The late great actor Alan Rickman is attributed to once proclaiming, upon being confronted for his penchant at being cast as an antagonist in his films, that he did not play villains - only very interesting people. And he was right.
There are two kinds of villains in stories. The first kind is, at least on the surface, the simplest in that they are the most recognisable. Sometimes a villain is less of a person and more a personification, eschewing individuality to become a representation of an ideal instead.
They are simple, in that they represent in an explicitly unfavorable light an inherent moral failure - be it as simple as overwhelming greed, arrogant pride, or some other primal, negative aspect that the individual has allowed - or even chosen outright - to define them. Such individuals are defined by this trait, and the abject lack of any morality to ensure that they won’t go too far in the pursuit of their goals. The detestable does not stop them. Shame has no meaning to them. They will do as they will, because they wish to.
Motivations do not matter to such characters. Motivations are the excuse, the permission they have given themselves to act in the manner that they do, to cause the harm that they wreak, because they have already found a way to justify it.
In terms of storytelling, the reason for this type of villain is so that they can become faceless. They blur the line of who they are versus what they are; personifications of corporate greed, unchecked systemic violence, oppressive social control, and far more besides. We do not emphathise with them, or we are not supposed to do so, and the way that this is achieved is by the fact that they personify something and not someone.
This keeps the villain at a distance. Just enough, that we do not need to feel sorry for them, that we can celebrate their destruction and defeat. The less we know about an individual that we can empathise with, the easier it is to dismiss their downfall. Faceless villains and henchmen meet their end at the hands of the heroes, and no one has to feel anything bad about it.
There is nothing wrong about such a villain. They are in fact a fundamental pillar of storytelling, and some of the most compelling stories ever told are centered around such an individual who has both the power and the drive to shape the narrative. They are also important because they are the retelling of the age old story of the knight vs the dragon - as a representative of a primal, fundamental and seemingly unstoppable force, we need to be reminded, openly or subversive, that the dragons that plague us can be slain. We do not see ourselves in such villains. We see the things that we face, instead - the underlying forces that we must stand against in our day to day lives, and against whom we yearn to know triumph - or that we tried at all.
But there is another kind of villain, that is as difficult to create as it is rewarding; the one we do not keep at a distance. The one we look closely at, and when we start to realise we are feeling uncomfortable, it is because they have been holding up a mirror to our own reflection. The fact we do not like what we see is not the mistake - it is the point.
The separation between condemnation and understanding is found in the singular expression of empathy. For empathy, one must understand something and to be able to relate to it. To do so, we need something in common with it; or a reason to sympathise. Shared experiences, shared feelings, and common traits between both the audience and the depicted individual, are what you need to create the defining moment - the instance when you look at the person who has done something terrible, and have the observer ask themselves, truly and honestly, if they would have done the same.
The more we can relate, the more we can see of ourselves. The harder then it becomes to condemn - even if we know that we should. That line in the sand becomes visible at last, and it shines a light on our own humanity as it does so.
In short, people are complicated. And villains are people too.
And because we are people, we all have traits and flaws of our personality. True introspection, with merciless honesty, is incredibly difficult - one might even say entirely destructive in that it can create crippling anxiety and self loathing. As such, when a character we might create has flaws, they can be excused with the knowledge that when they become deeply ingrained enough, the characters become blind to them. To explain further - a person will do things that they do because they believe themselves justified. That a thing is earned, by reasoning and logic that they themselves have chosen to ascribe to. By the weight of such justification, an individual can do things that can make them a hero of their own story. And the villain of others.
Action lauded by one observer, will be condemned by another.
The moniker of monstrous behaviour is often universal in its application, but certainly not always. When you have a conflict of causes and ideas, both fully justified to the self against the opposition, you have created a clash of ideals that can escalate into something where the end result is violence, in whatever fashion it might take. And once you reach that point, you create a situation where you inevitably create oppositional reactions.
In simpler terms - in many cases, a person being a hero or a villain is basically a coinflip, depending on who you are talking to. Mostly people are just that - people. And by being people they have parts of themselves that are good and bad. They perform small acts of good and evil based on various kinds of moral codes that they may or may not be judged by, but they exist all the same. And so it is with some of the characters we create. The closer we get our villains to being people, the harder it is to condemn them - even if we cannot forgive them.
To see how simple it is, one need only look at how easily a positive trait can become caustic; a trait that ostensibly can be viewed or described as beneficial - even upstanding and admirable - can become something that will guide a character towards doing something awful.
When an individual places their entire life into something, the things that they will do to uphold that can, depending on the stresses involved, cross any number of lines of what is and what is not acceptable. A parent who will do anything for their children, for example, sounds like something correct, and admirable, and it surely is - but there is a point where it can become something terrifying instead. Each of us has something dear, something we would defend, something we would fight for - but if it is at all costs, then there is an inevitable point that said cost can - or shall - cross a line.
Where the individual does something they know to be wrong, but whatever reason it might be that drives them, they do not stop. Desperation, rage, grief - the shape of it does not matter. But the result leaves us with the confrontation of the mirror - of the person who is an uncomfortable reflection of an aspect of ourselves we think to be noble, until confronted with the reality that it might be something else entirely. Love, loyalty, honesty, connection - the aspects of ourselves that make us human are but a tipping point away from having us do something terrible. And as difficult as introspection might be for the individual, the story and how it is told gives us uniquely the means to observe both it, and perhaps ourselves.
This is what I look for when I create my characters. First, realising that a villain and a hero is a matter often only resolved by perspective, and that the more those lines blur, the more human the character feels. They are a representation of the jagged edges that define each of us, though we can view them through the lens of distance, the design of them is that the barrier is not nearly as solid as we might like. If you are left with a character you condemn, but cannot separate your empathy from, you are in a place where difficult questions remain - questions that linger, that follow us as we leave the story behind. That narrow place between fiction and an uncomfortable realisation and truth, that if a terrible person does things that you agree with, where does that leave you?
Sympathy however, is not absolvement. Understanding is not forgiveness, even if it might be instinctive. Personally, I believe it is a balancing act. There is unequivocally a point where an individuals actions reach well beyond justification. How they act and react to that realisation is the only possible way to bring about their redemption - but there can be no demand that it is accepted. Instead, the character asks the question, that the individual observing the story must themselves answer - and do so knowing that not everyone will agree with them. And maybe they should not, at that.
Make your readers uncomfortable. Make them ask the question, because that question is the line in the sand. At what point is it too much? At what point is something going too far? The people in your stories - and I use the word people deliberately - are the lesson, and the warning. Be they admired or hated, they are the demarcation of where the observer stands, of who they are.
A complex character is not simply one that has many layers, and many conflicting aspects of nature - that is natural, and how people are. A complex character is someone who you measure yourself against - consciously, or unconsciously. They are the line in the sand; who you want to be, or who you want to avoid becoming. Or who you wish you were not.
In the end, we choose what we regret.
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