Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the greatest villain of them all?
Iago?
Ahab?
Fagin?
Voldemort?
Sauron?
Villains are just plain scarier when they only have one name, aren’t they?
Who’s your choice?
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Bob Ewell of To Kill a Mockingbird.
I like this question.
Pride and Prejudice offers both a straightforward bad guy — George Wickham, abductor of young girls, slanderer of Mr. Darcy – and a subtler threat, Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine. Wickham merely wants to destroy Darcy’s chance for happiness with Lizzie by ruining her sister and making the whole family socially untouchable. (Just another day at the evil office.)
Lady Catherine is the living, breathing embodiment of the status-obsession that poisons Darcy’s relationships and makes him fear to do the one heroic thing that would really make him the gentleman he thinks he is.
Fortunately, Darcy is a good guy at heart who figures out that even 200 years ago, being a class act is less about having the right ancestors and more about whether you treat people decently.
Nathan-
As I was reading through the comments I felt myself agreeing with so many people…and it made me realize something. For me, there is no greatest villain because I've read so many good books that the greatest villain is whatever I'm reading at the time. Hope that makes sense.
But I can say this. Great villains
have LAYERS. If all they are is "bad" how can we relate to them? The greatest villains are the ones that could be redeemed I think. The ones where we can see things that remind us of ourselves. To me, that makes them truly creepy.
A great villain makes me think, makes me see something new about myself. A great villain makes me feel sorry that they are on the wrong path. A great villain makes me want to root for them.
I guess this doesn't really answer your question Nathen, because I could never pick just one.
What about YOU? Do you think there is a greatest villain in fiction?
Morgoth!
Well maybe. I dunno.
Darcy from "Pride And Prejudice," easily. Total sociopath.
Javert from Les Miserables.
I know it's from a movie…but Rasputin from Anastasia is scary.
Also, Professor Moriarty is quite probably the most intelligent, cunning, coldly logical villain out there.
But I think, despite all of their villainous characteristics, I have to go with Aunt March from LITTLE WOMEN. She has the uncanny ability to torture, dehumanize, enslave, condemn, and deprive without ever once acting unladylike. Poor Jo.
Hannibal Lecter!
Voldemort by far. Of course, I am partial to Harry Potter.
Lady Macbeth and Bill Sykes were both evil manipulators. I loved and pitied Heathcliffe and consider him and Ahab both obsessed but not evil.
The evilest villains aren't the obvious ones. They're the one's you'd let babysit your kid until you find out what they do for a hobby.
@D.G. Hudson My first was RAMA at 13 and I've read every Clarke book I could get my hands on since. I love sci-fi, but can't handle horror and I think Childhood's End crossed the line for me. The Alien is an entity that can't be fought in any way and it goes for the children first so you can't even huddle in a closet with your babies until you all get sucked into it together. How scary is that!?!
I had to stop reading Brave New World halfway through because I was having the same kind of visceral reaction but there's not a specific villain in that book. Fortunately, my high school English teacher accepted my argument for why I couldn't finish it as evidence that I had gotten the point, and gave me an A.
If Nathan is actually reading this, I would be interested in finding out if other people have had strong physical reactions to books and what those books were. Is that something a publisher would want in a book? Would it help or hinder sales?
Bible salesman Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone. He kicks a dog to death after spraying it with bleach.
Bad dude…
Greatchen–The Beauty Killer in Chelsea Cain's 'Heart' novels
Oops. Gretchen.
tjpfau sez:
Herman Marshall from Robertson's The Ideal Genuine Man.
He's the only villain I ever read who deep down inside was me.
My mouth still gets dry thinking about him.
Mrs. Carmody from "The Mist' I hated her.
Ooh, I'm throwing my vote in for Hannibal.
I feel like I'm forgetting a good one, though.
The big, evil, power-hungry bad guys are always good for a nightmare. But the truly horrifying evil-dudes that keep me up at night watching over my children are the (sometimes) quiet manipulative-types who seek to gain power by destroying the spirit, the heart, or the innocence of their victims. These types have no conscience.
Bob Ewel
Umbridge
Bill Sykes
Anyone who preys on children
I don't have a bigger list because I can't give life to the truly, irredeemably evil by reading very much about them. I should have been born in another time. Or maybe on another planet. 🙂 And this is why I tend to write humor. I'm probably going to have to do something about that though. Maybe therapy . . .
Shakespeare's King Richard III. No contest.
@E.A. Provost — I understand where you're coming from regarding books that make you feel almost physically sick — for me it's usually when they describe torture or mutilation — I can't read those either. I don't remember the part you mention about the kids but I read Childhood's End long ago.
I also read all the RAMA series — that was some setting for a story.
Also all the followup stories after 2001! (still searching for Dave & Hal)
Always nice to hear from another sci-fi reader!
The Yankees in Gone with the Wind!
Darth Vader is the best badass in the history of badasses.
Period.
The helmet. So perfect.
The breathing. So deep and breathy.
The cape…the way he masterfully swishes it upon exiting the premises.
The wicked light saber skills.
The buried vulnerable side…sexy.
Pure badass through and through.
Simple answer- Beelzebub in Bulgokov's Master and Margarita. Aside from rudimentary stimulation of sensationalism, can you comment on this- jrmprojects.blogspot.com ?
The Dean O' Flunks!
Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall from the Outlander series.
A few people haven't mentioned yet:
The Marquise de Merteuil – Dangerous Liaisons
Becky Sharp – Vanity Fair
Littlefinger/Varys – A Song of Ice and Fire
Michael Corleone – The Godfather
Jack Carter – Get Carter
Cody Jarrett – White Heat
Dr Frank N Furter – Rocky Horror Picture Show
Lee Woo-jin – Oldboy
Light Yagami – Deathnote
Mishil – Queen Seon Deok
Zhuge Liang – Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Nellie Oleson: On the Banks of Plum Creek and others. Laura Ingalls was too nice. I would have slapped Nellie.
