Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
— George S. Patton, Patton
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other.
We all know the Chessmaster: cold, intelligent, calculating. His catspaws moving to shape events to his liking while he pulls the strings, the whole time secure in his fortress, never getting his hands dirty.
And then there is the Magnificent Bastard.
The Magnificent Bastard is what happens when you combine the Chessmaster, the Trickster, and the Manipulative Bastard (and sometimes throwing in a bit of Large Ham). He is bold, charismatic (though not necessarily lovable), independent, and audacious. Unlike the Chessmaster, who seeks to control every single minute aspect of a situation, the Magnificent Bastard opts to play the odds and wins regularly. Another differing characteristic is his willingness to move himself onto the playing field; he is his own most useful piece. The risks are obvious, but the strategic advantages are numerous. With charm, style, and an understanding of the human psyche, he can play people's emotions like a piano and often come up smelling of roses afterwards. His Trickster talents also allow for making adjustments to strategy on the fly, making for Xanatos Roulettes that can come out looking more like Xanatos Speed Chess or the craziest of Indy Ploys.
He can be at any level of the villainous hierarchy - Big Bad, The Dragon who's a Knight Templar or Puss In Boots, or a wild card trusted by none of the organized entities on either side. Also, the Magnificent Bastard is likely to appear as a protagonist, albeit a dark one, as his nature allows him to be more emotionally invested in his pieces.
The term was first used by General Patton in reference to Erwin Rommel in the film Patton. The Trope Codifier is Lionel Luthor of Smallville, who was given this nickname by the Television Without Pity boards.
Compare and contrast Smug Snake, who is a similar archetype but is less admirable or successful because he allows his ego to overtake his awesome. Can overlap with Crazy Awesome if the crazy has a strong element of cunning (although Crazy Awesome is more often a specifically heroic trope). Contrast the Complete Monster, whose acts fill the audience with hate and revulsion. For just the villainous charm, see Affably Evil, Evilly Affable, and Wicked Cultured. For just the ingenious planning, see The Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard. The Magnificent Bastard is often a beneficiary of Jerkass Dissonance, although to be fair, he oftentimes earns it.
The Guile Hero is the heroic analogue to the Magnificent Bastard. Please confine heroic examples to that page.
Please confine discussion to the discussion page.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Neon Genesis Evangelion has Gendo Ikari, the leader of the NERV organization. While far from his only ploy, the greatest reason he is on this page is for his involvement in the Human Instrumentality Project, even though he wasn't the one in charge. He was enough of a key factor to be considered the one most responsible for it, and he even had his own motives. To be reunited with his dead wife Yui.
- Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion is full of these, with titular character Lelouch being one of the best examples. He turns a weak regional rebellion into a massive world war against his father, all while under the guise of a fabulously theatrical masked persona. His older brother Schneizel lacks the theatrics, but more than makes up for it in sheer competence, managing to wipe out all the progress that Lelouch made in over forty episodes in less than four minutes.
- Considering both Charles and Marianne, it's In The Blood, after all.
- Even when Schneizel separates Lelouch from the Black Knights he manages to go and take over THE OTHER HALF of the world as from the half he captured last time He then goes on to finish taking over the rest of the world. His Magnificent Bastardness REALLY shines through, however, when you realize that taking over the world was really just part of a bigger plan to create a peaceful world for his precious sister Nunnally.
- Bleach's Sosuke Aizen. The man had the entire governing body of the Soul Society slaughtered and replaced by him and his henchman without anyone noticing, then manipulated everyone with ease in a great, long-running Xanatos Roulette to steal the Hogyoku trapped in Rukia's soul, take over the Hollow world, create a new army of soul-eating supersoldiers, and then take over... pretty much everything else. He had backup plan upon backup plan, faked his own death, nearly stabbed to death his fiercely-loyal lieutenant (who remained fiercely loyal afterwards), and plans to obliterate Ichigo's hometown to fuel his ambitions. And oh yeah, when he turns evil he can slick his hair back sans gel or styling mousse. How do we know that his hairstyle isn't just another one of Kyoka Suigetsu's illusions? Sit down and think about THAT.
- Crocodile from One Piece. This guy manipulated an entire kingdom into a civil war between the king and his people while still presenting himself as a hero to the country. His entire slogan for his plan was, "The love for this kingdom will destroy it." He also added even more insult to the heroes about telling them about a bomb that would blow up the town square that was nearly impossible to stop because he had a backup in case his lackeys failed to set off the bomb. His plan was nearly flawless and would had succeeded if it was not for certain events.
- In a side-story that took place after his defeat, Crocodile took over his jail block and, when given a perfect chance to escape, chose to light up a cigar and stay put. He would later agree to an Enemy Mine to break out of The Alcatraz that is Impel Down solely for the chance to kill an old enemy (who, incidentally, everyone else wanted to help save)
- Proxy One in Ergo Proxy, who is even referenced to be "the winner at the end of the world" (with good reason). Not only is he the master manipulator of nearly everything that happens in the course of the series, but he wins.
- Akio Himemiya aka Akio Ohtori from Revolutionary Girl Utena. He seduces almost the entire cast, including his sister Anthy, Utena, Shiori (Juri's love interest), Ruka (Juri's other love interest), Miki, Miki's sister (at the same time as Miki, no less), Touga, Saionji, and others. The only characters he doesn't appear to sleep with are Nanami and Wakaba - and there's debate over that. He also: rigs the entire series of duels; creates a false timeline; convinces his own sister to stab Utena; and runs a private school in his spare time. And he gets away with all of that.
- Medusa the Witch in Soul Eater. Manipulates her daughter (?) into becoming a Dark Magical Girl...but subverts the usual Heel Face Turn so that "she" would be The Mole instead. Blackmails other witches into working for her by planting parts of her body in them that explode whenever she wills it. Matches the best Technician and Death Scythe in Shibusen in battle, resurrects the Cosmic Horror, gives The Corruption to the main heroine/hero duo, comes Back From The Dead by stealing the body of a small child, drives the best tech crazy, frames him for murder, drives out a good witch who wanted to defect, and convinces Shibusen to let her lead them in an assault against her Rival Older Sister.
- Light Yagami of Death Note employs Memory Gambits, Batman Gambits and Xanatos Roulettes left, right and centre while eating potato chips and wielding his pen like a sword to Ominous Latin Chanting.
- The most impressive and villainous character in Ashita No Nadja? A 13-year-old girl. Yes, a teen Bitch In Sheeps Clothing and Nadja's Forgotten Childhood Friend named Rosemary, who steals the spotlight brilliantly by kicking puppies so well and hard that even the local Smug Snake, who thought the kid would be an easy-to-manipulate puppet at first, in the end utterly fears her.
- Johan Liebert - the Monster. He manipulates everyone he encounters as they were puppets on a string and then disposes of them without a second thought, subverts every Pet The Dog moment he's given in chilling ways, and never loses that Dissonant Serenity permanently affixed to his face. The problem is, the straight treatment the series gives his activities also makes him freaking scary to behold.
- Xellos for The Slayers fits this bill quite nicely.
- Manning from Orguss 02 is a perfect example of the trope. Perfect quote, when he's on a plane with two others that's under attack by an enemy Giant Robot:
Manning: "When I give you the signal I want you to push that button. That's not so hard."
Lean: "That's the hatch release. If I open the hatch, then what?"
Manning: "I'll escape in the Decimator."
Lean: "You mean the only person who's going to get out of this alive is you?"
Manning: <Shrugs> "Beats everyone dying, doesn't it?"
- Takamura Mamoru of Hajime No Ippo. Arrogant, loudmouthed and mean, he never stops humiliating his fellow boxers or rubbing the defeat in their face. And yet, everyone in the gym looks up to him, especially Aoki, Kimura and Ippo, because not only he's a GREAT boxer, but he is the one who got ALL of them into boxing. He rarely winds up hatching any of his ridiculous schemes, preferring brawn to brains except when it really counts - but come on, look at that charming smile
 ◊.
- Hiruma Youichi, Deimon Devilbats quarterback in Eyeshield 21. How did he get his players? Blackmail, manipulation, or the ultimate fallback, guns. Lots of guns. What does he do with his players? Gives them all nicknames that start with "Fucking," and puts them through Training from Hell including running up Tokyo Tower and pushing a truck from Texas to Las Vegas. What does he do to his opponents? All out psychological warfare, showing his hand, taunting unmercifully and cackling madly (even through a freshly broken arm if he has to.) He keeps innumerable calculations going on in his head and strategizes on the fly, willing (and eager) to go for the insanest of insane trick plays. He's a complete terror, but he has the absolute loyalty of his players (even the ones he recruited at gunpoint) who are willing to push themselves to insane heights right along with him (although they would be happier if he left his guns at home).
- TREIZE. KHUSHRENADA.. How did he make the Earth Federation fall into OZ's clutches? Freely give the location of the Federation council's meeting to the Gundam pilots. And it ended with the pilot killing the leader who was ready to start peace talks, stripping the pilots from colony support, and making them have a (rather) minor mental breakdown. Considering the goal of the ''real'' Operation Meteor, it is possible that his goal is to strip all the bad guys (the Obstructive Bureaucrate Federation guy, the Romefeller Foundation who had their hand in financing the war, and the war-toting colonist) from their power in one go. And that's just one battle.
- Kunzite in Sailor Moon. After over a season of Monsters Of The Week, most of the Shitennou repeatedly showing themselves to be incompetant, and Usagi continuing to win and even gain ground against the Dark Kingdom, it was a breath of fresh air to see Beryl's Dragon set clever traps, catch the entire team and almost finish them off (and only fail because of a senshi he didn't know about), tear through Usagi's obvious Out Gambitted like it was made of wet paper, and finally go down fighting against Sailor Moon instead of getting the You Have Failed Me treatment. Even if he's not as awesome as some of the examples on this page, the series could have used more like him.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, the most recent Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, brings us Rex Goodwin; a very different villain given the genre. For all of the first season, he operates behinds behind the scenes, manipulating the Five Signers in order to force them to reveal themselves. For example, in order to get Yusei Fudo to participate in his tournament, he kidnaps his friends and threatens him with their deaths. Yeah. And the kicker; it's revealed that his reasons for this were inherently noble, and he has received no comeuppance for his actions. And throughout all of this, he has maintained a calm, friendly demeanor.
- And then it's revealed that he used both the good guys and the bad guys for not so noble purposes, which makes him even more magnificent and even more of a bastard!
- Divine may also count, though he's more of a bastard than he is manipulative to the point of almost being labeled a Complete Monster.
- The Count from Gankutsuou- holy shit. Perhaps even more so than he was in the original story.
- Jean-Luc LeBlanc, Nietzsche Wannabe and Evilutionary Biologist, of Divergence Eve.
- Shinichi Akiyama of Liar Game. World class con artist and manipulator of anything that breathes. And he's completely awesome.
- Askeladd Olafson from Vinland Saga has pulled off damn near every gambit there is, kicked the dog, and kicked ass all with style. It's very easy to forget how much of a bastard he can be.
- It's a constant debate, both in-universe and amongst the fans, whether Irresponsible Captain Tylor is simply The Fool, a Genius Ditz, or a Magnificent Bastard who uses Obfuscating Stupidity in order to carry out his plans. Some fans believe that it's actually a mixture of both; that Tylor has somehow become enlightened to the extent of becoming a bodhisattva through his original simple, happy-go-lucky ways and that most, if not all, of his antics in the series are part of a plan to help the others on the Soyokaze achieve enlightenment too.
- Sakyou from Yu Yu Hakusho. Even before his main role in the Dark Tournament arc, he effortlessly used Yusuke's team to cause the downfall of one of his rivals.
- Balalaika from Black Lagoon. Ruthless, cool, very dignified ex-special forces commander, now the queen of the mafia. Her huge facial scars can't completely tarnish her incredible beauty, and her fighting skills and intelligence keep her on top of the crime control of Roanapur.
Comic Books
- Lex Luthor, of The DCU. Since the eighties, he's been well entrenched in Magnificent Bastardry. The Diniverse version is especially Magnificent, almost becoming the President as a distraction from his true plan... Though, unknown to him, he had help with that part.
- Vril Dox II from L.E.G.I.O.N. (a modern-day "prequel" series to the Legion Of Super Heroes), a slick Insufferable Genius, orchestrates the total disruption of two planetary governments in pursuit of justice in just the first six issues. He's so cold, he practically tamed Lobo.
- Doctor Doom is a perfect example in the Marvel Universe. When you can take on a god without flinching...
- The Kingpin, also part of the Marvel Universe, until the "Born Again" storyline.
- Namor, the Marvel king of Atlantis and on again off again super villain can pull this off on occasion. Like when he joined the heroic "Illuminati" of Iron Man and Mr.Fantastic, and the villainous Illuminati of Doom and Norman Osborne. Simultaneously. He sees no problem in attending both meetings, neither side knowing of his involvement with the other.
- Thanos of Titan, another example from the Marvel Universe, and arguably the quintessential one, at least for the company's cosmic landscape. A premier mover and shaker in many important storylines (if not the main focus altogether), he has a knack for successfully manipulating both sides of the fence (sometimes both at once) time and time again, despite his true nature being common knowledge to everyone.
- General Wade Eiling from Captain Atom. First, he framed Nathaniel Adam for drug smuggling, mutiny, and murder, when in fact Eiling had been secretly running the conspiracy responsible for those crimes. Then he talked Adam into participating as a guinea pig in the Silver Shield Project, which led to Adam's apparent death. Then Eiling married Angela Adam, Adam's "widow." Then, when Adam rematerialized eighteen years later, now possessing superpowers, Eiling was able to talk him into masquerading as a superhero to spy on the Justice League as part of the Captain Atom project, by telling him that this would give him the opportunity to clear his name, and even reconnect with his children, who of course thought of Eiling as their father. Even after Adam did prove his innocence, he never uncovered Eiling's involvement in the frame-up, and continued working for Eiling. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. What makes this especially impressive is that Adam is very smart, and is no slouch at political intrigue. Since Eiling was created by Cary Bates and Greg Weisman, who also created Gargoyles and David Xanatos, this is probably not surprising.
- Eiling ultimately got his commuppence: dying of cancer, he tried to transfer his mind into an immortal, nigh-indestructible body... of the Shaggy Man. The process backfired as Shaggy Man's primitive animalistic body quickly turned Eiling into a mindless savage. It didn't help that Batman and Superman, upon fighting Eiling in his new body, promptly teleported him onto an asteroid in the middle of deep space, in order to get rid of him once and for all. Sadly while Eiling DID eventually escape the asteroid, months of being stuck all by himself on a small asteroid in the silent void of space with a primitive brain, effectively drove Eiling insane and caused him to lose his manipulative bastard skills.
