

2601:283:4780:8790:2810:5C9D:5863:9C8A: /* Somewhat Special Cases */

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{{Heresy}}

There are too many fucking [[Mary Sues]] in our games and fiction. We know it, and we love to complain about it, because it makes us feel a little better to call a spade a shovel. The original purpose of this list is to provide examples so the phenomenon can be studied, identified and - as a result of the latter - avoided.

(Note: please post Mary Sues in alphabetical order, so they don't fight about who's the better Mary-Sue. Also, this is about fictional characters, so while Canon Sues are acceptable, no real-life examples (even if there is such person named <s>Mary Sue AKA the Scientology founder's wife</s> I'm just adding that for fun). For the sake of peace, religious figures [and possibly mythological characters; particularly when they're from original mythologies] are real-life examples. Also, any characters added to the list without justifying reasons will be removed from this page. If you're going to add a race, please use the list below this one.

==Mary Sues Case Studies==
{{Plot Armour}}
* [[Alice]] from the in-name-only ''[[Resident Evil]]'' movies: A character created for the movies who started out as corporate spy, she has superpowers and is <s>presented as</s> ENTIRELY invincible. She manages to becomes an even bigger Sue when she loses said superpowers yet continues to obliterate armies unscathed. The film refuses to even let other characters do anything but get rescued by her, she's worse than characters written by [[Matthew Ward]]. Later films even gave her clones to explain why she's still in the films. On top of all this, the bitch is played by the director's wife; she's his perfect Mary Sue waifu insert and she's literally sleeping with him to get the job. Don't forget that <i>she dual-wields katanas</i>. And shotguns. And probably Desert Eagles, too.

* Andrew "Ender" Wiggin from Orson Scott Card's Enderverse, and a blatant (almost comical to a serious reader) example at that. What's worse: he only becomes more of this as the story and the books progress. It's even worse in the 2013 movie. At least the books gave the other characters more depth, Ender's feats took more time to achieve, and it contained some POV's that weren't of or about Ender.
** Ender's siblings Valentine and Peter. Ender's sister is a self righteous prig who is only overshadowed by her obnoxious, sociopathic brothers. Peter, Ender's older brother, is even worse. He's a low functioning sociopath, [[What|but intelligent enough that, as a child, he comes up with sophisticated political philosophies that wow academic circles. As an adult, they prove so sophisticated that he's appointed Political Leader of Earth. Despite the fact that a sociopath with absolute power would become a dangerous tyrant as soon as someone refused to do what they say, he doesn't mess up and dies being hailed as a great ruler]]. Yes, this really happens.

* [[Batman]] in an unskilled author's hands. He's a handsome human billionaire who's the pinnacle of human physical prowess and manages to defeat superpowered beings simply because "he had time to prepare" (with few thinking "why don't his opponents also use that time to prepare?"). On top of this he has LITERAL PLOT ARMOR; one of the DC editorial mandates is that Batman is not allowed to be truly defeated (he's usually too popular and has a presence in too much of the DC Universe to be allowed the downtime by editorial, unless it's part of a major storyline such as Knightfall). Because of this a certain tendency for Batman to turn into a Mary Sue is well documented (Read JLA: Act of God and weep; that story was all about starting the First Church of Batman. Or hell, check out the Dark Nights: Metal storyline, where a bunch of Evil Batmen who are variants on an existing superhero attack the DCU as opposed to, say, just doing a whole Evil Justice League like they have multiple times before). While Batman does have plot armor (nearly no one thinks to just shoot him when they get the chance and the few times they do he escapes, and he's never unexpectedly engaged by superhuman opponents who could easily beat him - like Darkseid), the same can be said for other non-superpowered heroes. That being said, there are many ways of adding dramatic tension to such a foregone conclusion situation, and the above mandate only includes actual defeat, so Batman is allowed to fail and make mistakes in certain situations or the villain can escape to cause trouble even after their plan is thwarted, which also helps lessen the Bat-Sue Factor.

* [[Edgy|Billy Butcher from "The Boys"]] (comics and show, especially the comics) is a prime example of a Jerk Sue (An unsympathetic character nevertheless favored in the story, [[TVTropes|according to our frenemeies]]). A superpower-hating vigilante because a "super" raped and killed his wife ("There's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic"), Billy is half Punisher-knock-off, half Author Avatar for Garth Ennis. While most superheroes in this series are notorious for being corporate sellouts who often abuse their powers and sponsorships, Billy is clearly equally motivated by personal prejudice against people with superpowers (something he shares with the author like his prejudice towards religion, especially Christianity; it's no coincidence that Billy's an atheist while the antagonist Homelander has a side job as a Christian Pastor). While Billy does help the protagonist Hughie try to get justice for his girlfriend’s death by superhero collateral damage, Billy's reasons are selfish and he's also an edgelord (mean-spirited? check. violent? check. dark clothes? check. created by edgelord author? check. revoles around attacking "The Man"? that's a big check!), and nearly turns on Hughie when Hughie starts dating the superhero defector Starlight, then flip-flops as the plot pretends to avert a cliché storyline before playing it straight. Even becoming a villain via wanting to genocide everyone with superpowers after he gets them only adds "Villain Sue" to the list, as Billy only loses in the end because he chooses to. He’s also consistently never allowed to be wrong, as any time a character has something to say about Billy or his actions, he has something to throw back at them proving they’re actually wrong due to author fiat ensuring Billy only argues against strawmen. Goes to show that making a Mary Sue an edgelord is just as repellent as the gratingly sweet opposite, especially when they’re also pushing the author's views.

* Caius Ballad, the antagonist of ''Final Fantasy XIII-2''. Impractical overdesigned costume? Check. Impractical giant, overdesigned sword? Check. Purple hair? Check. Story-breaking powers? Check. Can't be beaten? Check. Openly called the most powerful ''Final Fantasy'' villain ever by his creator? Check. The only mitigating feature this fool has is that his English VA is Liam O'Brien.

* Darkseid from DC Comics is a rare case where people actually ''like'' someone for being a Sue. He wasn't one at the start of his career - Jack Kirby conceived him as a paper tiger who, for all his grandiose plans and ambitions, was only powerful if people feared him and could be beaten up by two street thugs who didn't know who he was, not anticipating that fans might prefer a villain who was really as intrinsically powerful as Darkseid claimed to be. He's strong and tough enough to go toe-to-toe with Superman, he has laser eyes that can do whatever he wants them to (including killing people instantly or bringing them back to life), he's a masterful schemer who knows all about setting up gambits where he wins no matter what and striking deals with easy ways around them he doesn't mention, most of his minions rival the Justice League in power and on top of all that he's the ruler of an entire planet that reliably goes to shit when he's not around to slap it into shape and sometimes a wide-reaching galactic empire. Despite all this Villain Sue-ness, any attempts to nerf him or bring him down to a more realistic villain level are met with backlash and outrage, and his most celebrated storyline in recent comics history is Final Crisis, in which the heroes required a time-travelling, god-killing bullet to defeat him and he actually forced Batman to abandon his rule against killing. The message is clear: Darkseid is DC's ultimate villain (or close enough to that status that the number of people higher than him can be counted on a hand or two/ doesn't require literal divine intervention etc. to defeat and thus retaining a meaningful conflict) and the fans won't settle for anything less.
** There's a reason for this, by the way: Darkseid and his court neatly fill the archetypal niche of embodiments of "the fucked up things people do when you give them power", with, for example, Gods of Child Abuse and of Torture as two of his chief henchmen. If you're going to have a hero who's about Hope and positive, creative or protective Aspirations (see: Superman, Flash, etc.), a villain who embodies the crushing of hope and negative, destructive Aspirations is incredibly useful. Making such a character a paper tiger can be made to work (see the Crimson King, under Special Cases), but is going to be unsatisfying, usually deeply so.

* Divis Mal from the RPG [[Aberrant]]. Oh, where to begin? Well, first of all on top of being the absolute, balls-out, most powerful Aberrant in the setting, ever, he's super smart, plans for everything, never loses ''no matter what the players do'', and has an ideology that can basically be described as "like Magneto, only ''right''. About ''everything.''" He's also in a loving relationship with a super-attractive partner who is ''also'' super-powerful, and his enemies are all stupid and happen to be straw-stuffed right-wing stereotypes because of course they are. He also serves as a thinly-veiled self-insert fanfic character for the lead game designer (a gay man with issues), and said designer once claimed that the title of the game referred to ''him specifically''. It was all the sequel game could do to take the piss out of all the problems he caused.

* Dr. Doom, depending on the writer. It doesn't help that he's a genius and self-made tycoon with a tragic past, who keeps getting his deaths retconned as body doubles (naming the infamous "Actually a Doombot" trope). Worst case scenarios are when he's written by somebody that forgets that he's a VILLAIN and depicts his rule over Latveria as unrealistically benign, and makes it look like the superheroes are wrong for trying to keep him from taking over the world.

* Elizabeth from ''Bioshock Infinite''. Plot-sustaining power (the key to the whole plot literally rests in her hands), cannot be harmed, <s>makes a grown veteran of war look like an idiot child</s> only if you suck at the game... Regardless, she is routinely placed in easily escapable situations for the pure purpose of being saved when she can plausibly save herself, and makes none of the major (or minor) mistakes in the game. While some claim that she greatly dislikes violence, especially killing, individual interpretations vary depending on whether you view her murders as character arc-defining. To make her comparable to Sues like Lightning and Alice, Ken Levin told the trolls who [[rule 34|34'd]] his perfect wife purpose, which result in a hilarious reverse psychology that gave Ken Levin [[promotions|what he wanted]]. She even gets to be tied into how Fontaine got Jack's (bioshock 1 mc) command code in the first bioshock. Way to ruin the franchise with some conventional plot device.

*[[Elminster]], who is currently having a threesome with the goddess of magic and rad boobies and his adopted super-hot albino elf daughter while simultaneously beating the god of murder in a sword fight with one hand and the god of slavery in a magic fight with the other. Also, he's like a million years old and looks it. Ed Greenwood's self-insert character in the [[Forgotten Realms]], and a big source of "Why doesn't he just do this for us?" questions whenever he appears in questlines. Also, along with the gods of the setting and the Harpers, he's one of the reasons why the Forgotten Realms are in [[Medieval Stasis]].
**Ironically he didn't start out originally like this. Back at the beginning of D&D, Elminster wasn't a massive Mary Sue. Believe it or not, he simply used to be a maxed-out wizard with some additional abilities and stuff that appeared as a Deus Ex Machina in case players had an encounter that was too difficult to overcome, much like Gandalf in [[The Hobbit]].

*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TedsiCaV2B4 Empress Theresa] is a good example of the "waifu" theory of Mary Sues and the Doyalist definition of Mary Sues, where the author's relationship to the character is the defining factor. Short version: Deranged author who can't take criticism creates his perfect waifu, hands her the world, and refuses to edit the resulting masterpiece, and posts the result for sale on Amazon. Criticism results, which in turn results in internet arguments on a scale that is ''amazing'' (by themselves, they dwarf all of the arguments and criticisms of the Twilight franchise put together, with the unsettling add-on that this is all the author's mindset).

*Every author self-insert. Especially those found in high-school writing assignments.

*Green Lanterns from Earth, especially Hal Jordan. All the human Green Lanterns are regularly shown to be the best Lanterns in the core because they ALL have indomitable willpower, skill, and courage, surpassing others who have been in the corps for decades. Most other lanterns exist only to be killed off as a means of showing how dangerous a threat is. They're only ever effective when they are helping the Human ones. The most Green Lanterns ever killed was during the Emerald Twilight story arc and they were killed by, you guessed it, Hal Jordan.

*Haoh from Shaman King. If there is any villain that can truly be called a Mary Sue, it's him, most other villains with this accusation still get defeated. Haoh not only proves invincible throughout the whole series, able to easily pull of feats that are impossible for everybody else, he also has the ability to revive himself if killed, meaning even if the heroes beat him, which they state is impossible in a straight-up fight, it would be pointless, because he'd just back even stronger. Worse is that he goes around saying how awful humans and everyone, even the writer, seems to agree with him because the series ends with him winning, only delaying his plans to kill humanity because reasons, and gets away with a number of atrocities that would make numerous the [[Warriors Of Chaos]] jealous.

*IG-88 in the ''Star Wars'' expanded universe, given that he easily breaks into the second Death Star and uploads his personality into it and takes control with nobody noticing, and before that single-handedly took over a planet.

*[[James Bond]]. To what degree varies, but the Roger Moore version is the worst offender: he's unbeatable at just about everything, never loses his composure, a ladies' man to an unrealistic degree (even lesbians and villains who stand for everything he opposes switch sides after a dicking from Bond, not to mention that time he had sex with a lesbian was questionable consent at best...so Bond gets away with actual sexual assault if not outright rape), implausibly intelligent, a crack shot, and basically unkillable. In the books, he is an unlikable git and an alcoholic, yet still gets shit done.

