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What are some good alignment examples? Some I think are
LG:
Superman, Princess Leia, Robocop (though he usually starts out as LN), Professor Xavier
NG:
Spiderman, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Mario Bros
CG:
Sonic The Hedgehog, The Doctor (Doctor Who), Han Solo (Though he starts as CN)
LN:
Spock, Data, Emma Frost, The Punisher (bordering on LE)
N: Lara Croft Locke (from Lost) Galactus (yes, he eats planets, but doesn't have a choice) ,The Living Tribunal
CN: Shadow The Hedgehog, Most of the "good guys" in the Borderlands games, Harley Quinn (some versions are CE, but still more about the C than the E.)
LE: Doctor Doom, The Party (from 1984), Magneto (usually), Claude Frollo
NE: Palpatine, Thanos, Dr Eggman, Bowser
CE: The Joker, Sabertooth (from X-men) Xenia from Goldeneye.
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THIS is one of my favorites ^_^
Weird. When I open this on desktop, it loads fine, but if I try on mobile, I get a "May contain erotic imagery" warning.
It's an alignment chart for the characters of Deep Space 9. Sorry if anyone else was taken aback.
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Lawful Evil: Lord Havelock Vetinari of Discworld fame. Emphasis on the Lawful part though. His evil is strictly of the necessary kind.
Well, except that mime thing of course...
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Robinhood was used as the archetypical Chaotic Good example.
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Frankenstein's monster is my go-to chaotic neutral. He acts in service to himself, without concern for the thoughts of bystanders but also without malice, and avoiding conflict where possible, he is very selfish, but also self-contained in that selfishness
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LG: Captain America
CG: Sonic the Hedgehog
LE: Darth Vader (too obvious)
CE: Sephiroth (bit unconventional, but fits the part of an omnicidal maniac)
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What are some good alignment examples? Some I think are
LG:
Superman, Princess Leia, Robocop (though he usually starts out as LN), Professor XavierNG:
Spiderman, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Mario BrosCG:
Sonic The Hedgehog, The Doctor (Doctor Who), Han Solo (Though he starts as CN)LN:
Spock, Data, Emma Frost, The Punisher (bordering on LE)N: Lara Croft Locke (from Lost) Galactus (yes, he eats planets, but doesn't have a choice) ,The Living Tribunal
CN: Shadow The Hedgehog, Most of the "good guys" in the Borderlands games, Harley Quinn (some versions are CE, but still more about the C than the E.)
LE: Doctor Doom, The Party (from 1984), Magneto (usually), Claude Frollo
NE: Palpatine, Thanos, Dr Eggman, Bowser
CE: The Joker, Sabertooth (from X-men) Xenia from Goldeneye.
Spock and Data are Lawful Good. In fact both will disobey orders to do good. (mostly in the movies, but still) Picard is much closer to LN, but I think he still falls on the side of good.
Magneto started off as LE, but by the end of the Eighties was TN, then the nineties pushed him eviler, then Grant Morrison had (later reconned) CE Magneto around 2003. Ever since, he's been Neutral or Good.
Palpatine was Lawful Evil in the original and prequel trilogy, but his final appearance pushes him to CE.
LG: Sherlock Holmes(The classic version, and ignoring some racism)
NG: Wonder Woman (she's as likely to uphold the law or break it)
CG: Green Arrow, Modern Deadpool
LN: Khan (in the original series, not the movies)
TN: Dr. Halsey (from Halo)
CN: Catwoman, Q (at least in TNG),
LE: The Borg,
NE: Deathstroke (he has a code, but he's willing to break it for vengeance)
CE: Nero (The villain of STAR TREK 2009, you might need to see the deleted scenes to understand)
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Robinhood was used as the archetypical Chaotic Good example.
Definitely has been except I've read one take of him being LG because he's actually supporting the proper king and line of succession. He has no lawful resources, as they've been corrupted, so resorts to chaotic means...to support the rule of law. That said his mantra of stealing from the rich to give to the poor fits CG pretty squarely IMO so as noted above, it's a matter of the author involved and how much of Robin's arc gets covered.
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And I disagree with several of the other examples, often because the breadth of a character, especially over an arc, makes it hard to narrow them down. And because these concepts are nebulous, at least without a mutual rubric. And again, because authors vary, and these characters become fluid tools suiting the moment.
