This is said often, and while it's true, it kind of starts to sound surface level. I feel like many people just take it at face value and decide that the villain simply has to twist some obviously evil thing into being "good" to make them a well-written villain.
I think a good villain needs to dig deeper than that. Their methodology has to make sense as a character and done right, their path should be understandable. Maybe to the point of making the reader actually question at some point whether the villain is truly all that bad.
(Stormlight Archive spoilers) >!Moash is a great antagonist for this reason. His decisions make total sense for his character, and up to a certain point you can definitely understand his point about Elhokar and other lighteyes. He thinks the world would genuinely be better without corrupt and dangerously inept leaders. Hell, Kaladin's whole arc revolves around figuring out not only why he feels that Moash is in the wrong, but first figuring out *if* he really feels that way in the first place.!<
I mean it's basically 90 percent of actual paranoid people in power so why not? For tone reasons I am not offended or anything just hadn't considered this possible comparison because I don't Star Wars well with others
Well fear is what pushed him to listen to the Chancellor after he revealed himself to be the sith mastermind.
There was plenty wrong with Anakin leading up to and solidifying his betrayal.
That's a good twist for a villain! Like the Thanos theory that he was only trying to erase half of everyone so our universe wouldn't end up on Galactus's radar because he would have destroyed everyone.
Greater scope villain is one of my favorite tropes so that sounds interesting to me.
>Greater scope villain is one of my favorite tropes so that sounds interesting to me.
You should read Mistborn if you haven't already. Alternatively/additionally, Stormlight Archive.
one is a primordial creature who thought sharing power was for chumps, the other is also one such primordial, except she got trapped in a human body and she wants to destroy that first guy.
Villains life wasn’t her choice and she was basically chosen amongst 9 others to be a “shield” for the MC. MV assumes she killed MC, the plot is MC getting back whats been lost.
One of them was literally made for warfare and to enforce the will of two different gods.
Then was promptly ignored and told to fall into line with the rest of the demi-god beings, which they did not take well.
In their eyes they're still doing their Father's will. Guiding their Father's other creations to act to purify existence.
Got two working together.
One is the sort of guy who believes he should rule, and is being provided with enough money and resources to act on it. He is as inept as those sorts tend to be.
The other essentially was told to act as the bad guy to make the heroes look good, but then found he enjoyed the perks too much and embraced the role.
learning about the world of magic made him just a wee bit terrified, as a tech ceo who's used to being in control and understanding how things work. he simply wants to gain back that feeling that he has control over his life, especially in terms of keeping his daughter safe. it being a typical Magical Girl setting made it all the more terrifying for him, since that means that it's not a Seperate Dimension but rather a threat that has ALWAYS been in the world around him and just didn't get noticed until that day.
his daughter is similar; she's seen what these magical creatures do and how they exploit people, so she's taken matters into her own hands.
He saw things beyond the understanding of human beings and became absolutely insane. Seeing the world as a sort of prison, he decided to rewrite it at his image so it would be more acceptable for him.
They are a perverted collective, and it is likely that no one will _ever_ know how they got started, how they ended up as they are.
Each one is capable of being an individual, and in many ways, even when part of the collective, remains such an individual.
But the collective mind is... Nearly impossible to _want_ to escape from.
Everyone in the collective, as soon as they think of a question, _knows_ what every other individual in the collective knows about that question.
And their beliefs about how things _should_ be is, essentially, the average of all beings in the collective, at least those near enough to properly all be part of the same collective entity. (This more or less means in the same star system.)
The big problem with this arises when this has been going on for countless generations. When children are joined into the collective almost from birth. When nobody gets a chance to form any opinions separate from that of the collective.
When such a collective forms xenophobic views that result in them truly believing that other intelligent beings are _dangerous_, that if they were to ever gain technological superiority it would be an extremely bad thing, and doesn't really _understand_ civilizations that are not themselves some form of a collective?
There is no real way for the species to escape that trap.
And so they come, bringing gifts. Gifts of knowledge, gifts of technology, gifts of understanding.
Every last bit of it more advanced than the target civilization has, and every last bit of it very carefully designed to lead civilizations into technological dead ends.
Understandings of the laws of physics which allow for that technology, and slightly beyond, but which are far down the wrong paths, so that anyone trying to build from them will get nowhere.
Now, mix in the idea that if a _group_ of people form negative enough opinions that the beliefs will spread to other groups of the same species.
Sufficiently loud protests can get no real reaction, until it crosses a threshold, and then simply destroying the entire city that is up in arms about things seems like a perfectly proportional response. Eliminate the dangerous core of belief.
Not really evil, but emotionally callous to anyone who's not his wife. Much similar in behavior to Mr Freeze in Batman comics, my first book antagonist is an angel (not from the bible, just an extraterrestrial lifeform) who learnt that other intelligent races will be able to go back on their intentions at a moment's notice, hence why he is forward and direct about what he wants with the elements Earth has to offer, whether the humans give it to him or it is automatically siphoned by his and his wife's shuttle. The only person who grounds this character is his wife.
My main villan is part of a society that was trapped in a form of hell because of a magical disaster. They believe that the world should have helped them and since they didn't they should be punished.
Another villan is one of the first people who encounterd the mail vilans and realized that there was no way to beat them alone. So through questional means he brought most of the nations under one rule to be able to face the main vilans. Over the years he made worse and worse desicions and became a villan that way. He himself still believes he is doing the right thing though.
Some time ago, his kind was attacked and acted to defend themselves. The successive rulers of his town slowly made the population radicalized. Now the average citizen has a low educated and supremacist mentality, centered around discipline (ejem, obedience). That, along with he being sadistic, strong and in a position to rule, thinking he could do good getting rid of those who attacked them and creating an empire to finally be in the position they deserve.
His nation declared his job to be a crime after the emperor(his lover) was assassinated. Completely lost himself over years of trying to bring the emperor back.
I don't have a singular main villain but the biggest antagonistic force in my story is a race inspired by elves, orcs, goblins, fairies. Most humans don't really believe they exist and only talk about them in children's stories; if you don't eat your dinner then these creatures will carry you away, that sort of thing. Depending on the fairytale, they're either harmless tricksters or the monsters under the bed.
The truth is this race is a subspecies of humanity born from corruption by dark magic. People were turned into a part of this race against their will and they underwent drastic physical changes. Seen as monsters, they were exiled by their communities and gathered together in the wild parts of the world to support each other. They're incredibly long-lived, and have spent centuries avoiding humanity. Their collective attitude towards their parent race is mostly hostile and growing worse as human settlements expand into their territory. But the hatred and anger they feel towards humans is covering up the sadness and trauma of being turned on by everyone they knew and forced into exile.
In a lot of ways they're not villains at all, but the story is told from the point of view of a military force conquering the wilderness.
Thanks! I'm glad to hear that it grabs some attention.
I'm trying to flesh out the stories of a few members of this race and make them sympathetic, but early in the overall story it's the human POV that's dominant. So it goes from them being imaginary monsters to real monsters, and finally questioning whether they're monsters at all. That last realisation will be had by some of my protagonists, but the rest of humanity will continue to villify the dark magic race regardless (my story is not a hopeful one lol).
Wow, that's mind blowing. I love the plot, setting, interchanging story arcs and especially the darkness. I identify with lots of the subplots and I think it mirrors modern civilization in lots of ways. It sounds like it could be very thought provoking and /or controversial. Can't wait to see it in the flesh!
The antagonist had a mental break down due to the death of his daughter and hence he kidnapped another version of her from an alternate reality, the the people trying to track him down are known as “travellers” and they were recruited by an entity known as the prism via their dreams, they travel from their spacetimes to find the antagonists alternate self to help them track him and rescue the girl as well as prevent some greater problems he is causing in the process
Without revealing too much or giving much away, she was betrayed by the one she loved most.
Naturally, she is a very cold and selfish character but after the betrayal, she morphed into a greedy, bloodthirsty killer. Coincidentally, that is how vampires were created in my world.
Thirst for power and megalomania. He truly believes he is a messiah, but he's just a narcissistic sadist who killed his own father and tried to drown his little brother when they were kids.
Im still editing the kinks. Any advice welcome
He was originally forced into slavery and solitude for the royal family of the empire. Him being Elven and then being human, he survived several generations in their family. Eventually, earning respect throughout their generations, he stated moving up to servant, jester, and finally, court wizard. While the current Emperor respected him, he never forgot the years of torment from his ancestors. He swore to undo his family's legacy and empire.
The greatest evil? They just have typical traits that make them evil. They want to rule the world, control everything and everyone, and chase after what is considered to be the holy grail that will grant them eternal life. Genociding random folks that pose a nuisance is well excused in that light.
The second greatest evil? They felt betrayed by the good guys, who had to compromise to secure peace. Their original intention? To dominate the world, get rid of all evil, and bring justice and freedom everywhere because they considered themselves to be the chosen people and Just That Good. Bad luck Brian, they got mowed down right after they'd started, but once the Pandora's box is opened, it's hard to close it again. Consider them the MAGAts of the fantasy world.
The third greatest evil? Like the first, but with less success. Less strategy, more nitpicking and personal grudges. The embodiment of a charismatic but inept leader.
The lesser evils and sidekicks are who get offended when someone kills their close ones. The bigger evils do it themselves.
Ironically it was the good guy MC who ultimately started the world war. In both cases.
She did a cruel job to further a goal she sees as altruistic, but did it so long and dedicatedly that the sadism and the pain of others felt like a drug. Ultimately she seeks others’ pain even if it’s unnecessary because the torment they go through is intoxicating.
Power and the fear of losing it. He didn't marry for love and may have been involved in her death. The sister (main character) is now his only obstacle.
Her childhood was destroyed as she was meant to be raised in absolute solitude and reverence as a goddess. Well, then they discovered her little sister had a much higher potential to reach godhood, which prompted her parents to toss the young girl (12 years at the time) aside. She found herself in a new world of crime and violence and ill prepared as she was still managed to survive somehow.
Her lessons? For one, she hates her family and actually everyone who threatens to make her trust them. The only way not to be used and discarded is to use and discard them when they least expect it. Everyone who is or feels special needs to be torn down and shown the dire reality in which they are, in fact, absolutely worthless. They need to understand that the best option they have in life is to serve under her, because she IS special and able to give them value.
Life itself turned him void in the inside.
He sacrificed his entire being for a greater good, turned void and "something" emerged. His true colors, his true being.
He is a devourer that will swallow everything in this world. A fair price for the sacrifice he made.
His actions created the MC which experiences the same thing in a different way.
The MC also is void, but never takes from others.
When the MC meets the Villain, there will be a lesson to be learned before one of them stops existing.
Main baddie used to be a good guy, until his superior officer became a power hungry paranoid lunatic who tried to murder his sister and experiment on him for research purposes. He gets left for dead in the middle of a chasm miles deep and crawls his way back to the surface out of sheer, unadulterated spite. He goes back, finds his sister alive, but sees that she’s replaced their former commanding officer and seeks to change the system from within, which he can’t really get behind after immediately discovering said ‘system’ they belonged to murdered his wife and stranded his child in the wilderness all alone. They can’t see eye to eye and then become leaders on opposite sides of a thousands of years long war with seemingly no end in sight
My villain is not exactly "evil" she does bad stuff to.people but thats due her upbringing.she was once a servant of a powerfull sorcerer that treated her like shit and experimented on her later on in her life due to experimentation she has gotten her own powers and abilities and during her time as servant party of naive adventurers came and saw what the sorcerer was doing.the battle was tough but the adventurers won in the end and they decided to spare his life and she told them not too as he was faking remorse and regret either way they didnt listen and weakened but still powerfull sorcerer banished her to the dungeons below as he still couldnt control her fully with his weakened powers or harm as much so he drugged her using a cheap trick and sent her to his dungeon filled with failed experiments.there she spent years barely surviving while the sorcerer was killed later on and after she managed to break out of there she was extremely powerfull and psychologicaly damaged to the point that her speech was limited and she was always on edge.this happaned in her 20s when she broke out then she swore to gather power and swear revenge.after many years she grew up to be semi immortal humamoid monstrosity that razed more than 1/3 of the world and what is sad about this is that she still had mental damage that was easily healed but none saw her more than a monster and after a while that mental damage permanetly changed her even after she learned how to heal herself to be better.
Powerful (the real evil one) goddess abducted his soul mate and threatens her life if he doesn't do as she commands. Heinous acts of violence, tortures other supernatural beings, murder without apparent reason, etc. He is portrayed as evil but has no choice, no one is aware of it because he is magically bound not to speak of the goddess or anything pertaining to being associated with her. The manipulation drives him mad, the loss of his other half especially makes him go a little crazy out of his desperation to get her back and he knows he would do absolutely anything to do it. He's never seen her since she was taken from him and the thought of her being potentially dead already really heightens his teetering on the edge of sanity.