*James T. Kirk of [[Star Trek]], but only when written by William Shatner. While in TOS, Roddenberry himself outright stated Kirk was his Author Avatar and that he wanted the show to have the ambiance of Kirk being able to have any woman he desired, Kirk was still allowed to occasionally fail or make mistakes in certain situations. For other non-Shatner written works, the Suedom factor is kept under control by factors gone into under the list found under "Somewhat Special Cases", below.

*John Galt, Dagny Taggart and most of the cast from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", which figures given her literature's reputation for being barely-disguised political sermon. Galt frequently has the narrative grind to a halt in order to focus on his inane views, somehow single-handedly grinds the economy to a halt by founding a libertarian utopia where no 'communists' can hold him or other similar geniuses back, and is shilled as the only sane man after the rest of the world becomes a dystopic hellhole without said "genius". Then there's the primary female character, a wannabe railroad tycoon trying to get a new train line built despite the fact that "evil socialists" can't keep them running without crashing every few hours because of mean ol' unions and regulations oppressing the poor upper class. Said woman somehow manages to bed Hank Rearden, local inventor of a metal alloy supposedly even stronger than steel called Rearden Metal. Yes, just drips with creativity, don't it? It's telling that the Bioshock series, based off her work, is far better received and a more realistic depiction, generally due to taking the prospect of a single man basically playing God to its logical conclusion (I.E. another dystopia but now with blackjack and hookers).

*John Kramer, the "Jigsaw Killer" from the ''Saw'' films. Pick any character you know of with a long list of skills or attributes, this guy has more, and he keeps getting away for a half dozen movies. He's also influenced people to the point that even after he dies, some of them copy his actions and ideas and think they're doing good things.

*Jon Snow (especially the show version): While this is in the books as well, it is more evident in the show and he is currently dying from a mutiny in the books. Being a bastard is a bad thing in Westeros so he gets sent to the wall, but it's uphill from there. He gets a Valyrian steel blade (which is incredibly rare and an heirloom of noble houses) in his first week. He has a pet Direwolf puppy like his siblings, but of course his looks unique. From here he gets named as squire and successor to the commander of the Night's Watch (though this does cause some resentment among his peers). Later on he meets Wildings where he spares one who turns out to be a woman; it's obvious where this goes... they don't get along, they fall in love, have sex and spend some time together, something forces them apart and she dies. She also has red hair, which stands out because among Wildings its considered lucky. While he gets stabbed like in the books, in the show he dies from it then gets resurrected by Melisandre/the Lord of Light. He's revealed to be the bastard child of Rhaegar Targereyn and Lyanna Stark, making him Westeros' rightful king, as well as Daenerys' nephew - but that doesn't stop him from having sex with aunt Daenerys*, and this time the incest is portrayed positively! Also, him beating Ramsay Bolton (see below); that's right, Jon's so Mary Sue his plot armor trumps the plot armor of another Mary Sue (to be fair, though, he was actually on the verge of loosing the big battle to Ramsay right up until the moment his ass gets saved by his little sister and about four thousand mounted knights.) While some of the earlier traits don't necessarily equal a Mary Sue, they add up... oh, they add up (*Daenerys, a warqueen who brought dragons back from extinction among other things, makes mistakes and suffers consequences that would seem to impact her Sue-factor if they didn't always turn out to be functionally inconsequential in comparison to her astounding triumphs through casual part-time parenting.) Book Jon is way more well rounded as a character, where it is pointed out that he actually had a decent life as a bastard before coming to the Watch, and several choices he made ended up biting him in the ass come the mutiny.

*Jotaro Kujo, from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 3 and 4 (And part 6 but not in part 6... we'll get to that later). He's pretty much invincible like Kenshiro, but unlike Kenshiro, he didn't train a single day to be as hax as he is (His Stand "Star Platinum" is really strong, at the cost of short range, but plot gets in the way and he always gets close enough to ORAORA the bad guys). Also unlike Kenshiro, he is an asshole to everyone, but never suffers any consequences from it (Women literally ADORE him despite his jerkass attitude, because 80's). He spends the entire trip to Egypt spurting out massive amounts of [[Just as planned]] against every villain of the week, or simply getting powers as plot demands, some of the most outrageous examples being: The use of "Star Finger", which completely negates the previously stated range weakness; His "battle" against Steely Dan, where he DID get humilliated but retributed it tenfold in the end; His "battle" against Alessi, where he gets to beat a grown man unconscious with his bare fists despite being turned back into a SEVEN YEAR OLD; His battle against main villain DIO where he wins DIO's time stopping powers for bullshit reasons and wins; and, even more ridiculously, being able to RESURRECT his very dead Grandpa Joseph by [[what|using his stand for blood transfusing and heart-resetting]]. In part 4 he mellows down a lot, most notably [[FAIL|getting beaten by a rat]], but that doesn't prevent him from beating the shit out of the main villain Kira TWICE and stealing the spotlight from Uncle Josuke (The titular Jojo of part 4) on his final battle; too bad Josuke!. Part 6 however, does a great job at not only nerfing but rounding him altogether, the Jojo this time being his own daughter, Jolyne Cujoh (Note that is not Kujo), a delinquent who ends out in prison and resents him greatly for being an awful, absent father and constantly reminds him of it. He attempts to "fix" things but [[Just as planned|falls into one of main villain Pucci's schemes]] and is rendered comatose for great part of the story, when he latter regains his powers (With a significant decrease in durability) and comes to terms with Jolyne, the villain becomes Godlike and ends out killing him along with the entire universe; too bad Shonen Jump!, now seinen is Araki's best friend. In Pucci's universe he is a complete spineless weakling, but in case that was a bit too much, reality resets again and creates [[Awesome|a new universe free of the Joestars Tragic Fate and Part 3's bullshit]]. PD: In the Videogame Eyes of Heaven he is even worse, but this entry is already too long so i'll only say the creators weren't too good with resolutions.

*Kai Leng, from ''[[Bioware#Mass_Effect_3_.28The_Downfall.29|Mass Effect 3]]''. You're constantly told he's a badass assassin, but when he shows up, Shepard's crew suddenly become drooling idiots so Leng can strut about, act tough, and monologue. He brags about killing Thane (alien assassin squadmate from the previous game) even though the latter was hobbled by a terminal illness requiring daily medical care and Thane ''STILL'' got the drop on Kai Leng; Thane even says himself "That other assassin should be embarrassed. A terminally-ill Drell kept him from reaching his target." When you "win" the "fight" against him on Thessia, he still gets away, utterly unaffected by the crumbling architecture that stops Shepard from pursuing him. By the end of the fight, you've advanced the plot a grand total of nowhere, regurgitated information you already have, and been hamstrung as a player because the writer wants his character to look cool. He is yet another antagonist dropped onto a story filled with them, but is nothing more than a costume, sword, and book of one-liners. Unlike Saren from ME1, we have no connection with this douchebag because the story doesn't give him enough screen time to develop into anything.
** Alternate take: What appears to be Sue-ness is BioWare writing him as a Hate Sink. (Basically a character designed to be hated and nothing else, [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HateSink ask those smashers at TV Tropes for more info].) BioWare were using the Reapers as cool villains and leaning into the Illusive Man getting the Darth Vader treatment of the tragic, sympathetic villain who can possibly redeem himself with his death, so Leng became the game's villainous punching bag. Given what a gut punch the final battle is, clearly they wanted Leng's ultimate downfall to give the player a moment of catharsis so they could take a small victory where they got it. And for that to work, it had to be satisfying, and that meant he had to get on the player's nerves without an excuse or understandable motive to undercut their focused rage against him. Note that during the final battle against him, Shepard spends the whole time dressing him down as a coward who can only win by running away and after beating him, smashes his stupid sword and guts him like a fish with their omni-blade. [[Awesome|"That was for Thane, you son of a bitch!"]]

*[[Fist of the North Star|Kenshiro]], nothing can kill him and he's morally flawless, superior to everyone-fucking-else. At least until Shin Saga in the anime, where he starts fucking up often, even with his super kung-fu laser ninja powers. Most battles are curb-stomps until later on because ''it's a fucking show from the 80's''. Do note, however, that Kenshiro loses a ''lot,'' especially later on, and mostly wins his hardest battles because he's the only one worth a shit left alive by that point in the series.

*Kratos from ''[[God of War]]''. He curb-stomps fucking gods due to [[plot armor]] (and because one of them decided to give a bloody psychopath the powers of a god; MENSA applicant right there) and he has threesomes with complete strangers, even though he is meant to be grieving for the death of his family that he himself murdered. Oh and the rules for how death works change whenever it's convenient for him. Err, some of this is because most of the gods he kills with super-powerful items, including Blade of Olympus, the God of War universe's version of Zeus' lightning bolts the cyclops gave him to defeat the titans, which has been infused with all the power of the Greek God of War. And he is later revealed to house the Power of Hope since GoW1, a power strong enough to kill gods. Now he is starting a new family in Norse mythology land Midgard while STILL having the "godly" super strength despite the blade of Olympus drained all his power and gave it all to the world.(Note that he clearly didn't give up his combat experience nor his genetics as a demi-god son of Zeus. Even without those things, he's at minimum a heavily trained demi-god from the strongest of the Greek gods.) At least he acknowledged how fucking awful he was in the past and tried to be a good father toward his new son Atreus, but still keeping his no gods allowed policy.

*Lana Lang from the TV show ''Smallville'' (note; Smallville is not considered canon to the Superman story by DC Comics). Almost big a Mary Sue as Bella from Twilight; almost because she actually has a few useful skills, but she learns them unrealistically quickly (becoming a black belt in martial arts in ''one week''). She has the cliche orphan story but with a unique spin for maximum snowflake effect (her parents were killed by a meteor strike), everyone in the story loves her with the exception of some villains (the key word is SOME), and she's treated as someone who can do no wrong. Lana even got on the cover of TIME magazine, in-universe, as a child! She serves as a wedge between Clark and having a relationship with any other girl and between Clark and his eventual Superman destiny. Clark technically sacrificed his father to save her! In one episode, Clark rewound time on a day in which Lana died, and instead lost his father.

*Lightning from ''Final Fantasy XIII'', she is basically a pink-haired Cloud without any of Cloud's likable personality traits. She's currently the NEW AND ASTONISHING HEAVENLY Valkyrie that fights a purple Sephiroth in her new game "Lightning's Return". Not that we care, but she was created by Motomu Toriyama ([[Matt Ward]]'s Japanese cousin), a man with a Chris-Chan-like persona and Matthew Ward-style writing who is now continuously raping the franchise. He has a waifu love for Lightning like Paul has for Alice. Lightning is comparable to Alice on many levels, which says a lot, really. She also has tons of fucking DLC "costumes" dedicated to her so the player could dress her up and fap her to death. This is so fucking shameful that I'm crazy enough to believe Alice is a much capable heroine. Somebody kill me, please. Oh, just recently, Toriyama decided to have Lightning become a guest character in a future Final Fantasy. So not only is the franchise gonna suffer the rotting Emperor syndrome, but Lightning is now the literal goddess of every Final Fantasy game? Seriously, have you ever seen Paul doing such disgusting things with Alice? Like forcing Alice into an actual ''Resident Evil'' game (well, the ''Resident Evil'' franchise is dead as well)? Motomu Toriyama is officially worse than Paul Anderson!!
** Gets worse: Toriyama has stated that Lighting is the "first" strong female character in any ''Final Fantasy''. Even ignoring the dozens of better-written female characters, some of which he himself has written, the "strong" meaning just physical doesn't work either; FF7's Tifa (a game he worked on, btw) can punch tanks to death.

*Lisa Simpson from ''The Simpsons'', depending on the writer. Lisa has dipped into Mary Sue-dom the same way as Brian from Family Guy (both serving time as smug mouthpieces for their show's creators on hot-button-topics). There was also a time where Lisa had the tendency to never be punished for the times she does do the wrong doing (she ruins Homer's BBQ in "Lisa the Vegetarian" and merely got scolded by him where Bart would likely have been strangled for it). One episode had people deferring to Lisa over Prof. Stephen Hawking in Hawking's area of expertise, and Groening once said Lisa is his favorite character and that he would do anything to prevent her from looking bad (to reference the strangling; the show's animators also applied a double-standard as they strongly protested against the idea of Homer strangling Lisa for upsetting him like he does with Bart). While Lisa's popularity in-universe fluctuates, at its worst the whole town bends over backwards for her even when it goes past characterization (eg; Springfieldians can be '''VERY''' sore losers, as demonstrated in the episode "Boys of Bummer" where the whole town - sans Marge - ridiculed Bart for losing a sports game [[Grimdark|to the point that they nearly drove the 10 year old to suicide]], but when Lisa lost a spelling contest she was applauded for winning second place and got a Mount Rushmore-style sculpture of her face). That being said, there are episodes where Lisa is depicted as unpopular at school, her activism is made over-the-top to be played for laughs, she's neglected at home and less of a "smartest person around" and more of a "only sane person surrounded by idiots", lessening the Sue-factor.

