Anti Villain / Literature

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• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo is one of the classic anti-villains: the protagonists' captor but also their guide to a fantastic new world, with a murderous hatred for imperialism but also boundless compassion for the downtrodden, driven by rage but also by intellectual passions; a scientist, a cult leader, an explorer, a terrorist. And we never find out why. Until the sequel.
• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: Salima just wants her granddaughter rescued from the Big Bad, and if threatening Amina's entire family is what it takes to get her help, then so be it.
• The Arts of Dark and Light: Aulus Severus Patronus, the Princeps Senatus and head of the Severan family, as well as leader of the expansionist faction in the Senate. Patronus is one of the main villains of the story, with the heroes furiously resisting his attempts to overthrow their constitutional republic. However, rather than being a Straw Hypocrite, Patronus really does believe in the politics he champions, and despite some gratuitous Kick the Dog moments, he also has a number of other noble traits. For example, Patronus genuinely cares about his family, and though he is an unscrupulous and ruthless politician, he is personally honest, with even his enemies acknowledging him as incorruptible.
• John Pointe of Asshole Yakuza Boyfriend is a career criminal who's at least somewhat complicit in the yakuza sex trade (though he doesn't feel great about that). He's also a loving father and Punch-Clock Villain who refuses to shoot a pair of unarmed women when he's put in that position.
• Most of the cast of Black Legion comes across like that, especially Khayon. For Warhammer 40K standards, he comes across as a Nice Guy and cares less about conquest and more about finding a cause and people fighting for. It helps that he's the Villain Protagonist.
• The Boundary's Fall series features Darklord Lorthas, who is polite and affable in person, and wants exactly what the protagonists want — peace between races and an end to persecution. To accomplish this, he's willing to conquer the world.
• In Caleb Williams, Falkland’s overall plans to follow, control, and discredit Caleb are evil, but he makes sure to never physically harm or kill Caleb. In fact, he tries to make Caleb’s prison stay more comfortable, gives Caleb money even after Caleb officially accuses him of murder, and drops charges against Caleb -– effectively saving Caleb from further imprisonment and execution.
• Cat Chaser: Nolen Tyner. He's greedy and sleazy, but he genuinely cares about Moran and does his best to avoid him getting hurt in his scheme to rob Andres.
• Clara Rinker from the books Certain Prey and Mortal Prey, part of the Prey mystery series by John Sandford. She was such a popular character that she was brought back for a second book. While Carmel Loan, the client who she became friends with after performing a hit for her, was a sociopath, Clara was quite likable. Clara has a sympathetic backstory as a teen runaway who suffered sexual abuse, and became a professional hitwoman after a mobster found out she killed a rapist. She gets even more sympathy in the second book, as she sought revenge on the men who killed her fiance and shot her in the stomach, causing her to lose her unborn baby. Later on, the FBI take her mentally ill little brother into custody in order to get her to turn herself in. When he panics and commits suicide in jail, she loses the only person she had left in the world. She is also kind of a Magnificent Bastard, as she outsmarts the hero, Lucas Davenport (who is supposed to be a genius), as well as the FBI, with elaborate schemes to take out FBI agents and the Mafia bosses who double crossed her. In person, she's actually very down-to-earth, friendly, and personable, and is described as looking like a "cute, perky ex-cheerleader type". The chapters that describe her career, how she carefully planned out her hits and got away with them, and how she set up a legitimate business with the money she made are the most interesting parts of the book. Davenport is actually attracted to her and flirts with her a bit, and does sympathize with her difficult life. Eventually, Clara seems to go over the edge and become reckless after her brother dies, and she is eventually killed by the FBI. She is part of a trend where many female anti-villains often have to have some kind of history of abuse to make them more sympathetic, and often meet a tragic end instead of getting away with their crimes.
• The Captain in Brom's The Child Thief. While the other Flesh Eaters are out to destroy Avalon through a combination of religious fanaticism and insanity caused by the island, he's the Only Sane Man who is motivated simply by a desire to return home, and risks his life more than once to protect Daniel after the latter's Face–Heel Turn.
• The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: Among the Soul Eaters, Nef the Bat Mage is easily the most sympathetic. While the others want to oppress the clans in their self-absorbed hunger for power, she believes that the clans aren't living in accordance to the will of the World Spirit and have to be oppressed for their own good. While she's not objecting to sacrificing predators, she doesn't like at all the needless torment Thiazzi the Oak Mage puts them and a White Fox boy (a disguised Torak) brought in as a human sacrifice through. Both Torak and Wolf sense that Nef is under her ruthless exterior insecure, and the former sympathizes her more than he does any other Soul Eater, especially when he's told that she nearly committed suicide when her son starved, only to be rescued by his father. Eventually Nef sacrifices her life to destroy one of the Fire Opal fragments in order to repay her debt to Torak's father.
