Yang doesn't die in a great battle, isn't outsmarted in tactics, or even killed by a named character.

Admiral Bucock: ' A toast to democracy.'.

Schönkopf finally remembering the name of his daughter's mother as he dies looking down on his own carnage and the enemy soldiers cowering in front of him.

Commander Jean Robert Lap clutching his fiances handkerchief as he lays dying an utterly avoidable death. Fortunately, he earned a friend in Kircheis, only for his life to get worse thanks to Kaiser Friedrich IV offering money to Sebastian so that he can claim Annerose, and claim Annerose he did.

Born to poor nobles, he saw Annerose as a mother figure all because his mother got run over by a high noble and said high noble's family refused to apologize, making his father Sebastian resort to alcohol. And of course Reinhard not dying under equally thrilling circumstances, but instead a mere disease. But the only two people he wanted to share it with are either dead and not talking to him.

Reinhard fulfills his dream: his sister is saved, he now commands the Neue Reich, and manages to be a great leader.

The sad silence that falls following Yang getting news of Jessica Edwards' death.

Legend of galactic heroes novel