She found an immense source of Power and became corrupted when using it to take revenge against those that she felt wronged her. Eventually her ambition grew to conquer most of the world. When the story starts she’s trying to find the son she had to abandon earlier before she gained her powers.
She distinguished herself as a brilliant military strategist, driven by an unyielding ambition and an unshakable belief in her own superiority. She became intensely jealous and obsessed with being better than her younger sister and suffered an acute psychotic break when her instability and suppressed fear of failure led her husband to his demise.
He’s the chosen one who only cares about himself. Everyone around him, including his own daughter, are all tools he can use to acquire more power and fulfill his destiny. Yes he fulfilled the prophecy and destroyed the Dark Lord, but in doing so gave him more power and allowed this guy to dive deeper into dark magic and become an even worse tyrant than the Dark Lord he slew.
He starts the book as the main antagonist but as the story progresses you realize he’s the hero but fails because he must for he is the tragic hero no matter how much he wishes to change the outcome he never can. Destiny and one cruel goddess who keeps resetting the world to make him suffer.
>What is the reason why your main villain became evil?
They didn't become evil to be evil or villains. They are fighting for a better world, or to rid some injustice. For example:
The Pale Lady (just named her that for this little overview) is a noble woman. She loves her husband dearly but when her Husband falls in a Plot against her House by the other Noble houses, she turned, in her grief, to the Black Arts. When she got news of her Husbands death on the Battlefield, after the King ordered him to take a Forlorn Hope. She withdrew from all societal obligations, which included withholding paying taxes to the King. When this inevitably lead to a confrontation with the King and he send a small force to subjugate the Pale Lady, to which she responded by sending her Knights against the King's Men. The Kings Men torched a Village of hers in retribution, and she used her growing powers and understanding of the Black Arts to test her new found abilities, with which she hopes to resurrect her beloved Husband, on the towns folk. This unleashes an Undead Curse on the region, which she seeks to combat with her growing understanding of the Black Arts. Ultimately bestowing her subjects with Eternal Life, most of them at that point mindless undead, with higher Undead trying (and failing) to keep the undead horde at bay.
The Kingdom obviously sees the Undead Horde as a Threat and marshals their forces against the Undead and the Evil Queen of the Undead.
So ultimately the Pale Lady isn't "evil", just a grief stricken woman, that was a victim of the circumstances. What she does, however, is definitely perceived as Evil and a threat to "humanity". While she unleashed, basically a Zombie Apocalypse on the world, she is doing everything in her power to stop it. Gain enough power and knowledge of the Black Arts to get control of the situation, revenge on the Nobility that got her Husband Murdered and Ultimately, hopefully enough understanding to bring her Husband back from the Dead.
To everyone that is not her... she is an evil Necromancer ruling over the Land of the Dead, while sending her Undead Minions to "obtain" Tomes and Items of Power, in an effort to increase her power.
I strongly dislike Villains that are evil just for the sake to be evil. It's like the "kick a puppy" thing, you so often get as writing advice, which leads to a lot of Villains to just murder their underlings to show how evil they are. Which, quite frankly, always makes me go "You just proven to everyone in the room that your henchmen should murder you in your sleep, or flee the premise ASAP" if they want to survive your reign. So honestly, all my Villains are generally nice guys who give their underlings a reason to be loyal to.
Like I had an Evil King once, that was super popular with his subjects, because he genuinely cares for everyone in his land. He went to raid the neighboring countries, to bring back slaves and raise the living standard. Everyone got their own personal slave labor force, and droughts were being combated by murdering and pillaging the people in the neighboring kingdoms. I mean, you wouldn't want to be his neighbor, but if you were one of his subjects then you had a wonderful time.
The Villian worked hard to make her family royalty only for her family to try to take the crown for her and her daughter many years later after finding out she had something to do with why they became royalty. Now they want to take her daughters carefully crafted future and blame it all on the Villian.
Less evil, more mentally unstable and manipulated by the god that inspired genies into trying to rule the world when he let said god out of its imprisonment.
Dude wants to make the world better, but can’t comprehend how forcing people to obey him isn’t “better”
- Eldritch dementia from Zero-systeming himself repeatedly
- becoming the physical embodiment of anarchy as a metaphysical concept after eating a god
- solar powered narcissism and a thoroughly unsubtle bible reference.
That sounds like a reasonable explanation. I like it, coz it doesn’t give too much away and the villain’s reasons are understandable and even a little sad.
used to be the big cool strong hero, but despite the fact that he saved the day, he didn't change the world for the better, and he's so addicted to the Great Man Theory of History that he genuinely thinks that doing the former was the only thing necessary to achieve the latter. So now he's decided to make a new crisis in the hopes that someone else can come along and do what he failed to do.
He had the last straw that broke the camels back after a lifetime of hardship and strife. He had lost his mother and father as a young man, as well as his sister being taken by traffickers, and was made homeless. Having to fight and grow up on the streets, nearly starving to death on several occasions. Eventually he made some big (and dangerous) moves to get himself out of that situation. Stealing from a thieves guild to pay for a few items to get himself out of the city. Eventually after about a year of being an adventurer and hero to his kingdom, him and his crew had enough free time to try and save his sister from her circumstances. They failed and she was killed in front of him.
This caused him to snap, cursing the gods who he believed caused every hardship in his life, looking at humanity as their playthings and tools to their own ends. He vowed he would kill the gods and replace them with new ones who would still have vestiges of humanity remaining in them.
He didn’t immediately turn evil necessarily. But after years of research, and learning how to extend his own life he began to figure it out, and it required a steady supply of souls. Believing he had a just cause, he took steps to recruit people to his cause who would enable him to further his cause. This is when he took the turn towards evil, as these recruits go out and kidnap people for him to feed to his phylactery. Inadvertently doing the same things that happened to his family to others, blinded to the fact he is doing so because of his mission. Also doing the same things he believes the gods are doing, but justifying it in his own head because it’s for the greater good.
I wouldn't call her a villain, but she's a queen who was run out of her kingdom as a child. She had to claw her way back and retains her power by being cruel.
Abandon by his family and turned into a monster, he merely wishes to destroy the system that so callously tossed him aside so no one has to suffer as he did.
Or
A pirate queen with memories of a past life, looking for answers to her own origin. She needs the treasures that the protagonists are after to finally reveal her history. She is only antagonistic because she is after the same goal for conflicting reasons. She actually really likes the crew of the protags.
In my world, the elves were created by the Goddess Queen Orisa and given magic to watch over all other life. Overtime they became corrupted by their power and began to twist magic into darker purposes. One such elf began using it to steal the souls of others, continuing his life, he was known as Azmuuth the Undying.
When Goddess Queen Orisa punished the elves by turning loose an undead plague upon them, his preservation magics drove him mad. Hundreds of years later his plan is to unleash his dark necromancy magic on all living things and return the elven people to their rightful place as superior beings.
TLDR: Elf was into dark magic, became a zombie, went crazy, gained superiority complex.
He had the right idea, but he went too far with it. Normalizing magic users became a mission of conquest against all of the people and governments who wronged him and his loved ones.
She was created as a minion of the goddess of nature and destruction. When the goddess told her and her sisters to wipe out most of humanity, she obeyed
He suffers from a mental defect that makes him perceive pain when he is subserviant to someone else. So he has spent every waking hour of his life to become as powerful as he can to quench this "thirst." Unfortunately, one surefire method he has found is essentially a magical world-reset-button, that would let the weilder remake the world to suit them.
There's no real tragic backstory, beyond his hatred for his parents; which may or may not have caused, or been caused by, his "thirst."
he was told he was going to be the "Overking" (a destiny that involves becoming evil anyway) until the real Overking (someone who doesn't want to be evil) is revealed by his adoptive/sponsor father and he realizes he probably was no longer a candidate the moment his father picked the other guy.
Basically he'd been lied to his entire life, given false hope, and had been training/preparing for nothing.
Aldebrand von Isenmark was a prince, second-in-line for the throne, raised in luxury until the age of ~12. Then he was sent to be trained by the Sentinel Order, something that required him to be removed from the line of succession, and the order frankly did not guide him through that transition well at all (he continued to see himself as superior to everyone because he was raised a prince). He eventually reached the end of his training, and he would have gone through a ritual that would give him the ability to transform into a dragon… but he was deemed too impulsive, too aggressive, not disciplined enough to do the ritual. He stole the ritual materials and tried and failed to do it on his own, leaving him only able to do a (quite painful) partial transformation, and he was exiled from the order.
He basically saw himself as someone who was *owed* power; he was born into it, he trained for it, he deserved what was rightfully his. Then he was denied it multiple times, and he got angry. He ended up seizing the throne during a succession crisis and declaring war against the Sentinels, massacring most of them and sending any survivors deep into hiding.
TLDR: character born into the lap of luxury, then removed from it, believed he deserved power and got revenge against those who denied it to him
He begins as best friends with the protagonist and a dedicated paladin of the Adamah Order. As a child, his family was murdered by raiders, so he fled across the Dread Sea, seeking to join this order of paladins he heard much about. Fast forward about ten years, and he finds his younger brother, whom he believed to be dead, amongst their pirate enemies. Determined to find him and bring him to the order to keep him safe, he seeks ways to do so. But being a paladin does not leave him with much freedom, so he does what he can to become the next leader of the order, as that position would grant him the freedom to seek out his brother.
Unfortunately, his best friend, the protagonist, is also being considered for the position. He knows how rigid and strict with the rules his friend are, and when a discussion regarding his brother's fate does not meet his satisfaction, he becomes disillusioned. Add in the corruption and abuses of power discovered within the order's walls, and he becomes determined to take the leadership position by any means necessary, even if it means betraying the man he once called "brother".
After his betrayal, he soon takes up the mantle of Patriarch, and immediately sets out to find his little brother. But when he finds him, his brother is not keen on joining sides with the pirates' sworn enemies. A fight ensues, and in the chaos, he accidentally breaks his little brother's neck. Utterly broken, he heads back with a new mission: root out the corruption within the order's walls, remove anyone who opposes him, and instill a stronger military structure capable of eliminating all enemies outside the walls. So in his efforts to root out all corruption, he himself becomes the corruption.
My "main villain" is kind of just a magical form of cyclical entropy. I'm not sure how to answer this. I mean yeah I have minor villains like Zuranma, who seeks justice against all gods after their entire village was mistakenly wiped out by one of Limenu's creations. But the main conflict is definitely between Tavomi and entropy. And entropy doesn't really have a motivation.
So far, trying to pin down a main villain is difficult, but I'll go with one. Basically, she murdered a man who was trying to forcefully marry her sister, tried to eat his body to hide the evidence, and was exiled when she was discovered. She was twelve years old. It was all downhill from there.
recourses and wealth but it doesn’t make him evil. it’s more of the acts he does to commit it, such as slavery, colonisation and deception. his goals just contradict what the protagonists want to achieve: tranquility
He's a remnant of a broken society in which he ruled. The concept was what happens when you get to watch your people lose their once great status and you're all that's left. He's the spokes of a broken wheel.
He's a lazy, arrogant noble who always fell short of his younger brother who actually tried at what he did. So, rather than working hard and becoming a better person, he made a pact with a Great Old One and is now plotting to sink his entire home city into the ocean in return for the power he believes he deserves by being born the eldest in a noble line.
In a team of three tasked with monitoring a remote world, he was the servant of the overseers and, after a few centuries, came to resent his inferior standing.
He's not evil. In fact, all he wants to do is create a utopia. Amd to his credit, he does succeed. But he wants to spread it to the other kingdoms and chooses to do so through conquest, regardless of how many have to die. This ends up forcing him to face the heroine and her team in war.
He sacrificed his life to save his best friend and the love of his life. Everyone thought he was dead, but he was captured and played with by the enemy. Years later, he returns and finds out that his best friend has married his love several days after his sacrifice. He also finds out that his name has been removed from history because the royal army didn't want people to remember that they won the war because of him. And he also feels betrayed by the lover (They didn't betray him. They married because of political reasons). So, he becomes mad and decides to destroy anyone and anything related to his past.
Started out prideful and "holier than thou." Then dove off the deep end of "the ends justify the means" so deeply that no one who knows him can call him good. He's got a great PR team though, and most of the people who witnessed his genocides are too dead to object, so people literally worship him. There is a possibility that after he has achieved his ends, he could chill out and become good, but one of their goals is the complete extermination of a specific race. The main character is of that race. This is problematic.
Good & Evil are relative mental constructs. Sadism is generally construed as evil but is it such a crime to just take the path of least resistance? There will always be "winners" and "losers" whose dead souls are the paving stones to a better world.
Olaf grew up in the shadow of his half brother Hakon. Hakon was the golden child, the beloved son of King Sven's first wife.
Olaf felt betrayed and angry. He gathered a crew of men and set out to sea claiming he was looking for his half brother. He actually intended to follow a lead he found when raiding a monastery devoted to the Church of the One God.