ETA: I think some of the issue, and perhaps why real world examples were excluded, is because people can oscillate so much. A lot of evil people are good to their inner circle, and good people often struggle with identifying with those far outside theirs (or who've been maligned by "good" authorities).
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...and it's really really easy to let such thoughts become a proxy for politics. In many ways, politics and moral intuitions are coupled in the human brain. The line between, say, "LG" and "LN, but works for the people we like" is often so thin as to be nonexistent. The line between "LE" and "LN, but works for people we don't like" is even thinner.
Consider Mario. Consider the sheer number of koopa troopas that man has murdered in his ongoing efforts to control who sits on the throne of the Mushroom Kingdom. They all work for the wrong guy, though, so our first-glance moral intuition says they don't count.
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There's also a few villains listed with mental disorders showing up as examples of Chaotic Evil, which is something one should be careful of.
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...and it's really really easy to let such thoughts become a proxy for politics. In many ways, politics and moral intuitions are coupled in the human brain. The line between, say, "LG" and "LN, but works for the people we like" is often so thin as to be nonexistent. The line between "LE" and "LN, but works for people we don't like" is even thinner.
Consider Mario. Consider the sheer number of koopa troopas that man has murdered in his ongoing efforts to control who sits on the throne of the Mushroom Kingdom. They all work for the wrong guy, though, so our first-glance moral intuition says they don't count.
Which is another reason I try to decouple Lawful alignment from 'obeying the laws of the land'.
Think of Lawful alignment as 'deliberate', 'organized', or 'well-planned'.
Which is why I would put Robin Hood as LG. Nothing political at all. It is because his heists are so well planned and coordinated.
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LG:
Superman, Princess Leia, Robocop (though he usually starts out as LN), Professor Xavier
Just a nitpicking, but I wouldn't have Professor Xavier as LG, he does a lot of bad to awful things in the X men back, in the name of the greater good, and also has a terrible habit of putting teenagers in deadly situations.
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Robinhood was used as the archetypical Chaotic Good example.
I still remember a discussion quite awhile back (decades at least) as to the alignment of Robin Hood.
People defended EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE 9 alignments. More than one person for every aiignment.
I think this is a mugs game. Peoples view of alignment vary too much and peoples view of a fictional character's personality also vary too much (ESPECIALLY for any character that has been represented in multiple media by multiple creators over time).
And lets face it, any remotely two dimensional character is NOT going to fit easily into the alignment straight jacket. Alignments are just way, way, way too confining for any character with any pretensions to being realistic.
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I think there is a bias where people tend to consider themselves as Neutral on the Lawful-Chaotic axis and then assign a position on this axis as it relates to themselves instead of the real 0-point Neutral.
It is pretty easy to peg some posters on this axis too. Chaotic tend to equal Lawful with Evil while Lawful tend to confuse Chaotic and Evil.
I find it fascinating and pretty funny too.
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Chaotic tend to equal Lawful with Evil while Lawful tend to confuse Chaotic and Evil.
Well, of course! They're the other side. That makes them evil pretty much by definition, right?
I'm pretty sure that alignment was added to the game back in the early days just to have an explanation for why it was okay to kill those people but not these people. Well, human beings know how to handle systems that do that. It's pretty hard-wired, really.
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Chaotic tend to equal Lawful with Evil while Lawful tend to confuse Chaotic and Evil.Well, of course! They're the other side. That makes them evil pretty much by definition, right?
I'm pretty sure that alignment was added to the game back in the early days just to have an explanation for why it was okay to kill those people but not these people. Well, human beings know how to handle systems that do that. It's pretty hard-wired, really.
I think part of it's also the "slippery slope", that if one equates (their own) Lawfulness/Order or Chaos/Freedom with "best" that blends in w/ "most Good" so other people's ethics are "less Good" which is the pathway to "more Evil" so must be avoided. Being on the opposite in the Law/Chaos spectrum is a gateway to Evil, doncha' know? Hence some of the worst atrocities of Law/Chaos get justified. It's the certainty of righteousness behind one's ideology which is the true gateway to Evil IMO.