- Tao of WildCATs and Sleeper. Genetically engineered tactical supergenius turned nearly unstoppable crime lord, Tao wins fights just by opening his mouth - by the time he's done with you, you'll probably have signed up with him. (Failing that, you'll be mindwiped, in a coma, or have been shot by your own allies - going up against this guy just doesn't pay.)
- Groucho Marx plays this role of Lord Julius in Cerebus. Incidentally, Dave Sim writes and draws a perfect Groucho.
- Spider-Man villain Roderick Kingsley, the original Hobgoblin, managed to trick Spider-Man and the general public into believing the Hobgoblin was deceased Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds for a good 10 years real time before being caught, blackmailed the Green Goblin into breaking him out of prison, and is currently living in luxury in the Caribbean. Not bad for a guy who was originally a fashion designer.
- Bomb Queen, the Stripperiffic Villain Protagonist of her self-titled Image Comics book. The iron-fisted dictator of New Port City has, in no particular order: wiped out the rest of her original villain team; turned New Port City into a place where nothing is illegal in designed "Crime Zones"; stolen a government supercomputer, the powers of the demon lord Desarak and her clone Bomb Teen (the latter of which was "born" from her supercomputer); kept New Port City's mayor under her control with sex and verbal assaults, casually killing anyone standing near him when she blasts a hole through his office wall (repeatedly to the point of being a Running Gag); orchestrated terror attacks on the cities of other Image superheroes; repeatedly foiled the plots of the Government Conspiracy (which created her) to have her killed; and indirectly killed an innocent girl roped into her co-worker's attempt to interview Bomb Queen for their website. She is still a Villain With Good Publicity within her city, if only because her constituents are Complete Monsters who moved to New Port City in order to indulge in their vilest sins. Outside her city, she has absolutely no protection under US law; she manages to avoid justly-deserved punishments every time.
- Lucifer is nearly the most Magnificient of all Bastards. Like a true Magnificient Bastard he isn't above putting himself on the line of fire, and can make and discard a hundred plans in a moment. He handily gets the better of just about everything in the universe, but barely manages to compete in the same league as God.
- Gary Jackson. It was recently revealed that he faked his own death, entered the Witness Protection Program to escape the Mob, and is currently buying up his old company.
- Edwin Alva in the series Hardware. He catches a case of Redemption Equals Death, unfortunately.
- The Sultan Agameen from the indie graphic novel Artesia. He's handsome and dresses well - gold-threaded silk and fine plate are all the rage in Thessid-Gola this season. He is eloquent and treats his arch-enemy, Artesia herself, with respect. He is an incredible strategist and tactician...and he is protected by a goddamn Dragon spirit.
- Romulus and Daken one pitted the most ruthless killers in a game of succession and manipulated Wolverine for a hundred plus years, the other... Just read Dark Wolverine #77.
- Sinestro, post-Green Lantern: Rebirth.
- Before that, in Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2 (1986), Sinestro was able to manipulate the omnipotent Sector 3600 into breaking the Sciencells, allowing Sinestro and the sector to escape.
- Ozymandias from Watchmen. Right up until the end, he's the most beloved man on the planet, seemingly admired by everyone but Rorschach and the Comedian. Rich, handsome, a star gymnast well into middle age, and the smartest man in the world, the man's got style and class. And his master plan, which involved manipulating hundreds of scientists and artists and gets both Cold War superpowers to lay down their arms, succeeds, at least for the time being. And he survives the story, despite an assassination attempt at almost point blank range - he catches the bullet - and getting on the bad side of a virtual god.
Film
- Keyser Söze from The Usual Suspects.
- One word: KKHHAAANNNN!!!!, Star Treks best example of the Magnificent Bastard, though not the last.
- Senator / Chancellor / Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. Sith-ness notwithstanding, he managed to shape the entire galaxy in his image, had manipulated every major event for the past two decades or so, and had kept everyone assured of his respectability and trustworthiness while doing so. As he declared himself ruler-for-life (and was applauded by the Senate for doing so) he could justifiably claim to have earned it. And his start to political prominence was over a seemingly minor trade dispute. Which he started.
- The Force Unleashed plot takes things even further with the reveal that the Emperor deliberately manipulated his apprentice's apprentice into founding the Rebel Alliance, though he didn't intend the united rebel leaders to survive after exposing themselves. The irony is that this means Palpatine was the driving force behind both sides of the conflict in the second major galactic war just as he was with the first. Xanatos backfire doesn't begin to describe it.
- The events of Dark Empire notwithstanding, one wonders if the bastard is still around in the Legacy era. If anyone could work out how to return from the Maelstrom of the Force, it would be him.
- Tony Wendice in Dial M for Murder. After discovering his wife Margot is cheating on him, he creates a complex plan to kill her while arranging a perfect alibi for himself and mentally punishing the man who cuckolded him at the same time. When Margot proves more resilient than he expected and kills the man he blackmailed into doing the deed, he only needs a few minutes to come up with a new plan to make it appear that she committed the act in cold blood. Even when his scheme is in danger of being exposed, he is quickly able to come up with a new way to turn the situation to his advantage. And finally when against all odds his whole plot is exposed, he turns out to be one of the all time great Graceful Losers, pouring wine for everyone who had a hand in finding him out (except a cop who he notes is still on duty).
- The Joker from The Dark Knight is an unorthodox example of this trope. There's just something about the supreme competence and control he exhibits throughout the entire film that can one forget (almost) that he's a Complete Monster. Joker Crosses The Line Twice. Hell, he dances a jig up and down the line.
- When you manage to convince a man that it's not your fault you killed his wife-to-be, but the fault of those who were working to save both of them, and that it wasn't anything personal because you were just trying to teach Gotham a lesson in chaos; all while WEARING A NURSE'S OUTFIT, you're a Magnificent Bastard. The best example, however is when he goes through his elaborate plot to kill Dent, gets locked up in jail, but manages to have a bomb in the stomach of another prisoner, which he sets off. Of course, he had to be a part of all this to make it work.
How about a magic trick? I'm going to make this pencil disappear! *WHAM* Ta-Daaaa! IT'S GONE!"
- The Book Of The Film gives the backstory of the crime boss known as the Chechen, who rose from being a penniless orphan in Chechnya to being a big fish in Gotham through the drug market and some luck.
- Leslie Vernon, from Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. He's an aspiring spree killer (in the vein of Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger, as the movie is a big deconstructor fleet of slasher films) who is chosen to be the subject of a documentary that the main character, Taylor Gentry, is making. She eventually becomes great friends with Leslie, who turns out to be quite charismatic. Then, she is surprised when he does go through with the killings, his chosen victims trapped in a mansion that he pretreated to be lethal. She decides to help, but when she goes into the mansion, she realizes Leslie's real plan: she and her crew were also intended to be his victims, and they're playing right into his hands. Finally, she is the last victim left, and manages to kill him in exactly the way he said the final girl would. Unfortunately, he planned this the whole time, taking the preparations required to fake his own death...
- And he even tells her how and by which means he is going fake his own death!
- Kuwabatake Sanjuro from Yojimbo. Not only does he play two rival gangs like fiddles, causing them both to collapse with little suspicion drawn to himself, he's able to turn his capture, which he didn't plan to his advantage.
- Harry Lime from The Third Man. "Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax—the only way you can save money nowadays." And he's played by Orson Welles.
- Bill "The Butcher" Cutting from Gangs Of New York has the hero at his mercy at one point in the movie, but instead of killing him decides to build him into a Worthy Opponent so they can have a Battle Royale With Cheese because having everyone living in terror of him is boring. Well, not quite. He lets the hero live because he considers him Not Worth Killing, who views being left alive by the Butcher as shameful. Which, in fact, may add to this magnificence. It helps that he's played with gusto by Daniel Day Lewis.
- Bill, namesake of Kill Bill, who drove his former employee/lover to come out of a 4-year coma just to kill him for his magnificent bastardry. Bill casually aided in murdering O-Ren's parents, adding a florish by artfully shooting a whiskey bottle and then kicking a smoldering cigar across the room to burn the place down. Oh, and he put a "cap in [The Bride's] crown" AS she told him she was pregnant with his baby. Then proceeded to adopt that baby. Definitely magnificent.
- That wasn't Bill in the O-Ren sequence. That was a fellow by the name of Pretty Riki, whom Tarantino is reported to elaborate on furhter in the forthcoming four-and-a-half hour version of Kill Bill, entitled "The Whole Bloody Affair."
- Chang, played with brilliant bastardliness by Christopher Plummer, in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country. He banters with Kirk at dinner, claiming Shakespeare is best recited in the "original Klingon", and even as he's pounding the Enterprise to death while cloaked, he still has time to quote Henry V, Julius Caesar and finally Hamlet. Classy bastard.
- Hans Gruber from Die Hard holds a building hostage in order to trick the FBI into helping him steal huge sums of cash from it. That alone qualifies him. But when he's played with deliciously slimy charisma by Alan Rickman, well, Magnificent Bastardry ensues.
- Ms. White from Inside Man. She's apparently made a career (or at least a lucrative hobby) of pulling strings and doing favors for the rich and powerful, so she can demand return favors in her own time. Early in the film, after she extracts a demand from the Mayor, all he can say to her is, "You are a magnificent cunt."
- Dalton Russell would also classify. He takes a bank hostage and creates a foolproof plan to achieve his objective (hint: it's not robbing the bank) while escaping by literally walking out of the front door. Keith Frazier's entry into the plot doesn't even faze him. Russell merely modifies his existing plan and turns Frazier into an unknowing accomplice.
- Little Bill Daggett of Unforgiven. Play by his rules while in town, particularly by handing over your means of defending yourself, and he's smiling, affable, and friendly; charming, really. Cross him, however, and he'll first put you in a position where you can't fight back and then beat you within an inch of your life or kill you outright for sheer fun. He even has a speech mid-way through detailing that what makes him formidable isn't speed or skill so much as his willingness to stand his ground and count on his manipulation of the odds where other people would piss themselves with fear.
- Norman Stansfield in Leon The Professional is a corrupt DEA agent who casually shoots up an apartment, tells the owner he stopped right in front of him because Beethoven gets boring after his overtures, and even convices the cops that it was self defense, despite a single person in the apartment having a gun. He's also played by Gary Oldman.
- Jackie Brown, who manipulates almost every character in the film against one another, while she steals millions of dollars and is granted freedom from prosecution, with only her lover the wiser.
- Repo The Genetic Opera has Rotti Largo who planted poison in Nathan Wallace's home lab, thus killing the woman they both loved. Then he convinced Nathan that Marni's death was all his (Nathan's) fault and made him work as a Repo Man for Gene Co. And that's not much considering some of the other stuff he gets away with (and tries to get away with) in the movie. In a deleted scene he managed to get Shilo to extract zydrate from her mother's corpse.
- Evil, as portrayed by David Warner, in Time Bandits, particularly during the final fight scene.
- The entire premise of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a competition between two con men to see which one is more of a Magnificent Bastard than the other. They both lose to an unknown third player.
- The Prestige features two magicians trying to beat each other with Magnificent Bastardry.
- Dr. Frank N Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show is this at times. He's able to manipulate two people whom he's barely met (IE: Brad & Janet) into sleeping with him, tricks said people into eating the very remains of someone he killed out of pure spite (Meatloaf, anyone?), and FINALLY brainwashes not only Brad and Janet, but also his groupie Columbia and his own creation Rocky into performing a floorshow with him. All the while, for the most part, maintaining a very charismatic appeal to him.
- Mr. Potter of Its A Wonderful Life: "I'm an old man, and most people hate me. But I don't like them either, so that makes it all even." Manages to nearly take over an entire town and name it after himself (and would have if it weren't for that meddling George), though he already seems to own absolutely everything in Bedford Falls (including the banks) beside the Building and Loan. In his office, there is an oil painting of himself on the wall and a bust of Napoleon (presumably his two favorite people.) The chair where visitors sit is deliberately tiny so he can lord over them, and on his desk is a paperweight shaped like a skull. During the war he becomes head of the draft board (natch.)
- Jack Sparrow, of Pirates of the Caribbean. Even his enemies can't help but admire his ambitious gambits... savvy?
- Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Billy Flynn
- From Thick As Thieves we have Kieth Ripley, a master thief who has been manipulating the steps of Miami thief Gabriel Martin (Antonio Banderas) from beginning to end, in order to pull off a heist for some Faberge Eggs from a high security vault, and he does this with so much class that you have to just love the guy.
- Lacenaire, the poet, playwright and murderer from the French movie classic Children of Paradise is an outstanding example of this trope. He's proudly evil ("I'll hold my head high, until it falls into the basket"), spends the second half of the movie manipulating events even when they don't go his own way and treating the other characters in the movie as if they are figures from his plays, is charming and foppish to the point of dandyism (in the original sense of the word, he lives during the era when the term was coined), he's witty and calm even when the lesser villan, the Count of Montray, has him bodily ejected from a theater and he gets even with the count with first a Crowning Moment Of Awesome and then a Crowning Moment Of Badass that must be seen to be believed. His real life namesake and counterpart was pretty salty himself, holding all Paris spellbound during his murder trial and inspiring writers like Baudelaire and Dostoevsky, who used him as one of his models for Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.
- Col. Hans Landa aka The Jew Hunter from Inglourious Basterds. Despite being a brutal, sadistic maniac tasked with searching all of France for Jews in hiding, his wit and charisma make him the real star of the show, not Raine and his Nazi-hunting soldiers. By the end of the film he's managed to take credit for killing the Nazi high command and ending the war in Europe, while allowing everyone else to do the work for him. The only hitch in the otherwise flawless execution of his plan is the swastika permanently carved into his forehead. Quentin Tarantino has remarked that Hans Landa might be the greatest character he's ever written.
- The Final Destination implicates that Death was sending the visions the supposed precognitives from all four movies experienced. Essentially, no one ever had a chance and everything was always going according to Death's insanely intricate plan.
- Nathan Muir of Spy Game may fit into this category. He demonstrates a certain amount of Chessmaster proclivities, risks his pension and his retirement to get his protege free, and manages to charm his way into the information he needs to get the job done.
- In Fracture, Anthony Hopkins' character with a bit of Xanatos Roulette hatches a plan that allows him to shoot his cheating wife, hide the murder weapon, confess to his crime, have his charges acquitted and be immune against further trial, cause the suicide of the man sleeping with his wife, pull the plug on his comatose wife, and get away with it all. Until the last two minutes of the film anyway..
