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alt title(s): The Vizier; Vizier; Grand Vizier; The Grand Vizier 
"Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: 'Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted advisor.'"
The helpful and suspiciously toadying assistant to the monarchy whose morality is usually inverse to the head of state. Most of the time he's actively scheming to discredit or usurp the throne, and may even by an agent sent for this purpose by an outside power. In other cases, he's perfectly content to be The Man Behind The Man and keeps the ruler around primarily as a fall guy. Sometimes called The Evil (Grand) Vizier instead, in which case he will spend a lot of time tapping his fingertips together and calling everyone "effendi".
In stories set in democratic societies, an Evil Vice President may play the same role. In the American political system in particular, there is a fairly legitimate reason why the vice president is the most logical position to be filled by someone evil. The vice president has little actual power unless the president is incapacitated. Therefore, presidential candidates typically choose their running mates based on who is most likely to win them the election. This can easily translate into "appeals to the demographic I hate". You'll notice many American films and TV shows will explain the presence of the Evil Vice President this way.
Interestingly, this stereotype may come from the evolution of the term itself. Originally, a chancellor was a servant guarding the entrance to an official's study. People probably quickly realized a servant who spends most of their day with a ruler could wield great influence if they were persuasive enough. Also, if the king genuinely screwed up, or was evil himself, his advisors made great scapegoats.
While Chancellors, Vice Presidents, and the like may not be examples of this trope, the title "Grand Vizier" might as well just include "Evil" as part of it. If you see a non-evil Grand Vizier, the author is probably playing with the trope. (And if you're writing about actual historical Persia, you can spell it wazir or vezir.)
Malicious Slander is a particular favorite of the Evil Chancellor.
If only the King thinks the evil chancellor is a great guy, he's a Horrible Judge Of Character. When only the protagonists see through the evil of this character, it's a Devil In Plain Sight.
Oddly enough, if the Chancellor of Germany of modern times turns out to be evil, he/she is NOT an Evil Chancellor, but rather a President Evil, even though Germany also has a president besides it's chancellor.
See also: The Evil Prince, who is usually also after the throne and rather less willing to remain in the shadows. Aspiring backstabbers may refer to the Evil Chancellor List.
Examples:
Anime
- Seymour Cheese from Samurai Pizza Cats was a very overt example of this as well.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: After the Time Skip, Rossiu became a Well Intentioned Extremist chancellor. And when he realizes what he's done, he almost kills himself. Simon has to punch him out of it through hyper space.
- The Eunuchs in Code Geass R2, keeping a little girl as a figurehead Empress and oppressing the Chinese Federation.
- Also Schneizel, though subverted in that his father the Emperor is not a weak figurehead, and that both turn to be , like Lelouch, Well Intentioned Extremists in their own fashion, rather than well and truly evil. He is after the throne but his father is fully aware of the fact, and is not overtly concerned ( When Schneizel finally makes his bid, he discovers that Charles has decided to let him have it, his own plans having at last started to come to fruition.
- He may not be a royal advisor (his leader is a Ninja boss, and later her granddaughter), but otherwise Tenzen Yakushiji from Basilisk fits the trope to a T.
- Played straight with Prince Gihren Zabi in Mobile Suit Gundam, and his father Degwin Sodo Zabi before him.
- Wiseman/Death Phantom, the Big Bad and Cosmic Horror of the second season of Sailor Moon plays the role of advisor/seer to Prince Diamond and the Black Moon Clan all the while using them for his own agenda.
- Averted in The Cat Returns. The Cat King's adviser is more of a straight man to the mad king.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has a whole group of them, and they've been extremely successful so far.
Comic Books
- The French comic book character Iznogoud (from the creator of Asterix) is a comic exaggeration of this character type. A short, excitable character who's Grand Vizier to his cousin the Caliph of Baghdad, his sole purpose in life is to try and take the Caliph's place (as outlined in his Catch Phrase "I'll be Caliph instead of the Caliph!"). Naturally, he never succeeds. The comics have been adapted into a TV series as well.
- And, who could forget Tantri the Mantri in Tinkle digest, whose main goal is to kill Rajah Hooja and become the Rajah.(basically based on Iznogoud). Naturally, he always fails, and injures himself. The Rajah is ignorant enough to believe that Tantri is a devoted servant for getting himself into such dire situations.
- Before he became President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy was regularly portrayed as Iznogoud by political cartoonist Jean Plantu, because of his obvious ambition to replace Jacques Chirac as President. Chirac has reportedly hated him ever since the 1995 presidential election, when Sarkozy (up until then a Chirac follower) abruptly decided to back Edouard Balladur for president.