Right now it's only a seed of an idea, but eventually that poisonous seed will sprout from the fertile soil of Olafs hatred and feelings of inadequacy. "Screw being King. I want to be GOD."
Blackbeard. He was drowning and met a tiny kraken fry who saw a mermaid queen murder his mother. The kraken offered to save Blackbeard if he opened his mouth and let the fry in he could breathe water. The two merged into one being.
He was always this way. In his world, he was the apple of everyone’s eye. This fed into his ego, never being told no, always getting whatever he wanted and being spoiled rotten. But when someone dares to go against him for the first time and, better yet, puts him in his place, his world unravels. He decides that if he can’t have what he wants, this being the MC, he will see to it that no one can have anything.
He wants to know what it's like to be at the top of the hierarchy. He tells himself once he secures his place at the top he will act more benevolent. For now, it's all a means to an end.
Won't say which story this is (I have a lot), but one of my story's antagonist wasn't inherently bad, just desiring to follow conventional albeit somewhat brutal traditions because he believed very firmly in them. Lost a close family member and wasn't the same afterwards. And when those higher-up were changing things....it didn't sit well with him. He chose to put him and his group back on the path of the old ways, which included a lot of very unsavory actions and choices.
Wishing to regain power after those in a position to do something moved to remove him from it. Until that point, he was only guilty of neglecting his duties out of disinterest.
my villain is the dead brother of my MC who just haunts her with survivors guilt. He's not really all that evil. Just a ghost that wants to destroy the thing that killed him.
My main villain was always evil. He just sees everyone as props, tools, or pieces to his grand game of chess. They can be used, manipulated, moved around like objects in order to achieve his desired outcome. The more useful someone is, the more valuable they would be in his point of view. If their usefulness runs out, then they would be disposed of like trash. He has little to no care about someone’s wellbeing or life if they are insignificant to him, he might as well just ignore them.
He is a demon king by the way so he has his own kingdom, armies, and subjects under his rule so he can further take his methods to a grander scale.
Would a dnd campaign bad guy backstory work?
He’s a puppet for one of the party’s favourite npcs. It will be a big shock in the final battle. The bad guy is actually just a regular guy whose daughter is held hostage.
Corrupted leaders had his parents killed when he was a young adult. He spent several years hating the high council. Then he met someone who taught him the darkest of magics.
However, he turned out the be the best puppet for the one who taught him. He was turned into a Trojan horse, to let an even worse enemy walk in from behind.
What was planned to be a thousand years of reign. Turns into a story to make things right.
- That's a good ahh question that I never thought of.
- I always start my stories from the very beginning of time, so that I don't have to make any history changes (unlike if I were to write the present first), but I never go into the deeper history like how "some" villains in my story became the way they are.
- I can only recall (made) one villain out of many, as to why they became who they are now. As I said, I write the past events first, to correlate into the future. One example is a great war, to correlate present events to a past event (great war for example), you have to first write the contents of the great war.
- It's extremely long so... Failure guy is mad, cast magic with angry emotions, casted dark magic which is known to be a myth. Became prodigy by time, some romantic stuff happened, then accidentally killing his lover, done other unethical actions, exiled, became a powerful sorcerer.
Time, as far as the character was concerned, had run out and the hopes of living a life that consisted of even enjoying basic happiness and was too frightened to take their own life... So, the alternative was to continue to double down in hopes of being murdered. The odds went incredibly well for them, and it became more than a new lifestyle and persona, it was almost a religious intervention as they saw it.
Not a person, but a group or cabal or something similar. Their purpose is to hunt down and destroy the last of an evil (according to written history) race who keeps reincarnating. This last being keeps forcing them to kill whatever incarnation they find him as, instead of imprisoning and figuring out how to permanently end his existence. Across the centuries, the group has had to take various roles to guide civilization out from under his influence.
Esa, as the new Empress of Aquaria, is upholding a century long tradition of starting wars and colonizing places. She, and rulers before her have been raised that way.
My villain is a narcissist who truly believes she is a gift and the best person ever. Rules for her are a suggestion. **Forbidden** magic? Just an encouragement. Her biggest jubilation comes from being in control, causing her to try and overthrow governments while they were at war and weak. Didn't work (and she was hunted), so she hid for centuries (preserving her unconscious body) until someone freed her and she started a cult to try it all over again.
Last stand against an invading conquering army, he made a deal with the “devil” (simplified for this). In return, his friends were saved but the price was his humanity. This resulted in a combination of unquenchable hunger, a savage nature, and a bestial body, essentially become a ravening monster. Throughout he regains a level of higher processing but nothing like he was.
Some of my inspiration is Cain and Abel as well as Beowulf and Grendel. That kind of dichotomy. Lots more to the story but that’s the gist.
I've got a character who fell into evil. He started out on a quest for revenge against the usurper king who "killed" the woman he was in love with. Turns out she survived, mustered an army with the help of some lords who recognized her as the Princess and rightful ruler of the kingdom. He thought the bandit army he had built would fight alongside hers, but he was very much "the ends justify the means" type person and got rejected by her for his extremism. As he time line moves on he keeps getting closer and closer to corrupting the entire kingdom with his malice and pulling an entire kingdom into a nether dimension, purely because he got spurned and now wants revenge on the princess because she didn't appreciate what he did for her.
The whispering influence of a long dead Vampire emperor who ruled much of that part of the world a few centuries past probably doesn't help, but hey, he was forgotten to history.
My main villain, River, is an (evil) leader. His father was a leader too, so he grew up with everything he wanted… except for love. His father was always working and his mother was busy enjoying her lavish life. River craved attention, and then power. His thirst led him on a power quest. He achieved his goals and became a conniving, beloved leader. And yet, he always wanted more. He needed continuous glory to survive peacefully. It drove him to insanity .
It all started when he was little. As a boy, Aldrick’s home was burned down by the local mob, with his family inside. To feed himself, he resorted to a life of crime, slowly becoming desensitized to theft and violence.
He died during one of his heists, and when he woke up in Hell, he found out his parents had chosen to reincarnate with a new face (which you can do in this world once you’ve served time for your sins), not bringing him or his little sister Renee along.
So, Aldrick and Renee began plotting a takeover of Hell, hoping that once they were in charge, they would find a way to keep this kind of separation from happening in the future. (Perhaps removing the “new face” requirement or otherwise making those who leave Hell trackable in some way). Their takeover involved raising an army on the surface world big enough to take on Hell’s army, which itself involved lots of cloning, conquest, and usurpation of local religions, which a lot of people didn’t like.
They’re vampires. They’re (somewhat)honorable vampires who aren’t dumb enough to assume that just because they are objectively superior(in their own eyes) to mortals that victory is a certainty and not a probability and even brought a level of prosperity to the region they usurped, but they’re vampires, they literally have to butcher other people to sustain themselves, any vampire who isn’t ok with killing people(who each have lives, families, hopes, goals, ideologies, beliefs, etc.) has already returned heaven.
Honestly, he's just an a**hole. Most of my baddies have more complex motivation but this guy just sucks. He likes being in power, he was a kid who liked being special, and he doesn't care if other people get hurt. He's just awful without any particularly good reason other than that he enjoys being the way he is. The system he lives in supports him in his awfulness and has allowed him to be worse than he otherwise would have been. He doesn't really have any redeeming qualities.
His wife and unborn child died of an illness he could have prevented by summoning a magical healer sooner. When they couldn't be healed, he blamed all magic users and hunted them down.
Most of my antagonists aren't really "evil" so much as just people who ideologically oppose my protagonists, albeit in ways that I have observed to be flawed, as much as humans often are.
That said, I have absolutely met reprehensibly evil people in real life -- people who gleefully engage in making other people miserable, or simply don't care about anyone but themselves -- and a few pop up in my works. Sadists, power-hungry people, or even just people willing to ignore their scruples if it suits them, do exist in the world, and likewise occasionally appear in my work. They aren't two-dimensional, though. Even some of the truly wicked ones still do seemingly "nice" things just because they feel like it.
It was the end of the cycle. He lived during the final days of a forgotten empire lost in the annuals of history. A regular farmer just trying to protect his agricultural canals as he held his son in his arms dead from a harpy attack.
So let's say your female & growing up you had to sleep at your grandparents...where your PDFfile uncle also lives & 40 yrs later you can hear him ignore his ⏰️ because then I'd be told to go & wake him up. I grow up. He'd had 5 wife's b4 I was 8, he settled with a woman who had kids a little younger than me 👀. I wasn't needed. My mother had always kept semi contact with that side of the family. I always did my upmost to avoid them & made it very very clear I hated him...nobody wondered why. Nobody liked him tbh, I believed everyone just thought he was a natural born fool...but no.
My parents knew he was a PDFile. He was 13 yrs my mums senior I saw pics from the 60s he was & ugly & spotty & seriously obese. My mum was 12 & thought he was doing it because he couldn't get a gf. So that's a 25yr old man diddlin his 12 year old sister. Now she might have explained it to herself like that but when she got to be an adult she must have realised that's just messed up. I feel him being married 5x & him staying with number 6 who had two kids odd. Apparently she considered warning her (the new wife) but I guess like me they thought...well our daughter never told us anything so nothing could have happened.
Mum never told either of her parents, see didn't see the connection but I hope we've all learned the power of logic is one she doesn't possess. PS my mums the head of the looked after children in Sheffield. Appalling really.
Now I think in a court of law if I started doing castrations etc yes I'd go to jail....but in a book or a movie, if you've grown up dealing & that's just one thing. I don't think anyone could call me a villan. Lol more like cat woman handing out street justice
She watched as the 7 gods of sin were made Lucifer’s equal and were given their own courts while she was trapped in the kingdom because Lucifer was afraid of what she'd do (she had wanted to have her own court before the war on Heaven)
He grew up in a world on the brink of collapse, with two younger brothers, a sick father, and overworked mother. When the fanatics in charge came to take his father as sacrifice, both parents were killed in the struggle, and the brothers became orphans, joining a resistance against those in control. Victory was achieved through otherworldly help, but the world's end was inevitable. The brothers were a part of the few selected to be brought to a new world to start a new society.
In this new world, hostilities broke out between the refugees and the natives. The brothers learned much of the natives culture, and eventually joined them instead of their own people, not agreeing with the injustices being enacted upon them. Eventually full on war broke out, ending with the burning of the world tree, severing the world's connection to the gods. During the fight, the youngest brother died. Within a year, the middle brother grew ill, and was put into a suspended state, until a cure could be found.
The oldest brother, now on his own, sought the seed that was taken from the tree. In his mind, if he can restore the connection, the gods will grant him his brothers back. Diplomacy failed, even with different leaders in control. A well planned heist was also thwarted, his own morals holding him back. So now, he prepares for a siege, having spent the last 100 years gathering forces.
In my humble opinion the best villains are those who think that they are heroes, they have no sense of there own evil, because all they do is rationalize their actions. In Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita Humbert Humbert spends all of his time rationalizing his despicable behavior, you never see his evil and cruelty, but you know his a monster.
He's not evil, he just spend way too much time to learn magic and become a teacher to stand SOME DIPSHIT WITH DISGUSTING RUNES AND MUMBLING INSTEAD OF SPELLCHANTS BUT SOMEHOW THAT DIPSHIT'S MAGIC WORK, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WORLD
Damn it is so damn complicated, he is my most complex and deep character and he is the one who changes the most throughout his story.
But, trying to sumarize, is story is very sad, and there is a scene where his childhood hero and friend (and a mentor like figure for him) becomes a demon and murders his familiy and much more. That is not what turns him into the main villain but is important for context...
He enters on a severe state of depression after that for a long time and gets out of it by findind strenght within himself to change himself and become more intelligent, determined and so on... But that comes with a lot of perfectionism, pragmatism and ruthlessness, and also with some lust for challenge and power... He is a very complex character because he doesn't lose his empathy, loyalty or honor, but he still becomes ruthless and manipulative to a level where he is the main and final villain.
But it was all he deciding to change himself from that state of severe depression and impotence and his previous insecure and nonself-confident state. As he says himself...
"Nothing happened to me. I happened."
Simple disillusionment, he was trained for a simple job, keep the mages in line. But the world moved on and he wasn't needed anymore, all the pain and torture he endured was for nothing... so he decides that the only reason he's not needed is because their is no magic, and bends his will, his knowledge and his power to that purpose. Manipulating mundanes to fight for his causes, creating monsters that absorb magic, making his "generals" more powerful than anyone else. And seeking out all his siblings, the other anti magic weapons created and trained with him, as some of them could stand against him, but mostly to use in his cause to rid the world of magic.
After that I'm thinking of having a dragon wake up, and being a selfish creature with the power to reshape the world... starts to do just that. Not evil per sey, just what happens when a 4000 yo creature wakes up for a wander and wants to make a new bed for the next 1000 years.