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Alignment was added due to Moorcock's fantasy setting(s) which featured a strong Chaos/Law war. It was typical for PC Thieves (and to some degree Elves, which was a class then) to be Chaotic (or at least barred from being Lawful/Lawful Good later on). Not much was made of this in grand terms, but in the field Law=civilization and Chaos=everything and everybody that hindered civilization. It was acceptable for Lawful types to fight if their civilizations (rulers, etc.) opposed each other so calling it the equivalent of "Good" vs. "Evil" didn't quite jibe.
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I think tenets have improved issues a lot, and it'd be cool if there were a tenet-based system, though that'd interfere heavily with so many mechanics that I enjoy. Maybe a tenet-primary system, where one delineates one's principles first, with Alignment arising from those choices rather than Alignment being the vague umbrella/corral that it is.
I think one thing we lose sight of here is the principles behind one's actions. That's seldom something we can connect with IRL, and few fictional characters explicitly reference their own or have the moral conundrums to illuminate them for us.
Do characters consider community vs. individuality or simply try to survive their predicaments? And then there are all those who justify evil actions for greater good, on all sides! (Which of course makes for a more interesting villain, but often undermines heroes.)
I'm not sure most authors even address issues at this level to be honest. They're too occupied with balancing other elements, and trying often at best to keep the characters' voices consistent. That's why Atticus Finch resonates so much, I recall landing in the number one spot for best movie hero in one poll, because he actually did have his morals and principles tested explicitly. Yet that's a rarity.
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You can make a good argument for batman in any alignment category.
Here is why tv tropes asks people not to attach alignments to characters "because characters are rarely so simplistic as to be easily assigned to a bucket on a 3x3 grid."
The Great Character Alignment Debate
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I pause here to note the existence of Moral Foundations theory. We all have foundations to our morality, but they're not always the *same* foundations... and part of the issue is that people who have morality based on differing foundations can appear to be evil to one another.
This is not to say that this is the be-all and end-all of moral thought. It's just that it's a more useful tool than an alignment chart, if you're trying to understand where people actually are in relation to one another.
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Lawful Neutral - Inspector Javert has always seemed the quintessential LN character.
Dream (from the Vertigo Comics) too.
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Javert seems to be a LN who thinks that means being Good, which is why he's so distraught when he realizes he's been hounding an actually Good (albeit perhaps Chaotic by circumstance) person for decades.
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As for moral foundations, I believe it was Haidt's research that showed people nearly universally value the same things! Yay...except when those principles come into conflict our choices differ enough for each other to be "other" therefore subject to stigma. And those principles often conflict! Oy.
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I'd probably leave out most comic-book heroes if I were trying to give someone examples. They have many different versions. I'd make an exception for Superman, because the overall impression is iconic enough.
The idea is what you convey to the listener. Robin Hood can be debated all over the map, but you will have better success conveying CG to most people with him.
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Michael Carpenter from the Dresden Files.
He's pretty much the perfect depiction of a Paladin.
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I'd probably leave out most comic-book heroes if I were trying to give someone examples. They have many different versions. I'd make an exception for Superman, because the overall impression is iconic enough.
The idea is what you convey to the listener. Robin Hood can be debated all over the map, but you will have better success conveying CG to most people with him.
I'd argue the opposite (from the perspective of someone who doesn't follow the comics closely, at least): comic characters are good examples because their specific manifestations change a lot, because this means that most people only have some impression of the characters' constant core traits or philosophies. These are much easier to classify than a complex character could ever be.
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I've always seen Karl "Helo" Agathon from Battlestar Galactica and Alphonso "Mac" Mackenzie from Agents of SHIELD as great examples of Lawful Good characters. They have a rigid sense of right and wrong and will follow it even when that means they have to go up against their friends and allies. They don't expect their colleagues to always agree with them, and know that sometimes they just won't be able to convince their friends to see things the same way, but they stick to their guns even when it causes them problems.
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LG - Batman
NG - Batman
CG - Batman
LN - Batman
NN - Batman
CN - Batman
LE - Batman
NE - Batman
CE - Batman
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Thought of a few more:
LG: Knuckles The Echidna and Blaze The Cat (from Sonic)
LE: Darkseid, Margaret White (from Carrie), Handsome Jack
CE: Simon Phoenix, Freddy Kreuger.
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Bronn is good example of neutral.