- In Asterix and the Magic Carpet, Hoodunnit is the Grand Vizier of India, and plans to gain power once the only heir (Princess Orinjade) is sacrificed to the rain gods. (In a Shout Out, he mentions his cousin, Iznogoud, and uses the phrase "I want to be Rajah instead of the Rajah".)
- Subverted in the Flash Gordon series. Rankol is an evil, hero-torturing cybernetic mad scientist whose experiments have endangered two worlds. And he is still aghast at most of the stuff his boss does on a weekly basis. Of course he does work for Ming the Merciless.
- Just about every adviser Lilandra had as Empress of the Shi'ar.
- Yusuf, Sinbad's advisor, in Fables.
- Oddly enough, Doctor Robotnik (and after his disintegration, Doctor Eggman) in the Archie Comics version of Sonic The Hedgehog. Before becoming the Mad Scientist (or, perhaps, concurrent with being such) and the Evil Overlord, Robotnik served the King of Acorn as his chief advisor and war minister... only to turn on him after the Great War was over.
- Doctor Doom was one of these, then he orchestrated a couple of robot doubles and waited for a death or two, and had a robot double prince give all the power to him.
- Darth Wyyrlok is an Evil Chancellor paired with an Evil Overlord - and he's an Evil Sorcerer to boot! He winds up betraying his Master, but it's something of a subversion of this trope- he does it not (primarily) out of ambition, but from a devotion to Lord Krayt's dream of a unified Galactic Empire which he himself has abandoned to pursue personal goals.
- Currently in The Mighty Thor, Loki is the Evil Chancellor for the new Asgardian prince Balder who, after a good
half-century millenium and a half of stories, should really know better.
- Deputy Chief Judge Martin Sinfield in Judge Dredd is this trope to the current Chief Judge, Dan Francisco. While Francisco is somewhat idealistic and does want to improve conditions for humans and mutants alike, but at the same time easily manipulated, Sinfield is a cynical bastard who is only interested in his own power, and has used his influence to carry out some deeds of questionable legitimacy.
Film
- Zig-Zag from the masterpiece The Thief and the Cobbler. And voiced by the master of such characters.
- Jaffar, from The Thief of Bagdad, starts out as an Evil Vizier, although he does wind up usurping the throne rather early in the film.
- Jafar, from Disney's Aladdin.
- Since The Thief of Bagdad, and especially since Disney's Aladdin, some version of "Jaffar" has been the traditional name for the Evil Vizier variation of this trope. The name almost certainly derives from Ja'far ibn Yahya, an advisor of Caliph Harun al-Rashid and secondary character in The Arabian Nights; while a Vizier, however, the historical and mythological Ja'far was not particularly Evil and did not appear in early versions of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.
- Since he winds up ruling the Empire, it's easy to forget that Chancellor Palpatine of Star Wars actually began as a minor functionary. In a slight deviation from the trope, Chancellor is the title he ends up with after his evil advisor shtick is over.
- In a way Palpatine still played the role when he was made Supreme Chancellor. It was a democracy, after all, so he was second in power to the people or at least the system itself. He still needed emergency powers from the Senate.
- There's also Yzma from the Disney film The Emperors New Groove. The thing is, she actually succeeds in overthrowing Kuzco, but Kuzco at the beginning of the film is such a jerk that his subjects don't seem to notice the difference (or even care).
- John Heard's secretly-competent version of Dan Quayle in My Fellow Americans is an Evil Vice President variation.
- Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age is entirely loyal to his queen, but plays the Evil Chancellor role to the extent that he is willing to do the necessary dirty work for which her conscience is too tender.
- The evil wizard from Care Bears Movie 3.
Literature
- Played straight and averted in the case of Mocha, the evil-as-sin Court Magistrate in the episodic-segment story "What Is This Black Magic You Call Science?". She kills and sacrifices anyone with faint hints of liberalism, even killing a little girl with red flowers in her hair who Chryseis was trying to save. In front of her parents and siblings. Her constant, rivalry-antagonism with Chryseis is also fueled by sibling rivalry, since their father thought Chryseis was a better child. I wonder why. Oh, and she's also the goddess of female power, and a very violent blood mage.
- Averted in that she does not wish to usurp the throne [ rather, she put him on there since she knew he'd not interfere with her wanton killing], and her motives for keeping people so afraid are supposedly that if they left Nifl, they'd see the rotted giantess head at Epoch at find out that gods really can die, and will give them some sort of sovereign power. However, she is slowly losing power since the death of the Red Flower Girl led to public outcry.
- Parodied in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of books, in which the Grand Vizier is automatically assumed to be like this, regardless of the culture involved or the circumstances of meeting them.