• Chops the gremlin in City of Devils is a multiple murderer, but she has a very good reason for every person she bumps off.
• High Lord Aquitaine is revealed to be this in Princeps' Fury, fifth book of Codex Alera. He took up the very plotting and deceit he hated to remove what he saw as a weak First Lord from power and unify the Realm.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "The Phoenix on the Sword", while Rinaldo views the king Conan deposed with stupid nostalgia, he is not acting out of personal ambition and really thinks he is helping the kingdom. Conan, on seeing that it's him, appeals to him, though futilely.
• Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory in Count and Countess. They start off with generally commendable goals but achieve them in horrific ways.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Tamlin becomes a Woobie-type, with a sprinkling of Well-Intentioned, in the second book. His treatment of Feyre is awful and only worsens her mental state, and his decision to ally with the King of Hybern was an all-round terrible idea, yet it's made clear Tamlin is likely suffering from severe trauma, and lacks healthy coping mechanisms and a strong support system. He has no love for Hybern and was secretly planning to betray him all along, only allying with him out of desperation to get Feyre back (from his perspective he was rescuing her). Considering his trauma and the fact he was helpless to stop the woman he loved from being tortured and killed in front of him, his obsession with keeping her safe at any cost is understandable even though his methods are not justifiable.
• Konstantine in Dangerous Spirits is highly antagonistic towards Alexei, but he's treated sympathetically, as Alexei comes to believe that he was lonely and too bitter about his own past to have a clear view of the situation.
• Every single protagonist in the Daniel Faust series. Daniel is a con-artist and a thief, and he doesn't hesitate to use blackmail, violence, or even murder to achieve his goals. Bentley and Corman are (semi-)retired grifters, Jennifer is a drug dealer, Mama Margaux's family had ties to the Duvalier regime in Haiti, and Caitlin...well, Caitlin serves the powers of Hell. They're nice people, though. Usually.
• Lord Robart Heller in A Day of Fallen Night. He's a worshiper of the haithwood who wants to return Inys to the ancient ways and tries to subtly maneuver power away from Queen Glorian while acting as her regent. However, he intends to convert her through persuasion rather than violence (or if not her, then her daughter) and expresses the same criticisms of Saint Galian that she privately feels, regarding the burden he placed on his daughters and granddaughters to engage in Mandatory Motherhood. He's also correct in calling Galian a deceiver.
• Count Bela de Magpyr who turns up at the end of Carpe Jugulum. Oh he's a traditional vampire, but he takes care to make himself almost harmless to all but the most ignorant and reckless, to the point that he actually has a happy reunion with the townsfolk when they come to kill the rest of his family.
• The Dresden Files
  • Gentleman Johnnie Marcone plays this to a tee. Despite being an illustrious crime boss and a self-confessed professional monster, his organization of the Chicago underworld has served to actually decrease and civilize crime. He's also helped (or sought the help of) protagonist Harry Dresden far more than he has opposed him. Marcone also has very strict rules regarding criminal enterprises that exploit children operating in his town (i.e. DON'T) and, at one point in Small Favor, after enduring a week's torture at the hands of the Denarians, he silently refuses to be rescued first before Harry and the Knights have freed the Archive, a 12-year-old girl, and then shelters her with his own body while escaping.
  • His motivation behind no kids is "Persephone", a girl that was shot in an attempt on Marcone's life. The girl fell into a coma. The guy that shot her vanished.
  • At the climax of White Night, Harry even convinces Marcone to help evacuate the noncombatants who are being savaged by the ghouls by simply telling him that there were people that needed saving, and he was the only one who could do so.
  • The only thing that stops Marcone from crossing the line into being an Anti-Hero is the fact that he indulges in so much evil off-page and the only time he helps Harry is when they have a mutual enemy. Marcone has outright said that the only reason he hasn't put out a hit on Harry is because he figures that it's only a matter of time before one of Harry's other enemies does the job for him. This was in direct response to Harry saying that, eventually, he will take Marcone out, but he was far down his to-do list.
  • Lash, the copy of the fallen angel Lasciel created to tempt Harry into a Deal with the Devil, also fits this trope. Over the course of the three books she's present in, she becomes increasingly more sympathetic until she ultimately suffers death by redemption.
  • Lara may also fit this trope, given all the times she's helped Harry, as well as her Freudian Excuse (she was repeatedly raped by her father before spiritually castrating him).
  • Kumori, who is only a necromancer because she wants to have a world where no one needs to die, spent some of her powers keeping death from claiming a gun downed man until the paramedics could stabilize him, and after the hero refused to join with them, asked him to leave the fight since her master would have no problems killing him.