Newspaper Comics
The megalomaniacal Dogbert, pet of Dilbert. Though a multi-billionaire and former ruler of the world, he often works as a business consultant simply for the fun of conning people and stirring up trouble.
Literature
- Lord Vetinari, Patrician and supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, is described as being such a Magnificent Bastard, he makes Machiavelli look like an amateur. He plots against everyone, plays people against each other, and he manipulates people into doing exactly what he wants, and always gets away with it. Interestingly enough, he is almost a subversion in that we meet him when he is already quite-contentedly in power, and his Magnificent Bastardry is dedicated entirely to the mundane bureaucratic affairs of quietly running his city, leading a quite Spartan existence himself and almost always acting as a side-character to the main action, never protagonist or antagonist.
- Vetinari's Magnificent Bastardry flips between genius level intelligence to nigh omniscient knowledge of all factors. Oddly, the former is more prevelant in earlier books where he manipulates events through adept manipulation of psychology and on extremely good intelligence received (through his clerks and spy network). Later books have him seemingly leaving everything up to other characters, only to later have their seemingly impossible to predict actions....all going to plan.
- Going Postal however has Reacher Gilt, who fits this trope to a T; the protagonist even describes him as the greatest conman he's ever met. He secretly has people killed in order to run the clacks into the ground and profit as it's built back up. And he gets away with it because he's so bald-faced about it, as well as amazingly charming, that no-one believes he's serious.
- Sauron, though much of his magnificent bastardy takes place before Lord of the Rings - see this essay. Sauron is a cunning manipulator who has plans going all over Middle-earth. When force fails he can sweet-talk and when sweet-talk fails he has force and when that fails he has schemes within schemes within schemes. He can manipulate even his enemies into serving his goals. He engineered the Fall of Númenor through manipulation of the Númenoreans' desire for immortality and he was the one that was responsible for many of the Foul Things that inhabit Middle-earth. And the Nazgûl were his own idea. And so on. Basically, he was a Magnificent Bastard all the way till the fall of Númenor. Afterwards, he became the archetypal Evil Overlord.
- He might have kept a few of his Magnificent Bastard traits even then. After all, he corrupted both Saruman and Denethor simply by preying on their base desires and fears in a plot to cripple the defense of Minas Tirith before the battle even began. It would have worked, too,
if it hadn't been for those meddling hobbits had Gandalf (a Chess Master in his own right) not intervened.
- Think on this: He somehow arranged for the only way to destroy his Ring of Power to be to bring it right to his doorstep. If he'd actually been paying attention, rather than plotting the downfall of the entire free world (and very nearly succeeding), he would have been restored to his previous self and been nigh-unstoppable.
- Go further. He didn't need to pay attention. As events ultimately proved at the climax, no-one has the strength of will necessary to destroy the One Ring - it only happened by sheer chance (or Providence). The entire War/Quest of the Ring was a desperate, improbable, last-ditch attempt to defeat Sauron, the ultimate success of which was arguably down to divine intervention (this is hinted at occasionally).
- Actually, it seems to me that given enough time with a Bearer, the Ring could corrupt anyone, even a Hobbit, widely shown to be the paragons of innocence in Middle-Earth. If, say, Sam (or Elrond before him) took the ring from Frodo (or Isildur) in the Crack of Doom, or indeed anyone whom the Ring hasn't had time to influence, then it would have been doing its Siren song all the way into the lava. However, Isildur probably wouldn't let Elrond part him from his new toy, and Sam wouldn't want to hurt his Mr. Frodo.
- Word Of God is that no one in Middle-Earth existed who had the willpower to deliberately destroy the Ring in Mount Doom where its power was so dramatically increased (which probably extends to shoving someone else who's holding it into the Fire as well). Sauron had set things up so well that literally the only way for him to be defeated was by chance/fate.
- Which is all well and good, except for the bit where you're going up against The Powers That Be including the guy who's responsible for chance, fate, destiny and all the rest.
- Which was actually something close to the point Tolkien was trying to make with Sauron, actually- no matter how magnificent a bastard you are, you can't beat God at his own game.
- Fëanor from The Silmarillion should probably qualify. He does some very despicable stuff but is so charismatic that most of his people, many of them otherwise fairly decent, follow him for a while.
- Harry Turtledove's World War series, which tell an alternate history of WWII in which the former enemies in the war team up to fight alien invaders, plays SS Officer Otto Skorzeny in this role out the yazoo. Of course, in the end, since he is a dedicated, genocidal Nazi, he eventually becomes the prime villain and is confronted and killed.
- Lord Petyr Baelish of A Song Of Ice And Fire, also known as "Littlefinger." Even though his title has little standing, Lord Petyr is nonetheless one of the most powerful men in Westeros. He was so adept at finance that he managed to gain a seat as the Master of Coin on the king's council, and has replaced many officials with servants who are loyal to him. He was responsible for the assassination of the King's Hand, Jon Arryn. He easily duped Eddard Stark into believing he was an ally and was ultimately responsible for his execution. He murdered the only woman who seems to have loved him, Lysa Arryn, after we learn the entire civil war was set in motion at Littlefinger's behest (not that he likely planned for it to be so big, but still. And to demonstrate he tolerates no bastards of the less-magnificent variety, he took a hand in Prince Joffrey's assassination, facilitating Margaery's marriage to a sane king at House Tyrell's request. Even Tyrion Lannister, one of the smartest characters in the series, doubts whether he is a match for Littlefinger. His only weakness is a love he once held for Eddard's wife Catelyn Stark, which seems to have transferred to an affection for her daughter Sansa, whom he's apparently "training" to follow on his manipulative steps.
- And let's not forget that, by the end of the fourth book, he is the Regent Lord of the Vale, is Lord of Harrenhal/the Lannister's duly chosen new Lord of the Trident, and has set in motion events through marrying off his protegé Sansa to Robert Arryn's heir to put himself in a position of power with the North as well.
- Many other characters, who mostly pale when compared to Littlefinger, including the Prince of Dorne who's been keeping plans to marry his children into the Targaryens to exact vengeance for his sister's death.
- The villain of L.A. Confidential: Captain Dudley Smith. The audience knows from the prologue he's evil, but you don't realize exactly how evil until Exley, White, and Vincennes unravel how everything from Patchett's hooker ring to the Nite Owl killings to Mickey Cohen's mobsters, to the smut books, to even Preston Exley, Ray Dieterling, and the Loren Atherton case is connected to him. Either he's got the best luck in the world, or he's put together one of the biggest XanatosGambits ever.
- In David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon, Prince Kheldar (a.k.a. Silk) is THE Magnificent Bastard. Silk spends the entire series conning, stealing, cheating, and tricking various people, all to the advantage of him and his friends.
- Special mention should also go to Porenn, the queen of Silk's home nation and Silk's first love. Among other things, she takes advantage of the fact that the spies watching her will leave her alone when she's nursing her baby to privately meet with her spymaster.
- The Lies Of Locke Lamora, tons of them. The most notable of course include the Gray King, and the protagonist Anti Villain Locke Lamora himself, leader of the fittingly named "Gentlemen Bastards".
- Capa Vencarlo Barsarvi of the first book deserves an honorable mention, despite the fact he is ultimately defeated by an even greater Magnificent Bastard, namely the Grey King. Barsavi was just a professor of Rhetoric for gods sake, moves to Camorr and in a few short years he had eliminated all the rival Capas, resulting in a total monopoly on the city's criminal enterprises with several thousand men and over a hundred gangs at his disposal. Not only that but through a shrewd alliance with the Duke's spymaster he promises not to go after the nobility and in exchange punishments are relaxed for his men and he physically rules several of the less desirable parts of the city. He kept this up for 20 years. Not a bad run.
- Speaking of the Duke's spymaster, the Spider aka Dona Vorchenza deserves a mention as well, for using a pair of Locke's marks against him to manipulate him into being captured.
- In the sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies: The owner of the high class gambling ring Sinspire at first seems to be the classic 'early story mark' in his ego and position as decadent nobility, serving to lead Locke Lamora into the main plot. He shows quite nicely how this isn't the case as the end of book however, when as part of the Downer Ending he totally outsmarts even Locke. He had already worked out that they were trying to screw him over and what they were after, allowing them to do his dirty work to earn his 'trust' while replacing the target paintings with fakes.
- Bastard Operator From Hell. Over the course of hundreds of short stories, he has almost exclusively come out on top with all of his complex gambits, quickly turning every event in his favor. He can walk into a convention with no preparation and manipulate total strangers into giving him their money. He had a Wonderful Life sequence and instead of coming to a realization of how bad he is, the only thing he gets out of it was the password to a competitor's computer system. This is the man that could take over the world if he only cared about more than just making more money by doing less work.
- Gentleman Johnnie Marcone from Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series. He's constantly putting himself in a position where it's absolutely necessary for people who hate him to cooperate with him, whether because he's the lesser of several evils or simply the only option. He has single-handedly brought all of Chicago's organized crime under his direct control and even managed to be the first normal human to sign on to the magical equivalent of the Geneva Convention known as the Unseelie Accords. The protagonist of the series says it all in his quote "Say what you want about Marcone, but he's got balls that drag the ground when he walks."
- Another Dresden Files example: Lara Raith, who single-handedly engineers the crippling of the White King (her own father) just so she can assert herself as the power behind the throne, and then procceds to manipulate her step-brother, the series' protagonist, into massacring her enemies in the white court for her, callously sacrificing dozens of innocent women in the process.
- Troy Phelan from John Grisham's novel The Testament. A rich businessman with over 11 billion dollars in assets as well as three ex-wives and six children he hates with a passion, he cooks up an ingenious plan to totally screw them when he dies. He first fools his heirs into thinking he signed a will that divided the money equally among them. Then, while they're not looking, he signs the real will. In it, he gives his entire fortune to an illegitimate daughter. He only gives enough money to his heirs to cover all of their debts up to the date of his death, orders his lawyer to keep the will from being publicly read for a month, and then commits suicide. The lawyer then realizes that thinking they're going to inherit a fortune, all of Phelan's heirs will go on a spending spree for the next month and incur even greater debts. Suffice to say, when the will was finally read, everybody realized how much of a Magnificent Bastard Troy Phelan really was. The icing on this cake? Shortly before committing suicide, he manipulates his family into getting a team of doctors to declare him mentally competent, knowing that they'll try to backpedal furiously when the real will is read.
- Forgotten Realms, having more underground intrigues than open epic quests, has its share.
- Jarlaxle Baenre—brother of Quenthel and Gromph, no less—, founder and leader of the mercenary band Bregan D'aerthe, which he left in the hands of a deputy (he found a drow who will not try to depose him but is powerful and resourceful enough to keep it) to go adventuring for fun. Living in a society where the precise cut of hair corresponds to one's status, he shaves his head to show he's not in the system. Other drow of Menzoberranzan try to master the controlled chaos that is the City of the Spider Queen. Jarlaxle tries to add chaos, because he thrives in it. In early products he was assigned Neutral Evil, in the latest edition campaign setting he's Chaotic Neutral, which is probably more accurate: he's not malevolent but a mercenary acting for fun, or profit... or just for the hell of it.
- Road of the Patriarch pretty much amplifies his Magnificent Bastardry to truly epic levels, where he ends up manipulating the entire Kingdom of Bloodstone and its paladin king, Gareth Dragonsbane, the Citadel of Assassins, two ancient dragons, the remnants of the lich-king Zenghyi's artifical magical constructs, Artemis Entreri, and his own drow mercenary band that he is no longer in direct control of to his own benefit and for the hilarity of it all, and he does it with such flair and ease that it looks like child's play. Truly, Jarlaxle is one of the greatest Magnificent Bastards in all of fiction.
- Elaith "The Serpent" Craulnober appears in books of Elaine Cunningham and Ed Greenwood. Stylish, fearless, merciless and almost shameless crimelord of explosive temper. He easily flips between Anti Hero and Anti Villain, usually intervening when something offends him. Or protects Status Quo when things can get worse — he wrecks an attempt to establish a thiefs and assassins guild in his city "because it's not in his best interests" or saves a hero as an "enemy of my enemy" — he prospers, why let anyone to rock the boat?
- Lauzoril, extremely charismatic Zulkir of Enchantment. Became leader of Imperialist party despite demonstratively breaking Red Wizards' tradition. Dodged Villain Decay despite being defeated in military campaigns, then tired of wars, steered further into Affably Evil and beyond, jumping into dangerous adventure to save a complete stranger just because his daughter happened to show a compassion to this guy during a scrying lesson. Witch Queen is the most dangerous mage in his world and not only wrecked all Red Wizards' plans she knew of, but simply killed them at sight, and is known as a bit crazy — not a typical Friendly Enemy. So what? First, long years of leading attacks on her land and underground war on her Harpers agents, up to an assassination attempt on her sister. Then he got a cheek and skill to scry upon her while apparently disabling the wards preventing her from far-seeing his real face at will. Then they met and... parted as friends. He managed to make sort of separate peace with her, extolling the future trade rivalries on the same breath.
- Raistlin Majere from Dragonlance is definitely an example of this. His cunning plan? Go back in time, study under the most powerful dark wizard ever (also Magnificent in his own right), then kill him and steal the rest of his secrets, organize an army and attack one fortress in order to get close to another which contains a gate to the Abyss, manipulate a cleric of good into
falling in love with him helping him open it, lure out the supreme goddess of darkness, kill her, and take her place. The only thing more insane is how close he came to succeeding. This is made more interesting by how many times Raistlin came close to failing; sure, he's a supreme Bastard, master manipulator, and ends up the series' most powerful dark wizard, but let's not forget that he started with absolutely nothing, and gambled everything with every step - this is a man so physically frail he coughs blood after casting even the most basic spells, and constantly wrestling with his own amorality, bitterness, and the shreds of actual love he felt for his brother and even Crysania. All of this only combines to make him more Magnificent; no wonder he's a Draco In Leather Pants to many fans of the books.
- Not to mention also, that he is the most intelligent person on all Krynn, even outwitting the gods with some Xanatos Gambits here and there. He originally suceeded in defeating them all until his time travelling brother guilt tripped him into abandoning his plan.