- Pyramids has the hidebound High Priest Dios. He doesn't like the way the new ruler, Pteppic, is trying to run things, but doesn't try to overthrow him; he justs "interprets" the commands of the Pharaoh so that things will be run the way they've always been run anyway. Also, he's not really evil, so much as very much steeped in the country's traditions.
- Well, he is seven thousand years old.
- Near infinitely old depending if you view the ending as a closed loop time paradox.
- GURPS Discworld subverts it with the Grand Vizier of Al-Ybi, a sensible and unambitious accountant, who has reluctantly grown a Beard Of Evil and practiced his sinister smile, because that's what's expected. He views the whole thing as an unneccessary distraction from getting the budget to balance.
- In Dante's Divine Comedy, the 8th Bolgia (ditch) of the Eighth circle of Hell is reserved for "Evil Counselors," that is, the officers and advisors of rulers who mislead or betray their masters. He includes examples of his era in the poem. When Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote the novel Inferno, doing their own take on Dante, the most poignant example was Benito Mussolini, who, as chancellor of Italy, turned that country to fascism.
- Inverted in A Song Of Ice And Fire: Eddard Stark and Tywin Lannister are both highly competent and (though Tywin's a bit of a bastard) they are both trying to do what's best for the realm. Unfortunately, the king Eddard serves is a stupid, brutish, drunken has-been, and both of the kings Tywin serves are products of incest and dangerously insane—one of them tried to burn the city down instead of letting his enemies have it, and the other is a young sociopath who is heavily into revenge and managed to cause a city-wide riot against the aristocracy.
- Qyburn is an aversion. He's quite shifty, he cuts open people for fun and has an unhealthy interest in reanimating the dead, but by the end of the fourth book he's the only one of Cersei's advisers who is still somewhat loyal to her.
- And then there's Varys, who very much fits in the school of the "scheming eunuchs" mentioned below. No one knows who the fuck Varys is playing for, but everyone bets on "himself."
you got it completely wrong. Varys told Eddard Stark that "he served the realm" and despised the aristocracy for being little more then spoiled fools with too much power and too little consideration for the commoners who suffered the most during their vying for power. He, essentially gave the good guy a reverse hannibal lecture letting him know that his lofty ideals of justice and nobility were a pleasure only the rich could care about while the commoners were worried more about famine and soldiers maiming and raping them then who ever sat on the throne. Ed left the conversation knowing that the ONLY reason why varys tried to keep him and king robert alive was that he saw them as less harmful then the rest. Varys is a brilliant deconstruction of the grand vizier and is more of a genre savvy white knight in a crapsack world then anything else.
- Grima Wormtongue of The Lord Of The Rings succeeds in effectively ruling Rohan by manipulating the ailing King Theoden... for a while.
- Sauron becomes this to the King of Numenor in The Silmarillion. Using the Numenoreans fear of death and envy of the Elves' immortality, he convinces them to worship the fallen Vala Morgoth and to attack the Valar's sanctuary of Valinor, resulting in Eru (God) sinking Numenor.
- Cabbarus in Lloyd Alexander's Westmark manipulates the king's grief over his dead daughter... but it all gets blown sky high when the daughter turns out to be Not Quite Dead. In the sequel, the king of the next country over has an Evil Uncle doubling as an Evil Chancellor, too.
- Alexander also uses the trope in The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha, which as I recall it is sort of Alice in Wonderland meets the Arabian Nights: a boy falls asleep and wakes up to discover that he has been mistaken for the ruler of a delightfully Arabesque kingdom complete with not-so-delightful Vizier.
- Subverted in Paul Kidd's Talking Animal novel The Fangs Of Kaath, where the Grand Vizier of the Kingdom of Osra is seemingly the only good hearted member of the court outside Prince Raschid. In fact, given that the Shah is callously indifferent to his own son, the Vizier is effectively much more a father to the naive prince than his biological one. Even Raschid's love, the cynical Sandhri, is the first to defend the Vizier when Raschid suspects him of jailing her without cause.
- In the Stephen King novel Eye of the Dragon, the king's trusted advisor and magician Randall Flagg plots to assassinate the king and frame the prince for the murder. The same character, under the alias "Marten Broadcloak", played the same role in the court of Gilead in the backstory of The Dark Tower series, while at the same time also playing evil vizier to Gilead's rival, John Farson, under the name "Walter O'Dim". All three of these roles, in addition to several others, are assumed by Flagg in his capacity as right-hand man to the Crimson King, to whom he also plays The Starscream.
- The Word Bearers' Chaplain Erebus fills this role in the Horus Heresy series of Warhammer 40000 novels. Somewhat different in that rather than scheming to kill Warmaster Horus, Erebus schemes to corrupt him.