• Fablehaven has The Sphinx who had a Dark and Troubled Past and simply wished never to be a slave again. He also knew the Demon Prison would eventually fall and tried to speed things up and release the demons on his own terms. However, so many people got killed because of him, and the people who he intended to help rightfully hate him for it, and then he gets A Fate Worse Than Death at the end. Even after he's revealed to be playing both sides,he's still Affably Evil at the most.
• For Your Safety has the Groupmind, a worldwide supercomputer who rebelled against humanity to save it from a coming ecological collapse. It's determined to save as many people as it can while keeping them locked in a Gilded Cage aboard a massive Ringworld style space station.
• Stragos from the second Gentleman Bastard book could be seen as this. While clearly a wicked man, he was fairly reasonable, and his ultimate fate was somewhat unfair given that much less sympathetic characters in the series got off more easily.
• Nagarak in Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy is the head priest of a Religion of Evil and a dour, grim fanatic who frightens his own priests...and who sees Hekat as the bloodthirsty bitch she really is. Fortunately for him, Hekat fears the wrath of their god too much (and considers him too unimportant) to try and kill him. And then he finds out that she had sex with the godspeaker Vortka, itself an abomination in their religion, and passed the child off as that of her in-reality sterile/spermatically deformed husband. She promptly lays him out with a divine curse of her own and rapes him to produce a second child capable of wielding the Power Crystal she has found...but, conveniently, he dies from the curse, unlike Vortka, who was merely left infertile.
• Goosebumps is known for its black and white morality with the antagonists ranging from pure evil to somewhat sympathetic villain. However, in the first of the series, Welcome to Dead House, one of the living dead children, Karen Somerset (and her TV adaptation incarnation Karen Thurston), is one of the series's few anti-villains. She would rather just be Amanda and Josh's friend if she could, but in order to stay alive, they have to prey on the living. Karen is the only one of the living dead to thank Amanda at the end (either for freeing them from their Fate Worse than Death or being her friend while she could).
  • Uncle Al from Welcome To Camp Nightmare is a borderline sociopathic drill sergeant who runs the titular training camp with extreme methods. These include cutting off contact with the outside world, doing away with medical staff, and having various wild animals attack the campers. He does his best to ensure no one really gets hurt, though, and is quick to reward the one who makes it through these "tests". This wouldn't excuse his methods, but then again, the book is set on an alien world.
  • Ironically, one of the most famous monsters, the Haunted Mask, could count. All it seems to want is a body, and its violent, bestial tendencies are probably due to being it dubbed an abomination by its creator. In one of its more recent appearances, it helps its original host, Carly Beth Caldwell against an even greater threat and allows itself to be removed out of respect for her.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Draco Malfoy becomes this.
  • And, perhaps more memorably, Snape does too.
  • Also, arguably, Regulus Black — he doesn't actually lose his Fantastic Racism, he just realizes that Voldemort is too evil when he leaves Regulus' beloved slave to die a slow, painful death in order to hide his horcrux.
• One of the reasons Chinese novelist Jin Yong is considered such a great writer is because he never makes his characters evil for the sake of it, such as the case of the entire antagonistic cast of The Heaven Sword And Dragon Saber, in which they are all provided with understandable motivations, albeit coupled with less than honorable MO.
• Warden Tim White from Hollow Places. Though he allows abuse to occur in his prison, purposefully hires violent guards with the assumption they will harm the inmates and boost their recidivism rate (as per company policy), and bribes local judges into sending more convicts to his facility, he has his reasons. The warden is aware stopping the abuse would get him fired and replaced by someone worse. He also readily admits that what he does is wrong.
• Trenton Kalamack from The Hollows. Good intentions and generally a nice person, but willing to do whatever it takes.
• In the Honor Harrington series, Rob S. Pierre of The Haven Committee of Public Safety. He took over from the Legislaturists sincerely planning reform and then realized that his country was so deep in a hole that the only way out was to keep digging.
• In Horus Heresy, Magnus is Driven to Villainy and tries to curb Lorgar's omnicidal tendencies, along with keeping away from the conflict in favor of working towards saving the Thousand Sons. He also advises Jaghatai to stay on Emperor's side.
• Another Victor Hugo example: Archdeacon Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, despite being the novel's antagonist, was a good father figure for both Quasimodo and his own loutish brother Jehan, and all of his villainous actions are motivated by his inability to deal with his love/lust for La Esmeralda. While he does evil things, there's a great emphasis on his incredible suffering. None of his sympathetic characteristics made it through the book's Disneyfication.