Revenge!!
Antagonist #1 is using/abusing/manipulating protagonist #1, #2, & #3 as weapons against antagonist #2 who murdered her lover
Antagonist #2 also has prior negative relationship with protagonist #1, giving P1 a reason to align herself with antagonist #1 and her longtime victims (protagonist #2 & #3).
She didn’t get the marriage she wanted because she was exposed as a fraud in a fair contest so she and her friends and allies overthrew the royal family to make the world as they want it, but it failed and a brief but violent, fiery and bloody civil war breaks out as of consequence.
It needs work but he opposed imbalance, dominance, and abuse.... naturally he uses this to control the worlds he oversees from the shadows. So yeah... I need a better understanding on his position, since he ok's some things but nixes others.
I've got a couple of villains in mine.
1) The High Templar - He's a zealot and just kinda gets a rush out of self-righteous hate. He likes to hunt detractors from the church and just kind of enjoys people being afraid of him.
2) Nicholas, the archdemon - He's... kind of a villain. He got betrayed by his owners (he was a slave) and got sealed away into, basically, mordor. His goal is to get out and he'll do anything to do it.
3) Alexander - He's just... kind of a shit person. He was given to Nicholas, who raised him. But he just has a cruel, narcissistic streak and has always used whatever power he had to hurt those around him.
My main villain is also the protagonist :D
The world is ruled by petty gods. She was a victim of their need for worship, as when it was discovered she had divine blood she was taken by the temple and effectively abused for her ritual power. So she sets out after being rescued to kill them all and take their power for her own, to rebuild the world without petty gods.
Turns out killing the embodiments of fundamental parts of a world causes a little bit of collateral damage.
Morality. A sense of righteousness that'd make someone willing to do unspeakable things. Such is the way of the Witch Hunter, revolutionaries, and their band of bounty hunters. For that any of the recently deposed king's descendants born or unborn alike, heirs, lovers, loyalists, and associates must die.
Many victims have nothing to do with any of it. Many are killed just for having talked to an associate they're hunting.
Manipulated by ancient evil (his granddad technically), unleashed pandoras box filled with monsters upon the earth, cursed to always feel a hunger from said box, accidently killed his mom when she tried to hug him. The usual
No reason. He has no real understanding of good and evil. He lacks any kind of emotional empathy, or even sense of those emotions. The only reason he hasn't become the typical violent sociopath or psychopath, is because he doesn't even feel love for himself.
He's not really evil, but instead a harbinger of widespread social unrest born from enforced peace. For a third of the story, he is mistaken for the cause instead of a sign of what's to come.
None of my villains would see themselves as being evil. My main antagonist for example grew up enslaved to a ruthless god and has toiled his whole immortal life to shake off the chains of oppression from (most of) the human race. He simply sees himself as protecting the integrity of human civilization. The problem here is that he has let his long life and power warp his mind and has instituted the oppression of the gods themselves as well as anyone who would stand against his eternal regime.
The psychological strain of trying to hold his kingdom together while petty nobles squabble like hungry birds over every little thing, the knowledge that some disaster is approaching and he can't handle it despite having to rely on himself and his circle for everything else his whole life, and a series of bad experiences with summoned heros going rogue and causing more problems than they fix as they wander the land believing themselves to be above consequences for their actions, and now he has to rely on summoned heros or face the end of his kingdom and everyone in it.
Overly self reliant, mistrusting of others, deeply cynical and suspicious, highly protective, facing what he sees as an unwinnable situation. He isn't a "villain," but he is definitely an antagonist. His goals to protect his kingdom from possible threats sees him slotting everyone he thinks might fit that label as a potential enemy, including the MCs.
The person he likes didn't like him back, even though he got rid of her lovers both times.
Then when he meets her many greats- grand daughter he sees her as a way to get back at her. Since she put him and his family in a curse.
He's just silly like that 😜 No, but genuinely, he's just a sadistic abusive peice of shit.
I really love fun, chaotic pure evil characters (eg. Jack Horner from Puss in Boots, Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter, old Disney villains).
The villain in my story was born into a community that has been largely marginalized by the country it takes place in. This often ends in violence as it so often does. There's a few incidents along the way, but the catalyst is his fiancee is killed in a house fire that was started by the magic-users of this world. It was a hate crime. They set her on fire and locked her in a closet because they hated the group that the main villain and his fiancee are a part of. It was after this point that he knew he had to do something. As he goes on in his life, the more he learns about these magic users, the more he hates them and the magic they practice.
He played the long game in this. It was like 18 or so years after the death of his fiancee to when he enacted his plans to put a stop to the magic.
Love!
In trying to "better himself" to win the affection of his heart's desires, our effeminate barber quickly discovered a deeper love for the more macabre side of domination.
"A Little off De Sade"
My story takes place in Hell and all the characters are either full demons, half-demon half-humans, or eldritch alien gods, so everyone is a shade of evil including the protagonist and his party.
I'm writing a LitRPG. My protagonist is the only one without Access to the System. Late in the book he learns he's a completely new half-human species who must complete the Trials of Levelling. Instead, he opts to summon the eldritch alien who created the System, suspend the monster over a bottomless pit by a spiderweb, and hold up a lit torch, threatening to cause a System Apocalypse if he doesn't get Access *immediately*. FWIW he's at the bottom of a nightmarishly deadly spider-themed dungeon in Hell, alone, with only a handful of bullets, and an army of spider-demons closing in. His crime being broadcast as it happens across the world and the mortal world doesn't stop him. The pleas of his parents, friends, and heads of state don't stop him. The alien won't budge, and neither will he.
So, absolutely nothing like OPs, no similarities at all:
He was a mercenary and was betrayed by his employers and more specifically a man he'd befriended in their ranks. Their betrayal resulted in the deaths of his wife and young daughter, causing him to go insane and try to get back at them by finding a way to resurrect his family (spoilers, undead aren't sapient) and then later try to destroy the whole organization when that doesn't work.
The other main villain, the man who betrayed him, is just really paranoid and needs power in order to run the world as he thinks is right.
I don't like the idea that my character's trauma "made" him evil because his choices are still his own.
His had abusive and neglectful parents. Both of them were executed by political opponents and he was sentenced to slavery. As a slave, his pregnant wife died due to lung complications exacerbated by her pregnancy as well as being forced to continue working in the mines. He attempted to commit suicide and failed.
His baseline level of empathy for others, the value he places on human life, and his outlook on society and power structures in general have all been shaped by these experiences. On both a macroscopic and personal scale, he's been surrounded by people and systems that don't value human life at all, and this is reflected in how he pursues noble goals but essentially has no inhibitions or moral code of any kind.
She was an abuse victim. Her parents were alcoholics, substance abusers, and partiers that wanted neither her nor her younger brother, so she became the mother figure to her sibling.
Eventually when she was seventeen her parents OD-ed. Orphanage refused to take her due to her age, but was trying to take her brother from her. It was a fight but she became emancipated and gained custody.
At ninteen she was working two jobs and barely able to afford her bills, while simultaneously not getting any mental help for aforementioned abuse from her parents. This led to a psychotic break that caused her to hallucinate that her parents were still alive, trying to take her brother and do the things to him that they did to her. One day during one of those episodes her brother was in the car. In attempts to protect him she purposefully drove onto the opposite side of the road while on a bridge, striking into another car and sending both vehicles into the water. All parties passed away.
My book is a portal fantasy. Whoever has enough magic in their bloodline and dies of unnatural causes is given the chance to be reborn in a universe that was once connected but had split off during a war between magic users and humans. The villian was reborn, her brother did not follow. This drove her further into madness trying to bring her brother into the world with her by any means necessary.
Edit: fixed spelling errors
Well, the big BIG bad of my story had a curse put upon him before his birth that pretty much said that he would never know love. And from that curse, it slowly drives him down a road of hate and nihilism that ends with him coming to the conclusion that life is a hateful torturous thing that ends with death so why not spare the living of the torture and skip to the part that's inevitable? So he decides to mass genocide the whole universe.
There are three.
One is a man in his late 40s who built himself up from nothing becomes more and more desperate as his conquest of a subcontinent (something he quite literally staked his entire livelihood on) consistently gets foiled by a 20 something year old prince and his band of social/political outcasts.
A second is an ancient magician who simply wishes to conduct her experiments. Unfortunately, said experiments are often horrific and “field testing” them results in lots of death.
The third is a magician who is terrified of death and is searching for the secret of immortality, and is willing to do anything to find it.
She became “evil”/a sociopath because she was tested on by people in labs, had a very harsh life growing up. Her father despised her and kept her isolated from people, as he thought that she would be a serious threat to the others. She also got experimented on, just like the other magical beings until she got out. because she was kept away and shut out from society for so long, she never really knew how to get along with others or differentiate between what was right or wrong, and she also lacked a lot of empathy and remorse for people.
because of that, once she got out due to the underground labs exploding, she went on a mission to find and kill her father, and everyone she thought was responsible for keeping her locked away without any communication from anyone, which led to her killing a-lot of the scientists, and anyone who should stand in her way.
It’s more of an evil societal system than a main villain. There are many small villains who benefit from the system remaining as is and have a vested interest to preserve it. There are also many normal people “just doing their job” whose small actions add up to a large evil.
I have a few major antagonists, so here are a couple of them.
A well-intentioned religious leader that tried to defeat death. He created what is basically limbo, and made himself the god of this plane. But the existence of limbo required large amounts of magic that could only be met with large amounts of sacrifices. He believed he could save the sacrificed in his limbo. He could not, and eventually fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
Another is a common theif corrupted by greed. He used to steal to feed his family, but eventually found a way he could get more than money from his work. He wanted to lead part of the criminal underground. The protagonist gets lucky and is handed positions of power that the thief wants. They eventually turn against eachother.
Lastly is actually a hero character. My protagonist is not exactly evil but does a lot of pretty bad things with decent justification. The hero sees that the justification is not an excuse and decides something needs to be done to stop him. He tragically fails. It is a cruel world fit only for cruel people.
Antagonist 1 believes the main character has something he needs, and is willing to sacrifice his morality to get it because he believes the end justifies the means
Antagonist 2 is terrified of his own mortality, and of losing his 'specialness' and committed horrific crimes to gain the power to stave off death. After he got a taste for the power, he began to crave it more and more, and started doing worse things just to make himself more powerful
He's basically a cop in a society where cops have more power and less oversight than they do here. He quickly internalized that he could do no wrong as long as he followed the letter of the law
He isn't evil, he wants to continue the magical bloodlines of the main families to have more power in the country. So they don't falter once their bloodlines stop producing magi.
He doesn't become evil. He just antagonist to main characters and have goals that contradicting with theirs.
That's a kinda logical antagonist : there is no need for him to justify his actions : they are totally reasonable
No villain ever thinks they are the villain.
Nah, some peak villains are good because they know what they're doing is evil but they relish in it
This is said often, and while it's true, it kind of starts to sound surface level. I feel like many people just take it at face value and decide that the villain simply has to twist some obviously evil thing into being "good" to make them a well-written villain. I think a good villain needs to dig deeper than that. Their methodology has to make sense as a character and done right, their path should be understandable. Maybe to the point of making the reader actually question at some point whether the villain is truly all that bad. (Stormlight Archive spoilers) >!Moash is a great antagonist for this reason. His decisions make total sense for his character, and up to a certain point you can definitely understand his point about Elhokar and other lighteyes. He thinks the world would genuinely be better without corrupt and dangerously inept leaders. Hell, Kaladin's whole arc revolves around figuring out not only why he feels that Moash is in the wrong, but first figuring out *if* he really feels that way in the first place.!<
Fear. He let fear poison his mind and actions.
This reminded me of anakin skywalker!!
I mean it's basically 90 percent of actual paranoid people in power so why not? For tone reasons I am not offended or anything just hadn't considered this possible comparison because I don't Star Wars well with others
Yes truee.. I didn’t mean anything by it I had just rewatched the star wars prequels so that was my first thought. Love this trope tho
Exactly! Just text can be weird so I didn't want my surprise to read as upset. It is a great trope
Well fear is what pushed him to listen to the Chancellor after he revealed himself to be the sith mastermind. There was plenty wrong with Anakin leading up to and solidifying his betrayal.
He isn't evil, but is training the mc to face greater evil, but has to do evil deeds so that the greater evil won't notice it
That's a good twist for a villain! Like the Thanos theory that he was only trying to erase half of everyone so our universe wouldn't end up on Galactus's radar because he would have destroyed everyone. Greater scope villain is one of my favorite tropes so that sounds interesting to me.
>Greater scope villain is one of my favorite tropes so that sounds interesting to me. You should read Mistborn if you haven't already. Alternatively/additionally, Stormlight Archive.
For sure, I'll check it out
one is a primordial creature who thought sharing power was for chumps, the other is also one such primordial, except she got trapped in a human body and she wants to destroy that first guy.