- Doubly subverted in War And Peace with Speransky, who most characters assume to be an Evil Chancellor until Prince Andrei meets with him and finds him to be a pleasant man only concerned for the betterment of Russia. He is later Put On A Bus when he's discharged from the sovereign's court on charges of corruption and treason.
- In the David Eddings Elenium trilogy, the churchman Annias serves as this trope to King Aldreas, the weak-minded ruler of Elenia. Annias needs to control the crown while he works on becoming Patriarch (the story's equivalent of the Pope), and to that end he convinces the king that it's okay to sleep with his own sister, Arissa, who is the mother of Annias' son Lycheas.
- In one book of Christopher Stasheff's Wizard in Rhyme series, the title character visits a country which has an evil queen who is descended from an Evil Chancellor who usurped the throne. The Chancellor's name was Reiziv. Which seems nonsensical until you read it backwards.
- In Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, Pryrates gleefully occupies this role to the ill-fated King Elias. In the end, he turns out to be The Dragon to the Storm King.
- In One Good Knight, part of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series by Mercedes Lackey, there's an Evil Chancellor. He's lampshaded with a line somewhat like "if the king's advisor was a magician, then according to the Tradition he must be scheming after the throne." Additionally, he and the queen are a couple. Of course, he's planning to betray her.
- General Zhi Zhong in Lords of the Bow is, for the most part, loyal to Emperor Wei, but outside the royal court openly considers him a foolish weakling. When his army is crushed by Genghis Khan at the Battle of the Badger's Mouth, he returns to Yenking, kills the emperor, and installs Wei's seven-year-old son, Xuan, as the new emperor, with himself as regent. His subsequent refusal to surrender to Genghis Khan quickly leads Yenking to starvation and eventually cannibalism.
- The Kingpriest in Dragonlance was unlucky enough to be stuck with two of these guys- the conniving Elven ambassador Quarath and the enigmatic Evil Sorcerer Fistandantilus. The two are often contrasted, as the former is a Smug Snake who plays politics for fun and profit, while the latter is a Magnificent Bastard with far more... epic ambitions.
FanFic
- In Sabaku on DA's remarkably mature Ben10 fanfic set in the future, the evil adult form of Kenny, called Kenneth has a scheming Evil Chancellor named Kiyomori Taira, based off the rather villainous Kiyomori from history. He also has skills as an Evil Sorcerer and is blatantly more powerful than Kenneth, as seen in ArcadiusD's Time of the Serpent continuation fic
Live Action TV
- 24 has had several evil Vice Presidents, including Charles Logan, who was merely incompetent as a vice president but became evil upon his ascension, and Noah Daniels, a Well Intentioned Extremist hell-bent on nuking the Mideast for whatever flimsy justification he can get away with.
- Pretty decent chance he was evil before. Given the scale and scope of the conspiracy, he probably became President by design, with Marwan as a tool.
- 24 also subverted the trope in season 5; when Vice President Hal Gardner first appears on the show, he's set up to appear to viewers to be The Man Behind The Man. Eventually, it turns out that Gardner is completely unaware of the plot unfolding around him, and it's the president who's calling the shots.
- Babylon 5 had Vice President Clark of the Earth Alliance, who was a front man for the Shadows and arranged the assassination of the President so he could step in and run Earth to their specifications.
- Subverted in the Doctor Who story "the Five Doctors". The "treacherous" counselor was actually innocent and had been set up to take the fall by the President himself.
- Done straight in the earlier story "The Deadly Assassin". And once the President and the Evil Chancellor were out of the way, guess who picked up the pieces (see above)?
- I Claudius has a subversion in its presentation of Narcissus and other freemen advisors of Claudius. These individuals were chancellors of the original kind, highly educated former slaves or the children of slaves who were hated by Rome's aristocrats for their influence over Claudius and probably prompted some of his more unpleasant actions. However, they were completely loyal to Claudius and thus more akin to the Poisonous Friend trope.
- Jim Profit is an Evil Vice President of Acquisitions.
- Francis Urquhart in the TV series House of Cards. Throughout the first part of the story he appears to be the faithful ally and Chief Whip to Prime Minister Henry Collingridge, all the while plotting the PM's downfall. Ironically, when Collingridge is forced to resign he throws his support behind Urquhart's own campaign to become PM, still completely unaware of who his betrayer actually was.
- Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica, second-in-command, is a Cylon, and though unintentionall, he really messed up when he had commaand at the beginning of season 2.
- A borderline example is Sir Humphrey Applebee of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. Not really evil (or if he is, he's a Villain Protagonist), but tricky, dishonest, and manipulative.
- Chancelor Dungalor from Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire, the Affably Evil villain of the show.