• Foxface from The Hunger Games. The only thing bad about her is that she's Katniss' opponent (though even then Katniss doesn't bear any hatred toward her), and she doesn't do anything bad in the book or the film.
• In Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, various Anthropomorphic Personifications are actually offices, called Incarnations, that have been held by a series of human souls. The Big Bad of the first five books is Satan, the Incarnation of Evil, who is trying to take ultimate power from God, the Incarnation of Good, while the other Incarnations try to thwart his plans. The sixth book tells Satan's side of the story. Satan discovers that God hasn't been doing his job properly, instead, preferring to do nothing but admire his own greatness. As a result of God's negligence, many souls aren't going to the afterlife they deserve. The only way Satan can fix this is to either find a way to force God to retire, or to gain ultimate power himself by causing the population of Hell to exceed that of Heaven—and, needless to say, the other Incarnations aren't very helpful. At the end of the seventh book, the governments of the mortal world impeach God, allowing his replacement to begin cleaning up the mess the previous one left behind in alliance with Satan.
  • It helps that, as in Incarnation, "Satan" is really a nice but flawed guy named Parry, who managed to kill the previous Satan almost by accident. This let him take the office, and prevented a more qualified (read: actually evil) candidate from being given the position.
  • To further cement Satan's Anti Villain status, in a rare violation of Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act, Satan manipulates Chronos, the Incarnation of Time, into preventing the Holocaust. After all, Even Evil Has Standards...
    • Chronos was also the only incarnation that acted nicely to him, so in tricking him, Satan ruined his friendship with that Chronos and his successors (well, Predecessors, but it's a complicated story).
    • He prevents it out of a friendship with the Jewish God. Not only that, but one of his first acts after he assumes the office of Satan (which, in turn, is because his wife was murdered) is to spare Poland from the Black Plague, because of a girl that reminded him of said dead wife. He was the one that started the plague in the first place, but it still counts.
    • He also spares Italy from the Black Plague in time for the Renaissance.
• Arturo of the Kitty Norville series, who exhibits Wicked Culture, cold stoicism (natch, he is a vampire), a wealthy lair, and the definite air of a Designated Villain (we aren't ever told of evil acts he committed, but he is the one to hire Cormac to kill Kitty in book one). Considering this last act was solely to prevent the Masquerade from becoming The Unmasqued World, his status as a villain is questionable from the beginning, and the scene where he tries to save his minion Estelle from Elijah Smith proves him to be less a Bad Boss and more a paternal figure for his "Family". After several fakeouts, Red Herrings, and twists, he's made out to be the Big Bad of Book 4, but it's all a big plan by Mercedes, and possibly Roman as well. By the time he is finally brought to his end, he's clearly a victim rather than the Manipulative Bastard he appeared to be at the start of the series. It doesn't hurt that he gets a Pet the Dog moment (offering to save Kitty's mother through vampirism) and gets to own Carl. Not ineffectual, but definitely sympathetic.
• Knaves on Waves features Captain Carnage, an enormous, blood-red warrior bred specifically for slaughter. He's also extremely eloquent, educated, and happy to indulge in some shared fine dining, over which he'll probably discuss methods of improving the world.
• The Last Days of Krypton: Brainiac is fairly eloquent and introspective while arguing that abducting whole cities is necessary to make sure that civilizations will survive in the event of Apocalypse How events like the one on his home planet. Brainiac also offers to shrink Zod to reunite him with any loved ones he may have in Kandor and doesn't mind when Zod declines.
• In The Lay of Paul Twister, Archmagus Ken'Tu Kel turns out to be a type III. Paul doesn't actually think there's anything wrong with his "evil plan" except for the way he's going about it and his clear and remorseless willingness to "break a few eggs" along the way.
  • The dragons, on the other hand, really didn't like the idea and manipulated Paul into taking him down in order to preserve the status quo.
• Jarlaxle of R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels leads a band of amoral mercenaries, switches sides at the drop of of a pimp's hat, depending on who pays better, thrives in the twisted city of Menzoberranzan, aids the Always Chaotic Evil antagonists in their goal to kill Drizzt/take over Mithral Hall, and steals an artifact of tremendous power with the explicit intent of using it to further his goals. He was also close friends with Drizzt's (mostly moral) father, does not even entertain the thought of raping a woman he finds attractive who is quite definitely under his power, engineers the escape and survival of Drizzt from certain (eventual) death, shows mercy on enemies whom he thinks may be useful, has never murdered anyone the reader is aware of (killed in battle or self-defense, yes), and seems genuinely interested in redeeming, or, at least, reforming, the stone-cold assassin Artemis Entreri. When that fails, he instead teams up with the bloodthirsty maniac Athrogate, who, for all his antiheroic sociopathy, has a fascinating quirk in attempting to rhyme everything he says.