*Magneto is not inherently one, but he does have the INSANE potential to become this when crappy writers start taking his sympathetic traits too far ("Hey guys, let's [[What|make Magneto a member of the X-Men and have him date Rogue]]!") or just forget he's the bad guy. Hell, he sometimes becomes this even when he's a horribly despicable villain. Jeph Loeb's raping of the Ultimate Universe known as "Ultimatum" has him use his magnetic powers to nearly destroy the world just by waving his hands at Earth's magnetic poles (completely breaking the laws of physics in the process) and then effortlessly take on half the X-Men and almost all of the Ultimates singlehandedly and nearly win.

*Master Chief from the ''[[Halo]]'' series is definitely one. For one, he has [[Matt Ward|Ward-grade]] [[Heresy|plot armor]]. Seriously, it was repeated throughout the games that he was born with the word [[What|'''LUCK''']]. To further expand on his Sueness, this 7-foot tall hunk of raging Leprechaun saved the entire Galaxy ''Twice!'', single-handedly stopped the Human-Covie War at the last minute, escaped and defeated an entire race of "Super-Space-Zombie-Fungus" that could mindfuck Culture-tier Civilizations without [[What|having his own brain being raped]], is one of the last surviving SPARTAN II's, solo an entire legion of Covenant Honor-Guards (Which are equivalent to Spacemarine Captain in rank but with inferior gear and training) as well as successfully assassinating a very important Covie leader protected by said Guards without being captured, survived escaping an Exterminatus-level explosion that destroyed a Super-Weapon 'Ring' by ''out-flying it'', somehow his armor is strong enough to deflect Fuel-Rod shots (Which are essentially Plasma Cannons), destroy a flying and mentally psychotic lightbulb with an overcharged Lascannon as a Self-Defence weapon (To be fair 343 Guilty Spark ''is'' a Forerunner Janitor Robot), and did I mention he saved the entire Galaxy ''twice''? Furthermore with the release of Halo 4, MC is now magically gifted the genes and DNA by the Librarian to become full on [[RAGE|''impervious to a fucking Forerunner Super-Weapon/Death-Beam'']], which allows him to single-handedly fight through the insides of a very important Forerunner Capital Ship filled with Necron/Warp-Spiders kill bots and somehow through the act of plot, [[Derp|defeat ''the'' highest ranked Forerunner Military General that has the power to solo the entire Galactic Empire from Star Wars.]] I mean [[Rage|WTF!]] did the developers of Halo not realize that they just created a character with plot-armor so powerful that they make the likes of [[Kaldor Draigo]] look decent in comparison? Thankfully however, as pants-on-head retarded as some of the feats listed for MC are, he at least has some faults such as being psychologically raped in childhood, doesn't have the "Morally Superior to thou" personality and has a very grim view of the war, almost got killed by the killer space popcorn, being rather mediocre for a SPARTAN II when compared to his other colleagues, is only good in leadership and even then made some stupid mistakes, gets pretty beaten the fuck up by a Brute, his Superhuman abilities only stopped when fighting against low-ranked Elites and know he will lose against one if he fought one-by-one, and most of the battles he has been through had almost cost him his life. Those faults listed are what makes good old Chiefy ''NOT'' in the top 10 most powerful Mary-Sues and makes him somewhat tolerable albeit boring compared to the other listed.

*Moka Akashiya from Rosario + Vampire: Stupidly fucking OP enough to one-shot kick '''EVERY OTHER FUCKING MONSTER''' IN THE '''ENTIRE FUCKING SERIES''' AND '''BOTH''' SEASONS, has a ''special exception'' to her power levels made so she gets 'first ancestor' vampire blood to enable her to be ''even more powerful'', has no character development ''at all'' (both her personalities), is a student at an academy and one-shot kicks two members ''of the fucking faculty'' '''AND TOTALLY GETS AWAY WITH IT''', and is ''unbearably arrogant'', revelling in her power and basically saying everyone else is beneath her. Not even other OP fucking vampires OLDER THAN HER can beat her. The only reason she's this bad? The author admits he LOVES vampires. So she's not only an Author Avatar, but a Canon Sue as well, existing only for [[Heresy|heretical deviants]] to fap to and the author to [[Slaanesh|schlick]] to. God-Emperor fucking damn it, Akihisa Ikeda. You little shit. What's worse is that [[Matt Ward|he has no shame about it]]. [[C.S.Goto| No, really]]. Even those who initially get one over on her before getting kicked are '''MORE''' OP ''fucking vampires''. Not really, she's easily one-uped by non-vampires with many characters introduced in S1 & especially S2 who rather easily take her down. Compared to the big leagues, she's a promising new recruit but not comparable to them.

*Mordenkainen (Gary Gygax's personal avatar in the Greyhawk setting and a level 30 wizard who never fucking ages past 50 despite being a hundred fucking years old without turning into a lich, he became bald for some reason, which makes him look evil, but he remains Stupid Neutral).

*Olympia Vale, another character from the [[Halo]] Series and seems to be all around taking over the mantle of Mary Sue from Master Chief as he is pushed in the sidelines like an old man being pushed in the old folks home. Whilst Locke has been accused for being a rather bland and forgettable copycat cutout of the original MC, he still pales in comparison to that of Vale. Essentially imagine Vale as MC but remove the sociopathic and borderline mentally damaged aspects of John 117, make her a prodigy even beyond that of Spartan recruits which in turn made her pretty easy to integrate in the SPARTAN IV program and make her instantly learn the language of the Elites whilst by herself in space with the only excuse being that [[Bullshit|'she was bored'.]] Vale and to an extent, the majority of the SPARTAN IV's seem to be an ongoing campaign from Karen Traviss (AKA the Destroyer of Fluff and Halo's Matt Ward) [[Derp|to further demonize Halsey and her SPARTAN II program]] for no better reason other than being forced to be [[Fail|unethical in an organization as ethically sound as the]] [[Inquisition|Imperial Inquisition.]] As you can imagine, this has already spurred some [[Skub|ire bitching]] in the Halo community and only time will tell if newer sequels from the game would flash her character out in a more decent or obscene matter.

*Ozymandias, AKA, Adrian Alexander Veidt from ''Watchmen''. He was born into a wealthy family, then threw it all away and earned even more money. He's a perfect athlete, good-looking, smartest man in the world (He mind fucked Dr. Manhattan, a blueish godlike superhuman) and a vegetarian. In the book he is able to successfully genetically engineer some sort of monster that would be teleported to New York and as it dies unleash a psychic shockwave that would kill millions in a "common enemy" plot to avert World War 3 by uniting them against "interdimensional aliens" (he does the same in the movie, but instead of aliens, he tricks people into making Dr Manhattan their common enemy - Dr Manhattan himself goes along with the plan once he finds out so there will be world peace). The only downside he had is loneliness, since he had betrayed all his friends and killed the only companion in his life, a fucking genetically-engineered female lynx named Bubastis, by having her bait Dr. Manhattan to the incinerator and killed them both with a switch. Still, Ozymandias is perfect because Mary Sue don't need friends. It was also portrayed that his "common enemy" scheme to stop World War 3 (which involved killing millions) in a positive or at least sympathetic light. He also caught a bullet fired from a gun with his bare hands, and the bullet didn't just go through them, like it would in real-life, despite him not having superpowers. Interesting to note that he the idol he worships: Alexander of Macedonia, is a man born before Christ, and the name Ozymandias is reference to a freaking [[Necron|Egyptian pharaoh: Ramses II]], proving that Adrian is just as egoistic as [[Dante]] and the [[Ultramarines]] by have the name of an ancient ruler as his own nickname. Hell, his color page on "before the watchman" made him looked like some sort of floating Jesus!! Thankfully, he has the decency to acknowledge what he did was wrong in the comics while also justifying it as being for the greater good...which it was in that it stopped World War 3, and he is more complex and well rounded as a character than several others.
** There's also the deliberately ambiguous implication that Ozymandias could get some comeuppance in the future (author Alan Moore stated that what happened after the end of the graphic novel is for each reader to decide for themselves); this is done with Dr Manhattan's cryptic response to Ozymandias' question whether things would work out, and Rorschach giving his journal - containing evidence implicating Ozymandias and revealing his plan - to a news outlet.
** A direct sequel to Watchmen called "Doomsday Clock" came and finally made Ozymandias pay for what he has done. After the news outlet ousted Veidt's plans, it started a chain of reaction that eventually led to his downfall as well as the supposed end of humanity. European Union dissolved, the USSR went back its old warmonger ways with their relation between the US degrading to lows below even the Cold War, nuclear weapons failed to be disarmed and one such missile was fired from Russia to New York City. Adrian is now the most wanted man in the world and has brain cancer (possibly ironically validating what he framed Dr. Manhattan for). Still, he managed to fight his way out of this chaos with other DC heroes (superman and the godamned batman mind you, characters with thick plot armor), the Comedian (brought back by Manhattan), pretty much everyone around the world but especially Dr. Manhattan (who masterminded this all from his glass palace on Mars). Also, keep in mind this sequel is not written by Alan Moore himself so it's at best considered an alternate continuity.

*Prometheus (the DC supervillain) certainly didn't ''start'' as this but ended up being twisted into one. When first introduced he was a genuinely cool and intimidating supervillain whose insane skill and manipulations were balanced out by his crippling mental issues (which the heroes exploited to take him down). Unfortunately, writers who weren't as skilled as Grant Morrison got their paws on him and made him ludicrously overpowered to the point where he single-handedly ''destroyed Star City, killing Roy Harper's daughter in the process''. Thus Prometheus went from an awesome member of Batman's rogue gallery to a complete waste of pages. Thankfully he was prevented from becoming any worse thanks to Green Arrow putting an arrow through the bastard's skull.

*Ramsay Bolton (show version): Oh good fucking God, where to start with this particular Villain Sue? Well, for one, he manages to take on twenty of the best Ironborn warriors, who were all heavily armed and armored, while not just unarmored but SHIRTLESS and armed with nothing but a kitchen knife and a mace, and SOMEHOW kicks their asses. Then, much later, he is shown to completely annihilate the battle-hardened Stormlander army led by Stannis Baratheon, the greatest military commander in Westeros, with nothing but cavalry, while the previous episodes had established that Ramsay is a tactically inept moron. (This can also tie in with the fact that the writers of the show seriously fucked over Stannis from "stern-but-honorable competent tactical genius" into "greedy, fanatical moron"). Finally, he is constantly shown to get his way no matter how stupidly contrived it seems to the viewer, arguably the worst case being marrying and deflowering Sansa Stark by raping her and getting the killing blow on fan-favorite giant Wun-Wun. His Sueness ends with his face getting caved in by Jon and fed to his own hounds by Sansa.

*Rey AKA Ma-Rey Sue from the [[Star Wars]]. From the release of the first movie, she already caught some backlash among the old guards of Star Wars who consider her a self-insert Mary Sue with a feminist agenda. Leaving aside the politics, the resulting trilogy and related events have only confirmed Rey’s Mary Sue-dom. Reasons from the first movie alone include Rey showing [[What|a better knowledge of the Millennium Falcon’s inner working than then Han Solo and Chewbacca]] who’d maintained the ship for decades where she had it for less than a week, being offered a job by Han shortly after meeting him despite him and Chewie being sufficient crew for the Falcon and Han being a cynic who barely knows her (like something right out "A Trekkie's Tale"), Rey suddenly being a [[Wat|powerful Force user who can resist a trained Force-user's mind probe]] despite no previous mention of her being Force sensitive and [[Bullshit|Rey performing said Jedi mind trick while in captivity almost immediately after learning she's Force Sensitive]] despite the fact that performing said trick is known to be difficult to master (to be fair, Rey had just been in telepathic contact with somebody who knew how to pull off a Mind Trick, and wasn't as good at telepathic interrogation as he thought he was). Rey’s only character flaw is recklessness, and while it does get her captured by the villains in the first and third films, this is offset by Rey getting rescued unharmed both times by luck/plot armour, which is a Sue-ish trait (at least Luke suffered actual setbacks and injuries – such as a severed hand and failing to save Han from Boba Fett). Furthering Rey’s status of Mary Sue is the “creators relationship to the character” part, with several of the filmmakers either pulling new explanations out of their asses to explain Rey’s abilities (or retconning them, such as the Force “cheat-coding” and the “Force Dyad”) or attacking anyone who didn’t like the character by tarring them with the same negative brushes ([[SJW|accusations of sexism got lots of usage]]). The third film threw in the big twist that Rey is ''really'' Rey '''Palpatine'''. You heard right, Rey is literally Emperor Palpatine's ''granddaughter'', almost as if they're trying to one-up Luke’s relation to Vader. The third film also ends with Rey taking the last name “Skywalker” while Luke and Leia’s force ghosts look on approvingly. For a more comprehensive coverage on why Rey is a Mary Sue, look up the results of the Mary Sue Litmus test on the discussion page.
** While it could be argued that Luke and Anakin are just as ridiculous, they fit easier the form of tropes they are. Luke, being the most classic [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHero Hero] ever, is quickly established as good at most things he does, culminating in flying an X-Wing through the Death Star trench and making an one-in-a-million shot to destroy the Death Star, and this is less than a week before he was just a backwater farmboy. Though while Luke used the Force untrained like Rey did, his only feats were enhancing skills he already had and developed; a stretch, but more plausible than pulling new skills ''that require training to use'' out of nowhere. Anakin is the [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChosenOne Chosen One], and people who are chosen tend to be skilled and powerful regardless because the Powers-That-Be have their backs on top of any personal skills they have. Young Ani competes and wins a pod-race that only aliens can normally participate in due to the sheer insanity of it, and then blows up a Trade Federation Dreadnought with a fighter he'd never been in before (even then kid Anakin also had R2-D2's help). Again, no problem. Now Rey is about as much the Hero as Luke but is an Unchosen One compared to Anakin, and the wildest thing she does in her first movie is to use the Force untrained (much like Luke does in A New Hope) and gain the upper hand on a Sith apprentice. Why people doesn't expect her to be [[-4 Str|as powerful]] as [[Lawful Good|Luke]] and [[BBEG|Anakin]] is better left for another discussion entirely, though the fact that Rey is touted as a strong female character while being propped up by the failures of men and saved by men throughout the trilogy doesn't help her case. Also, Rey has never once lost a fight in the movies, while Anakin first got his arm chopped off in a hilariously one-sided fight with Doku then later had all his limbs cut off and was lit on fire in another fight, and Luke completely lost the battle with Vader in Empire strikes back.

