The Greatest Villains in Literature

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

On the old forum, I once put up an open topic on the greatest villains in video games. As video games are a rather sticky subject for the present audience, I thought I would try again but with a different source. This time, I want to focus on some of the best rascals from books throughout the years - I think the reception may be better.

I love villains. As problematic as it may be, I'm fascinated with the nature of evil, and I always enjoy the depths that fictional characters go to. Oftentimes, the villain is simply a more interesting character than the hero, perhaps because he/she does all the things we secretly wish we could do but know to be wrong. It's living out a fantasy. Maybe it comes from being raised on Disney movies and other animated features (which is part of an altogether separate topic for another day). Considering the age of the medium, I think it is safe to say that the villains of movies and video games wouldn't be here without the precedents set forth in literature, so this topic is devoted to discussing the best of them. They can be either the rottenest of the rotten or simply a personal obstacle for the protagonist, varying in degrees of technical evil. Heck, they may not be evil at all, just mean-spirited or other forms of antagonism. So who are your favorites? Who have been the finest examples of villainy on the printed page, and why?

[Raven]

Lovelace in Clarissa (Haven't read the book -- it's a massive, massive book. But I know of the character as we studied the book in a literature class). Awful character.

Just saying what pops into mind:
Dorian Grey, A Picture of Dorian Grey.
Dracula.
The White Witch, The Chronicles of Narnia (The Magician's Nephew for her backstory), C.S. Lewis.
Lilith, Lilith by George MacDonald.
Dolores Umbridge, Harry Potter.
Wolf Larson, The Sea Wolf by Jack London.

That's enough for right now, I suppose.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

You know, it was Lovelace that actually inspired me to make this topic. When I made the original post on video game characters, your first reply was along the lines of "If Lovelace from Clarissa was a video game character, he would be the best villain." That's how I first discovered Samuel Richardson, and although I haven't read his work yet, I'm interested in trying it out. Also, that reply got me to thinking that a topic like this would be more suited to books than video games, thus what we have here now.

[Raven]

Oh. Hah! I didn't realize you were talking about movies and videogames. I just assumed we were talking about books.

Movies are a broad topic. But video-game wise, classic villains like Bowser and Gannondorf (that's the Zelda villain, right?) come to mind, but at the same time, they seem somewhat generic.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

No, I'm talking about books. Video games were simply the original inspiration, and since a good chunk of movies are adapted from books (if not most), there's a correlation. What I meant to say is that my topic on the old forum was about the greatest video game villains, and you brought up Lovelace on it, so I thereafter mulled with the idea of focusing on literature. (For that matter, I love Bowser and Ganon as well, the former being something of an antihero and the latter being one of my oldest memories of fantasy evil. There's some danger of genericness there, of course, but that's for another topic!)

I'm going to be real cliché here and start off with Sauron from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I confess that I like the "Dark Lord" trope, although I'm not averse to a little deconstruction or fiddling. Still, for the original trope namer (to my knowledge), you can always count on Sauron for a good bit of menace. While I do wish there was an encounter with him in person in the books, I have to give Tolkien credit for building up this character to the point where he's synonymous with dread and terror yet you never actually see him. It takes quite a lot of skill to infer menace rather than show it.

On the other side of the spectrum, Morgoth from Tolkien's other opus, The Silmarillion, takes the trope in a more fully fleshed out form. Even though he's present "on screen" in the books, he still manages to evoke the same sense of power and force, if not more. While he may not be as deep a portrait as Satan (Milton's Satan), Morgoth remains an imposing specter on the whole of the legendarium.

Funny thing that you mention Dolores Umbridge instead of Voldemort. I guess that may be expected, but what sets her apart as more worthy of note than the main villain? (I haven't read the books, just the first one, so I'm unsure.)

[Raven]

Tolkien does a really good job with Morgoth. What a villain. After reading the Silmarillion, Suaron seems like a small fry (which he is, in the greater scope of things).


To really borrow some of my wife's exposition on this topic (at least I think it might be hers; I've heard this from elsewhere, at any rate), Dolores Umbridge is so frightening and so infuriating because she is such a realistic portrayal of the banality of evil. It's been a while, but I don't recall that she actually was on the side of Voldemort. She was on the side of bureaucracy and control. She is entirely believable. We could run into her easily on the street. She is an evil we have all encountered to some degree and which is extremely likely in our world. I react to her much more viscerally because she brings back all the feelings of injustice I experienced as a child. I still feel like the world is full of people who partake of that similar sort of evil. She is infuriating.

Voldemort on the other hand -- meh. A narcissistic psychopath with a band of bad guys who find it extremely difficult to beat school children in an open fight. He is the "dark lord" trope. Even from his early childhood, he is painted as twisted and evil. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Harry Potter, and perhaps I'm being overly dismissive of Voldemort. He is a force to be contended with in the series. Yet the biggest threats to Harry to me always felt like they came from other people or things.