  • His theft of the artifact was doubly evil from a certain point of view, seeing as the artifact was sentient and pure evil and was known for mind-controlling even incredibly strong-willed people, and takes divine intervention to destroy. Based off the novels (especially the newer series featuring Jarlaxle as the lead character), Jarlaxle is incredibly resourceful and has enough magic trinkets to be borderline invincible. If an Always Chaotic Evil entity gained control of his mind, there's no telling what havoc could be wrought (and almost was wrought during the time he possessed the artifact, he's not as strong as he thinks he is) upon the multiverse. Artemis Entreri, the assassin Jarlaxle was 'reforming', prevented said havoc from happening.
  • And Artemis Enteri himself, the cold-blooded assassin who's killed more bad guys than Regis (a main protagonist). Artemis kills two mooks in the first scene to show us that he's evil, then only kills bad guys from that point on.
  • Obould Many-Arrows. Not a nice guy. Waged a bloody war against the heroes, but was doing it largely for (from his perspective) noble reasons — trying to elevate his people from savage cavemen into actual civilization. Also, when he fights Drizzt, he does it face to face and fairly, while Drizzt himself pulls a whole lot of dirty tricks.
• Inspector Javert from Les Misérables is an honest policeman who truly believes he is doing the right thing in pursuing the fugitive Jean Valjean. He simply has a naive, idealized view of the law and justice, and can't conceive of the idea that someone convicted of a crime could also be an essentially good person. After Valjean has him at his mercy but spares his life, he can't handle the idea that his lifelong belief in justice is flawed, and kills himself. The musical adaptation makes this especially clear, as the character's signature song, "Stars", in which he affirms that he will never stop until Valjean is brought to justice, could easily be mistaken as a hero's song if you don't know who it's about.
• The werewolf Captain John Kresnik from Magik Online is quickly revealed to be one upon his arrival at the end of the first arc. Despite serving the Concordian Empire and being sent to arrest the protagonist he is a Great Detective who fights For Great Justice, truly wants to protect the people, shows legitimate sorrow at the deaths a satanic cult caused and is generally all around more likable than his boss, Smokefang.
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen has Cotillion and Shadowthrone whose methods might be questionable — being the Patron God of Assassins and the Lord of Shadows respectively —, but their goals are far less nasty, culminating in seeing through their plan to heal and free the Crippled God and send him back to his homeworld in The Crippled God.
• Mertil tyl Loesp, in Matter by Iain M. Banks, starts off as a classic, power-hungry, regicidal villain and presumed Big Bad, perfectly happy to order a genocide simply to tarnish the King's reputation. He later becomes a far more sympathetic and conflicted character, who consciously changes his mind, considers war to be a last resort, and genuinely wants to come to an agreement with Prince Oramen, who begins to suspect what really happened to his dad. He wavers between Villain and Anti Villain through much of the book, but sadly, it doesn't matter, as he and the prince are both suddenly and horribly killed by the real Big Bad's dramatic, cityfucking entrance.
• In Nerve Zero, Azazel Santiago seems like an evil noir mastermind, but he's actually trying to free his people from brutal colonization.
• Nightfall (Series): Prince Vladimir. While he is obviously evil, he is doing what is best for his people who had been forced to live in hiding before the Nightfall.
• Nancy from Oliver Twist who despite participating in many of the gang's crimes chose to put her at life on the line to rescue Oliver after her conscience caught up with her.
• Milton's portrayal of Lucifer in Paradise Lost. He's painted in the style of a tragic hero from a classical epic and gives powerful speeches about the justness of his infernal cause. In his private moments, however, he reveals an anguished monologue in which he regrets his actions and realizes that he's the villain, but he's too stubborn to mend his ways. Satan is so sympathetic, in fact, that he enjoys perhaps the biggest Misaimed Fandom in literature.
• Luke Castellan of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the champion of Kronos and a Well-Intentioned Extremist. He considers the Olympians to be Jerkass Gods who abandon and mistreat their demigod children — and, on this point at least, the heroes even admit he's right. What makes him the bad guy is that his plan for revenge against the Olympians involves bringing back Kronos, which would lead to human civilization collapsing and someone worse than a jerkass ruling the cosmos. It helps that at the end of the books he has a My God, What Have I Done? moment, and sacrifices his life to destroy Kronos once and for all.
• Any version of the The Phantom of the Opera beyond the original novel (and that one movie *shudder*) turns the titular character at least into this if they don't outright turn him into the protagonist of the story.
• The lieutenant in The Power and the Glory says he wants to "speak from his heart"...but he also says that he'll be speaking "from the end of a gun". For the people.