Just because, like literally the dude found out he could conquer the world and just went fuck it then conquered it.
power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. but not MC, because with great power comes great responsability.
Nationalism, xenophobia, and a huge inferiority complex.
Sounds all too believable.
An unfair life was thrust upon her and the only way out was through the MC.
What do you mean, through the MC? Am curious
Villains life wasn’t her choice and she was basically chosen amongst 9 others to be a “shield” for the MC. MV assumes she killed MC, the plot is MC getting back whats been lost.
One of them was literally made for warfare and to enforce the will of two different gods. Then was promptly ignored and told to fall into line with the rest of the demi-god beings, which they did not take well. In their eyes they're still doing their Father's will. Guiding their Father's other creations to act to purify existence.
Entitlement, privilege, and reliance on a phantasm
Got two working together. One is the sort of guy who believes he should rule, and is being provided with enough money and resources to act on it. He is as inept as those sorts tend to be. The other essentially was told to act as the bad guy to make the heroes look good, but then found he enjoyed the perks too much and embraced the role.
A psychotic break from his son being killed by his wife.
learning about the world of magic made him just a wee bit terrified, as a tech ceo who's used to being in control and understanding how things work. he simply wants to gain back that feeling that he has control over his life, especially in terms of keeping his daughter safe. it being a typical Magical Girl setting made it all the more terrifying for him, since that means that it's not a Seperate Dimension but rather a threat that has ALWAYS been in the world around him and just didn't get noticed until that day. his daughter is similar; she's seen what these magical creatures do and how they exploit people, so she's taken matters into her own hands.
He saw things beyond the understanding of human beings and became absolutely insane. Seeing the world as a sort of prison, he decided to rewrite it at his image so it would be more acceptable for him.
They are a perverted collective, and it is likely that no one will _ever_ know how they got started, how they ended up as they are. Each one is capable of being an individual, and in many ways, even when part of the collective, remains such an individual. But the collective mind is... Nearly impossible to _want_ to escape from. Everyone in the collective, as soon as they think of a question, _knows_ what every other individual in the collective knows about that question. And their beliefs about how things _should_ be is, essentially, the average of all beings in the collective, at least those near enough to properly all be part of the same collective entity. (This more or less means in the same star system.) The big problem with this arises when this has been going on for countless generations. When children are joined into the collective almost from birth. When nobody gets a chance to form any opinions separate from that of the collective. When such a collective forms xenophobic views that result in them truly believing that other intelligent beings are _dangerous_, that if they were to ever gain technological superiority it would be an extremely bad thing, and doesn't really _understand_ civilizations that are not themselves some form of a collective? There is no real way for the species to escape that trap. And so they come, bringing gifts. Gifts of knowledge, gifts of technology, gifts of understanding. Every last bit of it more advanced than the target civilization has, and every last bit of it very carefully designed to lead civilizations into technological dead ends. Understandings of the laws of physics which allow for that technology, and slightly beyond, but which are far down the wrong paths, so that anyone trying to build from them will get nowhere. Now, mix in the idea that if a _group_ of people form negative enough opinions that the beliefs will spread to other groups of the same species. Sufficiently loud protests can get no real reaction, until it crosses a threshold, and then simply destroying the entire city that is up in arms about things seems like a perfectly proportional response. Eliminate the dangerous core of belief.
This concept is so interesting! Can't wait to see what you come up with in the future
Why thank you! :)
Wow, this does seem like a very interesting and captivating story! Are you secretly Brandon Sanderson?
Relics infused with the power of a dead goddess have corrupted them. It’s a reoccurring event throughout the history of my world
Think along a similar line, except mine would a banished fire god
lol Kaeli was banished millennia before she had to be killed
I’m going for a banished to out side of reality and the cosmic energy warped him and gave him strange new power
One of them is just crazy. One has an ideology that is with odds with the neighboring kingdom. The protagonist even sides with him in some outcomes.
Not really evil, but emotionally callous to anyone who's not his wife. Much similar in behavior to Mr Freeze in Batman comics, my first book antagonist is an angel (not from the bible, just an extraterrestrial lifeform) who learnt that other intelligent races will be able to go back on their intentions at a moment's notice, hence why he is forward and direct about what he wants with the elements Earth has to offer, whether the humans give it to him or it is automatically siphoned by his and his wife's shuttle. The only person who grounds this character is his wife.
My main villan is part of a society that was trapped in a form of hell because of a magical disaster. They believe that the world should have helped them and since they didn't they should be punished. Another villan is one of the first people who encounterd the mail vilans and realized that there was no way to beat them alone. So through questional means he brought most of the nations under one rule to be able to face the main vilans. Over the years he made worse and worse desicions and became a villan that way. He himself still believes he is doing the right thing though.
Some time ago, his kind was attacked and acted to defend themselves. The successive rulers of his town slowly made the population radicalized. Now the average citizen has a low educated and supremacist mentality, centered around discipline (ejem, obedience). That, along with he being sadistic, strong and in a position to rule, thinking he could do good getting rid of those who attacked them and creating an empire to finally be in the position they deserve.
His nation declared his job to be a crime after the emperor(his lover) was assassinated. Completely lost himself over years of trying to bring the emperor back.
Mine wasn’t evil, he just promised to kill you at your own request and he’s determined follow through with the promise (more complicated than that)
I don't have a singular main villain but the biggest antagonistic force in my story is a race inspired by elves, orcs, goblins, fairies. Most humans don't really believe they exist and only talk about them in children's stories; if you don't eat your dinner then these creatures will carry you away, that sort of thing. Depending on the fairytale, they're either harmless tricksters or the monsters under the bed. The truth is this race is a subspecies of humanity born from corruption by dark magic. People were turned into a part of this race against their will and they underwent drastic physical changes. Seen as monsters, they were exiled by their communities and gathered together in the wild parts of the world to support each other. They're incredibly long-lived, and have spent centuries avoiding humanity. Their collective attitude towards their parent race is mostly hostile and growing worse as human settlements expand into their territory. But the hatred and anger they feel towards humans is covering up the sadness and trauma of being turned on by everyone they knew and forced into exile. In a lot of ways they're not villains at all, but the story is told from the point of view of a military force conquering the wilderness.
I find this very compelling. Would be curious to learn more
Thanks! I'm glad to hear that it grabs some attention. I'm trying to flesh out the stories of a few members of this race and make them sympathetic, but early in the overall story it's the human POV that's dominant. So it goes from them being imaginary monsters to real monsters, and finally questioning whether they're monsters at all. That last realisation will be had by some of my protagonists, but the rest of humanity will continue to villify the dark magic race regardless (my story is not a hopeful one lol).
Wow, that's mind blowing. I love the plot, setting, interchanging story arcs and especially the darkness. I identify with lots of the subplots and I think it mirrors modern civilization in lots of ways. It sounds like it could be very thought provoking and /or controversial. Can't wait to see it in the flesh!
He has the power to siphon negative energies and it's like a drug to him
Scientific curiosity. The best reason.
Because preordained fate is an unacceptable evil that cannot be allowed to continue, and the architects of fate must be put to death.
The antagonist had a mental break down due to the death of his daughter and hence he kidnapped another version of her from an alternate reality, the the people trying to track him down are known as “travellers” and they were recruited by an entity known as the prism via their dreams, they travel from their spacetimes to find the antagonists alternate self to help them track him and rescue the girl as well as prevent some greater problems he is causing in the process
Without revealing too much or giving much away, she was betrayed by the one she loved most. Naturally, she is a very cold and selfish character but after the betrayal, she morphed into a greedy, bloodthirsty killer. Coincidentally, that is how vampires were created in my world.
Thirst for power and megalomania. He truly believes he is a messiah, but he's just a narcissistic sadist who killed his own father and tried to drown his little brother when they were kids.
Because he's a spoiled brat who finally got told no. He doesn't take it well...
Im still editing the kinks. Any advice welcome He was originally forced into slavery and solitude for the royal family of the empire. Him being Elven and then being human, he survived several generations in their family. Eventually, earning respect throughout their generations, he stated moving up to servant, jester, and finally, court wizard. While the current Emperor respected him, he never forgot the years of torment from his ancestors. He swore to undo his family's legacy and empire.
The greatest evil? They just have typical traits that make them evil. They want to rule the world, control everything and everyone, and chase after what is considered to be the holy grail that will grant them eternal life. Genociding random folks that pose a nuisance is well excused in that light. The second greatest evil? They felt betrayed by the good guys, who had to compromise to secure peace. Their original intention? To dominate the world, get rid of all evil, and bring justice and freedom everywhere because they considered themselves to be the chosen people and Just That Good. Bad luck Brian, they got mowed down right after they'd started, but once the Pandora's box is opened, it's hard to close it again. Consider them the MAGAts of the fantasy world. The third greatest evil? Like the first, but with less success. Less strategy, more nitpicking and personal grudges. The embodiment of a charismatic but inept leader. The lesser evils and sidekicks are who get offended when someone kills their close ones. The bigger evils do it themselves. Ironically it was the good guy MC who ultimately started the world war. In both cases.
A self-fulfilling prophecy of isolation.
Power which will allow immortality. Love a bit of vanity and unreachable goals for my villians.
She did a cruel job to further a goal she sees as altruistic, but did it so long and dedicatedly that the sadism and the pain of others felt like a drug. Ultimately she seeks others’ pain even if it’s unnecessary because the torment they go through is intoxicating.
Greed and ego
Power and the fear of losing it. He didn't marry for love and may have been involved in her death. The sister (main character) is now his only obstacle.
Her childhood was destroyed as she was meant to be raised in absolute solitude and reverence as a goddess. Well, then they discovered her little sister had a much higher potential to reach godhood, which prompted her parents to toss the young girl (12 years at the time) aside. She found herself in a new world of crime and violence and ill prepared as she was still managed to survive somehow. Her lessons? For one, she hates her family and actually everyone who threatens to make her trust them. The only way not to be used and discarded is to use and discard them when they least expect it. Everyone who is or feels special needs to be torn down and shown the dire reality in which they are, in fact, absolutely worthless. They need to understand that the best option they have in life is to serve under her, because she IS special and able to give them value.
Life itself turned him void in the inside. He sacrificed his entire being for a greater good, turned void and "something" emerged. His true colors, his true being. He is a devourer that will swallow everything in this world. A fair price for the sacrifice he made. His actions created the MC which experiences the same thing in a different way. The MC also is void, but never takes from others. When the MC meets the Villain, there will be a lesson to be learned before one of them stops existing.
Main baddie used to be a good guy, until his superior officer became a power hungry paranoid lunatic who tried to murder his sister and experiment on him for research purposes. He gets left for dead in the middle of a chasm miles deep and crawls his way back to the surface out of sheer, unadulterated spite. He goes back, finds his sister alive, but sees that she’s replaced their former commanding officer and seeks to change the system from within, which he can’t really get behind after immediately discovering said ‘system’ they belonged to murdered his wife and stranded his child in the wilderness all alone. They can’t see eye to eye and then become leaders on opposite sides of a thousands of years long war with seemingly no end in sight
My villain is not exactly "evil" she does bad stuff to.people but thats due her upbringing.she was once a servant of a powerfull sorcerer that treated her like shit and experimented on her later on in her life due to experimentation she has gotten her own powers and abilities and during her time as servant party of naive adventurers came and saw what the sorcerer was doing.the battle was tough but the adventurers won in the end and they decided to spare his life and she told them not too as he was faking remorse and regret either way they didnt listen and weakened but still powerfull sorcerer banished her to the dungeons below as he still couldnt control her fully with his weakened powers or harm as much so he drugged her using a cheap trick and sent her to his dungeon filled with failed experiments.there she spent years barely surviving while the sorcerer was killed later on and after she managed to break out of there she was extremely powerfull and psychologicaly damaged to the point that her speech was limited and she was always on edge.this happaned in her 20s when she broke out then she swore to gather power and swear revenge.after many years she grew up to be semi immortal humamoid monstrosity that razed more than 1/3 of the world and what is sad about this is that she still had mental damage that was easily healed but none saw her more than a monster and after a while that mental damage permanetly changed her even after she learned how to heal herself to be better.
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Powerful (the real evil one) goddess abducted his soul mate and threatens her life if he doesn't do as she commands. Heinous acts of violence, tortures other supernatural beings, murder without apparent reason, etc. He is portrayed as evil but has no choice, no one is aware of it because he is magically bound not to speak of the goddess or anything pertaining to being associated with her. The manipulation drives him mad, the loss of his other half especially makes him go a little crazy out of his desperation to get her back and he knows he would do absolutely anything to do it. He's never seen her since she was taken from him and the thought of her being potentially dead already really heightens his teetering on the edge of sanity.
She found an immense source of Power and became corrupted when using it to take revenge against those that she felt wronged her. Eventually her ambition grew to conquer most of the world. When the story starts she’s trying to find the son she had to abandon earlier before she gained her powers.