- Nyarlathotep from HP Lovecraft's writings: Not only is he a Cosmic Horror, he's the only one of Lovecraft's pantheon that seems to take real interest in actions of humans, which is not a very good thing for humanity. Prime examples include his appearance in "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", where he gives a three-page-long speech about how he was never trying to kill the protagonist (his minions just misunderstood him) and, in fact, needs him to go get the Dreamland's gods back to their rightful place in Kadath. He then proceeds to give the protagonist a flying creature that would take him to the Sunset City where the gods now dwell and explicitly warns him from flying too high with it. However it turns out that the protagonist has no control over the beast and it is taking him to the court of the great daemon sultan Azathoth (the biggest Cosmic Horror there is). He barely escapes with his life.
- In "The Shadow from the Steeple", which was written by Robert Bloch in response to a story written by HPL in response to a story written by Bloch, he posesses a medical doctor and turns him into *gasp* a nuclear physicist. He then helps mankind develop nuclear power (and bombs) from behind the scenes. Seems rather nice of him until you realise he only does it so we would have a weapon powerful enough to wipe ourselves from the face of the Earth. In a war he no doubt starts.
- Dracula in the eponymous novel by Bram Stoker; a soulless, eerily polite Manipulative Bastard whose nocturnal predations turn Victorian morality on its head, transforming demure and innocent young maidens into voluptuous, demonic temptresses right under the noses of their impotent menfolk, all while remaining mockingly out of reach. He plots and nearly executes a Xanatos Gambit conquest of England that is only derailed due to a Contrived Coincidence involving his first victim in England's connections. His massive effect on pop culture, almost singlehandedly inventing the modern image of the suave, aristocratic vampire, is largely derived from the personality created in Stoker's original novel - repulsively evil yet undeniably magnetic.
- This carries over into film; Bela Lugosi's portrayal may seem hammy and silly now, but it put the thrilling fear of vampire seduction into 1930's audiences, and Christopher Lee did the same in the 1970s. Subsequent film adaptions have, of course, been hit-or-miss, sometimes Spikeifying or Flanderizing Dracula to the point of parody or unrecognisability. Nonetheless, the spirit of the original retains all the charm and unrepentent evil of an undiluted Bastard.
- Castlevania's edition is a classic Bastard on several occasions, especially in Lament of Innocence.
- Hannibal Lecter, before Badass Decay set in. (Or didn't; there's a reason why Hannibal and Hannibal Rising are commonly considered Dis Continuity.)
- And even in Hannibal, in the event that such a novel exists, he has his Magnificent moments: he convinces his captor's sister to kill her brother (however much the brother deserved death, that still counts for something); he brainwashes Clarice to become his sister/girlfriend/embodiment of utter Squick; and manages to kill an opponent and simultaneously recreate the death scene of said opponent's Renaissance ancestor, right down to using the original Renaissance palace, while quoting a scene from Dante that perfectly describes the murder. That's got to win him at least a couple of Magnificent points.
- Randall Flagg/Walter o'Dim/Walter Padick from The Dark Tower. In the very first book, he brings a man back to life in full view of a woman who has always wondered what happens after death. He then leaves her a message telling her that if she says "19" to the previously-dead man, he will tell her the secrets of death, adding repeatedly that it will drive her insane to know. He then cheerfully reminds her of the password several more times. She goes for it.
- Made all the more evil and brilliant by the fact he signs the note that will steal her sanity with a smiley face and "Have a nice day". Then he adds: "P.S. Did I mention the number is NINETEEN?"
- First appeared in The Stand, where most of his badassery originally comes into play.
- Rupert of Hentzau from The Prisoner Of Zenda and its sequel is a textbook—nay, an entire course in Magnificent Bastard -ness. Starting out as The Dragon for the book's villain, Rupert is a womanising, treacherous, amoral, totally fearless young man who will kidnap your king, try to stab you in a public place, seduce or rape any young, pretty woman (not drawing a line at the future Queen or his own master's mistress), and do it all with the utmost good-natured charm, despite having caused his mother to die of grief. Also, the following line:
...the man Johann, whom I was compelled to...send back to Zenda, where, by the way, Rupert Hentzau had him soundly flogged for daring to smirch the morals of Zenda by staying out all night in the pursuits of love.
- Mr. Wednesday from American Gods. Early on in the story, the protagonist's wife died in a car accident she inadvertently caused by distracting the driver, which was later revealed to have been arranged by Mr. Wednesday so he could hire the protagonist for a dangerous job. This may seem impressive until you realize the thirty-something protagonist was born to be an integral part of Mr. Wednesday's Xanatos Roulette.
- And that's without before we even get to his master plan in which he intends to screw over every other god in America (except, possibly, his partner) to replenish his power. And you kind of want him to get away with it.
- There are several in The Wayfarer Redemption. For starters WolfStar, who pretty much rigs destiny in favor of Axis. And in the second trilogy, it comes to light that the Star Dance itself is responsible for setting the playing millennia ago, with a stop on Earth that can be found to be unnecessary Nightmare Fuel...
- Edmond Dantès, also known as The Count Of Monte Cristo. It's hard to summarize his schemes, but from psychologically destabilizing his enemies, to ruining their finances by messing with the telegraph system, to his inhuman penchant for disguises that allow him to control the flow of information about his character, and the way he draws the admiration of all who meet him... There isn't a single run-on sentence long enough to encapsulate his magnificence. As for bastardry, he does manipulate a greedy wife into poisoning almost every single member of her family, including one Shoot The Dog moment outside the count's immediate control where she poisons her nine-year-old son.
- Grand Admiral Thrawn of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels counts. He can deduce the mindset of enemies merely by observing their art, achitecture, and actions and adjust his tactics accordingly. His strategic skills were so great that he managed to keep pressure on the New Republic with only a relatively small fraction of the now-fractured Empire and managed to lock down Coruscant for the duration of his siege.
- His greatest act of magnificent bastardry, however, was in the prequel novel Outbound Flight wherein—as a young Commander of a very small Chiss task force—he managed to set up a Xanatos Gambit of epic proportions by predicting the actions of a human guest/prisoner, his superiors, an agent of Darth Sidious and his Trade Federation comrades, a group of nomadic alien raiders, and a colony ship full of Jedi (the titular Outbound Flight) in such a manner that everything he wanted to deal with all convened in one area while those that he didn't were out of the way. He then counted on the Jedi on Outbound Flight to use the Force to disable the gunnery crews on the nomadic raider's fleet (which he wanted to destroy earlier, but couldn't under Chiss Rules Of Engagement) while he used captured Trade Federation droids to destory most of the now disabled fleet, his own ships then swooped in and disabled the weaponry of Outbound Flight.
- Oh, and there's the matter of how he captured those Trade Federation droids. The first time he ever saw anything from the Trade Federation, it was the large task force sent to wait for and destroy Outbound Flight. Two Lucrehulk-class battleships, six Hardcell-class transports, seven escort cruisers, and three thousand vulture droid starfighters. Thrawn asked them to identify themselves and explain what they were doing so close to Chiss space. They attacked him. Thrawn had a tiny picket force of three small cruisers and nine heavy starfighters. He routed the task force, nullifying its starfighters by jamming the droid control signal and aiming right above the fuel cells of the larger ships, and spared only the flagship to capture.
- The incredibly devious, underhanded Chiss plan to destroy the Vagaari in Survivor's Quest was, Mara Jade believes, rife with Thrawn's fingerprints. But he's been dead for a long time, and she and Luke killed the clone in the Hand Of Thrawn duology. Does this mean there's another? Just because he hasn't made his presence known doesn't mean he can't have come back...
- Unsurprisingly, Thrawn was partially based on Erwin Rommel.
- Satan/Woland in The Master and Margarita. See also Noble Demon and Affably Evil.
- Rebecca of Daphne duMaurier's Rebecca. She manipulates her husband into keeping quiet about some sort of trouble she's gotten into by promising to bring life into Manderley, his childhood home. She keeps him under her control with this promise for years and years while she goes off and has sex with several "friends in London", including her own cousin. In the meantime, the two of them keep up the charade that they are the perfect happy couple, and Rebecca makes fanatic friends of all the servants and townspeople, particularly Mrs. Danvers, who loved her because of her manipulativeness. When she discovers that she has a fatal cancer, she makes her husband believe that she is pregnant with another man's child, causing him to lose control, shoot her dead, and sink her body in her boat. And then, even after she's dead, she still manipulates the second Mrs. de Winter into thinking (more than she already did) that she is worthless and her husband doesn't love her, by way of mementos, Mrs. Danvers, and a string of misunderstandings.
- Honor Harrington has the Mesa Alignment. It's implicated that they not only started the current war between Manticore and Haven, but that they caused the revolution in Haven. 'The first one 200 years ago.' All part of the plan feeding their true plans. Not only that, but the Audubon Ballroom, a terrorist organization that kills Mesan leaders, is completely compromised and only kills deadweight in the cover organizations that don't know the Alignment exists, despite being nominal heads of Mesa.
- Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22. Although a mere mess officer, he has connections all over the world and is - among other titles - mayor of an Italian city and imam of a Middle-Eastern country. Due to mastery of international import and export (including goods from Germany) and blatant pinching of various army supplies (he even leaves stylish notes!) he makes himself ludicrously rich, and becomes gradually even more of a capitalist wonder by turning his eye to private contracting with both the Allies and Axis. At the end of the novel he pulls off the amazing feat of bombing the regiment's own airfield for the Germans but easily avoids getting court-martialed due to his seemingly-unlimited funds. His only mistake is buying too much cotton from Egypt, but he takes care of that by convincing General Cathcart that the troops should be fine eating his excess cotton, provided they cover the cotton in chocolate sauce first.
- He buys eggs at 7 cents apiece to sell them at 5 cents apiece. For a profit.
- Lawrence John Wargrave, aka U. N. Owen from And Then There Were None, full stop.
- In Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn book, main character Kelsier straddles the line between this and Guile Hero- he's solidly on the good guys' side, but is a bit of a Well Intentioned Extremist who continually skirts Jumping Off The Slippery Slope. He's also a revolutionary brilliant enough to topple a thousand-year-old empire led by a Physical God posthumously.
- In Elantris by the same author, one of the three main viewpoint characters is one- Hrathen, a high priest of the theocratic Fjordell empire whose specialty lies in bringing nations to their knees so they can be converted. Things don't always go his way (as the other two main characters are both Magnificent in their own right, though neither are Bastards), but he never loses his cool and always finds a way to turn even defeat to his advantage. Hrathen's mostly unseen boss, Wyrn, is implied to be one as well (or at least a straight Chessmaster).
- Toranaga in Shogun is a skilled Chessmaster throughout the book, but the reveal in the final chapter of the insanely elaborate Kansas City Shuffle he's been playing through the entire second half, ending with his brutal To the Pain revenge on his nemesis Ishido, puts him firmly in this category. And he's based on a real guy! "It wasn't an Act of God. It was an Act of Toranaga."
- Marquise Isabella de Merteuil...just Marquise Isabella de Merteuil.
- Space Vulture from Space Vulture.
- Glenin Feiran of the Exiles trilogy by Melanie Rawn. Cunning, beautiful (and aware of it), she once remarks that the main difference between her and her major rival is that when she becomes the most powerful woman in the world, she'll look the part. She wants to control the world and order it to her vision, part of which involves using her sisters as breeders and later having his son sleep with his cousin for the magical offspring they'll produce. She also permanently maims her sister and shows no remorse. She's very popular with the fanbase for her intelligence.
- Saint Dane from The Pendragon Adventure series. Most of the time he disguises as two different people. One he allows Bobby to know about to taunt him, and the other is somebody who isn't revealed until around the end of the book. Usually the second disguise is what he is using to manipulate everybody to their doom, with the exception of The Rivers of Zadaa where he convinces the Rokador to flood everything as himself and The Quillan Games where he reveals his new secret weapon Nevva Winter. To top things off, as of Raven Rise, he's arguably winning, having destroyed all the barriers of Halla. The fact he also is capable of holding his own in actual combat, is more or less unkillable was responsible for the deaths of Press, Alder, Patrick, and Kasha (though they all got better makes it no surprise that an unusually large portion of the fanbase wants him to win in the last book.
- Romance Of The Three Kingdoms' Zhuge Liang, single-handedly responsible for half the Crowning Moments of Awesome in the novel. Just ask poor Zhou Yu.
- In Enemy Mine by Barry Longyear, Drac skilled in Talma (peculiar teachings of philosophy and logic) who apply it to political needs tend to achieve this effect. Like having a proper prisoner of war accidentally blinded, taught Talma and nearly adopted by one's clan as a way to stop the war. There's also the whole species whose survival model starts with "when running from a predator, run to another, make them fight over their prey, then slip away while they're busy". And when they started to mess with the big politics, they managed to confuse even Dracs into following their plans.
- Achilles in the Shadow series of sequels to Enders Game. Sabotaging India's war in Indochina to allow China to sweep in and conquer both India Proper and its new conquests, and then playing both the Chinese and Peter Wiggin like a violin until Bean stops him makes him the epitome of a Magnificent Bastard. And all before his thirtieth (hell, maybe even his twentieth) birthday.
- Practically half the named characters in the Shadow series count. Peter's manipulating world events to become Hegemon and Virlomi's one woman invasion come to mind, but Graff, Peter's parents, Bean, and many others have their Magnificent Bastard moments as well.
- The titular Harry Lavender in The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender by Marele Day is an exceptional version of one of these in the crime fiction genre, with an iron grip on Sydney's crime world and the city itself. Through the extracts of the in-universe titular book, we gain insight into the type of character Harry is, a manipulative, cunning and brilliant man who is cold, yet still has an ego. In the story itself, he pulls off what would normally be The Perfect Crime, killing Mark Bannister by altering his pacemaker through a program and more or less causing him to have a heart attack by reading his own death. And then he engineers a cat-and-mouse game with the protaganist, Claudia, eventually resulting in a Crowning Moment Of Awesome which can be summed up with the words "To My Valentine". And that occurs when the man isn't even around. The only thing that screws his plan up in the end? There are some things that you just can't prepare for. Even then? He slips into a coma JUST before Claudia has the oppertunity to expose him, avoiding punishment and preventing her from gaining that satisfaction of taking him down while he still lives, and his memoirs would end up being published posthumously, just as he intended. "They will remember me", indeed.
- John Scalzi's protagonist from the Old Mans War
trilogy series is just a lovable roguish character up until the third book where he leads a fleet of former enemy ships to Earth to circumvent the tyrannical extra-solar human government who had been keeping Earth in the dark about anything beyond Pluto. By doing so, he managed to prevent the extermination of the human race, free the Earth from the amoral splinter government and bring humanity into an interstellar alliance. He does all of it while navigating the judicial bureaucracy of a government that wants him to hang, framing himself as a war hero in the interplanetary politics, leading an entire planet and negotiating peace. At the same time, his daughter assists his plan in her own story which might qualify her as well.