Professor Moriarty broke the mold for the true "Supervillain". After all, Sherlock Holmes described him as the "Napoleon of crime". The first criminal mastermind of prose.
For sheer villain psychology no one I've read can match Dostoevsky. There's a prince character in his novel The Insulted and Injured who does absolutely infuriating things to everybody. But then you read the Prince's monologues, and he understands everybody's feelings so well, and sympathizes with them. The Prince knows what it is to be young and passionate, and feel ourselves wronged; but someday we will be grown up realists like him, and see that all his actions were really for the best. Then he goes on explaining — never justifying — and it all sounds so reasonable. Perhaps we only think him a villain because we have our youthful ideals — he admires those ideals — but after all one's youth can not last forever.
He's enraging. Like any good Dostoevsky character he makes his own disturbing behavior sound all too rational.
I'd also suggest Daisy from The Great Gatsby. To me she's a more modern kind of evil. Not wicked, just self-absorbed and without any conscience.
Gotta pick Heathcliff…
Sauron is too abstract (since no one ever sees him), and I actually feel sorry for Voldemort..
First, I would place Morgoth over Sauron on the evilness scale. Morgoth actually created (or corrupted) the Orcs.
The White Witch, yes. Voldemort, definitely. I don't read horror so I can't comment on many that have been mentioned.
However, someone suggested Heathcliff and that reminded me of another Gothic novel and a romantic hero gone terribly wrong. My vote for worst villain is Nicholas Van Ryn from Dragonwyck. He manages to seduce a young girl into loving him, kills his wife so he can marry her, and then is apparently in the middle of plans to kill her as well before he is… "dealt with." The story creeped me out as all good Gothic novels should, simply because of his malevolence.
I agree with a few other readers, and the greatest villain in fiction has got to Ms. Annie Wilkes of Stephen King's Misery.
Yes, her threat was physical, as in "I'm going to take a sledge hammer to your dearly exposed ankle", but it was more mental/psychological as in "but you don't WHEN I'm going to bring the sledge hammer out or if I even will".
Her character was plain crazy (which made her unpredictable) but lucid (which made her even more of a threat). The worst aspect of her character was her willingness to play mind games – terrifying!
Johan from Monster by Naoki Urusawa. Awesomely scary.
Carnivale.
The Child Catcher. Anyone who's name is proceeded with 'the' well…*shudder*.
No doubt, forever hungry…. HANNIBAL LECTOR !
Loved the ending… his stroll through the village, "meeting a friend for dinner".
I'd have to go with Voldemort…Sauron is undoubtedly more powerful, but from a character development standpoint, Voldemort seems so real that it's a little spooky…Rowling did a great job of making him human and not just some incarnation of evil.
I thought it was interesting that some people mentioned Umbrige, but I'd have to say no to that because she simply misused the office that had been given to her. She had no extraordinary power of her own.
Truly evil people don't have power simply because they've been handed a position, instead they use their power to seize offices and titles.
And power is one of the most important aspects of the super villain. My neighbor's Chihuahua is evil, but who cares?
Bernardo Gui the Inquisitor in "The Name of the Rose."
Edward Cullen.
Okay, bear with me here: I know he's supposed to be the romantic lead. However, even setting the gag factor aside, he has tremendous potential as a villain.
1) He's powerful. He's fast, strong, and virtually indestructible.
2) He has similarly strong allies. Edward can read minds – the people he calls family can see the future, etc. Dangerous combination.
3) Others believe in him. While this could be the trait of a true romantic hero, in Twilight it comes off as beyond creepy. Okay, the high school students are intimidated, but that's about it. Meanwhile, Bella is willing to go to the end of the earth for Edward, despite his actions being controlling and sometimes abusive. She's a sidekick if ever there was one. He's a successful villain because he isn't recognised as such.
Think about the havoc he could wreak if he ever decided to embrace his unlife as a vampire. So much untapped potential!
Erik from Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. It's hard to find a villain who's more loved, or who has had a longer life than Erik.
My choice is William Hamleigh in Pillars of the Earth.
Javert from Les Miserables is an evil, also tragic, villain. I also fear Hyde, from Jekyll and Hyde, because he is the villain in each of us.
As I child I feared Hook from Peter Pan the most–he would slay the lost boys and his own pirates without batting an eye.
Growing up from Peter Pan. Being a kid is so much better.
Oh, I love these! My brother and I have just been emailing back and forth "What are your top three ________ (gunfights, sci-fi movies, one-liners, etc.)
My vote has to go to Moriarty. We don't get to know him very well, but anyone that can give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money is pretty awesome.
Also whoever said Edward Cullen deserves a cookie — that sick bloodsucker has probably psychologically damaged more females than anyone else in the world.
Reading all of these comments has helped me with my writing.
I have a villain who starts off as a good guy, but changes in the end.
Now I know that in the beginning, he'll be called by both of his names, but in the end, he'll just be called by his first name to keep with the whole "one name is scarier" theme.
Thanks, guys.
Professor Umbridge for me.
I want to agree with the choice of Professor Umbridge, but I'm not sure she's an all-time villain.
Probably have to say Hannibal Lecter, but I controversially consider all texts after 'Hannibal' (and even parts of 'Hannibal') to be non-canon fanfiction so I am just talking about Lecter of Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs 🙂
I would have to agree Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter was the villain that got under my skin the most. But it wasn't fear, it was Hate.
'It' from a wrinkle in time definitely scared me though. And the aliens from Signs. All they wanted was to kill, and they were sneaky which is just scary!