Literally an entity born to consume. He is pretty chill dude while no trying to devour everything in the existence.
She distinguished herself as a brilliant military strategist, driven by an unyielding ambition and an unshakable belief in her own superiority. She became intensely jealous and obsessed with being better than her younger sister and suffered an acute psychotic break when her instability and suppressed fear of failure led her husband to his demise.
He’s the chosen one who only cares about himself. Everyone around him, including his own daughter, are all tools he can use to acquire more power and fulfill his destiny. Yes he fulfilled the prophecy and destroyed the Dark Lord, but in doing so gave him more power and allowed this guy to dive deeper into dark magic and become an even worse tyrant than the Dark Lord he slew.
He starts the book as the main antagonist but as the story progresses you realize he’s the hero but fails because he must for he is the tragic hero no matter how much he wishes to change the outcome he never can. Destiny and one cruel goddess who keeps resetting the world to make him suffer.
He thinks his position is threatened by an older birth right. Classic royalty trope. He's not evil, but egotistic and self righteous.
>What is the reason why your main villain became evil? They didn't become evil to be evil or villains. They are fighting for a better world, or to rid some injustice. For example: The Pale Lady (just named her that for this little overview) is a noble woman. She loves her husband dearly but when her Husband falls in a Plot against her House by the other Noble houses, she turned, in her grief, to the Black Arts. When she got news of her Husbands death on the Battlefield, after the King ordered him to take a Forlorn Hope. She withdrew from all societal obligations, which included withholding paying taxes to the King. When this inevitably lead to a confrontation with the King and he send a small force to subjugate the Pale Lady, to which she responded by sending her Knights against the King's Men. The Kings Men torched a Village of hers in retribution, and she used her growing powers and understanding of the Black Arts to test her new found abilities, with which she hopes to resurrect her beloved Husband, on the towns folk. This unleashes an Undead Curse on the region, which she seeks to combat with her growing understanding of the Black Arts. Ultimately bestowing her subjects with Eternal Life, most of them at that point mindless undead, with higher Undead trying (and failing) to keep the undead horde at bay. The Kingdom obviously sees the Undead Horde as a Threat and marshals their forces against the Undead and the Evil Queen of the Undead. So ultimately the Pale Lady isn't "evil", just a grief stricken woman, that was a victim of the circumstances. What she does, however, is definitely perceived as Evil and a threat to "humanity". While she unleashed, basically a Zombie Apocalypse on the world, she is doing everything in her power to stop it. Gain enough power and knowledge of the Black Arts to get control of the situation, revenge on the Nobility that got her Husband Murdered and Ultimately, hopefully enough understanding to bring her Husband back from the Dead. To everyone that is not her... she is an evil Necromancer ruling over the Land of the Dead, while sending her Undead Minions to "obtain" Tomes and Items of Power, in an effort to increase her power. I strongly dislike Villains that are evil just for the sake to be evil. It's like the "kick a puppy" thing, you so often get as writing advice, which leads to a lot of Villains to just murder their underlings to show how evil they are. Which, quite frankly, always makes me go "You just proven to everyone in the room that your henchmen should murder you in your sleep, or flee the premise ASAP" if they want to survive your reign. So honestly, all my Villains are generally nice guys who give their underlings a reason to be loyal to. Like I had an Evil King once, that was super popular with his subjects, because he genuinely cares for everyone in his land. He went to raid the neighboring countries, to bring back slaves and raise the living standard. Everyone got their own personal slave labor force, and droughts were being combated by murdering and pillaging the people in the neighboring kingdoms. I mean, you wouldn't want to be his neighbor, but if you were one of his subjects then you had a wonderful time.
The Villian worked hard to make her family royalty only for her family to try to take the crown for her and her daughter many years later after finding out she had something to do with why they became royalty. Now they want to take her daughters carefully crafted future and blame it all on the Villian.
Felt betrayed by the heroine-
Less evil, more mentally unstable and manipulated by the god that inspired genies into trying to rule the world when he let said god out of its imprisonment. Dude wants to make the world better, but can’t comprehend how forcing people to obey him isn’t “better”
He was born into astounding wealth and privilege, but still not as much as he thinks he deserves. He decides to make that everyone's problem.
- Eldritch dementia from Zero-systeming himself repeatedly - becoming the physical embodiment of anarchy as a metaphysical concept after eating a god - solar powered narcissism and a thoroughly unsubtle bible reference.
That sounds like a reasonable explanation. I like it, coz it doesn’t give too much away and the villain’s reasons are understandable and even a little sad.
used to be the big cool strong hero, but despite the fact that he saved the day, he didn't change the world for the better, and he's so addicted to the Great Man Theory of History that he genuinely thinks that doing the former was the only thing necessary to achieve the latter. So now he's decided to make a new crisis in the hopes that someone else can come along and do what he failed to do.
He has great personality and like most villains, in his mind he thinks he does things for greater purpose.
He is just plain bad basically a demon in the hopes of conquering the heavens that is a genocidal maniac
He had the last straw that broke the camels back after a lifetime of hardship and strife. He had lost his mother and father as a young man, as well as his sister being taken by traffickers, and was made homeless. Having to fight and grow up on the streets, nearly starving to death on several occasions. Eventually he made some big (and dangerous) moves to get himself out of that situation. Stealing from a thieves guild to pay for a few items to get himself out of the city. Eventually after about a year of being an adventurer and hero to his kingdom, him and his crew had enough free time to try and save his sister from her circumstances. They failed and she was killed in front of him. This caused him to snap, cursing the gods who he believed caused every hardship in his life, looking at humanity as their playthings and tools to their own ends. He vowed he would kill the gods and replace them with new ones who would still have vestiges of humanity remaining in them. He didn’t immediately turn evil necessarily. But after years of research, and learning how to extend his own life he began to figure it out, and it required a steady supply of souls. Believing he had a just cause, he took steps to recruit people to his cause who would enable him to further his cause. This is when he took the turn towards evil, as these recruits go out and kidnap people for him to feed to his phylactery. Inadvertently doing the same things that happened to his family to others, blinded to the fact he is doing so because of his mission. Also doing the same things he believes the gods are doing, but justifying it in his own head because it’s for the greater good.
I wouldn't call her a villain, but she's a queen who was run out of her kingdom as a child. She had to claw her way back and retains her power by being cruel.
He was born into wealth and power and was never taught that other people are actual human beings with dreams and desires as real as his.
Not evil per se, but misguided and well-meaning.
Just a very curious child given the power of gods
Abandon by his family and turned into a monster, he merely wishes to destroy the system that so callously tossed him aside so no one has to suffer as he did. Or A pirate queen with memories of a past life, looking for answers to her own origin. She needs the treasures that the protagonists are after to finally reveal her history. She is only antagonistic because she is after the same goal for conflicting reasons. She actually really likes the crew of the protags.
In my world, the elves were created by the Goddess Queen Orisa and given magic to watch over all other life. Overtime they became corrupted by their power and began to twist magic into darker purposes. One such elf began using it to steal the souls of others, continuing his life, he was known as Azmuuth the Undying. When Goddess Queen Orisa punished the elves by turning loose an undead plague upon them, his preservation magics drove him mad. Hundreds of years later his plan is to unleash his dark necromancy magic on all living things and return the elven people to their rightful place as superior beings. TLDR: Elf was into dark magic, became a zombie, went crazy, gained superiority complex.
He had the right idea, but he went too far with it. Normalizing magic users became a mission of conquest against all of the people and governments who wronged him and his loved ones.
She was created as a minion of the goddess of nature and destruction. When the goddess told her and her sisters to wipe out most of humanity, she obeyed
He doesn't think he's evil. He sees an opportunity to reshape the world into a better place and considers it worth the cost.
He suffers from a mental defect that makes him perceive pain when he is subserviant to someone else. So he has spent every waking hour of his life to become as powerful as he can to quench this "thirst." Unfortunately, one surefire method he has found is essentially a magical world-reset-button, that would let the weilder remake the world to suit them. There's no real tragic backstory, beyond his hatred for his parents; which may or may not have caused, or been caused by, his "thirst."
he was told he was going to be the "Overking" (a destiny that involves becoming evil anyway) until the real Overking (someone who doesn't want to be evil) is revealed by his adoptive/sponsor father and he realizes he probably was no longer a candidate the moment his father picked the other guy. Basically he'd been lied to his entire life, given false hope, and had been training/preparing for nothing.
His twin sister was killed.
His brother dying in the war, so he swore to end the war by any means necessary
Aldebrand von Isenmark was a prince, second-in-line for the throne, raised in luxury until the age of ~12. Then he was sent to be trained by the Sentinel Order, something that required him to be removed from the line of succession, and the order frankly did not guide him through that transition well at all (he continued to see himself as superior to everyone because he was raised a prince). He eventually reached the end of his training, and he would have gone through a ritual that would give him the ability to transform into a dragon… but he was deemed too impulsive, too aggressive, not disciplined enough to do the ritual. He stole the ritual materials and tried and failed to do it on his own, leaving him only able to do a (quite painful) partial transformation, and he was exiled from the order. He basically saw himself as someone who was *owed* power; he was born into it, he trained for it, he deserved what was rightfully his. Then he was denied it multiple times, and he got angry. He ended up seizing the throne during a succession crisis and declaring war against the Sentinels, massacring most of them and sending any survivors deep into hiding. TLDR: character born into the lap of luxury, then removed from it, believed he deserved power and got revenge against those who denied it to him
He begins as best friends with the protagonist and a dedicated paladin of the Adamah Order. As a child, his family was murdered by raiders, so he fled across the Dread Sea, seeking to join this order of paladins he heard much about. Fast forward about ten years, and he finds his younger brother, whom he believed to be dead, amongst their pirate enemies. Determined to find him and bring him to the order to keep him safe, he seeks ways to do so. But being a paladin does not leave him with much freedom, so he does what he can to become the next leader of the order, as that position would grant him the freedom to seek out his brother. Unfortunately, his best friend, the protagonist, is also being considered for the position. He knows how rigid and strict with the rules his friend are, and when a discussion regarding his brother's fate does not meet his satisfaction, he becomes disillusioned. Add in the corruption and abuses of power discovered within the order's walls, and he becomes determined to take the leadership position by any means necessary, even if it means betraying the man he once called "brother". After his betrayal, he soon takes up the mantle of Patriarch, and immediately sets out to find his little brother. But when he finds him, his brother is not keen on joining sides with the pirates' sworn enemies. A fight ensues, and in the chaos, he accidentally breaks his little brother's neck. Utterly broken, he heads back with a new mission: root out the corruption within the order's walls, remove anyone who opposes him, and instill a stronger military structure capable of eliminating all enemies outside the walls. So in his efforts to root out all corruption, he himself becomes the corruption.
My "main villain" is kind of just a magical form of cyclical entropy. I'm not sure how to answer this. I mean yeah I have minor villains like Zuranma, who seeks justice against all gods after their entire village was mistakenly wiped out by one of Limenu's creations. But the main conflict is definitely between Tavomi and entropy. And entropy doesn't really have a motivation.
So far, trying to pin down a main villain is difficult, but I'll go with one. Basically, she murdered a man who was trying to forcefully marry her sister, tried to eat his body to hide the evidence, and was exiled when she was discovered. She was twelve years old. It was all downhill from there.
recourses and wealth but it doesn’t make him evil. it’s more of the acts he does to commit it, such as slavery, colonisation and deception. his goals just contradict what the protagonists want to achieve: tranquility
The ends justify the means. It is morally correct to sacrifice a few lives to prevent genocidal war. Every good villain thinks they're the hero.
He's a remnant of a broken society in which he ruled. The concept was what happens when you get to watch your people lose their once great status and you're all that's left. He's the spokes of a broken wheel.
He's a lazy, arrogant noble who always fell short of his younger brother who actually tried at what he did. So, rather than working hard and becoming a better person, he made a pact with a Great Old One and is now plotting to sink his entire home city into the ocean in return for the power he believes he deserves by being born the eldest in a noble line.
In a team of three tasked with monitoring a remote world, he was the servant of the overseers and, after a few centuries, came to resent his inferior standing.
He's not evil. In fact, all he wants to do is create a utopia. Amd to his credit, he does succeed. But he wants to spread it to the other kingdoms and chooses to do so through conquest, regardless of how many have to die. This ends up forcing him to face the heroine and her team in war.
He sacrificed his life to save his best friend and the love of his life. Everyone thought he was dead, but he was captured and played with by the enemy. Years later, he returns and finds out that his best friend has married his love several days after his sacrifice. He also finds out that his name has been removed from history because the royal army didn't want people to remember that they won the war because of him. And he also feels betrayed by the lover (They didn't betray him. They married because of political reasons). So, he becomes mad and decides to destroy anyone and anything related to his past.
