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I think I'm going to kill my MC at the end.

ascanius

Inkling
So I think I'm going to have one of my MC sacrifice herself at the end kinda saving others from themselves and the enemy. The reader is going to learn of this through another MC, her husband when he is given a letter she wrote. This mirrors something he tried ( he tried to kill the enemy early on but it ended in disaster)

The one thing is that it is very cliche, almost predictable.

I think this will work the best because she is like the corner Stone, the rock upon which everyone else builds upon, or the glue that keeps everything from falling apart. So now that mantle is passed on. She does this mostly because she has hope where others see doom, kinda forcing them to give it everything, they have nothing to lose but everything to gain.

Thoughts? What do you think about having a MC end in this manner. George Martin does this all the time but I'm not him so...
 
A cliche is still a tool, this coming from one who's fond of using them. Honestly, if you can make the impact felt and the death stick, the latter of which you plan to, then it seems like a worthwhile sacrifice. I don't really see too much issue for it.

As for Martin, he mostly kills P.O.V. characters rather then what I'd call full on MC's and he is of the habit of often killing them in senseless or often straight up in one sentence summaries. Not glorious sacrifices. There are the exceptions like the Red Wedding and Ned Stark being the big two, which again weren't sacrifice. Just a nice punch to show no one's safe.
 

Ruru

Troubadour
I'd say go for it. Carried off well, this is the sort of ending that sticks with a reader for a long time afterwards. It also gives your story an element of Tragic Victory, which I am a huge fan of. In my opinion though, it has to be foreshadowed. Not necessarily far back in the story, and it can be extremely subtle, but killing off your MC needs to be significant, not off hand. As you've described it, I think it would work: she does it to bring about the best possible outcome for everyone else, not just for the sake of it when there was, say, another simple option in which she didn't need to die.
 
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