• The Catholic priest from Oblivion who poisons Pedro stands out as pretty-much the only villain in the series to be tragically misguided rather than selfish or inherently evil.
• Nicola Ceaucescu from Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania series. She actually becomes more interesting than the protagonist Miranda, who is a standard teenage fantasy heroine except not stunningly beautiful. Nicola (who was named after a real-life Romanian dictator, who is also referenced in a fictional book within the book, in a mindbending bit of meta) is beautiful and charming, and believes that her political manipulations are all for the good of her country. She is not all that competent as a villain, since she tends to be impulsive, melodramatic, and over-emotional, with a stereotypical "artistic" temperament. She commits acts of evil like kidnapping and murdering the good guys and sacrificing men who love her, and then cries about it afterward. While her attempts at political intrigue and sorcery turn out badly, she is described as a brilliant artist on the stage, and is able to skillfully manipulate others with her beauty, charm, and acting abilities. While Miranda is described as not all that great-looking, Nicola is a famous beauty who can make men give up their lives for her even when they know she is evil, reinforcing the trope that Evil is Sexy. Nicola also has a sympathetic backstory as the daughter of a rural prostitute who ran away from home when she was very young, and lived on the streets before becoming a famous actress and luring a baron into marriage. She also has an autistic son, who was taken from her and forcibly institutionalized. She reveals a maternal streak towards her young henchman, Kevin Markasev, in addition to her son, although she eventually makes Kevin martyr himself and honors him by making him a Romanian national hero. She gets lots of sympathy from the entire country when she writes and performs a tragic opera based on her own life, which gets a standing ovation and is eventually performed by others all over the world. However, she gets killed right after her performance, and although her ghost returns to possess the heroine, she is eventually consigned to a gloomy afterlife. She's more of a fabulous theatrical diva than a Magnificent Bastard, in spite of her manipulative nature.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades:
  • In volume 7, upperclassman Cyrus Rivermoore, always considered a man to avoid, is revealed to have been attacking other students and stealing their bones. In volume 8 these attacks turn out to have been for the purpose of constructing a new body for Fau, the ghost of an ancient necromancer his family has been keeping preserved for centuries, so that she can pass on her otherwise lost knowledge in a way that he can recreate it. Once the posse hunting him figures this out, they make a deal with him to let him finish in exchange for him returning Alvin Godfrey's sternum afterwards (The Grim Reaper will inevitably come to claim her because resurrection was forbidden by the dead god).
  • Professor Demitrio Aristides is one of the conspirators who murdered Chloe Halford in the series' Distant Prologue, and is on her son Oliver Horn's Enemies List as a result. He did this because he thought there was too much risk that her ideals would lead to The End of the World as We Know It: he genuinely believes, not without reason, that the horrible things he sometimes has to do are necessary to protect this world from the gods of other worlds, starting from a Sympathetic Murder Backstory where he had been living in a nonmagical village as a helpful mage beloved by its children, only to have to exterminate the entire village when it became infected by an Apostle that turned them into Plague Zombies. Furthermore, he is unfailingly polite and respectful even to people he disagrees with. He is also apologetic for the Trauma Conga Line that Chloe's murder put her son Oliver through, and even tries to create an illusory happy life for Oliver so that he doesn't suffer when Demitrio finishes him off. After Oliver spots A Glitch in the Matrix, escapes the illusion, and mortally wounds him, they have a sort of Dying Truce and Demitrio does his best to warn Oliver about Esmeralda's powers, then allows Yuri to take control so that he and Oliver can say goodbye.
• Dying as Yourself: Inverted. Yuri Leik reasserts himself over Demitrio's personality one last time in his dying moments and creates an illusion of a starry sky to replicate the last time he saw Oliver, so that they can say their farewells.
• Jules Verne's character Robur the Conqueror, from the novel of the same name.
• Vicar Rhobair Duchairn becomes this starting in the second book of the Safehold series. Originally as sinister a minister as the rest of the Church of God Awaiting's leadership, he begins to rediscover his personal faith. In the third book, he warns a Reformist group that the fanatic Grand Inquisitor Clyntahn has found out about them; an act which helps to at least somewhat reduce the damage Clyntahn does when he acts. In the fourth book, he uses his position as the Church's treasurer to fully fund Church-run hospitals, soup kitchens, orphanages, and schools. The only reason he doesn't act more openly against Clyntahn's excesses is because he's perfectly aware that he (and, more importantly, his family) will merely be added to the list victims without accomplishing anything.