- Although mentioned below in detail, in the Real Life section, Cardinal Richelieu in Eric Flint's 1632 series gets even more chances to demonstrate his magnificant bastardy, thanks to getting a preview of the flow of history thanks to uptimer history books, as discussed in 1633.
- Though he's not as magnificent as some examples on this list, and his plans do fail about half the time (though considering the sheer amount of schemes he has going at once, that's still a large number of successes) one has to give props to Nom Anor. Merely the fact that he can survive as a Dirty Coward in a culture of Proud Warrior Race Guy Scary Dogmatic Alien Knight Templars is quite a feat- and when his superiors finally do get tired of him, his response is to assume a fake identity and launch a rebellion that nearly brings their government to its knees. Plus, his knowledge of how "infidels" think and continuous work as a political destablizer was responsible for most of the victories the Yuuzhan Vong won against the New Republic period.
- One of the best examples of this trope is Kees van Loo-Macklin in The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster. Starting as a homely and abused orphan and using nothing but determination and brainpower, he becomes one of the most powerful criminal figures in human space. Then he sells out almost all his old cronies convincing everyone that was really an undercover law enforcement agent. From there, he manipulates the human dominated empire and its chief rival by becoming a double agent for both sides against the other in order to trick them into forming alliance in order to attack a race that knows nothing about either side. He uses this con in order to become the president of the combined alliance. Along the way are littered the bodies of many rivals and innocent victims who were simply more useful to him dead than alive. And why does he do all of this? To fulfill a lifelong desire never to feel vulnerable again.
- From Warbreaker, Denth, Dragon With An Agenda to the Government Conspiracy. So Affably Evil that he has one of the main characters totally convinced he's a good guy despite being a mercenary who keeps company with a Psycho For Hire, a Jerkass and a zombie; uses said main character as part of a plot to utterly destabilize the government while keeping her completely in the dark about his real intentions, and as he is Really Seven Hundred Years Old he's ridiculously Genre Savvy.
- John Constantine, while the protagonist of Hellblazer, could be counted a Magnificent Bastard as he regularly uses people even though some of them arguably deserve it) in ways which doom them to acheive his own ends. An example of this would be raising several people executed by the mafia as zombies, then offering to help them pass on to the next world if they killed off the mafia family who had killed them in the first place. Of course, as they were all mafia members "sending them on to the next world" meant damning them to Hell.
- Warrior Cats: Sol. He is pretty much the embodiment of the Manipulative Bastard. Upon his first formal appearance, the main character gets Mind Raped as he proceeds to talk about absolutely nothing and still freak everybody out. His voice actually seems to be able to control other cats minds, and the main characters are constantly struggling to not fall under his influence. And he never panics. He always stays cool, and never puts up any resistance (When suspected of murder, he not only immediatly guesses that that is why they are after him, but he calmly goes with them). Also he knows everything about the plot, which is quiet impressive, because the main characters don't. In fact, nobody does, that's the point of the plot. He somehow extracted this information from Midnight, and uses it to terrorize the Clans by doing... nothing. So far, he has taken control of ShadowClan, pretty much overnight, almost forced the main characters completely under his control, and, before his first appearance, started his own Clan of loners and kittypets, who he eventually led into battle against some dogs that were terrorizing them. Of course, he doesn't participate in the battle, and most of them were killed, at which point he comes in and tells them it's their fault for wanting to fight and to get him some food. And finally, it's seems likely that he's never had to feed himself. Ever. He always gets other cats to do it for him, because they are either his servants, or he knows they aren't cruel enough to let him starve. Put quiet simply, as said several times thoughout Sunrise, he doesn't like to get his paws dirty, so he gets other cats to do his dirty work.
- Sang-drax of the Death Gate Cycle is one when he first appears in the fifth book, in which he manipulates an entire world war for the whole purpose of messing with Haplo and distracting him from his true work, while all the while being annoyingly (to Haplo) cheery and upbeat about the whole thing. Unfortunately, his overconfidence led him to suffer Villain Decay in the sixth and seventh books, downgrading him to a (literal) Smug Snake.
- In Kushiel's Dart, the character Lady Melisande Shahrizai runs a Batman Gambit in the beginning and also runs two Xanados Gambits throughout the book, and after getting a Spanner In The Works still survives through to most of the series.
- Duke Roger of Conte, from the Song of the Lioness quartet. He's handsome, charismatic, talented, a snappy dresser— oh yeah, and determined to get the throne at any cost. So much so that the heroine has to kill him twice.
- Lord Aquitainus Attis of the Codex Alera morphs into one of these (he was already The Chessmaster) after learning his backstory. He was the best friend of Princeps Gaius Septimus, who was assassinated during a major battle by a hostile faction within court. When Septimus's father, First Lord Gaius Sextus, did nothing to solve the murder, Aquitaine took matters into his own hands, deciding to destroy the conspiritors himself and take the throne from a man too weak to save his own son. How does he do this? By marrying the only conspirator he knows the identity of and using her formidable skills to help track down the others and angle for the throne. Now he's finally managed to get rid of the wife, kill everyone else suspected of being involved in Septimus's murder, and taken control of the throne as regent. Too bad for him that he can't enjoy his success, as there's a very hostile Horde Of Alien Locusts running around making a mess of things...
- A female example being The Wife of Bath from The Canterbury Tales. She is able to control her first three rich husbands who are old and gets them to give her their money. She comes across as more sympatheic than say the Pardoner, since she never tries to take from the poor. She tames her fifth husband Jankyn, by burning his mysoginistic books and they both end up living peacefully until he dies. Making this trope as old as paper.
Live Action TV
- Ted Roark from Chuck.
- Doctor Who is littered with examples:
- The Master, in many of his incarnations, in Doctor Who. For instance:
- In the Delgado era, he was a suave foil for the Doctor, constantly trying to take over the world, using untrustworthy allies.
- In the Ainley era, he created a city for the sole purpose of trapping the Doctor, managed to foment a civil war among people who were convalescing, and nearly derailed the signing of the Magna Carta, among other schemes. Not to mention the time he held the entire universe for ransom.
- In the Simm era, he ran for and was elected Prime Minister. He took over the Earth, decimated the population with six billion robot beachballs Of Doom, tormented the main protagonists while dancing around his Cool Ship to Scissor Sisters, and was generally bastardly. And magnificent. This was undone in the end.
- Davros in the episode "Revelation of the Daleks". After escaping from a maximum security prison, he adopts an alias and becomes a hero to the galaxy by alleviating famine. How does he do it? He uses the bodies sent to a planet-sized cemetery complex as the main ingredient for an "artificial" foodstuff. When the Doctor asks if he's actually told the general public about this Davros says no, because "That would have created what I believe is termed 'consumer resistance'." Oh, and while he's doing all this he's using other bodies from the complex to create (yet another) new race of Daleks.
- Come to that, he was pretty bastardly in "Genesis of the Daleks" as well. When the Doctor convinced the Kaled government to investigate his research programs, he simply gave the Thals, his own people's arch-enemies, the information they needed to annihilate the Kaleds. Then he sent the Daleks to wipe out the Thals. Meanwhile, he carries out a purge of any surviving Kaleds whose conscience might hinder future development of the Daleks.
- Ramón Salamander in The Enemy of the World. A public benefactor for his own ends, he was consolidating power by engineering tectonic disasters. He did so by herding some people into a giant fallout shelter under the pretext of avoiding a war, and telling them the survivors were so warped it would be a mercy to kill them. Also, his supposed arch-nemesis was actually The Dragon (and The Starscream). When his plans went aft a-gley, he used his resemblance to the Doctor to get into the TARDIS (His cover did not last, of course).
- Li H'sen Chang from The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Onstage, he was a star illusionist and the most popular act (albeit with some unfortunate facets to his act). Offstage, however, he was The Dragon for a fifty-first century mass murderer, very skilled in hypnosis, and quite possibly Jack The Ripper.
- Cessair of Diplos, from The Stones of Blood. She absconded with part of a Cosmic Keystone and three silicon-based creatures, which she used as attack "dogs". With the ship hauling her to prison stuck in hyperspace by Earth, she passed herself off as a deity among the locals. For ages they fed her Ogri (with animal blood once human sacrifice was abolished), and she bought up the land her shrine was on, through the ages. Oh, and she may have been an agent of the Black Guardian.
- The Dalek Emperor in Parting of the Ways. After manipulating the human race for centuries, he grew an army of Daleks by transmatting and harvesting the losers of many game shows of doom.
- What about the Dalek Emperor from the Dalekmania years? Establishing a council of Smug Snakes to procure the materials necessary to destroy the Earth, and then manipulating the Doctor himself, making him isolate the "Human Factor" so that the Daleks could isolate the "Dalek Factor".
- The
Brickyard Knacker's Yard Valeyard from Trial of a Time Lord. Of course, any bastard siphoned off of the Doctor while the latter was regenerating would HAVE to be magnificent, and the Valeyard almost succeeds in getting the Doctor executed, all the while plotting to wipe out the High Council. In the ensuing Thirty Xanatos Pileup, his plan literally blows up in his face, but he survived and become Keeper of the Matrix. And even the Master was afraid of him.
- Taren Capel from The Robots of Death overcame more than a million subroutines per robot when making them forget the First Law Of Robotics and turn on the humans, while impersonating a man assigned to a Sandminer.
- Captain John Hart from Torchwood. A slick, charming, handsome, stylish, pathological liar who enjoys using a Xanatos Gambit to get what he wants (which includes attention from Captain Jack). He poisoned Gwen, shot Tosh, beat up Owen, and threatened Ianto at gunpoint, and enjoyed every minute of it. When he blew up a good chunk of Cardiff, he said, "Let the fun begin! Do I mean fun or carnage? I always get those two mixed up." True, he was acting on orders from Grey, who'd strapped a bomb to his arm, but he was still clearly enjoying watching the city and the Torchwood Team panic.
- Also from Torchwood, Bilis Manger: a polite, unassuming old man who happens to be able to travel through time and space at will. For the duration of the last two episodes of the first season, Bilis plays everyone like puppets from beginning to end, all while remaining cool, calm and elegantly understated. And there was that soft, malevolent smile he'd break into...
- Invasion of the Dinosaurs gives us Well Intentioned Extremists Sir Charles Grover and Professor Whitaker. Their plan was to turn back time to land their chosen few in the Mesozoic, undoing everything that had happened since. They also arranged that the head of the British Army's operations in London would be in on it, too.
- Star Trek has entertained us with many a Magnificent Bastard. Such as the villainous Q. Omnipotent, yet petty; cruel but not vicious; causing devastation yet helpful at times, you really couldn't help but love the bastard(s).
- Another Magnificent Bastard is Gul Dukat. Even going so far as to turn himself into a Bajoran in order to corrupt their entire religion. And always expects people to be grateful to him.
- Gul Dukat was far too often a victim of his own ego and hubris. Garak, on the other hand...
- Seska from Voyager was a Cardassian spy surgically altered to look Bajoran. After she was busted, she wormed her way into power in a rabidly misogynist society and got them to steal Voyager. Some time after the ship was retaken and she was killed, it was discovered that she had edited a tactical training scenario to trap the author — Tuvok — in it and hunt him down and kill him — after toying with him for a while.
- Lionel Luthor from Smallville is the Trope Namer.
- Azazel of Supernatural is no slouch on the bastardry, but with the revelations of the end of season 4, Fridge Brilliance kicks in, and he becomes the magnificent bastard we know and loathe. For starters, we find out that his master plan, previously hinted at, was to release Lucifer himself, and for kicks, exclusively torment one family. he starts by arranging the release of Lucifer's firstborn, Lilith, who is the LAST of the 66 (of 600+) seals necessary to free Lucifer. He then tricks various parents into signing away their unborn children's futures as incubators for demon blood, specifically so that they can kill said firstborn. The master stroke here being picking a favorite future mother, killing the parents of Mother Mary brutally, possessing the dead father, killing her future husband for the first of TWO times, THEN having her sign away her child's future, with a deal of bringing back John, the future husband. This "bargain" was of course done for the sole purpose of creating the child he'd doomed. The deal was sealed with a kiss, again, between Mary and her dead father that Azazel was wearing. Of course, leaving right afterwards, no doubt making her carry the body away. This takes place a few decades before the series begins. During the course of the show, on the other hand, he has a couple of pet projects: plotting to get his hands on a gun that kills everything, attempting to kill the entire remaining Winchester family, choosing an heir to herald the armies of hell, and attempting to literally open the gates of Hell. He succeeds in ALL OF THEM. The kicker is, his greatest victories, as well our knowledge of ANY of his true plan, only come after he dies, with the knowledge that he's basically already succeeded in everything he set his mind to. MAGNIFICENT.
- And he only died because he made the mistake of underestimating Dean. Here's what he should have done different: possess John on the night of the nursery fire and raise the boys evil.
- Jack from Tru Calling. His Bastardry comes from his mission: to keep the protagonist from saving the lives of the dead people who ask her to do so. His Magnificence comes in the way that he does it. Where Tru tends towards attacking the problem at its source, Jack thinks sideways, poisoning people against Tru before she even shows up. He also tends towards taunting her with little notes and snide commentary. He managed to infiltrate her inner circle with a mole, thus allowing himself to garner all manner of info on her without her knowledge. By the end of the series, he literally has 3 people connected to Tru and her gang that they are entirely unaware of. Imagine the Bolivian Army Ending when the good guys don't even know the army is there.
- Heroes has several of these. In season one there's HRG, smooth and calculating enough to trick even his MIB employers, although his eventual Heel Face Turn puts an end to his Bastardry. Later, we get introduced to another, Mr. Linderman, the Affably Evil mastermind behind everything. Season 2 brings us a new Magnificent Bastard in the form of the new Big Bad, Adam Monroe. Magnificent and manipulative to boot, Adam recruits resident Idiot Hero Peter Petrelli to be his unwitting dupe, attaining a level of villainous charisma unmatched by any villain in the series since.
- Even after HRG Heel Face Turn he's capable of being a Magnificent Bastard when he threatens his former teacher's family in order to get the information he wants to help keep his family safe
- Due to the fact that HRG's methods in achieving his aims have not changed at all, despite the fact that he changed sides, one could argue he never took a true Heel Face Turn, but counts as just a straight example of this trope.