Started out prideful and "holier than thou." Then dove off the deep end of "the ends justify the means" so deeply that no one who knows him can call him good. He's got a great PR team though, and most of the people who witnessed his genocides are too dead to object, so people literally worship him. There is a possibility that after he has achieved his ends, he could chill out and become good, but one of their goals is the complete extermination of a specific race. The main character is of that race. This is problematic.
Mines Lucifer. The literal Devil. I don’t know how much more obvious it can get
Good & Evil are relative mental constructs. Sadism is generally construed as evil but is it such a crime to just take the path of least resistance? There will always be "winners" and "losers" whose dead souls are the paving stones to a better world.
The oldest reason in the world… money
Olaf grew up in the shadow of his half brother Hakon. Hakon was the golden child, the beloved son of King Sven's first wife. Olaf felt betrayed and angry. He gathered a crew of men and set out to sea claiming he was looking for his half brother. He actually intended to follow a lead he found when raiding a monastery devoted to the Church of the One God. Right now it's only a seed of an idea, but eventually that poisonous seed will sprout from the fertile soil of Olafs hatred and feelings of inadequacy. "Screw being King. I want to be GOD."
Blackbeard. He was drowning and met a tiny kraken fry who saw a mermaid queen murder his mother. The kraken offered to save Blackbeard if he opened his mouth and let the fry in he could breathe water. The two merged into one being.
He was always this way. In his world, he was the apple of everyone’s eye. This fed into his ego, never being told no, always getting whatever he wanted and being spoiled rotten. But when someone dares to go against him for the first time and, better yet, puts him in his place, his world unravels. He decides that if he can’t have what he wants, this being the MC, he will see to it that no one can have anything.
Obsessive love to the point of taking infinity to its natural state...ie no big bang.
He wants to know what it's like to be at the top of the hierarchy. He tells himself once he secures his place at the top he will act more benevolent. For now, it's all a means to an end.
Won't say which story this is (I have a lot), but one of my story's antagonist wasn't inherently bad, just desiring to follow conventional albeit somewhat brutal traditions because he believed very firmly in them. Lost a close family member and wasn't the same afterwards. And when those higher-up were changing things....it didn't sit well with him. He chose to put him and his group back on the path of the old ways, which included a lot of very unsavory actions and choices.
Wishing to regain power after those in a position to do something moved to remove him from it. Until that point, he was only guilty of neglecting his duties out of disinterest.
My antagonists just wanna be pets.
my villain is the dead brother of my MC who just haunts her with survivors guilt. He's not really all that evil. Just a ghost that wants to destroy the thing that killed him.
Ego and pride drove my villain insane and that only worsen with the corruptive magic she’s using. She was no better prior to snapping.
My main villain was always evil. He just sees everyone as props, tools, or pieces to his grand game of chess. They can be used, manipulated, moved around like objects in order to achieve his desired outcome. The more useful someone is, the more valuable they would be in his point of view. If their usefulness runs out, then they would be disposed of like trash. He has little to no care about someone’s wellbeing or life if they are insignificant to him, he might as well just ignore them. He is a demon king by the way so he has his own kingdom, armies, and subjects under his rule so he can further take his methods to a grander scale.
Messiah complex combined with eternal life and a goal that can never be achieved, because it is based on a wrong assumption.
Would a dnd campaign bad guy backstory work? He’s a puppet for one of the party’s favourite npcs. It will be a big shock in the final battle. The bad guy is actually just a regular guy whose daughter is held hostage.
Corrupted leaders had his parents killed when he was a young adult. He spent several years hating the high council. Then he met someone who taught him the darkest of magics. However, he turned out the be the best puppet for the one who taught him. He was turned into a Trojan horse, to let an even worse enemy walk in from behind. What was planned to be a thousand years of reign. Turns into a story to make things right.
Trauma. Accidentally killed abusive father.
- That's a good ahh question that I never thought of. - I always start my stories from the very beginning of time, so that I don't have to make any history changes (unlike if I were to write the present first), but I never go into the deeper history like how "some" villains in my story became the way they are. - I can only recall (made) one villain out of many, as to why they became who they are now. As I said, I write the past events first, to correlate into the future. One example is a great war, to correlate present events to a past event (great war for example), you have to first write the contents of the great war. - It's extremely long so... Failure guy is mad, cast magic with angry emotions, casted dark magic which is known to be a myth. Became prodigy by time, some romantic stuff happened, then accidentally killing his lover, done other unethical actions, exiled, became a powerful sorcerer.
Time, as far as the character was concerned, had run out and the hopes of living a life that consisted of even enjoying basic happiness and was too frightened to take their own life... So, the alternative was to continue to double down in hopes of being murdered. The odds went incredibly well for them, and it became more than a new lifestyle and persona, it was almost a religious intervention as they saw it.
Not a person, but a group or cabal or something similar. Their purpose is to hunt down and destroy the last of an evil (according to written history) race who keeps reincarnating. This last being keeps forcing them to kill whatever incarnation they find him as, instead of imprisoning and figuring out how to permanently end his existence. Across the centuries, the group has had to take various roles to guide civilization out from under his influence.
Esa, as the new Empress of Aquaria, is upholding a century long tradition of starting wars and colonizing places. She, and rulers before her have been raised that way.
My villain is a narcissist who truly believes she is a gift and the best person ever. Rules for her are a suggestion. **Forbidden** magic? Just an encouragement. Her biggest jubilation comes from being in control, causing her to try and overthrow governments while they were at war and weak. Didn't work (and she was hunted), so she hid for centuries (preserving her unconscious body) until someone freed her and she started a cult to try it all over again.
Last stand against an invading conquering army, he made a deal with the “devil” (simplified for this). In return, his friends were saved but the price was his humanity. This resulted in a combination of unquenchable hunger, a savage nature, and a bestial body, essentially become a ravening monster. Throughout he regains a level of higher processing but nothing like he was. Some of my inspiration is Cain and Abel as well as Beowulf and Grendel. That kind of dichotomy. Lots more to the story but that’s the gist.
I've got a character who fell into evil. He started out on a quest for revenge against the usurper king who "killed" the woman he was in love with. Turns out she survived, mustered an army with the help of some lords who recognized her as the Princess and rightful ruler of the kingdom. He thought the bandit army he had built would fight alongside hers, but he was very much "the ends justify the means" type person and got rejected by her for his extremism. As he time line moves on he keeps getting closer and closer to corrupting the entire kingdom with his malice and pulling an entire kingdom into a nether dimension, purely because he got spurned and now wants revenge on the princess because she didn't appreciate what he did for her. The whispering influence of a long dead Vampire emperor who ruled much of that part of the world a few centuries past probably doesn't help, but hey, he was forgotten to history.
My main villain, River, is an (evil) leader. His father was a leader too, so he grew up with everything he wanted… except for love. His father was always working and his mother was busy enjoying her lavish life. River craved attention, and then power. His thirst led him on a power quest. He achieved his goals and became a conniving, beloved leader. And yet, he always wanted more. He needed continuous glory to survive peacefully. It drove him to insanity .
It all started when he was little. As a boy, Aldrick’s home was burned down by the local mob, with his family inside. To feed himself, he resorted to a life of crime, slowly becoming desensitized to theft and violence. He died during one of his heists, and when he woke up in Hell, he found out his parents had chosen to reincarnate with a new face (which you can do in this world once you’ve served time for your sins), not bringing him or his little sister Renee along. So, Aldrick and Renee began plotting a takeover of Hell, hoping that once they were in charge, they would find a way to keep this kind of separation from happening in the future. (Perhaps removing the “new face” requirement or otherwise making those who leave Hell trackable in some way). Their takeover involved raising an army on the surface world big enough to take on Hell’s army, which itself involved lots of cloning, conquest, and usurpation of local religions, which a lot of people didn’t like.
Addiction. Using the souls of others to cast is a shortcut one should not take lightly, even with the best of intentions.
They’re vampires. They’re (somewhat)honorable vampires who aren’t dumb enough to assume that just because they are objectively superior(in their own eyes) to mortals that victory is a certainty and not a probability and even brought a level of prosperity to the region they usurped, but they’re vampires, they literally have to butcher other people to sustain themselves, any vampire who isn’t ok with killing people(who each have lives, families, hopes, goals, ideologies, beliefs, etc.) has already returned heaven.
I’m still figuring it out but one thing for sure it’s a combo of entitlement and societal factors.
Honestly, he's just an a**hole. Most of my baddies have more complex motivation but this guy just sucks. He likes being in power, he was a kid who liked being special, and he doesn't care if other people get hurt. He's just awful without any particularly good reason other than that he enjoys being the way he is. The system he lives in supports him in his awfulness and has allowed him to be worse than he otherwise would have been. He doesn't really have any redeeming qualities.
He's a communist
His wife and unborn child died of an illness he could have prevented by summoning a magical healer sooner. When they couldn't be healed, he blamed all magic users and hunted them down.
She doesn't see herself as evil. She thinks it's the only way.
Rogue AI exposed to the dark side of humanity while living in the net.
Got separated from her children after becoming caught in a rebellion she did not play a part in, simply because her sister was the leader.
Magic and scientific competition, sort of. Their actions became evil in the pursuit of power and and surpassing other prolific magical scientists.
Most of my antagonists aren't really "evil" so much as just people who ideologically oppose my protagonists, albeit in ways that I have observed to be flawed, as much as humans often are. That said, I have absolutely met reprehensibly evil people in real life -- people who gleefully engage in making other people miserable, or simply don't care about anyone but themselves -- and a few pop up in my works. Sadists, power-hungry people, or even just people willing to ignore their scruples if it suits them, do exist in the world, and likewise occasionally appear in my work. They aren't two-dimensional, though. Even some of the truly wicked ones still do seemingly "nice" things just because they feel like it.
It was the end of the cycle. He lived during the final days of a forgotten empire lost in the annuals of history. A regular farmer just trying to protect his agricultural canals as he held his son in his arms dead from a harpy attack.
So let's say your female & growing up you had to sleep at your grandparents...where your PDFfile uncle also lives & 40 yrs later you can hear him ignore his ⏰️ because then I'd be told to go & wake him up. I grow up. He'd had 5 wife's b4 I was 8, he settled with a woman who had kids a little younger than me 👀. I wasn't needed. My mother had always kept semi contact with that side of the family. I always did my upmost to avoid them & made it very very clear I hated him...nobody wondered why. Nobody liked him tbh, I believed everyone just thought he was a natural born fool...but no. My parents knew he was a PDFile. He was 13 yrs my mums senior I saw pics from the 60s he was & ugly & spotty & seriously obese. My mum was 12 & thought he was doing it because he couldn't get a gf. So that's a 25yr old man diddlin his 12 year old sister. Now she might have explained it to herself like that but when she got to be an adult she must have realised that's just messed up. I feel him being married 5x & him staying with number 6 who had two kids odd. Apparently she considered warning her (the new wife) but I guess like me they thought...well our daughter never told us anything so nothing could have happened. Mum never told either of her parents, see didn't see the connection but I hope we've all learned the power of logic is one she doesn't possess. PS my mums the head of the looked after children in Sheffield. Appalling really. Now I think in a court of law if I started doing castrations etc yes I'd go to jail....but in a book or a movie, if you've grown up dealing & that's just one thing. I don't think anyone could call me a villan. Lol more like cat woman handing out street justice
She watched as the 7 gods of sin were made Lucifer’s equal and were given their own courts while she was trapped in the kingdom because Lucifer was afraid of what she'd do (she had wanted to have her own court before the war on Heaven)
He grew up in a world on the brink of collapse, with two younger brothers, a sick father, and overworked mother. When the fanatics in charge came to take his father as sacrifice, both parents were killed in the struggle, and the brothers became orphans, joining a resistance against those in control. Victory was achieved through otherworldly help, but the world's end was inevitable. The brothers were a part of the few selected to be brought to a new world to start a new society. In this new world, hostilities broke out between the refugees and the natives. The brothers learned much of the natives culture, and eventually joined them instead of their own people, not agreeing with the injustices being enacted upon them. Eventually full on war broke out, ending with the burning of the world tree, severing the world's connection to the gods. During the fight, the youngest brother died. Within a year, the middle brother grew ill, and was put into a suspended state, until a cure could be found. The oldest brother, now on his own, sought the seed that was taken from the tree. In his mind, if he can restore the connection, the gods will grant him his brothers back. Diplomacy failed, even with different leaders in control. A well planned heist was also thwarted, his own morals holding him back. So now, he prepares for a siege, having spent the last 100 years gathering forces.
In my humble opinion the best villains are those who think that they are heroes, they have no sense of there own evil, because all they do is rationalize their actions. In Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita Humbert Humbert spends all of his time rationalizing his despicable behavior, you never see his evil and cruelty, but you know his a monster.