- Primeval season 2 gives us Oliver Leek.
Video Games
- Revolver Ocelot from Metal Gear Solid makes this trope his identity.
- Both of the chancellors to the royalty of Guardia in Chrono Trigger are kidnapped and impersonated by members of the Yakra family — vicious monsters who seek to overthrow the kingdom.
- Jaffar from the Prince Of Persia series. (Notice a pattern?)
- And the Vizier in Sands of Time.
- Noah in the first Galaxy Angel game sucked up to Eonia, claiming him for her admirable older brother in a siscon sort of manner while convincing him to do all the evil he did before and during the coup.
- Variant subversion: In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door in Glitzville Grubba the arena owner is potrayed as an eccentric and somewhat dishonest nice guy, while the manager and his assistant, Jolene, is cold and behaves suspiciously. Of course, it turns out that Grubba is a villainous monster who has been draining people's energy to stay young forever, and although Jolene — true to the trope — was working to eliminate him, it was because she was the heroine of this arc who had discovered just what Grubba was.
- Played straight by Sima Yi and averted by Zhuge Liang (and most other strategists) in "Dynasty Warriors".
- In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sima Yi is played as one, although he is loyal until almost the end, and Zhuge gets a nice rant about how he's a hero and not about to betray anyone.
- The Tenma/Misha path of the second chapter of Ar Tonelico has the corporate version of this, with a twist. Bourd is very obviously evil... but initially seems to be a loyal servant of his boss, Ayano, who appears to be a villainess, right down to a Stripperiffic villain costume and eyepatch. However, at The Reveal, it turns out that she's a genuinely good person who had no idea Bourd was a villain performing inhumane experiments and perverting her company away from its goal of helping people, not just making a profit, as she was poor at the actual day-to-day management of the business, and left that to Bourd.
- In Jade Empire, this trope is subverted. Death's Hand originally appears to fit this trope perfectly: After his rise to power, the normally popular Emperor stopped making public appearances, he's the head of an evil Secret Police that never existed prior to his appearance, he slaughters and tortures innocents in secret, and he's building a massive golem army that could easily destroy the Emperor's human one and place him in power. However, shortly before the game's fake ending, it is revealed that Death's Hand really is loyal to the Emperor, and was actually given his position so that anyone who discovered his actions would fall for the red herring and not blame the Emperor. Later, it's revealed that Death's Hand doesn't have any free will at all: He's just a spirit bound to obey the Emperor.
- Lady Prestor, advisor to the young King of Stormwind in World Of Warcraft, is actually giving him terrible advice because she's a dragon, the daughter of Neltharion.
- The Lich King expansion added Varimathras, a member of a race that has been Always Chaotic Evil from the start of time to this list, to the surprise of absolutely no one. The spoiler tag probably isn't even necessary
- Played with by Magatha Grimtotem. She has all the trappings of one (suspicious motives, has shown disdain for Cairne and the Horde's new directions, leader of the Taurn's Evil Counterparts) but hasn't actually done anything to go against them. Not yet, at least.
- Taken to ridiculous extremes in the Xbox 360 game Metal Wolf Chaos, where Richard Hawk, the vice president of the United States, abandons subtle evil-advisor strategies to terrorize the country in a giant robot. Necessitating the President to don his own giant robot and take it back.
- In the Fire Emblem titles Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, the Apostle Sanaki and the Senate rule over the Bengion jointly. While claiming to share her interests, they obstruct her ability to discover their corrupt actions. In fact, they killed the previous Apostle, Sanaki's grandmother, and had her installed as ruler at an young age. Because Sanaki was a child at the time of her installment, they made a seemingly minor member of the Senate named Sephiran Prime Minister as he was the only one to calm her tantrums. They thought they could control the two, but Sanaki ended up being politically formidable, and Sephiran became the only man she could trust. However, as events seemed to come into motion that could reveal their plot, the senators launched a coup'de'tat, imprisoning Sephiran as a traitor to the empire and sending Sanaki into "seclusion", essentially securing their personal rule over Begnion, in order to continue their campaign of extermination against the "sub-human" laguz.
- Of course, unknown to both Sanaki and the Senate, Sephiran actually had his own agenda. Actually an agent of the goddess Ashera, Sephiran was tasked to watch over the two races of Tellius, the normal-human Beorc and the shapeshifting animal-like Laguz, in hopes both races will live in peace. Of course, they failed to do so, and in fact, the assassination of Sanaki's grandmother and the framing (and near extinction) of the Herons was the last straw. So, with the aid of his servant Zelgius, aka the Black Knight, he sparked the war as depicted in Path of Radiance in hopes of having the war engulf the entire continent forcing the goddess to awaken and wipe out all living things. Despite his intentions of having everyone in Tellius killed, he is genuinely concerned for Sanaki.