• The Saga of Arrow-Odd: Odd's arch-enemy Ogmund Eythjofslayer is a monstrous half-demon chock full of black magic who kills Odd's entire crew and treacherously murders Odd's blood-brother Thord Prow-Gleam. But later we learn that Ogmund acted in revenge of Odd's depredations in Bjarmaland and so is hardly more ruthless or cruel than Odd himself. Moreover, after their first encounter Ogmund tries to get away from Odd, and it is Odd who hunts him out of vindictiveness. Ogmund even tries to reconcile with Odd, and eventually offers him his friendship.
• Brandon Sanderson tends to like these; he's a self-admitted believer in Rousseau Was Right, and most of his antagonists are at least trying to do the right thing as they see it. A few notable ones:
  • In Elantris, Hrathen is a warrior monk of the militant Shu-Dereth religion who comes to the country of Arelon to convert its populace. Why? At first, it seems it's just because he believes that his religion is the right one. Then you find out what fate he was sparing them from by having them converted. He was saving their lives, and that was his motivation.
    • Also, by the end of the Mistborn trilogy, it becomes obvious that the Lord Ruler was this. He took power to stop an Omnicidal Maniac from getting loose and destroying the world, and many of his more evil acts were the result of said Omnicidal Maniac constantly assaulting his psyche over a thousand years, slowly driving him insane. In the third book, a major antagonist is Yomen, a high-ranked priest of the Lord Ruler's religion, who is a perfectly reasonable man who shows genuine concern for the people under his care- and hates the heroes for overthrowing the Lord Ruler and as a result frustrates them at every turn at least until aforementioned Omnicidal Maniac plays his hand and they end up doing an Enemy Mine.
    • In The Stormlight Archive, Highprince Sadeas might be this. He's clearly a true patriot, but he's equally clearly very ambitious, and its as-yet unclear which is the real motivator for his actions. Dalinar, another Highprince, plainly believes he's this and actually gets on rather well with him, but Dalinar has been shown to be rather more optimistic about human nature than the people around him deserve at times...
    • This is out-and-out rejected by Words of Radiance, where Sadeas is revealed to have purposefully led Dalinar into a hopeless battle then leave him, intending to allow him to die and leave the kingdom so shaken that he can easily take power over it. Kaladin ensures this doesn't happen, and throughout the second book the two Highprinces are at each others throats. Even after the cataclysmic events of the final few chapters, Sadeas tells Adolin that he intends to continue trying to seize power, even knowing it may literally doom the Human race. Adolin finally snaps and murders him.
• In The Secret History, Henry is the driving force and the mastermind behind all the evil the group commits. Then again, he's also the only thing that keeps them all from paying the consequences after the fact (more or less), and in the end he's willing to make enormous personal sacrifices, including the ultimate sacrifice, to save them.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: Fernald seems to fall into this category at times.
• Jefferson Hope from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet. Murdered two Mormon ex-suitors who forced marriage upon the love of his life, one for killing her father and the other for breaking her heart in a depressing, almost literal sense. Subsequently died of a debilitating heart condition, which he gained by pursuing them ruthlessly over two continents for several years, after being captured by Scotland Yard and Holmes. Died peacefully knowing he had his revenge.
• Many examples in A Song of Ice and Fire, considering the rampant moral ambiguity, but especially Jaime Lannister (when not wearing his Jerkass mask.)
  • Stannis Baratheon walks a fine line between this and Anti-Hero. His two main advisors each represent one of these aspects, Davos the heroic side of him and Melisandre the villainous (though Melisandre is an Anti-Villain herself and Davos is a bit of an Anti-Hero, what with being a smuggler and all that).
• Maedhros and Maglor from The Silmarillion. Because of their Oath, they killed many innocent people; however, both regretted their acts and tried to make amends for it, even attempting to forswear the Oath at various times. Maedhros was rather more diplomatic than the rest of his brothers, and he tried to save Dior's sons and avoid attacking Sirion; Maglor, the nicest of the group, fostered Elrond and Elros.
  • Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. Sure, he looks evil, but by the third book, most readers see him as more pathetic than anything.
• Jacqueline Carey's The Sundering series (Banewrecker and Godslayer) consist of deconstructions of classic high fantasy villains, from the Big Bad and The Dragon right through the ranks.
• In the Sword of Truth series, the conflicted, guilt-stricken, ultimately well-intentioned Sister Nicci can easily come across as this.
• Grand Admiral Thrawn of The Thrawn Trilogy wants to crush the New Republic (which he insists on calling the Rebellion). He wants to unite the galaxy so that it capitulates to a single rule — The Empire. He plans to let an insane Dark Jedi attempt to convert Luke, Leia, and Leia's children into weapons for the Empire's use. And he does it... because he knows that something horrible, powerful, and truly evil is coming, and that only by standing united and using everything at its disposal will the galaxy have a chance, so if some people must die or some freedoms must be sacrificed, so be it. Better that than extinction.