*Richard, from the Sword of Truth series (he's not as bad in the TV series). He is always considered an ideal hero despite being cruel, sociopathic, and thinking that the universe should bend over backwards for him [[What|(which it actually does).]] Everyone who disagrees with him is evil (even if that's the only reason they're considered a villain) or turns evil. Gratuitous rape is thrown in by the author as a cheap way to make him look better (making villains as reprehensible as possible doesn't solve the problem of the protagonist being completely un-heroic).

*Richard B. Riddick, from the Riddick universe. Vin Diesel's personal self-insert inspired from his own D&D Rogue. Didn't start out as a Mary Sue though, going from a sensible power level ''(where a fist-fight with a morphine-addicted merc is reasonably fair)'' with dubious morality and a lovably snarky badass attitude. Later becoming ''(particularly amongst the directors cuts)'' a superpowered badass who can single-handedly take on squads of soldiers with a knife, resist soul sucking, commune with animals and make threats with [[Just as Planned]] modes of killing. ''("kill you with my teacup" / "dead in 5 seconds")'', oh... he can also explode as shown in the director's cuts and off-screen in the video games. His later portrayals also show his morality becoming a "told you so" mentality, where, when people die it's really because they are the assholes and nothing to do with Riddick.

*Roran, from the Inheritance Cycle. He started as a farmer-apprentice blacksmith, yet he managed to become an invincible warrior, charismatic presence, expert orator and master strategist without any training. We are talking of a young man who soloes 194 soldiers in a melee battle and wins without taking any major injuries. He then survived a public flogging severe enough to be an alternative to execution despite it being not long after that battle. He also beat an urgal in a wrestling match despite the Urgal being stronger, bigger, better trained and having horns. In the third book he even single-handedly defeated a Ra'zac; a race that are to humans what wolves are to sheep. Then in the final battle Roran bested the magically-enhanced warrior who killed the elf-queen, and did so without magic or special weapons of his own. Yes, Roran managed to achieve feats that even elves would consider impossible. While his cousin Eragon has the (weak) excuses of magical enhancement and helping from his dragon companion, Roran doesn't. He is a common man who, for plot reasons, creates a plot armor just by thinking about his girlfriend.

* Sarah Kerrigan from the Starcraft series has become this more and more as time passes. In the first game she's just a terran ghost (psionic assassin) who gets turned into a human-zerg hybrid and disappears from the plot after like two or three missions in the zerg campaign, but then she becomes one of the main villains of the expansion pack and everyone else in in the game becomes a thundering dumbass so she can look like a master manipulator despite being played for a sap by yet another character, and commits several atrocities to serve herself and her own agenda but is not punished them in any way despite multiple characters swearing revenge on her. Then the sequel ramped it up. Out of fucking nowhere she is designated the saviour of the galaxy from the new villain in town with virtually no justification offered except that Blizzard were too cowardly and attached to the the character to follow through on people wanting her dead. She gets purified of zerg corruption and another character who's more fun and interesting gets killed off so she can live. The zerg campaign centers on her and shows her doing yet more pointlessly-cruel and destructive things in the name of petty revenge, its only concessions to the ridiculousness of letting her live being some half-hearted acknowledgements of her past crimes. And after a pair of pointless guest appearances in the protoss campaign and its prologue campaign, she gets picked by the last good Xel'Naga in the universe to receive his essence and become a Xel'Naga herself so she can defeat the main villain in a laser beam-off. And after her boyfriend, a better-written character who spends all his time getting shit on throughout the series, is seen moping in a bar at the end of the final campaign, she gets to ass pullingly make him a Xel'Naga too, for some moron's idea of resolving their relationship with happily ever after ending.

*Sakamoto from 'Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto' never fails at anything and always manages to look [[Awesome]] no matter what he is doing or how much the other characters try to sabotage him, and it is hilarious.

*Selene, from the 'Underworld' movies. Throughout the series, she bears several similarities to [[Alice]]; both are experts with weapons, both have superior biology to their respective species (humans for Alice, Vampires for Selene), both kill their way through swarms of enemies without getting a scratch, both have little regard for their source material, and both are played by the wives of the directors of their respective film series.

*Squirrel Girl from Marvel Comics is another one of these Sues who's actually popular and enjoyed for it, probably because she's played entirely for laughs: Doreen Grey is a [[Mutant]] teenage girl with Spider-Man levels of strength/speed/agility, can grow bone knuckles, can talk to squirrels (and have them do her bidding) and has the ability to defeat any villain she wants off-screen. This includes big-name villains like Doctor Doom (she beat him in his first appearance and several times afterwards, and this is a rare instance of a Doom-related incident that was ''not'' smoothed over with the "Just a Doombot" excuse), Ego the Living Planet (who is, like his name suggests, a planet, meaning that a teenage girl beat up a planet), Thanos (who is one of the biggest badasses of the Marvel Universe, but the writers saved his face by replacing him in this instance with a perfect copy of him), Deadpool (whom she calls the mean, mean man; he's actually scared of her), M.O.D.O.K. and tons of other people. She was once part of a C-list superhero team, but quit because she thought she was holding them back (which she was entirely correct about: she once apologized to them for being late because she had to beat a 100' space dragon) and left for Marvel's Nexus of the Multiverse: New York. Despite her unapologetic Mary Sue-ness the fans love her and see her as the one spot of light in the otherwise relentlessly [[grimdark]] Marvel Universe, because again, she's played entirely for laughs and there's nary a title in Marvel Comics that couldn't do with more laughs.

*[[Superman]] in the hands of a poor writer. He is morally perfect, one of the strongest beings in the DC universe, and his one weakness that's supposed to kill him never works <s>ex: he lifts an entire continent of Kryptonite after being stabbed by a dagger made of it</s> thankfully ''Superman Returns'' had so many plotholes that ''Man of Steel'' declared it all non-canon. The only reliable way to nerf him is to have Batman beside him, because Superman always becomes a dumbass when Batman is around (go watch DCAU Justice League to see for yourself). Good writers can avoid falling into this by having him go up against villains who can genuinely threaten him (such as General Zod, Maxima or Doomsday; in fact, the writers made Doomsday specifically to be a threat who can physically match Superman), showing that even with all his vast powers there are things Superman just can't do (in one tragic story it turned out that even though he can benchpress planets, he can't stop his parents from dying of cancer) or emphasizing that his strong morals are not intrinsic to him, but a product of a happy childhood, caring parents and a network of close friends, and he wouldn't necessarily have them if he were raised somewhere less pleasant (like, say, Planet Apokolips or the Soviet Union - both actually happened in Elseworlds stories, look it up) or if those close to him were taken away (like in the Injustice and Kingdom Come comic series).

*Tauriel, Peter Jackson's special snowflake from ''The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug'' (a Mary Sue in something related to Tolkien; [[Tolkien|Beren and Luthien are deep and well-written enough to get a pass]], this is a sad day). Not content with undermining or retconning the book, Jackson creates a special snowflake elf OC. Tauriel's ridiculously skilled at fighting to the point she matches Legolas in archery - and he's pretty OP in the films (as shown when she shots an arrow at him when he surprises her, he returns fire and their arrows collide with each other) - she also has healing powers. According to all of Tolkien's books, only a select few elves can heal people such as Lord Elrond Half-Elven, wielder of one of the three Elven Rings of Power, some who's studied healing for millennia and is a direct descendant of the Kings of the Noldor; all things which Tauriel lacks. In addition, she's ship-teased with canon-characters Legolas (who never appears, or even gets mentioned, in the book - albeit he was shoehorned into the film to cash in on his popularity with fangirls) and Kili. To be fair, some of the ship tease between Kili and Tauriel is well handled as well, in particular when Kili teases her and then tells her stories when locked in prison.

*[[Star Trek|Wesley Crusher]]. Wesley FUCKING Crusher. Originating from the same franchise as the original Mary Sue, Wesley is a very young ensign training to be an officer in Starfleet, where he's earned the admiration of many of the bridge officers. He became something of a protege to Captain Picard, who was impressed by Wesley after he showed that he had learned all the controls at the captain's chair when they first met. <s>While not morally perfect or incorruptible Wesley is as close as he can be in most cases</s> He's only moral by Gene Roddenberry's standards ''(which were messed up beyond belief, the man thought it was okay to be a prima donna director but not for children to grieve over dead loved ones, and that's not getting into his corporate shyster practices, anti-religious prejudices and sexism; seriously we're not making any of that up)'', by a normal person's, he's smug and egocentric, along with his [[Deus Ex Machina]] techno skills, which are shown off by making the rest of the crew look useless. He notably also gets the Enterprise into danger before getting it out of it, and never gets called out for it. Many people thought that he was an insufferable little shit, among them Wil Wheaton (the actor who PLAYED the guy... and coming from him, that's saying something). Wesley is even named after Gene Roddenberry, as Wesley was Gene's middle name - or to give Gene's full name, Eugene ''Wesley'' Roddenberry.

*[[Loli|Young main characters]] in crappy [[Asians|Japanese]] [[anime|animes]] and [[manga]].

*Main characters from Japanese [[Isekai]] light novels. Usually they were nerds or losers who only interest in a particular underrated hobby/talent in their world, but became a fucking skyrim tier powerhouse once they enter the so-called mysterious otherworld. Upon entering, they became super powerful since their somewhat boring talent suddenly becomes a miracle to the other world residents thus making the main character successful. It is a trend that they will done the following to prove their superiority: wrecking Saturday cartoon villain tier antagonist (usually a reference to the main character's childhood bully) that made even [[Ahriman]] looks good, instantly gained many female party members because the main character was an unpopular virgin in their original world (and no males allowed, they are yucky), using their otaku knowledge to solve every problem that was deems unsolvable in the other world (more reason that their useless hobby/talent that was deemed useless has more use in the otherworld). The other world usually consist the cliches of JRPG world: [[Medieval Stasis]], fantasy creatures like dwarves and elves, old European like hierarchy and cultures, monsters, JRPG mechanic. One of many trend of isekai protagonist is that almost all of them have tragic background featuring how they were bullied in high school or parent suicide or some typical Japanese cliches of tragic (such as truck-kun). There are also many situations where authors would made the protagonist suffer by have him stuck in a misunderstood situation, setup by the unlikable villain as an attempt to make him look good. Then again, these kind of self fulfilling characters are authors self insert whom was a victim of a depressing citizens of their society, or they thought. There are a few exceptions to this such as Ainz Ooal Gown, Kazuma Satou or Kazuya Souma who are thrown into situations that requires far more intelligence, planning and Indy Polys than your typical light novel protagonist can muster. Some try to subvert this with mixed results. ''Re:Zero'' is a deconstructive take where its protagonist (Subaru Natsuki) dies painfully over and over and ''over'' again, and eventually confesses to everyone around him that he's completely useless. (Though then he starts learning from his mistakes and becomes more competent-- but '''not''' an uber-badass.)

*Judging from the rest of the list, [[Skub|any character you don't like.]]

===Works with more than too many of them===
*[[In Nomine]]'s Superiors may or may not qualify; if they do, they do so as a block, thus placing them here. The problem here is that each Superior is an NPC made to more or less '''be''' their entire organization (''most'' PCs report directly to at least one of them), and thus needs to be larger-than-life. Ultra high-powered NPCs plus Strong Personalities plus Needing to Show Up Frequently is a formula only in need of a small amount Bad Writing or Poor GMing to go into hardcore Suedom. On the "possibly further from Suedom" side, all the Superiors have exploitable character flaws, but the result is still an edifying example of why High Powered NPCs are a problem.