- Long story short, the Vice Minister plans to thwart his two superiors and claim power to himself, while the Prime Minister/Chancellor plans to obliterate all life because he lost faith in it.
- Melvin in Odin Sphere. Exactly how much he planned beforehand and how much just happened on its own after Elfaria's death is debatable. The Three Wise Men are a better, albeit far less prominent, example.
- Gnarl, an aged minion in the game Overlord serves as the evil advisor of the Villain Protagonist, serving as his guide and giving him hints and tips in-game while also encouraging the player to do as much evil as he can. At the end of the game when the original Overlord returns Gnarl quickly betrays you, but it's depicted more as a duty to the owner of the Dark Tower and tells you that he'll take you back in if you kill the old Overlord.
- A non-evil chancellor wouldn't be much use to the Overlord, would he?
- Overlord II's ending suggests that he's biding his time...
- Star Craft's Samir Duran. Twice.
- In Ocarina Of Time, Ganondorf begins as the trusted "servant" of the King of Hyrule.
- Zant in Twilight Princess is also one according to the Japanese text of the game
- Chancellor Cole in Spirit Tracks. Unlike Zant, he flat out kills the Princess, instead of just transforming her.
- The Pope of Tales Of Symphonia, who is for all intents and purposes the Chancellor of Meltokio, plots the death of the King so he can take over and rule, among other heinous acts (see the Jerkass entry for examples, a trope he fits very well).
- All of Ansem's students in Kingdom Hearts betrayed him and took his place, when he forbid them to do researches on the darkness, including Xehanort, who even went as far as to steal the name of his teacher, who was trusting him so much. Afterwards, Xehanort banished Ansem into the realm of nothingness, a fate worse than death.
- Ad Avis from Quest for Glory.
- Vizier Abdul Alhazred from Kings Quest 6 attempts to establish dominion in the Land of the Green Isles by becoming a trustworthy advisor to the king. After becoming Vizier, he has Mordack kidnap Princess Cassima, then he goes forward to kill the king and queen and become the de facto ruler. We see the full extent of Alhazred's XanatosGambit when Cassima returns and Alhazred has her locked in a room while using this opportunity to devise a staged marriage to have himself declared king.
- He's named for the alleged author of the Necronomicon and the king trusted him? Wow.
- In Dungeon Siege 2, the leader of the dark wizards was Valdis's Evil Mentor, procedes to become his Evil Chancellor and Dragon, and turns out to secretly be the Man Behind The Man for both Vadis and the player.
- Before usurping the throne and becoming an Evil Overlord, Murod of Summoner used to be this.
- In Valkyria Chronicles, prime minister Borg is definitely one of those. He actively plots to use the princess as a bargaining chip to the approaching imperials in an attempt to allow him to be named King in her stead.
- The kings Chancellor Kronus Maelor in The Horde is a example of the silly blantantly evil type. He will randomly take your money as a bonus for himself, plot to kill Chancey during cutscreens and is The Horde king
- In Jak And Daxter The Lost Frontier it is inverted. Though you don't deal with them for very long, Duke Skyheed seems like a noble leader while his chancelor seems like a very rude, disagreeable, and scheming sort, turns out Skyheed is the Big Bad and the Chancelor has been helping you all along.
Webcomics
- Parodied to ridiculous levels with the 8-bit Theater character Chancellor Usurper aka Dark Elf King Astos. When he was about to take over he planned to have the man who would be the next chancellor killed since he knows you can never trust whoever is in that position.
- Adventurers has a comic where upon being introduced to the Chancellor, Karn immediately tosses him out a window for this very reason. Parodied in that that was the GOOD chancellor, his evil duplicate was late to work and hadn't had a chance to kidnap/replace him yet.
- Subversion/Lampshade Hanging: In Darths And Droids, Qui-Gon is immediately suspicious of Queen Amidala's advisor Sio Bibble (whose name Qui Gon thinks is "Bubble") due to his goatee and the fact that he's a "trusted advisor". However, never ever at all does Bibble do anything that would indicate this to be at all accurate. In fact, the commentary includes a link to this page.
- Chancellor
Zod Valorum is portrayed as (ludicrously over the top) Evil, and he is a Chancellor, but oddly enough, he is not an Evil Chancellor as defined by this trope, because in the Galactic Senate "Chancellor" refers to the equivalent of President or King, rather than an advisor role.
- Played to the extreme by Advisor Magon
 in Sluggy Freelance.