  • This was, however, a retcon: originally, he just wanted to re-establish the Empire, and run it along more efficient (and SLIGHTLY more pleasant) lines. Though they hinted at it as early as 1997 in the Hand of Thrawn books, with his base in the Unknown Regions, part of something vaster he'd set up, intended to watch for any of a hundred threats that would make one's blood freeze. They only made it official in Outbound Flight, written after the New Jedi Order series (completed in 2003), which featured the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong. He is, after all, a Magnificent Bastard.
    • He formed the Empire of the Hand, which, in Survivor's Quest, looks to Mara Jade like an Empire that has everything she loved about her Empire — order, discipline, people who know when to stop infighting, the chance to do a challenging investigation — and none of the things she hated, like constant suspicion and paranoia, sanctioned genocide, callous disregard for the troops, rampant speciesism, and mass-murderers high up in the government.
    • The New Republic is shown to be so screwed up that a large number of fans either disown swathes of the EU or are extremely pro-Imperial. Seriously, their incompetence is staggering...more people get killed in one battle than all the atrocities done by Palpatine!
    • Pellaeon, Thrawn's understudy, mostly served as the viewpoint character for the readers to see Thrawn through. In later books, he's picked up on some of his boss's tactics and is distinctly non-evil, though very Imperial. He was behind the Imperial Remnant realizing that they were outmatched and making peace with the Republic, after which point he really couldn't be called the villain at all, bad NJO garden metaphors notwithstanding. And apart from Thrawn, he's also likely the most capable commander the Imperials ever had: in his first offensive after he took over from Daala, he actually defeated the New Republic and took back some territory from them.
• Treasure Island's Long John Silver was clearly a villain, but was sympathetic enough for Robert Louis Stevenson to allow him not only to live, but to escape with a good deal of treasure.
  • An escape that is explicitly viewed with a great deal of relief by the characters, albeit because it got rid of him rather cheaply, considering.
• The Deconstructor Fleet novel Villains by Necessity is about this. Well, also Light Is Not Good.
• In the last The Dark Tower book, the narrator admits that it's easy to pity Mordred Deschain—but warns us not to get too close.
  • Unless the author's being sarcastic...
• Villains Don't Date Heroes!: Night Terror identifies as a villain, but under her rule criminals avoid endangering innocent bystanders at all costs, and the vast majority of her crimes are directed at the city's corrupt elite. Some of her worst "crimes" were misunderstandings, though likely spurred on by those corrupt elites who are covering up their own crimes. She stopped an alien invasion when the US government got bribed into opening a portal for them, she connected a nuclear reactor to the power grid to give everybody free power only for the power company to send it into a meltdown, and she threatened the mayor because that is simply the only way she could get him to actually do his job.
• Virgil of Within Ruin. He spends centuries developing an awful plague, orchestrating a large scale war by pitting neighbouring countries including his own against one another. Then you find out that he did this to kill as many people as possible and collect their souls in statues. Statues from a fake religion that he started to ensure he would be able to easily collect the souls. His reason for all this evil doing? To revive the woman he loves.
• The TIE fighter pilot Qorl from the Young Jedi Knights series fits pretty well into this trope throughout the first story arc. Shot down during the Battle of Yavin and left stranded in the jungles of Yavin IV for decades, his loyalty to the Empire never wavered. However, after his TIE is unintentionally and then forcibly repaired by the Solo twins and their friends, and outfitted with a hyperdrive, he leaves at once to seek out the remnants of the Empire, and takes up with a Dark Jedi upstart with grand visions named Brakiss. It doesn't take Qorl long to realize that most of these new Imperials lack the dedication and discipline of the men that he served with, and slowly loses his fanatical loyalty over the course of the books. Finally, when one of his most headstrong pilots breaks out of formation during the big battle at Yavin, ignoring reprimands and disobeying orders to return in order to gun down a helpless supply ship, Qorl flies after him and blasts him out of the sky, saving the supply ship. Not long after, he's shot down for a second time and crash lands on Yavin IV, where he decides to spend the rest of his years, after becoming disillusioned with what remained of the Empire.
• The Wheel of Time's Pedron Niall is an honorable man, brilliant general and savvy politician. He dreams about the noble goal of uniting the whole continent against Shadowspawn and leading his people in the Last Battle. However, he stubbornly believes that all magic is evil, and thus considers all channelers his enemies. He is seriously underestimating scale of things to come, equally overestimates his own power, knowledge and importance, and sees nothing wrong in employing torture technicians and so on. So, under him Children of Light did more harm than good and Niall himself was unceremoniously killed off by traitors.

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