Tragic Heroes and Doomed Protagonists

Protagonists whose downfall is driven chiefly by their own passions, moral flaws or unyielding will, the shape of tragedy Aristotle's Poetics first named and literary criticism has carried into the novel and short story ever since: a fatal flaw or overreaching desire meets circumstance and destroys the very greatness that drove the character forward. Belongs here: a protagonist whose central arc ends in death, ruin, exile or irreversible loss brought on chiefly by their own nature rather than by an external villain. Does not belong here: a morally ambiguous but surviving rebel figure, tracked under Byronic Heroes and Antiheroes below, even where that figure also suffers real consequence.