AND steal candy from a baby!!!
I vote for Emperor Palpatine. At least Vader had some good left in him – and his path to the Dark Side was to prevent those he loved from being harmed.
How about Lord Voldemort? He likes to make people hurt themselves, just for the fun of it. (Even as a child) Total sociopath. He has no sense of empathy – all he wants is power, and to stop himself from dying. He has not a single friend in the world – nor does he want any. He only wants himself.
Francis Urquhart from House of Cards was deeply evil, but great fun.
Blue Duck from Lonesome Dove was pretty irredeemably unpleasant.
Thanos. Killer of zillions because he’s got this insane notion that he could get an abstract personification to fall in love with him.
Nobody yet for Cathy from East of Eden?
What’s Aaron the Moor, chopped liver? For that matter, what of King Lear’s Edmund?
Also, while I can see the argument, I’d be reluctant to call Abigail the most evil character. She’s just too young and clueless to fully understand what she’s doing, I think. She’s, what, high school age? I’ve taught high schoolers - even the smart ones are pretty freaking clueless in surprising ways, sometimes.
So? I had deep-fried veal brains for dinner last night. Delicious!
YHWH
And he may well have been doing it for far better reason than “to make a point”. Consider that Princess Leia certainly said the planet was unarmed, but she had been far from a cooperative interrogation subject to that point. It’s entirely possible, given Leia’s role in the planetary government, that it housed significant numbers of Rebel personnel and equipment. And we all know the only way to be sure that such things are destroyed …
Every creative writing student must study Darth Vader. From the music, introduction, voice, motivations, actions, coloring, backstory, fall, redemption, etc. etc. etc., he’s the most perfectly presented villain in history.
And the Emperor’s path was to save the Galaxy from anarchy. If there’s one thing that the first prequel made clear (other than that Lucas needs to hang it up), it’s that the Old Republic simply didn’t work, and had become vulnerable to endemic corruption and insurrection. The Empire delivered stable government for decades, until the rebel scum brought it down.
Come on, man - is it really that far to Great Debates?
There were no complaints about Satan.
Cthulhu
“A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant infamous and hideous–such is the God of the Pentateuch.” - Robert Ingersoll
Not that many satanists on the board afaik.
Eric Cartman.
I mean he’s got it all; no empathy, total racism, greedy beyond belief, a manipulater of epic proportions, utterly ruthless, and incredibly competent at everything he does. And all this at only age 10. Give the kid a break, he’s gonna be something as an adult.
Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
But I also vote for Lord Voldemort.
You don’t think his boss, the Emperor, was worst? The guy was pure evil. He was willing to let his Darth’s son off his #1 so that he could take his place and if that didn’t work out, oh well, I still have #1 working for me. I think Darth tossed him just for trying that bulls#$t. :dubious:
As an honorable mention with an asterisk*, how about Shakespeare’s version of Richard III? Granted, he was a real person but the play so thoroughly assassinates his character and exaggerates (and outright lies about) his misdeeds so much that he almost qualifies as a fictional.
The requirements of the OP aside, I think one complaint about including Satan is that in the best-known and most influential works where he’s a character–*The Divine Comedy *and Paradise Lost–he’s not evil enough. He doesn’t really do all that much in “The Inferno” section of The Divine Comedy and is almost admirable at times in Paradise Lost. To be a great villain, you should be so detestable that even the most pacifistic person not only like to see you killed but also drawn and quartered.
On a somewhat related note, is this thread strictly limited to fictional characters with known authors or can we nominate legendary characters as well?
The OP didn’t explicitly ask people to go to GD or the Pit if they wanted to nominate Satan.