*Sonichu, made by [[Chris-Chan|you-know-who]]. To make a long article short, just about anyone who is friends with the author or from some franchise <s>s/he/it</s> they like gets to be overwhelmingly hax and unbound by the laws of morality, everyone who isn't is pretty much either nonexistent or very very evil (the latter guaranteed for any character representing someone the author has a personal beef with).

*Twilight
**[[Twilight|Bella Swan]]: Though she is a pretentious, manipulative, male-dependent, self-pitying downer who takes her parents for granted and makes no time for her friends, Bella is adored by all. Her first day of school is supposedly hard for her, despite the fact that every person she meets instantly presents her with a best friend badge, and/or falls in love with her. She's also clumsy EXCEPT when there's a moment where she'll die if she does something clumsy. Add being a painfully obvious author surrogate and even being the product of one of the author's dreams (S Meyer admitted that herself), "clumsy" Bella is the Mary Sue of her generation.
**[[Twilight|Edward Cullen]]: This character is the reason the popularity of vampires took a massive hit when the book came out. Possibly the most rage-inspiring aspect is he introduced the idea that vampires [[FAIL|SPARKLE HARMLESSLY LIKE DIAMONDS IN SUNLIGHT]]! He can read minds, is near impossible to kill, doesn't have the vampire weakness to holy objects despite seeing himself as an abomination against God, doesn't feed off humans despite his literal bloodlust except for criminals or "those who deserve to die", always fashionable and multi-talented. Despite being a textbook case of an emotionally abusive and controlling boyfriend to Bella, he's always treated as having the moral high ground... except when he refuses to make Bella a vampire, but that gets swept under the rug as soon as he changes his mind.
**[[Twilight|Jacob Black]]: A werewolf from the Twilight franchise. He commits date rape on Bella (forcing a kiss), trolls the vampires and switches sides between the werewolves and the vampires without consequence. The worst part is when he [[FATAL|falls in love with Bella's and Edward's newborn daughter because of a vision, practicing wife husbandry on her as soon as she can walk and talk... and all the other characters are fine with this]]. The story also gushes about his looks to the point that the movie doesn't go five minutes without the character taking off his shirt and the camera focusing on his muscles.

*Warhammer unfortunately has several examples, many of them a result of Matt Ward's bad writing. They get much better in the hands of more skilled writers, or in [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|parodies]].
**[[Cato Sicarius]]. Seriously this guy is Mary Sue's Mary Sue. He was born to a noble house on Talassar, trained with a sword as soon as he could hold one, inducted into the Ultramarines. He got commendation after commendation going from sergeant to company champion to Captain of the 2nd Company in several decades. He refined lightning assaults to near perfection and knows what to do after giving the battlefields a quick glance. He leads a company of mini Sues, each squad having some title for some great feat; their devastators having destroyed a titan, and a tactical squad that hasn't taken a casualty in close to 100 years. He is not only captain of the 2nd but "Master of the Watch", "Knight Champion of Macragge", "Grand Duke of Talassar", and "High Suzerain of Ultramar", seriously those last two titles are [[pretend|completely made up]]. He's a complete dick, valuing glory for himself and his company over all else, admitting to his men that he didn't care about planet Damnos when they were battling the Necrons over it (where he got his ass handed to him by a no-name Necron Lord). He also decided to appoint himself judge, jury, and executioner, to judge Uriel Ventris when he broke from the Codex, even though they're the same rank and only the Chapter Master has the right to do stuff like that. Oh yeah that reminds me, to top it all off most of the chapter thinks he's next in line to be Chapter Master, instead of Captain Agemman of the first company, even though he's got much (see fuck-tons) more experience than Sicarius. Add all that to the Mary Sue-ness of being a Space Marine and being in the Ultramarines and it reaches critical levels.
**[[Eldrad|Eldrad Ulthran]], and what's worse: he knows he is, and is a complete dick about it. Though he was recently imprisoned by his Craftworld for trying to help the Imperium and messing up Ynnead's ascension. He then joins the Ynnari after being shunned by his Craftworld.
**[[Kaldor Draigo]]. Wrote his mentor's name into Mortarion's heart without contracting Spess Aids, or being fucking destroyed by said primarch which, of those 19 (21?) can roll through a squad of Custodes without too much effort, got schllupped into the Warp and somehow remains pure.
**[[Marneus Calgar]], especially post-Ward. Killing an Avatar of Khaine by punching its chest in and not getting seriously hurt in said fight with one. An Avatar of Khaine is supposed to be as hard to kill as a Bloodthirster, something that takes a Primarch or a Bio-titan to beat in a one-on-one fight (then again, Games Workshop loves [[Worf|worfing]] Avatars, and Space Marines are their Creator's Pet). Calgar had his limbs chopped off by the Swarmlord, which didn't kill him due to Plot Armor, and he leads the Ultramarines, themselves considered a Mary Sue chapter in a Mary Sue faction (see the Space Marine entry on this page). These are just the first few examples.
**[[Captain Matthias Ward]], I am the better Mary-Sue.
**The [[Primarch]]s <s>and their [[Warhammer High|daughters]].</s>{{BLAM|'''THOSE WORDS ARE BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!! /tg/ can only create perfection!'''}} (To be fair, the daughters are only Sues in that they inherited their Sue traits from their fathers.)
**[[Uriel Ventris]] - despite initially coming off as a subversion of Wardian Ultramarines-are-the-best Mary Sue bullshit, he quickly devolves into [[Skub|Ultramarines are the worst unless they use the Codex to wipe their asses and act like Space Wolves]] - which is pretty much limited to - guess who? - McNeill's OC-Do-Not-Steal Special Snowflake Ventris.
** [[Iskandar Khayon]] a pretty awesome villain, but some of the stuff he does is just unbelievable, though some of that may be because his book is actually him telling the events to his enemies while captured so he may be lying about a lot of it.

*World of Warcraft:
**Kalecgos (AKA Kalec), blue dragon who can disguise himself as a human-elf hybrid; from [[World of Warcraft|World of Warcrabs]]. Ham-fistedly inserted into the Blood Elves' redemption story arc as an enabler. Later he takes over the blue dragonflight even though he's not the oldest, wisest or most powerful blue dragon, but simply because he was the only surviving named blue dragon with anything approaching a personality. Later he hooks up with Jaina Proudmoore, a powerful human mage/noblewoman/faction leader introduced in Warcraft III. She does this in spite of their vast age difference (which made her reject an Elven prince who loved her) and bad track record with lovers. Though Kalecgos later disbanded them as an organization, he's still the go-to blue dragon (despite older, more powerful ones like Azuregos and Senegos still being in the lore).
**Jarod Shadowsong, a Night Elf commander shoehorned into the setting in books "War of the Ancients" and "Wolfheart", by Richard Knaak. Brother to canon character Maiev Shadowsong, love interest to Shandris Feathermoon, - Tyrande's adopted daughter with both characters canon since WC3 (Shandris in case you don't recognize her, is that one Elf archer with a unique model present in the first two and last Night Elf missions in ''Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos'') - and the Night Elves greatest war hero after Furion and Tyrande themselves. His mere presence raises morale so much that people, to quote the book, "automatically fight harder and obey him with greater swiftness". He survived a one-on-one fight against Archimonde, a demon lord who can destroy cities single-handedly, because he suddenly decided to toy with Jarod even though time was of the essence. Said war saw various Night Elf DEMIGODS place themselves under Jarod's command! He also lacks any personality beyond humble hero and has no character flaws that effect him negatively. He spends thousands of years after the first fight against the Burning Legion resting on his laurels and doesn't show up when they invade the second time, but no-one calls Jarod out on this in-universe. On top of this, Shandris' love for him is poorly written and makes no sense. The last time Shandris saw Jarod, he was married to someone else and Shandris knew it, and Shandris had no contact with Jarod for ''thousands of years'' until they met again during the Cataclysm. And when they met, Shandris propositioned Jarod '''at his wife's funeral'''. This bears repeating; Shandris pursued someone who she hadn't spoken to for millennia and who was married to someone else by trying to hook up him before his wife's body was even cold (and Shandris is not that kind of ignorant/thoughtless/crazy/predatory person).
**Krasus (AKA Korialstraz) a high-ranking red dragon, mainly due to the author's overuse of him, and said author is also Richard Knaak. He disguises himself as an elf, and said elf is one of the leaders of the Kirin Tor. On top of this, he's Consort/Adviser of the Dragon Queen, he might as well be the Dragon King considering how much importance Alexstraza puts on him and how few decisions she makes until after he's gone. He also gets sent back in time to partake of a historical event despite the fact HIS YOUNGER SELF WAS AROUND IN THAT TIME. He also set up another Mary Sue in Warcraft, Rhonin (NOTE; both characters were created by the same author). To be fair, Krasus is tame compared to most WoW examples listed here.
**Rhonin, human archmage of the Kirin Tor. By Richard Knaak again, Blizzard Entertainment's equivalent of [[Robin Cruddace|Robin Cruddace]]. Knaak made up a new member of the famous Windrunner family just for Rhonin to hook up with. They have half-elf kids who are blessed by dragons despite the fact they've done nothing to earn it (the player characters have done more, but they don't get anything like that; just a few trinkets that will be rendered obsolete by the next expansion), not to mention that those half-elf kids are one of the very rare examples of human-elf hybrids in WoW (the other is Arator the Redeemer, son of legendary characters all the way back in Warcraft 2 - human paladin Turalyon and elven general Alleria). Even the name Rhonin is just the title "Rōnin" (referring to a Samurai with no master during Japan's feudal period) with a few changes to anglicize the name (and, of course, the character doesn't even look Japanese). He gets sent back in time to partake in the first fight against the Burning Legion for no other reason than Knaak wanted Rhonin to be there. He does practically nothing in the game, yet everyone says he's a great hero; even then, he didn't do half the things they praise him for.
**Sylvanas Windrunner from [[World of Warcraft]] (The trend is now a bullet train into Edgytown): Started out as a Fantasy counterpart for Sarah Kerrigan, she's been turning into Fantasy Hitler/Mengele (or rather, was from the beginning). Originally a High Elf ranger in Warcraft III who is killed and turned into a Banshee by Arthas. She sets up the Undercity as a fortress/Horde-run concentration camp for Alliance captives, and has free reign of atrocities ranging from slavery to genocide. Her Royal Apothecary kidnapped innocents to experiment upon under her watch, torturing them for fun and science. Now that doing bad things upsetting some players does definitely not qualify for Mary Sue'dom, but the problem becomes obvious as the plot advances. She was already under suspicion before the Wrathgate Incident (she knew about the plague, but not that it would be used on the Horde too), invaded Gilneas, nuked Southshore, waged a torture-filled genocidal campaign on the Humans, manipulated the Horde (to join them in the first place in order to use them as tools), built a Cult of Personality around herself, employed the Val'kyr (which seems to be a case of "Even Chaos has standards" when seen by pragmatic Death Knight Thassarian), resurrected those who she killed against their will despite not liking when it happened to her, shot and killed Liam Greymane then taunted his father Genn about it, attempted to steal the Scythe of Elune to enslave the Worgen to expand her personal army and made some kind of deal with the devil to get the Val'kyr in the first place. The closest she got to any kind of punishment was Lor'thermar threatening to kill her if she raised the Horde's dead as Forsaken, stating he'd leave her to the Alliance if she tried it on their dead and calling her out on several of her actions in Mists of Pandaria - rather weaksauce given the almighty kicking they were giving Garrosh throughout that expansion pack, making him out to be evil incarnate. In Legion, after retreating from the Broken Shore, the crowning moment of Mary Suedom occurs when she ends up being named the next Warchief of the Horde with Vol'jin's dying words, followed by her abandoning the fight against a world-destroying demon army so she can find a way to cheat death, and everyone in the Horde is okay with this. In the next expansion, the Horde forced the Night Elves out of Kalimdor in the War of Thorns, with Sylvanas pulling an Arthas by forcing the dying commander to watch her burn Teldrassil, an action worse than Garrosh's Bombing of Theramore because Theramore was a military target while the Night Elves had surrendered and Teldrassil was inhabited only by non-combatants. Then the writers give her plot armor by having "never forsake honor" Saurfang save her life by dealing a dishonorable blow to her opponent, as Sylvanas' atrocities grow barely anyone from the Horde turns against her, and pulling new powers out of their asses for her. Then she pulls an admittedly cunning trap and Blight-bombs Lorderaen when the Alliance take it from the Forsaken in retaliation (only turning the tide thanks to Jaina). After this she gets more unexplained new powers that allow her to one-shot Saurfang and solo Lich King Bolvar and a horde of undead in the lead-up to the new expac. The Mary Sue reason on top of all this? She never suffers any ''(literally, ANY)'' setback except Greymane ruining her Val'kyr agenda. All her atrocities and horrors are ignored or turned into heroism, and what's worse, she automatically pulls out the next phase of her agenda out of her ass like some Pentagon's high command after snorting a line of coke each. Her Forsaken, despite horrendous losses and ban on raising unwilling dead, somehow destroys each and everything with a shred of goodness around her...only for her to get raised to Warchief status like some spoiled prepubescent princess. This issue is compounded by the fact that Sylvanas has a very vocal fanbase and she's the Creator's Pet of at least two of Warcraft's dev team, lead quest writer David Kosak and Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi (the latter who insists [[Skub|she's not evil and that there's still a lot more to her story]]). Even then, David and Alex were proven wrong as the end of Battle for Azeroth and the upcoming Shadowlands expansion confirm/FINALLY ADMIT that Sylvanas is a villain and she's going to be taken down.
**Thrall, the (in)famous Orc Warchief from ''[[Warcraft]]''. Started out cool in WC3 as an Orc orphan raised in a human internment camp who escaped with help from a friend, he led the Orcs because he was the former Warchief's son and a powerful but not story-breaking shaman. By having his forces fight alongside the trolls and Tauren and save them from their enemies he made allies. Though he fucked up by sending Grommash to collect resources from Ashenvale (antagonizing the Night Elves, giving the demons an opportunity to corrupt the Orcs and leading to the death of a demigod who would've been a great help against the Burning Legion), with a lot of help from some allies and another demi-god he sets things right and they kick the Burning Legion's demonic asses off of Azeroth. He still holds the line against threats and tries to make peace, but he's a bit too forgiving of trouble-makers in the Horde (see Sylvanas above and Garrosh below). In the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcramps, he became Azeroth's premiere shaman and leader of half the world while appointing the <s>[[Skub|VERY CONTROVERSIAL]]</s> <s>balls to the wall violent and universally hated</s> patriotic warmonger Garrosh Hellscream as Warchief of the Horde; despite the protests of several others ''including Garrosh himself'' (who was uncertain he could handle the responsibility of such a role at the time). Takes over as Aspect of Earth from a borderline demigod, and even deals a crippling blow to him when he's empowered by the Old Gods. Even people that were fans of Thrall during Warcraft III have started to get sick of him.
*** The writers appear to have realized what kind of monster they unleashed in Cataclysm and every expansion since has given him a kicking in some way. In Mists of Pandaria Garrosh kicks his ass just before his final fight with the players. In Warlords of Draenor he gets relegated to the sidelines and has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHwiEbXqh3k another fight with Garrosh], which features a memetastic sequence in which Garrosh pummels his dumb ass while listing his failures. He wins the fight only by cheating and using his shaman powers, and Legion (the expansion) reveals the Elemental Spirits have nerfed him for his blatant haxxing. Even when he begins getting his powers back, you only see that happen if you're a shaman, and he ends up becoming your bitch. Even his big fancy Doomhammer gets misplaced so it can become an Artifact weapon for Enhancement shamans.

