: Re: Should I let my hero die with the villain? I'm writing my own fantasy novel and the way I want it to end is with the villain showing his humanity to the hero, begging for mercy, and when

@Kevin153

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Killing the villain and the hero as an end to a long running conflict between them is a perfectly reasonable endgame in many cases, however:

If either the hero or the villain is willing to kill the other, and this is not their first encounter, someone should be dead already. Unless you can contrive to keep the two characters away from each other for the rest of the narrative one or the other should have taken out their opposite number already. They could have tried and failed but they need to have shown a willingness to go that far or their mutual knife work will be a jarring and off-flavour ending.
If the hero doesn't show a willingness to kill other villains before his ill fated final encounter his sudden change of heart in the face of impending death will tarnish his heroism, and be a jarring end note to the tale. He may still kill the villain as a consequence of his death, like having a, literal, death grip on the villain and pulling him off a building as his legs give out for example.
If the villain doesn't go out of their way to try and kill the hero at other times in the piece they can't get stabby at the last minute without justification. Think Heath Ledger's Joker, who'd rather toy with the hero than try to kill him, a sudden about face in a saner character who had shown the same proclivity would be jarring if left unjustified. Justification can take many forms though, the villain may discover the who the hero is, and that he's banging the villain's sister or similar. The villain may experience a lose, whatever something has to change the way he relates to the hero if he wasn't taking a purely homicidal approach to their relationship already.

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