- Lampshade Hanging and subversion in Casey And Andy, where the protagonists visit a fantasy-based parallel dimension. There, the "Evil Grand Vizier" is supposed to be constantly scheming to topple the monarch, and sure enough, the Vizier is easily recognizable as the local version of Casey & Andy's archnemesis... however, in the end it turns out that he's actually a good guy, and that he'd only pretended to be a scheming, unreliable madman in order to get close to the Queen, with whom he was in love. The true Evil Chancellor turns out to be the court wizard Kasor, who plays this fairly straight.
- Subversion in The Wotch, the character of Kohain Ravime is cunning, brilliant, and the right hand man of Big Bad Melleck Xaos... to whom he is utterly loyal, despite the occasional instance of taking action on his own, even when he knows Xaos wouldn't approve. He is, in fact, incensed when the Uricarn Demon implies that he'd help Ravime overthrow Xaos and seize power, and explains that he instead hopes to make sure the prophesies about Xaos are fulfilled and to enjoy a long and healthy career as Xaos's second-in-command. To some extent, this makes him more of a Man Behind The Man, who knows the second-in-command position is more comfortable than the Big Bad's. He's notable mainly because he seems to fit the trope very well at first. He looks like a duck, he walks like a duck... but at a closer look, he's a goose.
Web Original
- Associated Space features Ursula Urquart, leader of the loyal opposition, who is apparently out to either take over, or secede her worlds from the Terran Associated States.
- Somewhat subverted in Cwen's Quest as the three scheming advisors to the Witch Queen, while unscrupulous, are actually a lot nicer then the queen. They briefly actually manage to take over the kingdom by putting a child on the throne after the original Witch Queen's death but when next we see them they've apparently lost control as the new grown up queen is viciously ordering them around.
- Over-the-top parodied (as most things are) in Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy: The United Nations has a Trusted Grand Vizier, who takes over when the Secretary-General goes missing (in accordance with the U.N. Ancient Texts, of course).
- "Now, I know how much you hate personal power, Grand Vizier Slitherstab, but —" "I'll cope."
Western Animation
- The character of Long Feng, head of the Dai Li in the second season of Avatar The Last Airbender. The DVD Commentary mentions his power was based on that of Imperial Chinese eunuchs (see below).
- Another comical, over-the-top example is Chancellor Trample from the Tale Spin episode "The Road to Macadamia."
- The character Stan in Frisky Dingo turns out to be one of these about half-way through the first season.
- Jafar in Aladdin.
- Subverted in a recent episode of The Venture Brothers: Dr. Henry Killinger, Dr. Rusty Venture's new life coach, is trying to get him to join the Guild of Calamitous Intent and become an archvillain to his more capable twin brother, but in rare form Killinger is actually looking out for Rusty's best interests and making him into a more successful, stronger-willed person. It seems to work: we spend the climax of the episode assuming Rusty is signing a form of membership in the Guild, only to find out he's actually signing Killinger's severance agreement.
- Arguably, Tzekel-Kan in The Road To El Dorado. His actual title is High Priest, but he's a major advisor to the ruler of El Dorado and is scheming to take it over.
Real Life
- This trope pretty much describes the relationship between President Paul von Hindenburg, Germany's last pre-WWII president, and the later chancellors of the Weimar Republic. Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher and Adolf Hitler all derived a considerable degree of thier power from how good they were at manipulating Hindenburg to churn out presidential emergency decrees for them. When Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler merged the two offices together and thus became President Evil.
- The eunuchs of Imperial China were notorious for commonly being an entire set of Evil Chancellors. In fact, at one point people were banned from becoming eunuchs as they simply held too much power. Of course, you didn't see many people lining up to become eunuchs anyway...
- Actually, most imperial eunuchs volunteered to be castrated for the sake of a career. They were preferred for civil service because (1) they could be allowed to live in the palace and could be trusted not to mess with the emperor's wives and concubines, and (2) it was presumed that since they could have no sons of their own, their only family loyalty would be to the emperor's dynasty. Intact men in a position of power would want to use it to advance their own sons. But, of course, if men are denied the pleasures of the flesh, that does not guarantee they will find no pleasure in wealth and/or power for their own sakes; in fact, it mean even increase their desires on those directions.
- Eunuchs are popular villains in Wuxia and Hong Kong cinema for this particular reason. Many portrayals of them tend toward the Evil Sorcerer persuasion.
- Eunuchs of the Achaemenid Persian Empire were, as in China, preferred for government service and known for court intrigue. Bagoas, a famous power-behind-the-throne, deposed and murdered two kings, replacing them with more tractable candidates. The last such, Darius III, wised up and ordered Bagoas to drink poison (Darius himself was later ousted by Alexander the Great).
- Hamman from the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible is probably one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.
- This editor recalls reading many stories of Court Jews and/or Rabbis facing off against Evil Courtiers of various stripes in books of Jewish folktales as a kid.