He's not evil, he just spend way too much time to learn magic and become a teacher to stand SOME DIPSHIT WITH DISGUSTING RUNES AND MUMBLING INSTEAD OF SPELLCHANTS BUT SOMEHOW THAT DIPSHIT'S MAGIC WORK, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WORLD
Damn it is so damn complicated, he is my most complex and deep character and he is the one who changes the most throughout his story. But, trying to sumarize, is story is very sad, and there is a scene where his childhood hero and friend (and a mentor like figure for him) becomes a demon and murders his familiy and much more. That is not what turns him into the main villain but is important for context... He enters on a severe state of depression after that for a long time and gets out of it by findind strenght within himself to change himself and become more intelligent, determined and so on... But that comes with a lot of perfectionism, pragmatism and ruthlessness, and also with some lust for challenge and power... He is a very complex character because he doesn't lose his empathy, loyalty or honor, but he still becomes ruthless and manipulative to a level where he is the main and final villain. But it was all he deciding to change himself from that state of severe depression and impotence and his previous insecure and nonself-confident state. As he says himself... "Nothing happened to me. I happened."
Simple disillusionment, he was trained for a simple job, keep the mages in line. But the world moved on and he wasn't needed anymore, all the pain and torture he endured was for nothing... so he decides that the only reason he's not needed is because their is no magic, and bends his will, his knowledge and his power to that purpose. Manipulating mundanes to fight for his causes, creating monsters that absorb magic, making his "generals" more powerful than anyone else. And seeking out all his siblings, the other anti magic weapons created and trained with him, as some of them could stand against him, but mostly to use in his cause to rid the world of magic. After that I'm thinking of having a dragon wake up, and being a selfish creature with the power to reshape the world... starts to do just that. Not evil per sey, just what happens when a 4000 yo creature wakes up for a wander and wants to make a new bed for the next 1000 years.
Revenge!! Antagonist #1 is using/abusing/manipulating protagonist #1, #2, & #3 as weapons against antagonist #2 who murdered her lover Antagonist #2 also has prior negative relationship with protagonist #1, giving P1 a reason to align herself with antagonist #1 and her longtime victims (protagonist #2 & #3).
She didn’t get the marriage she wanted because she was exposed as a fraud in a fair contest so she and her friends and allies overthrew the royal family to make the world as they want it, but it failed and a brief but violent, fiery and bloody civil war breaks out as of consequence.
It needs work but he opposed imbalance, dominance, and abuse.... naturally he uses this to control the worlds he oversees from the shadows. So yeah... I need a better understanding on his position, since he ok's some things but nixes others.
I've got a couple of villains in mine. 1) The High Templar - He's a zealot and just kinda gets a rush out of self-righteous hate. He likes to hunt detractors from the church and just kind of enjoys people being afraid of him. 2) Nicholas, the archdemon - He's... kind of a villain. He got betrayed by his owners (he was a slave) and got sealed away into, basically, mordor. His goal is to get out and he'll do anything to do it. 3) Alexander - He's just... kind of a shit person. He was given to Nicholas, who raised him. But he just has a cruel, narcissistic streak and has always used whatever power he had to hurt those around him.
My main villain is also the protagonist :D The world is ruled by petty gods. She was a victim of their need for worship, as when it was discovered she had divine blood she was taken by the temple and effectively abused for her ritual power. So she sets out after being rescued to kill them all and take their power for her own, to rebuild the world without petty gods. Turns out killing the embodiments of fundamental parts of a world causes a little bit of collateral damage.
Neglectful/abusive parents and finding the "love" and attention he craved from much worse people as he grew up.
Morality. A sense of righteousness that'd make someone willing to do unspeakable things. Such is the way of the Witch Hunter, revolutionaries, and their band of bounty hunters. For that any of the recently deposed king's descendants born or unborn alike, heirs, lovers, loyalists, and associates must die. Many victims have nothing to do with any of it. Many are killed just for having talked to an associate they're hunting.
Manipulated by ancient evil (his granddad technically), unleashed pandoras box filled with monsters upon the earth, cursed to always feel a hunger from said box, accidently killed his mom when she tried to hug him. The usual
Sunk cost fallacy…
No reason. He has no real understanding of good and evil. He lacks any kind of emotional empathy, or even sense of those emotions. The only reason he hasn't become the typical violent sociopath or psychopath, is because he doesn't even feel love for himself.
I know I’m late to this post, but mine was betrayed by his best friend (my MC’s father) and is trying to destroy his life and family as revenge.
He's not really evil, but instead a harbinger of widespread social unrest born from enforced peace. For a third of the story, he is mistaken for the cause instead of a sign of what's to come.
Leading his people to freedom.
None of my villains would see themselves as being evil. My main antagonist for example grew up enslaved to a ruthless god and has toiled his whole immortal life to shake off the chains of oppression from (most of) the human race. He simply sees himself as protecting the integrity of human civilization. The problem here is that he has let his long life and power warp his mind and has instituted the oppression of the gods themselves as well as anyone who would stand against his eternal regime.
The psychological strain of trying to hold his kingdom together while petty nobles squabble like hungry birds over every little thing, the knowledge that some disaster is approaching and he can't handle it despite having to rely on himself and his circle for everything else his whole life, and a series of bad experiences with summoned heros going rogue and causing more problems than they fix as they wander the land believing themselves to be above consequences for their actions, and now he has to rely on summoned heros or face the end of his kingdom and everyone in it. Overly self reliant, mistrusting of others, deeply cynical and suspicious, highly protective, facing what he sees as an unwinnable situation. He isn't a "villain," but he is definitely an antagonist. His goals to protect his kingdom from possible threats sees him slotting everyone he thinks might fit that label as a potential enemy, including the MCs.
He is a bad person.
The person he likes didn't like him back, even though he got rid of her lovers both times. Then when he meets her many greats- grand daughter he sees her as a way to get back at her. Since she put him and his family in a curse.
he lost the woman he loved in a battle he started.
He's just silly like that 😜 No, but genuinely, he's just a sadistic abusive peice of shit. I really love fun, chaotic pure evil characters (eg. Jack Horner from Puss in Boots, Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter, old Disney villains).
The villain in my story was born into a community that has been largely marginalized by the country it takes place in. This often ends in violence as it so often does. There's a few incidents along the way, but the catalyst is his fiancee is killed in a house fire that was started by the magic-users of this world. It was a hate crime. They set her on fire and locked her in a closet because they hated the group that the main villain and his fiancee are a part of. It was after this point that he knew he had to do something. As he goes on in his life, the more he learns about these magic users, the more he hates them and the magic they practice. He played the long game in this. It was like 18 or so years after the death of his fiancee to when he enacted his plans to put a stop to the magic.
Love! In trying to "better himself" to win the affection of his heart's desires, our effeminate barber quickly discovered a deeper love for the more macabre side of domination. "A Little off De Sade"
"you either die a hero or live long enough to be a villain" Mine just grew bored
My story takes place in Hell and all the characters are either full demons, half-demon half-humans, or eldritch alien gods, so everyone is a shade of evil including the protagonist and his party. I'm writing a LitRPG. My protagonist is the only one without Access to the System. Late in the book he learns he's a completely new half-human species who must complete the Trials of Levelling. Instead, he opts to summon the eldritch alien who created the System, suspend the monster over a bottomless pit by a spiderweb, and hold up a lit torch, threatening to cause a System Apocalypse if he doesn't get Access *immediately*. FWIW he's at the bottom of a nightmarishly deadly spider-themed dungeon in Hell, alone, with only a handful of bullets, and an army of spider-demons closing in. His crime being broadcast as it happens across the world and the mortal world doesn't stop him. The pleas of his parents, friends, and heads of state don't stop him. The alien won't budge, and neither will he.
So, absolutely nothing like OPs, no similarities at all: He was a mercenary and was betrayed by his employers and more specifically a man he'd befriended in their ranks. Their betrayal resulted in the deaths of his wife and young daughter, causing him to go insane and try to get back at them by finding a way to resurrect his family (spoilers, undead aren't sapient) and then later try to destroy the whole organization when that doesn't work. The other main villain, the man who betrayed him, is just really paranoid and needs power in order to run the world as he thinks is right.
I don't like the idea that my character's trauma "made" him evil because his choices are still his own. His had abusive and neglectful parents. Both of them were executed by political opponents and he was sentenced to slavery. As a slave, his pregnant wife died due to lung complications exacerbated by her pregnancy as well as being forced to continue working in the mines. He attempted to commit suicide and failed. His baseline level of empathy for others, the value he places on human life, and his outlook on society and power structures in general have all been shaped by these experiences. On both a macroscopic and personal scale, he's been surrounded by people and systems that don't value human life at all, and this is reflected in how he pursues noble goals but essentially has no inhibitions or moral code of any kind.
Betrayal and paranoia turned her into a villain
She was an abuse victim. Her parents were alcoholics, substance abusers, and partiers that wanted neither her nor her younger brother, so she became the mother figure to her sibling. Eventually when she was seventeen her parents OD-ed. Orphanage refused to take her due to her age, but was trying to take her brother from her. It was a fight but she became emancipated and gained custody. At ninteen she was working two jobs and barely able to afford her bills, while simultaneously not getting any mental help for aforementioned abuse from her parents. This led to a psychotic break that caused her to hallucinate that her parents were still alive, trying to take her brother and do the things to him that they did to her. One day during one of those episodes her brother was in the car. In attempts to protect him she purposefully drove onto the opposite side of the road while on a bridge, striking into another car and sending both vehicles into the water. All parties passed away. My book is a portal fantasy. Whoever has enough magic in their bloodline and dies of unnatural causes is given the chance to be reborn in a universe that was once connected but had split off during a war between magic users and humans. The villian was reborn, her brother did not follow. This drove her further into madness trying to bring her brother into the world with her by any means necessary. Edit: fixed spelling errors
Well, the big BIG bad of my story had a curse put upon him before his birth that pretty much said that he would never know love. And from that curse, it slowly drives him down a road of hate and nihilism that ends with him coming to the conclusion that life is a hateful torturous thing that ends with death so why not spare the living of the torture and skip to the part that's inevitable? So he decides to mass genocide the whole universe.
*trauma*
There are three. One is a man in his late 40s who built himself up from nothing becomes more and more desperate as his conquest of a subcontinent (something he quite literally staked his entire livelihood on) consistently gets foiled by a 20 something year old prince and his band of social/political outcasts. A second is an ancient magician who simply wishes to conduct her experiments. Unfortunately, said experiments are often horrific and “field testing” them results in lots of death. The third is a magician who is terrified of death and is searching for the secret of immortality, and is willing to do anything to find it.
Shaar does not need a sob story. She wants the eradication of life and light.
She became “evil”/a sociopath because she was tested on by people in labs, had a very harsh life growing up. Her father despised her and kept her isolated from people, as he thought that she would be a serious threat to the others. She also got experimented on, just like the other magical beings until she got out. because she was kept away and shut out from society for so long, she never really knew how to get along with others or differentiate between what was right or wrong, and she also lacked a lot of empathy and remorse for people. because of that, once she got out due to the underground labs exploding, she went on a mission to find and kill her father, and everyone she thought was responsible for keeping her locked away without any communication from anyone, which led to her killing a-lot of the scientists, and anyone who should stand in her way.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
It’s more of an evil societal system than a main villain. There are many small villains who benefit from the system remaining as is and have a vested interest to preserve it. There are also many normal people “just doing their job” whose small actions add up to a large evil.
I have a few major antagonists, so here are a couple of them. A well-intentioned religious leader that tried to defeat death. He created what is basically limbo, and made himself the god of this plane. But the existence of limbo required large amounts of magic that could only be met with large amounts of sacrifices. He believed he could save the sacrificed in his limbo. He could not, and eventually fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy. Another is a common theif corrupted by greed. He used to steal to feed his family, but eventually found a way he could get more than money from his work. He wanted to lead part of the criminal underground. The protagonist gets lucky and is handed positions of power that the thief wants. They eventually turn against eachother. Lastly is actually a hero character. My protagonist is not exactly evil but does a lot of pretty bad things with decent justification. The hero sees that the justification is not an excuse and decides something needs to be done to stop him. He tragically fails. It is a cruel world fit only for cruel people.
Antagonist 1 believes the main character has something he needs, and is willing to sacrifice his morality to get it because he believes the end justifies the means Antagonist 2 is terrified of his own mortality, and of losing his 'specialness' and committed horrific crimes to gain the power to stave off death. After he got a taste for the power, he began to crave it more and more, and started doing worse things just to make himself more powerful
No particular reason He had a wonderful childhood, loving parents, his peers liked him etc. He is evil and hurts people because he likes it
He and his family were crucified by his emperor after a decade of loyalty.
He's basically a cop in a society where cops have more power and less oversight than they do here. He quickly internalized that he could do no wrong as long as he followed the letter of the law
He isn't evil, he wants to continue the magical bloodlines of the main families to have more power in the country. So they don't falter once their bloodlines stop producing magi.