- Noah "I'm fine with morally grey" Bennet does not even acknowledge the difference between heel and face. He's just that magnificent.
- Let's not forget everyone's favourite Manipulative Bastard and self-described shark politician, Nathan Petrelli - at least in Season 1 before Character Derailment and Face Heel Revolving Door / Face Heel Whiplash set in.
- Two Words: Angela. Petrelli. Heroes' resident Queen Magnificent Bitch.
- Amen, amen, alleluia, amen.
- At times it seems like everyone in the Petrelli family except Peter is a Magnificent Bastard - take, for example, Arthur Petrelli. "Come, now, give your father a hug." ... Makes you wonder where Ma and Pa Petrelli went wrong with their youngest one.
- Arthur wasn't a great manipulator though. Controlling Peter is the easiest thing in the world to do, especially if you're family. Or have a functioning central nervous system.
- What, we got this far without mentioning Sylar? Volume One aside, manipulating the Blunder Twins, sometimes just for fun, the end of Volume Three, the whole of Volume Four...
- Livia in the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves' I Claudius. She spent years brilliantly and subtly manipulating everyone in the highest level of the Roman Empire, just to get her son Tiberius chosen as Emperor. And that's just a part of what she did.
- Benjamin Linus from Lost is notorious for being a magnificent bastard. His entire character revolves around manipulating others into doing his bidding, constantly lying, and emotional blackmail. Among his accomplishments:
- Season 2: Gets captured by Danielle Rousseau (Word Of God is that he was legitimately captured, some fans think it was all part of the plan), then calls himself "Henry Gale" and concocts an intricate fake backstory for himself that doesn't crack even under torture. Of course, his true identity as a member of the Others is eventually discovered, at which point he starts emotionally playing with John Locke's inferiority compex. Locke will end up becoming Ben's archnemesis and whipping boy. Ben eventually escapes when Michael shoots and kills Ana-Lucia and Libby, and is then revealed as the Others' (apparent) leader. He has Michael lead Jack, Kate, and Sawyer into a trap, and captures them.
- Season 3: Ben intentionally allows Kate and Sawyer to sleep with each other to emotionally force Jack into doing surgery on Ben's tumor. Later, when Locke arrives at the Others' camp, he begins forcing Ben to do his bidding as the Others start to believe Locke is their "chosen one" and not Ben. Locke eventually demands that Ben bring him to the mysterious Jacob, and Ben does so (season 5 reveals this was all some kind of elaborate ruse gone wrong). Ben then proceeds to shoot Locke and leave him for dead when he discovers the latter heard (the alleged) Jacob speak. Ben eventually gets captured by the survivors again, and they refuse to listen to him when he tells them the people coming to rescue them are actually dangerous.
- Season 4: Even though he's captured, a member of the Others describes Ben as being "right where he wants to be." Once again, Ben begins manipulating Locke, explaining the freighter was sent by his archenemy, Charles Widmore. Eventually, Ben and Locke team up to take down the freighter mercenaries, and (the person claiming to be) Jacob tells Locke to move the island. Ben decides this means he has to move it, and proceeds to do so, getting banished from the island in the process. Season 4 is the first time where one of Ben's Xanatos Gambit moments blows up in his face: his attempt to bluff the mercenaries results in his daughter getting executed in front of him. When banished from the island, Ben begins blackmailing Sayid into assassinating alleged Widmore goons on his behalf, all because Sayid's girlfriend Nadia was killed by someone Ben claims worked for Widmore.
- Season 5: Once Locke banishes himself from the island (having been told to do so by Richard, who was told in turn by Locke himself...or was he?), he encounters Ben again. Locke tries to reunite the Oceanic Six and fails. Just as he's about to kill himself, Ben appears, talks him out of it, gets some information...and then strangles Locke to death. Ben then attempts to kill Widmore's daughter Penelope, in what would have been a Kick The Dog moment if it wasn't for the intervention of Desmond (though Ben seemed reluctant when he saw Penny's son, showing Even Evil Has Standards). Upon return to the island, Locke comes back to life and reverses the roles, manipulating Ben with his newfound knowledge of the island and claiming Ben is going to have to kill Jacob. When they find the real Jacob, a huge twist occurs: the resurrected Locke was actually a previously unintroduced character in disguise, masquerading as Locke to manipulate Ben, Richard, and the Others. He told Richard to tell the time travelling Locke to leave the island and kill himself, a predestination paradox that would allow the man to use Locke's body. The man then uses Ben, still unaware of "Locke"'s true identity, to kill Jacob.
- Catherine Packard Martell in Twin Peaks. It's not just everyone who can fake their own death in a mill fire, come back to town in drag to foil the plans of everyone looking to profit off the land, and then plot with their Not Quite Dead brother to seek revenge on his treacherous wife.
- Alfred Bester on Babylon 5 combines ruthless scheming with an infuriating charisma that drives the heroes crazy even as they are forced to respect his skill. Speaking of Babylon 5: Londo Mollari.
- Babylon 5's characters tend to evolve with such complexity that nobody knows just who is going to be the bastard at any given time. Londo careened between comic relief, Magnificent Bastard, and Tragic Villain countless times throughout the series.
- Word Of God has it that their respective actors tossed a coin to see which one of Londo Mollari and his rival G'Kar would be the bad guy. Word Of God did not reveal which actor won. Ten years after the show ended, its fans still haven't figured out which character was the bad guy. That's complexity.
- Damages featured a brutal winners-takes-all war fought between the magnificent bastard Arthur Frobisher and the magnificent bitch Patricia "Patty" Hewes.
- Continued into Season 2 with Patty vs. David Pell and Walter Kendrick's energy-manipulation scheme.
- Francis Urquhart in House Of Cards. He plots, schemes, manipulates and backstabs his way up the political chain in the hopes of becoming Prime Minister; remaining above suspicion among all of his colleagues. He does it with class, skill and style, all the while giving conspiratorial No Fourth Wall asides to the audiences, explaining his thoughts on his opponents and next steps. He commits terrible deeds, but the audience has to forgive him, because his charm and panache are too overwhelming for him to be hated.
- Richard Cross in Murder One. A fabulously rich developer with a love of fine wine and Renaissance art, who has a marvellous public image through his various donations to charities. He also helps out South American drug lords just for the hell of it, and after one of these affiliations goes very, very wrong he spends the entire first season wildly improvising to keep himself and his associates in the clear, all while appearing completely unruffled and dangling his involvement in the faces of the show's heroes. It also doesn't hurt that he's played by the indescribably charismatic Stanley Tucci.
- Holtz from Angel falls under this, mostly for his sheer efficiency. Jasmine spent millenia with godlike power manipulating events to come to earth, lasted less than a week, and died at the hands of her most loyal servant. Wolfram and Hart spent five seasons with nigh-limitless resources trying to corrupt Angel and all they accomplished in the end was letting him know who to kill. Meanwhile Holtz, had no powers whatsoever, was out of his own time and had no allies but those he created for himself. And in half a season he managed to convince one of Angel's closest friends to kidnap Angel's son, then escaped into a hell dimension with him, raising him to be Angel's worst enemy. Then his assisted suicide actually made things worse between them.
Angel: You took my son!
Holtz: I kept your son alive. You murdered mine.
- Lilah Morgan also comes to exemplify this trope by mid-season three, having begun the series as more of a Smug Snake. The turning point is probably either "Billy", in which Lilah coldly executes the title character, or Darla's pregnancy storyline, over the course of which Lilah gets some great one-liners and becomes legitimately scary for the first time. In season four she's every inch the Magnificent Bastard, ruthlessly dispatching her former superior Linwood, leaving significant emotional scars on Wesley and ably defending herself from a rampaging Angelus. It's only the complete shock of Cordelia's possession by Jasmine that catches her in the end.
Translator: Well, this should be fun!
Lilah: No. This shouldn't be fun. What it should be is done by morning — or I'll have your family killed.
- Spike was sometimes seen as this before his infamous (and highly arguable) "Spikeification." However, he has a large strike against his cred in his admitted tendency to "get bored" and rush into things without thinking, something a full fledged Magnificent Bastard does not do. That being said, whenever he does take the time to plan things out, he can hang with the best of them; most notably in episodes like "The Yoko Factor", or the second season finale in which he seemed to realize rushing into things against Angelus would not be a smart move and thought a successful plan out in advance.
- The Devil in Reaper not only arranges for Sam to get an apartment next to a pair of rebel demons whose plan to destroy him would actually have worked, and manipulates Sam into infiltrating the rebellion with a new (doomed) plan to kill him, he also signs Sam's lease with his name and sends him clues as to what is going on that Sam, Sock and Ben can only work out moments after it is too late to do anything about it. Then repeats this plan with the few survivors of the rebellion, and is still witty, charming and diabolically affable. Ray Wise's portrayal is just so good that fans now think he may actually be The Devil.
- How about another Devil. The Devil from Brimstone. Also happens to be another Magnificent Bastard played by Jon Glover.
- Ryan O'Reilly from Oz controls the prison's drug trade, has all this rivals killed by other people, starts gang wars between the ethnic clans and is one of the few characters to survive the show's entire run, and never has anyone other than his mentally retarded brother for muscle. As he replies when one character asks him how he became a leader of the prison riot despite his lack of a gang: "I'm like the Lord of the Fucking Dance. I've got moves."
- The title of Super Sentai's only Magnificent Bastard goes to Dr. Mikoto Nakadai of Bakuryu Sentai Abaranger, an Insufferable Genius who takes on the mantle of AbareKiller, the Evil Counterpart of the Abaranger. Within five seconds of his introduction, he captures the Monster Of The Week and turns the poor thing into his personal maid, complete with apron. He sets up a series of Deadly Games for the heroes just to amuse himself and demonstrate that Humans Are Bastards to the Wide Eyed Idealist heroes. He seizes control of three of their (sentient) zords via More Than Mind Control. He decides to take over the villains' headquarters and install himself as their new leader just for kicks. Oh, did I mention that the Super Prototype Transformation Trinket he uses will eventually blow up with the force of a nuclear warhead and that not only is he fully aware of this, he doesn't mind one bit?
- Naturally, Deviot of Power Rangers Lost Galaxy takes this trope to a t. He sets up the rangers to kill the Big Bad himself, and tries to kill his daughter, without her noticing...for a while.
- Scorpius of Farscape fame spent the entire run of the series, plus the Made For DVD Movie holding allegiance only to himself, and doing his darnedest to manipulate every side in his favour... and more or less succeeding by series end. And he accomplished his goals with such intelligence and charm, even his apparent Freudian Excuse is transformed into a rational explanation.
- Roman Grant in Big Love: the patriarch of a polygamist compound who stole the title of Prophet from the hero's grandfather. He's also an extremely cunning businessman, who manages to one-up the hero, Bill, thoughout the first season - in one case, just when Bill appears to have blackmailed him into giving up his financial interest in Bill's business, by threatening to destroy a guitar he particularly likes, he makes a deal with Bill that appears to give Bill everything he wants - a third outlet of Bill's "Home Depot" style store. Except then he gets the government to declare the land Bill has already bought an historical site. Despite being a thorough swine, he also believes deeply in the importance of family and calls to commiserate for Bill when Bill's family is exposed as polygamists. Of course, he exposed them...
- Sheriff Lucas Buck of American Gothic fulfills this trope again and again throughout the series. Among the worst (or best, depending on your point of view) offenses would be his Mind Rape of Dr. Crower, beginning with forcing him to relive his past tragedies (his alcoholism, its destruction of his career, and the terrible accident which cost him the life of his wife and daughter), which nearly makes him fall Off The Wagon again. This then continues on to the convoluted Xanatos Roulette wherein he convinces Dr. Crower via a woman who claims to be his mother that he is the Devil Incarnate. Armed with this Cassandra Truth, Matt morphs into a Stalker With A Crush (only without the crush, unless you take it to mean wanting to crush Buck to death), so that in the end he gets dragged away, having gone off the deep end, and is last seen locked away in an insane asylum. Talk about a Downer Ending...but so ingeniously pulled off.
- Honorable mention also goes to the number Buck pulls on the orderly in "Eye of the Beholder", Carter in "Damned If You Don't", and the talk show host in "Resurrector" he forces to kill his wife...or at least, he thinks he does.
- Avon, of Blake's 7, is an example of a Magnificent Bastard protagonist.
- Whatever Avon did though; Servalan did better, and in high heels.
- Joey Heric from The Practice gleefully eludes justice for one blatant murder after another with his expert manipulation of the legal system, confounding both the district attorney's office and his own defense firm with theatrics, misdirection, and at times even the truth. His ability to shed reasonable doubt into just about everything he does is so uncanny, he can even imply responsibility for crimes he's legitimately not involved in and still have people conviced he might have something to do with it.
- T-Bag from Prison Break. This guy has built his house behind the Moral Event Horizon.. Or so you'd think. He sexually abuses prison mates. He raped children and killed them. He's racist. And yet, you still somehow find him awesome. Maybe you can stand him because he more than once got what he deserved. (One hand hacked away, for example). Maybe it's because no matter how often he gets beaten, he always rises from the ashes and continues his magnificent plans.
- Edmund Blackadder, the third incarnation and the episode involving the French Revolution, especially.
- The Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere makes his living by trading favours, and will call them in whenever he likes, however he likes, whether the debtor likes it or not.
- Al Swearengen from Deadwood slowly earns this title over the course of the second season when it becomes clear he's trying to bring order to the horrible frontier town in order to protect his dominance. Sure he orders hits on little girls, kills innocent people and generally does horrible things to everyone. Compared to Hearst and his cronies, Swearengen is practically a populist man of the people.
- Season 2? In just season 1 alone he is shown to be behind almost every scheme that the protagonists run into, from the murder of the Dutch settlers by road agents to the swindling and murder of Amos Garrett. All the while he insults Starr and Bullock to their faces while refusing to sell them their land, belittling and insulting his cronies. And he doesn't even need to pull a Karma Houdini, because he's easily the most popular character on the show!!
- Parodied with Bill from News Radio had a tendency to see conspiracies in coincidences and accuse Dave of being a Magnificent Bastard, once even uttering the page quote (with Rommel replaced with Dave). This said, the true Magnificent Bastard of the show is Jimmy James.
- Julian Sark from Alias is a perfect example.
- One Word: Cardassians. Magnificent Bastardry is their hat.
- Commander Cain, commanding officer of the battlestar Pegasus in the original Battlestar Galactica, certainly qualifies. He was based on Patton, after all. His counterpart in the re-imagined series, Admiral Cain, is more of a General Ripper.