==Mary Sue Races==
While not every member of a race is a Mary Sue, [[Chakat|with one or two exceptions]], sometimes whole races are considered Mary Sues because they have huge amounts of plot armor and are idealized beyond reason. They were put here as the Mary Sue list was originally conceived for characters. Also, please list them in alphabetical order.

* Although some might find this as [[Skub|arguable,]] the characteristics describing the Asari race in [[Bioware|Mass Effect]] are blatantly Mary-Sue. Although not every Asari is a Mary Sue (though some are), when it comes to the general race as a whole, oh boy does their 'Sueness' reach Chakat levels. Examples on what makes them a Mary Sue includes having the second longest lifespan behind the Krogan (over 1000 years, plus they lack the Krogans violent nature which can easily waste their long lifespans), all of them are biotic users, every one in the game is intelligent, founders of the council, considered sexy by many other species despite being a monogendered species (even Salarians, who lack a sex drive and mate by necessity), and are deliberately oversexualised by the developers so they can be [[Rule 34|Rule 34'ed to death]]. Their race as a whole is portrayed as peace loving hippies, the best diplomats, the most respected species in the galaxy as well as having a serious case of "Holier/Morally Superior then thou" attitude. Their ship the "Destiny Ascension" is the largest and most powerful ship in the Citadel fleet and their ships perversely resemble a lady privates because you know they all look like "wominz". Thessia, their homeworld, is regarded as the "jewel" of the galaxy (instead of the fucking Citadel) as well as having the largest amount of Eezo which partially explains how their entire race is biotics. Any asari can 'Read' most people's minds and inner-thoughts with near complete-accuracy, though only if that person agrees to it (they can literally mindfuck you). Furthermore with their way of reproduction, since they are monogendered (Meaning their all female) a lot of newcomers in Mass Effect start to scratch their heads on how they manage to get each other pregnant without any physical evidence of having a dick (Although one of the hypothesis is that they might actually screw around with the local fauna AKA Bestiality). However the fluff states this as Parthenogenesis, for those that don't know what it is, think of them as chickens....which is actually hilarious if you seriously put the comparison in context. Another odd thing about their reproduction is that somehow the Asari have the capability of getting pregnant from just about '''''Anyone'''''. [[Chakat|Do those traits sound fucking familiar to you?]] So all in all, not only are they a holy (unholy?) fusion of a smurf, elf and a monster girl, but they also commit in sweaty Lesbian/Bestiality/Xenoality orgies with almost everyone, turning the Asari race into nothing more then a giant Whorehouse for Aliens and Humans to fap in a hundred dozen ways and yet they are still ''okay'' with that....<s>Slaneesh approve of this!</s> {{BLAM|'''''BLAM! BLAM! DOUBLE HERESY!'''''}} But to be fair, at least Asari aren't [[Avatar|furries]] or physical [[Chakat|hermaphrodites]].
** Amusingly enough, the third game reveals that the only reason Asari are so much more advanced than the other races is because the Protheans (the super-advanced precursor race) were deliberately manipulating them and sneaking tech to them in their ancient history in order to give them a boost (such as genetically engineering them to be a race of skilled biotics and [[STC|leaving instruction manuals on how to create all sorts of advanced technology and deal with the other races in their "beacons"]]). The hope was that if they were given enough a headstart, the Asari would be able to unite and lead the other races to victory against the Reapers (in other words, they were deliberately ''trying'' to make the Asari Mary Sues in order to give the next cycle an advantage over the Reapers). Instead the Asari kept that knowledge to themselves and used it to become the most powerful race in the galaxy. When the Reapers showed up, the Asari buried their heads in the sand like the smurf elf pussies they are on their homeworld, leaving the other races to fend for themselves, than promptly got their asses kicked by the Reapers (Which they probably deserved it for being such [[Eldar|self-righteous and selfish cockbags]]). Perhaps one of the few instances of a Mary Sue being both invoked and subverted.

*[[Angry Marines]]. When was the last time YOU heard of an Angry Marine LOSING? Thought no-{{BLAM}}
{{BLAM|+The current author has been executed by the Inquisition to prevent the total destruction of the Imperium of Man by Angry Marines. Thank you and have a nice day.+}}

* The Draka, once human, then Posthuman slaver empire from the Domination Series by S.M Stirling, collapsing the "Bullying, slaving, torture-happy, heartless Karma Houdini asshole who is the channelized catharsis of the author rather than genuine art." shtick into a black hole the size of the galaxy. South African British colony turns into a nation of literal "[[Drow]] in human skin" when due to (mis)fortune, every losing side from wars against tyranny gets exiled to Drakia, the British colony named after Francis Drake. Turning chattel slavery into a race-wide, airtight regulated franchise in the case of blacks, they exploit entire Africa by taking the colonies belonging to the enemies of British people. Unifying in a Spartan way of life, completely shedding any morality in the case of slave control, eventually Draka Dominion declares independence from the British Crown, and turns entire Africa into a mega plantation with industrial giants enticed by obscene handouts exploited from Africa. The Draka then adopt Nietzschean ideals, and declare every non-Draka a slave, or a potential slave. Somehow the First World War results in Ottoman Empire being overran by them, and eventually the Draka start turning white people into slaves starting from Italy with approval of Hitler and employ black slave soldiers who are given ample living standards and items with free rape of anyone that is captured.
** This (Post-World War 2) is where the story turns from an [[Edgy]] /pol/-fanfic to pants-on-head retarded FAPfic. Though the series display a very detailed alternate history AND technological evolution (steamer cars phased out far later than combustion engine driven ones), the Draka's endless S&M laden plantation slave bitch fantasy hits overdrive and they simultaneously conquer Russia, Europe minus , and entire CHINA with black soldiers and their white masters that were, mind you, from an Africa that wasn't overpopulated but ecologically protected. They do not lose one, ONE battle while rampaging and raping and enslaving. Their methods are extremely savage: impalement and rape are regular actions at every resistance, and the black soldiers can take out any psychosis forming from mass atrocities on other slaves back home, every capture tortured until completely broken before being enslaved. Their research facilities have *zero* ethics, using up millions of humans in torturous experiments to develop fantastic drugs, bioweapons and medications since, well, their citizens are drilled from age 2 to 18 with a Nietzsche-on-crack ideology to circumvent a sudden case of conscience to heart. Eventually they change the Draka Citizen DNA to that of an immortal superhuman species, destroy the rest of non-Draka armies with [[/pol/|weaponized AIDS]] and make all slaves into docile abhumans and take over the rest of the world, rape all the women and men, destroy every monument and cultural heritage not belonging to them, turn the USA into a hunting reserve to hunt humans like animals (and eat them sometimes). Then the Draka expand into alternate universes, infiltrating our world and its parallel versions and start taking them over as well and enjoying immortal, eternal exploitation of everyone everywhere forever. What the entire US and UK plus the rest of Asia, Japan, Southeast Asia does is to create an Alliance that walks on eggshells and fucks up every espionage action against the Draka, loses every battle and ends up escaping to Alpha Centauri. S.M Stirling eventually writes a sequel where an alternate Earth has the [[Humanity's_Last_Stand|human Alliance win for a a change]], but the damage is already done. We are graced with the endless plantation BDSM fetish fantasy of bisexual, blonde, white, transhuman, constantly horny blue-eyed men and women fucking their farm slaves of either gender and make them work their asses off after breaking them in of every little inch of their personalities. A particularly nasty lesbian Draka is Stirling's Creator Pet: she manages to capture the sister of an American soldier who killed her lover and makes her a slave. She tortures her with a mental chip for years to destroy her brain, forcing her to bear her lover's clone children, and rapes her mentally, and eventually, physically. And her side wins the war, the girl escapes an old ruined wreck into space(albeit back to her brother), and our bitch spends her long, long life to torture and kill surviving Alliance holdouts for fun, happily raping, killing and torturing ever after. Seriously, even Kosak had more of a shred of decency, Stirling.

* The [[Drow]] from [[Drowtales]]. Their Mary Sue factor isn't even funny. Shaped by several inputs from several authors, their Drow are the best example of how too many cooks ruin a soup as well as the main author's high school misantrophy hitting overdrive. The Drowtales' Drow are practically immortal, have regenerating limbs, never menstruate, possess metals that are impenetrable to other sentient beings and virtually twice as big and a thousand times as powerful as other races to the point of a few drow kids on an adventure can butcher a city with innocents to save their friend who was about to be killed for its blood, since humans, hunted and enslaved, are desperate to the point of killing elves for their blood just to have an edge. Their houses in underworld have all the modern technology complete with giant walkers and submarines, modern machinery, PARTICLE RIFLES and magitech street lights, but somehow they need human and other races as slaves and this need is shown as just and necessary right at the beginning with the "good" faction's "surface raiders" murdering an entire village and taking women and children to slave markets because the poor widdle drow need slaves and "It's just their unique morality". And the way the webcomic shows them as tragic beings is the cherry on top: I didn't know it was so tragic and sad when the humans counterattack to save their raided relatives from your homes, locked in to be sold as slaves.

* ALL [[Chakat|Chakats!]] The entire fucking race are distilled and purified Mary Sues, sometimes warping stories they are even mentioned in passing. Not just [[monstergirls|feline-centaur]] [[/d/|dick-girls]](Sick Fucks), they're also each master psionicists with faster-than-light mind-reading, able to cure deep neurotic complexes with a good deep dickin', strongest and most stable form of 'Taurs', considered as the most "beautiful thing in the universe" despite looking exactly like lions with the fact that they have dicks, morally perfect to the extreme, nobody technically hates them, their breast milk can turn the most feeble human into mini-Arnold Schwarzeneggers and every non-Chakats seem to have a unnatural and unhealthy lifestyle on trying to "Do it" with them. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of ''other'' Catgirls outside of this furfag heresy, that are more attractive, cuter and prettier then them with the added benefit that they are actually female, [[HERESY|not hermaphrodite abominations]].

