The wordsmiths notebook

I’ve decided to start a Blog where I’ll talk about specific character elements used in storytelling, and discuss some of my favourites. If you’d like to respond with who your favourites are, and why, that would be awesome :)

Today, we will talk about not the good guy, but instead the bad guy; the antagonist. Antagonists are important to the story, because they provide the equal - sometimes greater - and opposite to the protagonists. However, some villains are written to just be evil for the sake of being evil. Very well written villains have hopes and dreams of their own, complex motivations, and of course never truly see themselves as a villain.

One of my favourite villains is Claude Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame, a judge who sees himself as superior to all but God, and believes that he himself is incapable of being wrong, and that anything he does is for God. But one day he meets and becomes infatuated with Esmerelda, and romani dancer living in Paris. She denies his advances, and through a wonderfully dark song, “Hellfire” decides to go on a manhunt for Esmerelda, eventually threatening her with death by fire, and very nearly succeeds.

Frollo is such a wonderful villain, because he is believable; a man who believes himself capable of doing no wrong, and abuses his position of power to get what he wants when he wants, and if he can’t have it, he will destroy it instead.
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So my friends and family, tell me who some of your favourite villains in stories are.