- Starbuck calls Apollo this in the new series after he flies through a conveyor system to fly under a Cylon base's defences and blow it to bits. More a congratulatory term for pulling off something insane brilliantly, but still.
- Brother "John" Cavil.
- Gaius Baltar of the new Battlestar Galactica has demonstrated an amazing ability to weasel, connive, and adapt every adverse situation to his own personal advatage. Even when he has been called out on his manipulations and lies and has grudgingly admitted to it, he has been able to show his opponents how it is to their advantage to grant his wishes, just this one more time.
- Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock ultimately personifies this trope, being a motivated, cutthroat corporate head who usually finds incredible ways to benefit both himself and his favorite underlings, usually while sounding totally ridiculous (see Season 2's scene in which he imitates Redd Foxx in order to aid a black movie star under his employ in coping with his family issues.... and actually manages to make it work). DY-NO-MIIITE!
- The System Lord Ba'al from Stargate SG-1. What, you DARE mock him??
- Parodied humorously in That70s Show when Fez calls Hyde a magnificent bastard. Which leads to the response "Sorry buddy. By the way it's pronounced 'bas-TARD'."
- Hyde actually does fill this role around Fez and Kelso throughout the series.
- Of course, it's not as if manipulating Fez and Kelso is very difficult...
- King Silas in Kings. As one fan put it, "Never try to outsmart Ian McShane. He is smarter than you."
- So much so that we root for him even though the Bible itself tells us he's doomed.
- The finale just cements his Magnificent Bastardry. As of the finale, he is still alive and kicking, having returned from two assassination attempts, done an amazing Unflinching Walk past a battalion of armed soldiers to retake his crown, has scared William Cross into hiding, apparently plans to wall his own son up in a cell ALIVE for treason, and has sent David on the run. Bible, schmible. Silas is pretty awesome.
Silas: "Oh, William . . . bringing guns to a tank battle."
- Hilary Briss in The League Of Gentlemen.
"Somebody's got to stay in control."
- Adelle De Witt has ascended to Magnificent Bastardry in the last couple episodes of Dollhouse The woman took a bullet and proceeded to watch her former right hand man be lobotomized then carried on a conversation as cool as ice cream!
- Colonel Montoya, the Big Bad of the cheesy TV show Queen of Swords. Possibly as a result of being played by one of two decent actors on the entire show, and being one of two intelligent characters.
- The season two finale of Gossip Girl manages to turn its title character into one while still keeping her The Unseen. First everyone gets a text during graduation of Gossip Girl's own judgements about their personality flaws. When some of them team up to try to discover her identity, she retaliates by printing all of the most hurtful information she's held back on. Finally Serena tries to bluff her into a private meeting at a coffee shop, saying she knows her identity, but instead Gossip Girl arranges for the whole class to go to the coffee shop, then sends them another text saying that they're all looking at Gossip Girl right now, as the only reason she can do so much is that people keep sending her information. She goes on that they're not rid of her yet, and she'll still be keeping tabs on them all in college.
- Holly Day from Slings And Arrows. Neither as evil nor as magnificent as many on this list, she still earns her place by managing to display exactly how batshit insane corporatization and commodity culture are, and how they can seem perfectly reasonable and good from the inside. And for taking a bright and sunny disposition far beyond Affably Evil. And for just being so over-the-top as to gush about her plans for the New Burbage Festival in the middle of her sex scene with her Bastard Understudy.
- Stringer Bell from The Wire is one of these. Soft-spoken, well-dressed and bespectacled, he is in actuality a shrewd, Machiavellian power-player in the Baltimore drug trade.
- Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It and The Movie, In The Loop. As the Prime Minister's chief spin doctor he has made a whole career out of Magnificent Bastardry, and MP Hugh Abbot even coined the term "Malciavellian" to describe his particular brand of it. He gets by on his frankly terrifying degree of charm, which he greatly enjoys abusing. Considered a bastard even by the standards of other spin doctors, his colleagues can't help but grudgingly admire him:
Nick Hanway: "Fuck you very much, you unscrupulous bastard."
Malcolm Tucker: "Scruples? What are they? Those low fat Kettle Chips?"
- Even his choice of understudy is bastardly: he appointed the Violent Glaswegian Jamie, knowing that he lacked the charm and intelligence that would be required to overthrow him.
- In George Lopez, there's an episode where George and Vic get into a fight, and Vic puts a lock on George's garage because George could only build it because of a loan Vic gave him. George spends a few minutes trying to get the combination to the lock, he finds out his son Max was given the combination. But he runs into some problems.
"He gave the combination to a dyslexic fifth grader. The man is an EVIL GENIUS!
- Hugo deVries in the Inspector Morse episode "Masonic Mysteries". Basically spends the entire episode ten steps ahead of everyone, jerry-rigs Morse's home stereo to play really awful Opera (LOUDLY), sets Morse's house on fire with Morse inside, frames Morse using the Internet, and delivers some utterly fantastic monologuing and Deadpan Snarkery to boot. The fact that he's being played by Large Ham Supreme Ian McDiarmid is really just gravy at this point.
- Cal Lightman officially achieves Magnificent Bastard status in the episode Blinded, when at the end of the episode it's revealled that the entire episode was an elabourate con in which he manipulated every single other character, including the highly-trained deception experts, the FBI agent, and the serial-rapist pathological liar.
- Iris Crowe in Carnivale is a fairly spectacular example. The sweet, innocent spinster sister of Brother Justin? Has not only spent her entire life playing Xanatos Speed Chess with her brother's true nature, but burned down her brother's church to get him publicity, allowed an innocent man to go to jail and eventual exection for what she did, and kept the secret of Sofie's paternity from everyone. After the big battle, when Ben and Justin are lying dead in the cornfield, the New Canaan faithful have almost been completely slaughtered by Justin, and the Carnivale has had to slip away for fear of the authorities in the early morning hours, what is Iris doing? Cooling her heels as the Last One Standing.
- Both Tony Stonem and his sister Effy from the BBC 4 drama Skins.
- Criminal Minds has had its share of Big Bads, but the crown has to go to the Boston Reaper (aka George Foyet). Not only has he evaded capture for over ten years, but he passed himself off as his own victim by stabbing himself multiple times. Then, he blackmailed the lead detective at the time into dropping the case and stopped killing for ten years just to watch the detective self-destruct out of guilt. He comes out of hiding to offer the same deal to Hotch, but when Hotch refuses, kills an entire bus full of people. He knocks out Morgan and steals his credentials, but leaves him alive, to live with the knowledge of how close he was to dying. He allows the team to capture him only because, in the interim ten years, he's memorized the schematics of every single prison in the state of Massachusetts, and bites his own wrists to fake a suicide attempt. He escapes, then waits a few months until the team is off their game, returning to attack Hotch in his apartment after the Turner case. He shoots at Hotch at point-blank range, then overpowers him physically, stabbing him nine times and sadistically torturing him. He then leaves a nearly-dead Hotch at the door of a hospital with a page missing from his day-planner: the one with his ex-wife's address. Foyet's message is clear - he's targeting Hotch's family next - and so Hotch puts Hayley and Jack into protective custody, meaning as long as Foyet is at large, Hotch can never see them again.
Professional Wrestling
- Ric Flair was probably wrestling's prototypical Magnificent Bastard. "Limousine riding, jet-flying, kiss-stealing, wheeling, dealing son of a gun" that he was, he always had four aces up the sleeves of his impeccable suits and gaudy ring robes, and a couple of them in his boots too for when things got really desperate. As a heel, he also delighted in constantly reminding the other wrestlers, and everybody watching, that they'd never, ever be like him, no matter how much they wished otherwise. Wooooooooooooooooooooo!
- Rowdy Roddy Piper fit the bill better than any wrestler before or since. Magnificent? Despite never winning a World Title he was one of the top heels of the 80s. Charismatic? Oh yeah, just listen to one of his promos. Audacious? He hit Jimmy Snuka in the head with a coconut, you can't get more audacious than a random sneak attack with a concealed and slightly racist weapon. Bastard? Dear God yes. Trickster? To quote the man himself, "Just when you think you have the answer, I change the question!". And a Karma Houdini? Not always but frequently. Piper was a brilliant heel, but almost as good as a face, and he could shake karma by getting the fans back on his side.
- Edge, in his "Ultimate Opportunist" Gimmick, has established himself as a dangerous threat to any world champion, and a cunning adversary for any respective challenger, with his ruthless exploitation of any circumstance he deems favorable. As such, even after the most embarassing of defeats, he almost always bounces back.
Close Professional Wrestling
Religion and Mythology
- From Norse mythology; Loki. Not even counting his cosmic Face Heel Turn after the death of Baldur, in itself a grandiose act of Bastardry, his consistent use of clever, cunning plots and charismatic trickery combined with Thor's brute strength in the stories of their journeys together make him one of the most entertaining characters of Scandanavian myth, even when he's being a total prick. One example has him turn into a female horse to distract an ice giants horse. He ends up giving birth to one of the great horses
- Also, Odin, in his Trickster guise as the one-eyed Wanderer, performs some glorious Bastardry, but outside of that his defining Bastard act is encouraging humanity to continue slaughtering itself in pointless wars so that his Valkyries can gather the souls of enough valiant warriors to bolster Odin's armies in Ragnarok.
- Satan, the Devil, in just about every portrayal since Milton (and Marlowe, and Goethe...) has shifted from the nasty but easily-duped Trickster of early medieval times to a charming, smooth-talking soul dealer and patron saint of Magnificent Bastards. The appeal of this version has led to it becoming increasingly popular to portray the Devil as tragic, misunderstood, sympathetic or even an out-and-out AntiHero. Despite this, he's rarely given Woobie traits and usually remains unrepentant literally until Doomsday, dodging Badass Decay and making him truly Magnificent. Some fans of this interpretation take it so far as believing it's God who's the real bastard, and sometimes a Magnificent one in His own right.
- Nearly any trickster god worth his salt will be one of these. It's basically their role to be magnificent bastards, taking down gods and monsters in such ingenious ways that you can't help but admire in their sheer audacity.
Close Religion and Mythology
Tabletop Games
- Asmodeus, ruler of Nessus, Ninth Layer of Baator in Dungeons And Dragons. He is one of the oldest living things in the multiverse, controlling all of the Nine Hells and standing over every other devil. The gods fear him. He once instigated the Reckoning, an Enemy Civil War, just to root out the more dangerous of his foes... only to promptly step forward and force all of Baator to submit once it stopped being useful to him. His only reaction to Mephistopheles threatening to take his throne was an amused silence.
- Don't forget that with the update to 4th Edition his status went from merely a powerful archdevil that required a full team of high level epic characters to fight into a full god.
- Asmodeus' first Starscream was Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. Beelzebub was almost as magnificent as Asmodeus himself. He was a former angel who went to hell and did such a good job taking over that he completely removed all knowledge of his predecessor's name and identity from existence. He managed to control two levels of Hell, one himself and one through a viscount, Moloch. Add to that, he actually had Asmodeus' favor. Unfortunately for Beelzebub, during that civil war he led an insurrection that tried to take Asmodeus down. He was thwarted when Mephistopheles' troops turned on the insurrection, and then Asmodeus punished him by changing his form from that of an angel to that of a slug. Beelzebub's still the #3 guy in Hell (behind Asmodeus and Mephistopheles), but looking like a slug pretty much demotes him from Magnificent Bastard to The Chessmaster.
- Cleon Zhunastu founder of the Third Imperium in Traveller. He actually did better then Palpitine because his Empire lasted for more then a thousand years. He manipulated dozens of powerful men and thousands of planets into forming the Third Imperium.
- Hanse Davion from BattleTech. While he reshaped military thinking within his life, he will probably best be remembered for his acts of Magnificent Bastardry. The first being where he ordered the court martial, exile and stripping of name from the son of his Intelligence Secretary - and best friend - as a part of an elaborate ruse to plant him into another state's intelligence network. So successful was this gambit that in the subsequent war (Which Hanse started at his own wedding) he captured more worlds in two years of fighting then his predecessors had in the last two hundred, all but crippling the state and driving its leader to insanity. Why did he do it? As an act of revenge against said leader who had tried to kill Hanse and replace him with a doppleganger.
- While on the subject of BattleTech, let us not forget Ulric Kerensky. Even when introduced as 'merely' the Khan of Clan Wolf, he already comes across as this; once voted into the position of ilKhan and forced to lead an invasion he's essentially opposed to, he manages to ever-so-subtly sabotage it without ever committing an outright act of treason (most notably by playing on the vanity of the other leaders and letting them get hoist by their own petards when they're too full of themselves to ask for advice or instructions), ultimately culminating in a fifteen-year truce — and then, when later challenged over it, sets into motion a plan to cripple the Clan pushing the hardest to resume the invasion while making sure part of his own Clan survives to keep defending the Inner Sphere in the future, even though it will cost his own life among others. Throughout it all and even posthumously he's never depicted as being anything less than completely in control and on top of events.
- Also Sun-Tzu Liao. He turned his crippled state (Courtesy of Hanse Davion above) around in the space of a few years, abused his elected position as the new First Lord of the reborn Star League to allow his nation to legally annex a breakaway state, reclaimed more then half the territory his grandfather lost under the pretense of "Peacekeeping" operations and forged a three-way alliance amongst other dissafected nations. There's (circumstantial) evidence that he even nuked his own capitol to serve as a propaganda piece to provoke hatred of his enemies. In the end he fakes his own death to ascend to the level of godhood in the eyes of his people. In many ways he acts like Hanse Davion, which is no surprise, as he's Hanse's genetic son.
- Tzeentch of Warhammer 40 K is a literal god of scheming who lays plans that take millennia to pay off. Whilst we're in the same universe, the Alpha Legion are, most terrifyingly, an entire army of Magnificent Bastards, even before the Horus Heresy (with the exception of Bale and Carron, but we don't talk about them).
- Then there are the Thousand Sons Legion, whose meticulous planning runs for centuries, every detail mapped out, completely flawless, until the Space Wolves show up, kick their teeth in, then laugh at all the effort Tzeentch put into those plans- unless of course Tzeentch just enjoys watching Magnus the Red and co suffer. The Space Wolves, a whole army of Spanners In The Works, they keep the Thousand Sons from ever becoming 'proper' Magnificent Bastards.
- Then there's the Alpha Legion, who's whole Hat is this.
- Also, the C'Tan Deceiver. He works on the same level as Tzeentch, playing the other races of the galaxy, including the Necrons themselves, against each other for his own benefit.