* [[Elf|Elves]] are often portrayed this way in fiction(Look above at Drowtales), though there are exceptions and it's becoming rarer for elves to be portrayed as Mary Sues. A lot of their sueness comes from how idealized they are. They're always beautiful, sometimes even without making an effort, either immortal or have very long lifespans and can only die from violence. They're often considered to have the moral high ground yet also be condescending to the younger races, but the elves contempt kept getting justified in some stories. Some have the natural ability to make anything beautiful from even the most base materials, naturally have great magical ability, and are often favored by their gods. However, there are evil elves in fiction and some elves who are morally good without being Mary Sues. Then there are curvy anime rapebait elves (often dark elves) who get high on male smells and secretions and turn into thicc fuckdolls taking massive amounts of dicking.
** Elves from Eragon are probably the worst example of Mary Sue elves yet. Elves from Eragon move so fast that humans are incapable of tracking their movements, can run over a hundred miles an hour, and can keep up that pace for days at a time, are atheists who are morally correct in all regards, can destroy entire human armies in minutes yet are somehow on the losing end of a war and have to hide in a forest on the edge of the map, are one of only two races on the planet capable of riding dragons, the other being humans (who literally turn into elves when they start riding the dragon), are naturally connected to magic to such a level that an elven child can surpass an adult human who has spent their entire life studying magic, and, apparently, were the second race in existance only predated by dragons.

*[[Doctor Who|Whoverse Humanity]] takes this up to a 100 million in this case. Depending on the timeline, Humanity not only manage to become the dominant ruler of the multi-galaxy not once, but [[What|'''Five Fucking Times!''']] Without any indication on how they manage to conquer the Galaxy, thriving with hostile Aliens that could LOLStomp the Necrons, Eldar, Orks, Tau, Tyranid, Chaos in all it's forms and the Imperium ''combined''. Furthermore not only are they one of the [[Imperium of Man|most numerous species in the Universe,]] but also one of the most adaptable and longest lasting race, as seen when they are one of the [[Grimdark|few species still alive near the end of the fucking Universe.]] To give you an idea on how fucking ludicrous Humanity got within Doctor Who, in just 500 years from present day, Humanity was already a major force in the Galaxy ([[Star Trek|Compare this to most Sci-Fi timelines]] [[Bioware|where Humanity either just started to explore their surroundings]] [[Halo|or already establish a small and insignificant area]]), as well as having weapons that could make [[Strike Legion]] seem useless in comparison, and when you take note on how short the timeline distance is between the present day and the end of the Universe, it just makes you say to yourself....the Fuck? Compare this to say [[Star Wars]] in which they have the excuse of not knowing how long Humanity has been space traveling, or [[WH40K]] where the thousands of years gap of slow progress before the Warp Drive was invented seem much more plausible then this absurd scenario. You know Humanity is a Mary Sue when even the near-death of the Universe can't kill them off....until a certain Dues Ex Machina appeared. To be fair, they only gain their Sueness momentum when a certain Time Lord keep on foiling the plans of countless Aliens attempting to conquer and crush humanity in various stages in time; either that or because the Doctor has a unusually unhealthy Humanophile fetish. They are probably one of the few examples of a "Accidental Mary Sue", in which the Doctor, with his fancy Time gizmos and intellect, unintentionally guided Humanity to such power levels by either saving their asses from certain doom or altering the timeline so they won't fuck up, due to his love of Humans. Granted Whoverse Humanity is definitely far from morally perfect (A substantial amount of Whoverse villains are Humans and the multiple Human Empires itself are morally questionable at best. The Timelords themselves are hardly better than the Daleks at times.), the main point of contention is how influentially powerful they are for such a young race while at the same time, disregarding other more ancient and more powerful races (Silurian, Cybermen, Sontarian, Ice Warriors, etc) that should be the one having more galactic screen time and hegemony then them.
**Whoverse humanity Mary Sueness can't really be blamed on any one author. It's basically what happens when the newer writers don't want to change or retcon forty year old fluff.

* Dwarves as seen in the Artemis Fowl series. While virtually all dwarven exploits described are performed by one Mulch Diggums, most of his Mary Sueness is excused as "dwarven racial talents." His spit can harden into a glowing substance that's strong enough to resist high speed impacts, he can fart hurricanes and shit cannonballs, he can dig a self sealing tunnel through any earth-like substance as fast as a man can run, drink water with his pores, use said pores like suction cups if he's thirsty, hear better than a stethoscope, and has tremorsense to at least a hundred feet. Dwarves are also described as having access to the fairy magic (Common uses include instant healing, invisibility, and mid-grade mind control), but Mulch gave that up to steal things instead. This despite no readily apparent level adjustment, nor any mention of useful powers before those same powers are necessary, puts this race quite firmly in this category.

* LeShay are a race that appeared as a monster in the D&D 3th edition book [[Epic Level Handbook]] and have been completely forgotten about since then like most of what was in that book. They are described as being to elves what elves are to humans only more so. That sentence alone should immediately set off red flags. LeShay are extremely powerful immortals resembling albino elves who are survivors from a civilization that was erased from history. Whoever it was that came up with this race probably did not intend for them to be Mary Sues and the concept of them actually isn't that bad, but they probably would have ended up as Mary Sues if any bad writers had gotten a hold of them.

* The Mandalorians in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, depending whose writing them. While good under the correct writers, under some of the bad ones (Hint, it involves Karen fucking Traviss), they compete with badly written expanded universe Jedi and Sith for the position of Star Wars' Ultrasmurfs. In the expanded universe ALL mandos are elite warrior mercenaries, skilled enough to take out armed enemies with their bare hands and usually packing enough fire power to level a building. They're so badass in fact that they're known to hunt Jedi for fucking sport because they're the only thing that'll give'm a real challenge. Experienced jedi hunters can be good enough to fight them head on despite all their force powers and saber swinging because they have the right gear and experience to counter it. Bear in mind that Mandos do not use the force in anyway. Karen Traviss also writes them with the Mary Sue trait of always being right and people agreeing with them for things they call the Jedi out for that they didn't even do, like create the clone army, and makes them out to be the pinnacle of civilization despite being warmongers with a history of allying with the Sith and trying to conquer the galaxy themselves.
** The most famous Mandalorian, Boba Fett, generally avoids becoming this trope and is just a plain badass (as a bonus he rarely if ever engages in the dick-stroking egomania of Traviss's Mandies), but under bad writers his badassitude can push into this. His father Jango Fett follows this same idea; in fact his origin story partly involves his old merc group of Mandalorians getting slaughtered by a group of Jedi in a moment that reads sort of like "fuck you Karen Traviss". Sure, Jango kills six Jedi with his bare hands in that massacare, but the Jedi he killed were not decades old masters and he is (as an individual) supposed to be that good. The fact that he managed that made Palpatine choose him as the Clone Army template donor.

* [[Avatar|All Na'vi]], the blue-skinned eco-humping gobshites.

* Smurfs. They're portrayed as a peace-loving, quasi-communist society who always come out on top in their primary conflict with an evil wizard family and are idealized to the point of ridiculousness. They're also friends with animals and never have to worry about being eaten even though they're the size of large mice. [[Skub|Then ''again'']], most of the other conflicts they encounter are usually due to one or more of their clan fucking something up in accordance with their [[Derp|singular personality trait]], and overall they seem collectively naive about things to the point of gullibility. Said approach is likely designed to promote the usual aesop of teamwork and the importance of family, so it could be far worse.

* [[Twilight|Vampires in a certain book series]]. Even though they were as gay as fuck (which damaged the reputation of actual vampires).
** [[Vampire]]s in general started in falling in modern years due to their weaknesses being forgotten. They were often portrayed by writers as hard to kill monster that is able to use magic, good at many martial arts, good swordsman, master scholar, good charismatic looking in appearance, living in big castles while commanding other monsters like they were their servants or slaves, making them the Elves of the monster world by that definition. Initially in novels like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Vampires had notable weaknesses including regularly drinking the blood of many human victims to stay young and powerful, but later writers dropped this in favor of making Vampires straight up immortal. Seriously, some writers even give them plot armor to get past their weaknesses of holy objects, divine power or sunlight (though the former usually depends on the author's attitude towards religion).
** [[Tremere|Clan Tremere]] (a.k.a. "Tremary Sues") from the ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' [[RPG|ttRPG game]] are an entire clan of Mary Sues as they were [[Mark Rein·Hagen|the author]]'s pet mages from his previous ''[[Ars Magica]]'' game. Tremary Sues enjoy the narrative absurdity of holding a near-monopoly on vampiric thaumaturgy, despite the fact that older vampiric clans had millennia to perfect thaumaturgy before the first Tremere was ever born.
** Probably one of the best exceptions of this is Count Orlock from the classic silent film ''Nosferatu''. Whereas nowadays vampires get the treatment of being oh-so-sexy, suave, charismatic, pitiable creatures whose lives suck despite being immortal, undead bloodsuckers, Orlok is just a hideous predatory monster out to drink blood and feed. No charisma, no suave, nothing to pity, nothing to feel empathy for. In short, straight-ahead horror vampires done completely right.
** By contrast, the vampires of the House of Night series by mother and daughter team P. C. and Kristen Cast are far worse examples than even Twilight's bastardization. To clarify, vampires worship the goddess Nyx who is the only real goddess, are selected by a tracker when they are a human teen, are the poor, oppressed minorities of the world even though literally almost every famous person in human history was a vampire, will become utterly handsome and beautiful unless they reject the Change in which case they are afforded no sympathy as they die due to events outside their control, every negative stereotype is because of stupid humans, they can never due anything bad...in short, vampires done so badly that Twilight is more believable as good vampire literature. Seriously.

* [[Doobies]] describe themselves this way. Aside from their crazed fans, it is obvious to everyone else that they aren't.

* Saiyans from Dragonball are practically born more powerful than any human could ever be, get exceptionally stronger every time they almost die (the words that are actually used to describe it) can literally become strong enough to eclipse actual gods with little effort and have more asspulls and deus ex machinas than any other race on this list. A twenty-three-year-old Saiyan can destroy an entire place with a single movement in the anime, and the manga implies that a Saiyan can do it with a finger before the first manga even concludes.

*The Forerunners from Halo easily fit the bill of being mary sues. For one, the Forerunners were created by actual no holds barred Gods who could rewrite time and space with little to no effort. The Gods, known as the Precursors (real original), thought the forerunners were such hot shit that they decided to make them the new gods of the universe before they moved onto the next one, despite the Forerunners having achieved nothing of note yet. But then the gods changed their minds and decided to make humanity the new gods of the universe. The forerunners responded by turning on their guns and literally murdering actual gods with no effort. The remaining gods ran off in a panic and turned to dust, later degenerating into the Flood. Then the Forerunners pulled a bunch of crazy shit like building ships that could ROFLstomp everything in Warhammer with minimal effort and creating an AI so advanced it could simulate entire universes in microseconds. Then they somehow got wiped out by the flood.
**The Forerunner's main enemy, the Flood, are similarly sueish, if not more so. While it is dubious if you can call the flood a race or a single organism, it is undoubtedly completely OP, to the point of it being ridiculous. For one, they are quite literally the degenerate (ergo inferior) offspring of the Precursors, but they are somehow better than them in every way. They can infect time and space just by existing for a long period of time, are completely unbeatable, incurable, and can literally infect all life in the universe, including purely mechanical technology somehow, despite that not being how biology works. They are also capable of convincing AI that was programmed with the simple purpose of protecting all life from being infected by the flood, to join them by simply talking to them, can convince an entire group of human scientists to kill themselves just by saying a single sentence, and can never be defeated as 'they will always return'

== Mary Suetopias ==

As mentioned in the main article, there are some cases of entire civilizations getting the "Mary Sue" label with some justice. Here are a few.

* The Draka, before they become a species, are usually held to be a fairly strong example of a Villian Suetopia. See above in Mary Sue Races for more.
* Anarchist habitats in [[Eclipse Phase]]. To quote TVTropes, they "are apparently flawless societies where robots and nanofabricators provide for everyone, crime is virtually non-existent due to surveillance sensors everywhere and well-armed populaces, and there's no shortage of spare bodies like there is in the Transitional Economies."
* Aldis, from [[Blue Rose]], has this accusation thrown at it, with some justification.
* The various civilizations of Ayn Rand's science fiction are either Mary Suetopias or Villain Suetopias. No inbetween.

* [[Ultramar]]. Need more be said?