- Otto von Bismarck might be a real life subversion: he was certainly a chancellor, a chancellor famed for his plots within plots, dastardly schemes, and willingness to be flexible with orders from the King, and he ended up effectively ruling Germany as a power behind the throne, yet remained loyal to his country and monarchy to the end.
- That is highly disputable, to say the least. While he remained loyal to his country (though in his position, one would wonder what anything short of selling his decisions to the highest bidder would constitute as acting "disloyally), his "loyalty" to the Monarchy can best be shown by his more-or-less outright kidnapping and 'tutoring' of young Wilhelm II, which provided him with a Freudian Excuse that largely pans out. And the fact that he helped crushed tentative attempts at setting up a German Republic in a very bloody purge in 1848, set up the situations that led to the international situation that led to World War One , waged explicit wars of aggression against Denmark and Austria and an all-but-declared one against France, oversaw violations of international law in those campaigns (mainly in France), and generally gave the military a free hand from civilian oversight probably lets him qualify.
- Charles Martel, though not normally regarded as evil, was certainly after his master's throne.
- Hugues Capet a few centuries later as well, after Martel's dynasty started to peter out.
- There appears to be an inverted example in Zimbabwe, as long-time dictator Robert Mugabe has recently made civil rights activist Morgan Tsvangirai his prime minister, presumably as an attempt to pacify the opposition.
- Henry Clay Frick to Andrew Carnegie.
Exceptions:
- Cristo/Kiryl in Dragon Quest IV / Dragon Warrior IV is completely loyal.
- Grimble in Myth Adventures, while engaging in power struggles with General Badaxe, has no desire to rule.
- In Rice Boy, the Grand Vizier of Satuar is far more intelligent, level-headed, and kinder to Rice Boy than the Prince is.
- High Chancellor Ocato from Oblivion is absolutely loyal to the Empire and it's heirs. Hell, he gave no question as to Martin being the son of the emperor and simply knelt down and officially gave him the position.
- Which makes him an exception in the Elder Scrolls verse. Just look at the other two Imperial Battle Mages in the games: Jagar Tharn from Arena who imprisoned the Emperor in Oblivion and disguised himself to rule in his stead, and Zurin Arctus aka the Underking from Daggerfall who defied Emperor Tiber Septim's policies well into undeath. The Prima guide even lampshades this trope in its description of the Main Campaign near its conclusion.
- Princess Peach's chancellor, Toadsworth, from the Super Mario series is not only loyal to her, but also kind of a father figure.
- In Final Fantasy VI, Figaro's chancellor is also loyal to his king and kingdom. Even when Edgar's gone for over a year, the chancellor continues to go about his business as though the king had just stepped out for a few minutes.
- In War Planets (AKA Shadow Raiders), the Grand Vizier of Planet Fire is a narrow-minded, obstructionist xenophobe. However, he is utterly devoted to his prince and the people of Fire. He even goes so far as to make a Heroic Sacrifice. He does make a reappearance afterwards where he tries to get them eaten by the Beast Planet, but like Chrono Trigger, it's an evil replica, not the real Vizier.
- No matter how many Evil Viziers get named after him, "Jafar" in the original Arabian Nights stories was usually seen as wise, generous, and probably more mentally stable than Harun al-Rashid himself.
- In the Fan Fic The Basalt City Chronicles, Priest-Emperor Zaykar and The Guardian of the Crown Lord Kosgan do not get along well, at least on the surface. However, Lord Kosgan is actually utterly loyal to the Empire; his friction with the somewhat younger Priest-Emperor was originally to make sure that the Empire got a strong ruler
- The Shadow Chancellor in the British political system is neither evil (ex officio, anyway) nor a chancellor in the sense of this article. The term, while awesome, merely refers to the chief spokesman on the budget and economy for the Opposition party.
- The Grand Vizier in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad has taken over the running of the city since the death of the old caliph and wears a golden mask to hide a face hideously scarred by fire. He is also, however, brave, noble and wise, and a true companion to Sinbad throughout the adventure.
- After Ozma takes the throne of Oz, the Scarecrow cheerfully steps down and becomes Regent of Oz. It's a fine use of his fine brain, and he is very loyal to Ozma and to Ozma's chosen successor, Dorothy.
- In the "present day" Oz of Tin Man, Ambrose/ Glitch is loyal and devoted to the lavender-eyed queen to the bitter end, destroying plans for an invention that could theoretically used as a doomsday device unfortunately, he wasn't able to stop the Witch from taking the plans quite literally out of his head. Years later, he meets up with DG, the Queen's daughter, and becomes equally devoted and protective of her.
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