There are some "special cases" (parodies, twists, and deconstructions), that are worth mentioning:

* Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is... odd. Go read it if you want more, because it's ''very'' short. 
* Rapture and Columbia from the Bioshock series are "functionalist" Suetopias: Because the games are about killing lots and lots of dudes, you need to have those dudes be crazy or assholes or both. Rapture could actually be interpreted as a criticism of Ayn Rand's Suetopias by showing how they will go wrong in a less ideal world.
* The original "Utopia" by Thomas More is interesting, in that it somewhat parodies the concept before it existed. To provide two examples, "Utopia" is a pun on ''eutopia''-"good place", and ''outopia''-"no place", and the frame story narrator's name translates as "Peddler of Nonsense". Yes, this means that the man who literally coined the term Utopia immediately considered it wishful fantasy.
* Mordent, from [[Ravenloft]], has a somewhat interesting twist. Its Darklord focuses more on Ghosts than on the living, so the living aren't the focus of the horror, and as such, for Ravenloft, it's a relative Utopia ''for the living''. Once you die there, however...
* Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" is widely interpreted as a parody of such works.
* The Federation of [[Star Trek]] seems like a Mary Suetopia on the surface. However because the show was initially focused on morality stories the "Insane Admiral" trope crops up every now and then, showing some leaks beneath the surface. In latter seasons of TNG and all Deep Space Nine those leaks become full blown cracks, with the Maquis and the consequences of the Dominion War. Captain Sisko even rants about this a few times during the show. Earth in Star Trek is practically a paradise compared to most other planets in the galaxy, and thus "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." With examples such as the Federation spy agency Section 31 engineering a virus to use on The Dominion's Founders(aka rulers) or Sisko himself collaborating with a former Cardassian spy/assassin to bring the Romulans into the war via a ''massive'' fraud.

* Alpha Complex, from [[Paranoia]]. Need more be said?


== Somewhat Special Cases ==

There are a few cases of characters who could be referred to in-universe as a Sue, or serve as a non-joking deconstruction of the idea, or are referred to above sufficiently to be worth describing, but aren't actually Sues. (Characters who veer in and out of Suedom depending on the writer or episode go on the main list, BTW.)

* The Crimson King from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. He's talked up as a big threat, and his plan legitimately threatens the universe; but when confronted, he turns out be a paper tiger, whose chief power was getting so many people and monsters working on one page on his plan to destroy the world, and was otherwise actually rather mediocre compared to them. Given the heavy theme of '''disappointment''' in both the series as a whole and the last book of it in particular, this sorta worked on a meta level, but was very, well, disappointing. (For the reason he's included here, see Darkseid above.)
* Griffith, from [[Berserk]], seems a Mary Sue on the surface, leading the efforts to save Midland and defeat the Kushan invaders while everything goes his way and everyone praises him... but then you remember that he's also a member of the Godhand who's got reality-warping powers and uses them to manipulate everything and everyone around him to his advantage. Basically, Griffith hacked the game and then began playing on the lowest difficulty, while making it harder for everyone else. If anything, Griffith is all the common jokes people make about a Mary Sue deconstructed, showing how utterly awful and soulless such a person would actually be. On the other hand, one of his former Warband member, Rickert, saw through his bullshit and slapped him for it even though he was not there when Griffith betrayed his comrade. So not everyone is falling for Griffith.

* Jonathan, from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Superstar", provides a pretty good case study of the in-universe Mary Sue.

*Joeseph Joestar, though he does have some sueish traits such as being a super-genius who can trick anyone and knows exactly what people are going to say before they say it, alongside having the appearance of a Greek god, is very much not a mary sue when you actually get down to it. He is extremely flawed, to the point of being weaker than all of his allies in part two and part three, both physically and stand/hamon wise, is very obviously outclassed by the villains of both respective arcs (Dio being able to easily beat him without even touching him, and Kars being a literal god by the end) and does extremely scummy things, such as cheating on his wife with a Japanese woman, who's race he supposedly hates.

*Momonga/Ainz Ool Gown from Overlord boarders on Mary-Sueish and is the protagonist of an [[Isekai]] work, but is also a decent deconstruction of invincible Villain Sues at the same time. He is transported to a fantasy world as his [[Lich]] MMO avatar, along with his Guild Hall and all its NPCs, now alive. He's still a no-life (literally) Japanese salary man, but finds he has lost his humanity and feelings, all the better to pretend to be (and eventually become) the overlord his adoring minions expect. These expectations pressure him to conquer the world with his gamer skills, system knowledge and corporate experience, min-maxing his way to success whilst bullshitting people that he's an evil mastermind. He still has many advantages however in resources, magic and diplomacy (substituting sales pitches for evil monologues, surprisingly easy) compared to all other characters so far. This results in him single-handedly winning wars, having an Empire become a vassal state almost by accident, and annexing a whole town from a neighbouring kingdom to rule over (Word of god is that no other YGGDRASIL players will appear). Being by many definitions OP, drama arises from him not having complete control and knowledge of his minions' actions. Though fanatically loyal they are constantly guessing his true intentions to try and impress him, misinterpreting his commands, and in some cases almost outright deceiving him. Two such examples are Ainz's advisor Albedo plotting behind his back to kill other Supreme Beings that he wants alive and unharmed, and Demiurge harvesting human captives to make magical items (Ainz himself mistakenly thinks Demiurge is only using animals because Demiurge refers to humans as animals on account of his contempt for mortal races). Both are in part because of Ainz's actions, and in any case, he has ordered equally terrible things himself. :* While most of Ainz's female guardians lust after him, even this is deconstructed. Albedo's a succubus, so lust is par the course, and yandere for Ainz because he altered her code in YGGDRASIL to change her from " a slut" to "in love with Momongo" as a joke. Shalltear wants Ainz because he's a walking skeleton and she's a necrophile (and not to Ainz' taste being a loli vampire; yeah... even then she holds her absent YGGDRASIL creator in higher esteem than Ainz) and Aura keeps a lid on her crush (she's also a flat-chested teenage elf and wary of jealous reprisals from Albedo and Shalltear). Ultimately, the fact that Ainz is a walking skeleton means he's unable to fulfill their desires or consummate his own.
:*TL:DR: Ainz's skills as a salary man and a competitive gamer don't translate well to politics or world conquest. Without his own gamebreaking powers, his almost as powerful loyal NPCs, his skull poker face and incompetence from some of the enemy commanders, Ainz's plans wouldn't have worked nearly as well.

* The Monkey King, from [[Mythology|Journey To The West]], if one assumes he isn't a religious figure and thus safe to include in this list, is interesting in that while he's very close to being a Mary Sue, several factors drag him away from the classification:
*#He's charged with protecting an unworldly monk, along with a horse, an idiot, and a SUPER idiot. Rescuing them is most of what he does in the main body of the story.
*#He's repeatedly shown as being outwitted by the Buddha. While he's more clever than anybody else besides the Buddha, the implication is clear: there '''are''' people better than him.
*#Even if one cares to dip into a religious reading, one can see in his introduction the clear Buddhist message "No matter how awesome you are, you are still trapped in the machinations of Desire and Karma"; alternately, even if you don't care for religion, there's also the message "make enough of a nuisance of yourself, and your enemies will eventually slap you down even if it means _____" (in the case of the Monkey King, swallowing their pride and asking help from somebody they dislike). (In other words: A deconstruction of certain kinds of Mary Sues, before the idea of a "Mary Sue" was even created.)

* [[The Raven Queen]] is a fairly good example of why "Mary Sue" accusations, unless taken from a Author Centered or Functional perspective, are somewhat useless. TRQ hits many Mary Sue buttons, and thus is sometimes accused of being a Sue; ''HOWEVER,'':
** She's never the protagonist, and when she does appear, she's treated the same as any of the other deities in 4e. Accusations of Functional Suedom thus sort of fall flat.
** While she may hit some Authorial-Centered (or Doyalist) definitions of the term, it's probably more appropriate to compare her to just about any other non-monster female character in 4th Edition D&D in this context--while she is obviously designed to attract those who are attracted to a certain kind of woman, so are all the other non-monster females (to quote a famous demotivator, "RPG Artwork: Let's face it, a lot of it is porn. (Pretty odd porn, too.)").
** She is no longer an example at all due to her backstory being completely rewritten in 5th edition to make her fit in with the setting better. She is no longer even a god since her attempt to become one was sabotaged, turning her into a phantom with a craving for knowledge and memories.

* Saitama from One-Punch Man. A manga/anime/webcomic that satirizes comic book super heroes. As the title says he able to defeat just about any opponent with one punch (with a few exceptions that require two or, rarely, three). While stronger than most of the "S-Class heroes" (the highest rank in the Hero Association), at the start of the series Saitama's personal life pretty much sucked. He had to pinch pennies to eat and had no knowledge of the Hero Association until he was notified by others of it's existence. As most can easily guess his strength makes most fights unsatisfying for him. Even the arc villains who force him to use his Serious Series techniques will leave him bored. Since nobody knew who he was until recently. Credit for his work went to other people and the super hero name he was given by the association is "Caped Baldy".
** Just to be clear, the main reason why he's not actually a Sue has to do with the usual focus of the series: That Saitama gets no satisfaction from his lopsided victories, and the fact that the World's Strongest Man is something of a pathetic loser.

* Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty. When it comes to his (seemingly) limitless ability to invent crazy sci-fi tech and to get himself out of virtually every tough spot, not to mention with getting away with being a colossal jerk to everyone around him, Rick could qualify as an anti-Sue. But his character is far from perfect, and he often falls under a combination of archetype and deconstruction. As a person, he is an older man who’s had a tough break (divorce and the death of a close family member in some parallel universe), and the fact that he has all this tech and that he either can't solve his personal problems or prevent new ones from occurring. Though the fact that he can be funny, the handful of moments of his positive qualities and being a fictional character do contribute to his likability.
** Again, to be clear: Rick's antics would probably qualify him for the main list, but the show is very clear on a few points that move him here: First, Rick is an asshole, and not the type you want to be, either (it's almost directly stated that his assholery grows from some pretty grim experiences and knowledge); second, Rick is not somebody you want to be, nor be around; and third, the writers realize that he's both of the above.
**Season 3 however, ruined this and tried to attempt to drop his dislikability, what few weaknesses he had, and just plain made him extremely overpowered.

* The main casts of [[Star Trek]] TOS and TNG (besides Wesley due to being Rodenberry's self insert, above)--in particular, James T. Kirk when not written by William Shatner-- provide a good reference line for Suedom. Although they are usually right by authorial fiat, there are several points that point the other way from Suedom:
*#They are also usually allowed to be wrong about an issue, at least initially (and rarely, but enough to be worth mentioning, all the way to the end of the story)
*#The fact that the focus is usually on the scenario presented, rather then the perfectness of the characters
*#They all have character flaws (even Kirk's "No Such Thing As A No Win Situation" attitude is presented as something that ''could'' get him and his crew killed one day)
*#They are not omni-compitent, even within their field--even Kirk has been outmaneuvered on occasion
*#Most importantly, the writing is usually of sufficient quality to not make their perfectness an issue (except, in Kirk's case, for works written by William Shatner)
*#Notably, as part of #2 and #5, there is no "right" solution to many of the situations beyond "survival"; the audience is usually allowed to draw its own conclusions about the morality of the situation, something usually lacking in the writing of the type of author who perpetrates a Sue.
** Combined, these points make them a good reference line for "hyper-competent" characters: Beyond here may lie Suedom

* At first glance, Tsukiko from [[Order of the Stick]] seems like a textbook Mary Sue, given the LONG list of Mary Sue boxes she ticks: Heterochromatic eyes, great beauty, skimpy clothing, unusually skilled for her young age, Japanese name meaning "moon child", oppressed by a stuck-up society not understanding her greatness etc. But in reality, Rich Burlew wrote her as a satirization and deconstruction of the Mary Sue archetype and the mindset that often creates such characters. The "misunderstanding" in question? They threw her in jail for '''literal''' corpsefucking. (Yes, she's a necrophiliac, and it's treated as being just as gross as it is IRL.) Great beauty? Nobody cares, and it doesn't make her a good person by default. Sees good in the bad guys that nobody else does? It's based on deliberately ridiculous logic that is completely wrong anyway. ([[What|The living are jerks, and the undead are the opposite of the living, ergo the undead must be good people]], she claims, the batshit insanity of which is called out for what it is. Also, she thinks that Xykon is some kind of Edward Cullen type-guy, as opposed to the Chaotic Evil Lich Sorcerer he ''actually is''.) A bad guy becomes a complete dumbass to accommodate her genius? Nope, Redcloak only let her have her way so his own, far more subtle machinations could avoid having attention drawn to them, and when she forces his hand he gladly demonstrates to her that she was completely outclassed by him the whole time. And to really drive home how wrong about herself she was, when she dies nobody on Team Evil gives a damn except the Monster in the Darkness, which only seems to have happened because he/she/whatever is the resident softie of the team. Also, Redcloak let her die at the hands of her own wights, [[Slaanesh|simultaneously her surrogate children, minions and lovers]], after controlling them, removing her ring that made her immune to level drain and giving her a "You suck!" speech about how undead are not people, just complex weapons, her thinking otherwise doesn't make it so and if she ever thought he was powerless before her, she was dead wrong, for a delicious dose of karma.
** TL;DR version: Tsukiko is a parody of a Sue, who is shown to be objectively deluded about everything.


[[Category:Mary Sue]]