- Khazrak the One-eye, a beastmen leader from Warhammer Fantasy. A ruthlessly efficient beastmen who uses simple yet effective ambushing tactics. He has a rather one-sided Friendly Enemy relationship with the count of Middelland and really believes in an eye for an eye. Even though the count sends knights, soldiers and mercenaries his way, and has put a price of a whopping 10 000 gold pieces on his head, Khazrak keeps one-upping everyone he meets (and even if he somehow gets caught, he will escape and exact revenge on whoever caught him). The fact that he's from a race that's not too good when it comes to smarts is just icing on the cake.
- Legend of the Five Rings has the Scorpion Clan, which basically trains every single member from birth to try to live up to this trope, with a frightening degree of success. However while the Scorpion Clan might specialize in it (and get the most attention for it), just about every major organization in the setting has a good half-dozen or so examples that qualify. Of course, there's also the Kolat, who tend to be as magnificently bastardy as the Scorpion Clan but for entirely different reasons. That is, until the Scorpion Clan found the Kolat's secret hideout and, in a suprisingly unsubtle but extremely effective maneuver, sent in a crack team of killers to wipe out as many Kolat as possible and stole the Kolat's magic scrying device that they needed to remain the super-secret all-knowing conspiracy, thus giving the Scorpion Clan a monopoly on Magnificient Bastardry within the Empire.
- Incredibly, the overwhelming majority of Scorpions avoid slipping into Smug Snake or Chaotic Stupid territory, despite effectively having a giant banner reading "We are untrustworthy and will compulsively backstab any and all who deal with us in any way whatsoever" as their clan emblem.
- Mostly because one of the most common tactics for a good Scorpion is to pretend to be a Defector From Decadence or some similar type - basically convincing their marks that they're not like the rest of the OBVIOUSLY untrustowrthy Scorpion Clan, they're different, honest! Also, despite being Magnificent Bastards, most have as the goal of their schemings 1 ) Personal power and glory, and 2 ) The survival of the Scorpion Clan, and 3 ) The survival of the Empire. They may be nasty sons of guns, but they're still (mostly) loyal.
- If you play Diplomacy and aren't a Magnificent Bastard, you lose. End of story.
Theatre
- Iago from Shakespeare's Othello is a super Magnificent Bastard. Sure, he's kind of the bad guy, but he has been argued as having a "motiveless malignity". Indeed, the reasons he gives for manipulating everybody just aren't big enough for justification - in the end, it probably has to do with the fact that he finds it fun to control everyone and have them believe his every lie. Iago is such a witty and amazing evil genius he's practically the main character. Eponymous good-guy Othello has no chance against his sneaky intellect. Just to complete his magnificence, he manages to be one of the only Shakespeare villains who doesn't get killed at the end, though it is heavily implied he'll be tortured. To make it even more magnificent, he goes through almost the entire play with the nickname "honest Iago."
- Shakespeare's Magnificent Bastard par excellence is Richard III. Born with a slew of Red Right Hands and a truly twisted intellect, he takes to villainy, manipulation, and Xanatos Gambits like a fish to water. He also possesses an unparalleled wit and charisma, managing to seduce the wife of a man he murdered over the man's corpse. He talks to the audience more than almost any other Shakespeare character, letting them in on his plans, and sharing his triumphs in wonderfully gloating asides. He's a vile and utterly self-centered man, but it's just about impossible not to admire how damn good he is at it. How much the real Richard III lived up to the "bastard" half of the equation is a matter of much controversy in historical circles.
- The three witches in Macbeth persuade a great hero to murder his king and become a bloody tyrant, all without even explicitly encouraging murder until he is steeped in it already.
- Aaron The Moor from Titus Andronicus really needs a mention as well. Rarely can yo look up a mention of him on this site without having the words magnificentbastard trail behind.
- King Lear's Edmund. A bastard in every sense of the word, Edmund is an evil manipulator of the Iago variety, but he's also way cooler than his legitimate half brother Edgar, who, while not (particularly) stupid, is a total stiff. Edmund lies, forges, betrays, and seduces his way to the top, but part of you still can't help liking him. Especially since he actually says in a speech, "Stand up for bastards!" No apologies.
- Harry Roat from Wait Until Dark, right from the very first scene when he traps Talman and Carlino into his plot.
- Caldwell B. Cladwell, Corrupt Corporate Executive and Big Bad of Urinetown, most definitely qualifies. His bastardry is even more delicious when in the end it is revealed that as cruel as his methods were, they actually caused less harm to the people than when the heroes take over and make water consumption unlimited, resulting in an apocalyptic drought.
- Roy Cohn, the Real Life Amoral Attorney and McCarthyist zealot portrayed in Angels In America, manages to be both this and a Complete Monster—no easy feat.
Video Games
- Krelian is pretty much the God of Magnificent Bastards.
- His partner Miang is even better, and far cooler. Krelian mostly works behind the scenes, experimenting on nanotechnology and plotting to rebuild God. Miang, meanwhile, goes straight into the thick of things, even when the protagonists are ultimately mostly bit players in her scheme. When she deliberately built Oedipal issues into Ramsus, solely for the sake of building him into a weapon for killing Emperor Cain, and then alternately treats him like trash and makes sweet love to him to ensure he fulfills his purpose, and succeeds in every aspect of her plan, it's hard not to be left open-mouthed in wonder.
- Arkham of Devil May Cry 3 plays all the sides against each other, in order to open the gate to hell.
- Spider of the Mega Man X: Command Mission RPG is in reality manipulating X and company from even before they meet him in order to obtain the latest series Macguffin, under the guise of his Commander Redips identity, a high-ranking maverick hunter. Sure, the name reversal's obvious in hindsight, but it's sufficiently stealthy and well-executed that most people tend to miss it on the first go-round.
- Alex of the Golden Sun series manages to manipulate 4 different groups of characters throughout the games, all to achieve a power higher than Alchemy. It doesn't quite work out, but there was a big enough cliffhanger at the end of the second one to imply it could've.
- Ocelot of the Metal Gear series casually plays every side against every other possible side, all while twirling his prized revolvers. Almost everything that happens in the series can be somehow traced back to him, and when it can't, it's usually because it happened before he was born. Reached Aizen level in Metal Gear Solid 4.
- Solidus Snake, a.k.a. George Sears, is another example. This man, while acting as the President of the U.S.A., orchestrated the vast majority of the events in Metal Gear Solid, and later Metal Gear Solid 2. Ocelot upstaged him in the latter, but Solidus was the main force behind the events of the first game. His brother Liquid counts as well.
- And, in a more Meta example, Hideo Kojima himself. Admit it.
- Killzone's Scolar Visari, who creates public support through his sheer force of will, who singlehandedly rebuilds the Helghast (a word he invented, by the way) state into a highly disciplined military state with him as an absolute leader, and who then invades the neighboring human colony of Vekta. Oh yes, and he has some of the greatest speeches in video game history.
- Jade Empire has Master Li, who pulls off an astounding Xanatos Gambit that seems too complex to be possible. Then, if you play through the game again, you can see how carefully he planned everything and manipulated everyone, making even the crazy complex scheme believable (of course, he had twenty years to do so, and they don't call him "The Glorious Strategist" for nothing).
- It also has a character with the regal title of "The Magnificent Bastard" from the game's England analogue. Though he doesn't really fit the trope, being voiced by John Cleese certainly qualifies him for the magnificent part.
- Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard has the single greatest name in the entire game.
- Frank Fontaine of Bio Shock started off as just a small-time smuggler in Rapture, but after the discovery of ADAM, he set the wheels in motion to take over all of Rapture. He charms the lower class and corners the market for ADAM giving him a massive army of both poor citizens and ADAM-addicted splicers. Then Fontaine faked his own death, reappeared under an assumed name and led his followers in a massive civil war that left Rapture in ruins. The game's protagonist, Jack, is revealed to be a Laser Guided Tyke Bomb created by Fontaine in order to kill Rapture's founder. Who is also programmed to die on command when the job is done so he can't come back and kill the man that created him.
- Depending on your point of view, Andrew Ryan himself is a Magnificent Bastard.
- Albert Wesker, proof that one can be an ur-Chessmaster and a physically godlike Bad Ass at the same time. Plus, there's, ya'know, the fact that he's never actually lost at his Xanatos Gambits.
- And then Ozwell Spencer goes and pulls the title out from under him in RE5 when he reveals that Wesker was essentially manufactured to be precisely the Magnificent Bastard he is, and was carrying out Spencer's own Xanatos Gambit the entire time.
- Delita Hyral from Final Fantasy Tactics. In a game full of competing Chessmasters and Magnificent Bastards, he finishes the story standing on top of the Thirty Xanatos Pileup, out-manoeuvring everyone else to become a king by marrying the Damsel In Distress and using the protagonist- his lifelong friend- to do most of the hard work.
- Let's not forget that Delita became King through marriage to a princess who was not actually a princess. In a world where blood trumps everything, a pair of commoners became the absolute rulers of the realm, through divine right.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics A 2, there's Duke Snakeheart, a somewhat loony Nu Mou Arcanist in Duelhorn that does not care if innocent people get hurt during Duelhorn's attacks as long as the job gets done, wants to do things his way, and even hires your clan at one point to protect him from punishment from his clan members, which he says "...Heh, that went well." after he does avoid it. If that wasn't enough, he reveals himself to be the traitor of Duelhorn, admitting to leaking their plans and turning the girl that Maquis saved into a zombie just for kicks.
- Starcraft had Kerrigan. While a major character of the original game, she doesn't show her true magnificence until Brood War, an expansion pack nearly as long as the original Starcraft campaign. The entire length of Brood War is Kerrigan playing the Protoss and two competing Terran factions against one another in order to spread the Zerg to even more worlds and ensure herself as their queen. She pulls it off magnificently, betraying and/or murdering every named character, and setting up a massive Downer Ending.
- While she belongs here, do remember that she left Raynor and Zeratul alive, not to mention the whole Duran-saga. Seems like she may have dug a grave for herself, although Starcraft 2 will tell.
- Duran (or at least the unknown powers that stand behind him) is also hinted to be a Magnificent Bastard - or at least a Chessmaster.
- Command and Conquer has Kane, the granddaddy of them all. Unshakeable, unflappable, and utterly in control the entire time (well most of the time anyway), for all the games, and also quite affably evil, Kane betrays his second in command, manipulates GDI to get what he wants, (multiple times), is a veteran and master of Xanatos Roulette, and in the latest installment, starts the Third Tiberium War just to get GDI to fire a Ion Cannon strike on Temple Prime, detonate a liquid Tiberium bomb, and call the Scrin to Earth. All so that he can hijack the Scrin gateway and leave Earth.
- It gets even more awesome in Kane's Wrath. not only does Kane manipulate the fractured Brotherhood into reunifying in the wake of Firestorm, he also engineers the rise of Redmond Boyle, who he wants to be in charge of GDI so he can manipulate him into using the Ion Cannon on Temple Prime. And he does all this while constructing LEGION, the ultimate strategic AI to interface with the Tacitus and bring him and Nod one step closer to ascension. And this is while fighting off the most well-armed and elite forces of both GDI and the Scrin.
- Strangely enough, a droid plays the role of Magnificent Bastard in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. The first HK-50 droid you meet orchestrates the systematic murder of every single person aboard the Peragus II mining station (save for the imprisoned Atton Rand) and lockdown of the same facility, as well as several events preceding your arrival there, and administers a sedative meant to keep you unconscious until it can deliver you to the Exchange for the bounty on your head. Its plan works so smoothly, in fact, that even after waking up you have no means of escape until T3-M4 intervenes.
- Really, though, the true crown of Magnificent Bastardry should go to none other than Kreia. You can't get to the end of the game without simply being awed at how completely and absolutely she used and manipulated the Exile, with the implication that the Exile was fully aware the entire time that he/she was being manipulated but unable to do anything about it. Not to mention how she utterly and completely crushes Mandalore, Atton, and Hanharr psychologically.
- And let's not forget Kreia trained Revan, and was probably ALSO maniputating Revan for a lot longer and in-depth than she had Exile! She's also the only one who seems to know anything about the "True Sith," and mind-wipes Mical when he discovers a pattern to Revan and the Triumvate's attack patterns! Given that, it's not too much of a stretch to guess she may have been "the Sith" that convinced Mandalore the Indomitable to go on crusade, meaning she would have been the Chessmaster behind at least 20 years of galactic history!
- M. Bison (Vega in Japanese) in the Street Fighter saga pretty much fits the bill, mind controlling multiple heroes, making them fight each other, having clones of himself to activate once he dies, and arranging the whole friggin' Street Fighter tournament just so he could make all those who want his head to beat each other up for him. Of course, he meets his end in the hands of Akuma, but it's not like death would slow him down. He's such a Magnificent Bastard that he manages to retain his awesomeness in, of all things, the Street Fighter movie.
- The Gravemind from Halo can arguably be considered one hell of a Magnificent Bastard for the way it manipulates everyone around it, combining complicated Xanatos Roulettes with skin-crawling psychological warfare. Most striking is the way it ended the war with the Forerunners by truning the AI created to destroy it into its greatest ally using nothing but logic. Even when defeated, its only response is that its destruction is nothing but a temporary setback.
- Master Albert from the Mega Man ZX games is one hell of a Magnificent Bastard. He fits the criteria like a glove, manipulating the entire cast of the two games for centuries. Even during his defeat, he doesn't throw any tantrum or scream/evil laugh at his defeat, he merely acknowledges his defeat and delivers one of the finest lines even spoken in the series.
- Mind you, there's another person who could was potentially even more of a Magnificent Bastard than Albert - Master Thomas. In the hidden ending, he reveals that he simply helped the heroes (Simply by making the defeat of Albert an official mission) for the sake of making Albert kick the bucket so Thomas could start his own scheme to reset the world, and even recruited the four rival Mega Men. It's possible that he planned Albert's demise from the beginning, thus manipulating the entire heroic cast into doing exactly what he planned. Which would make this one a Xanatos Roulette that even Light Yagami would quite possibly be jealous of, considering both of them enacted over a span of 200 years. This is an would be an example of a Xanatos Roulette being designed to destroy another. That is truly magnificent.
- There's a whole bunch of Magnificent Bastards in Super Robot Wars over the years, but the biggest was, without a doubt, Commander Laker of the Far East Brigade, a character who never actually fights. Between being the planner of the campaign against Aeidoneous Island -which crippled the DC movement-, helping plan the defence of Geneva from the DC's remnants, and the L5 campaign, he certainly is a competent leader. The icing comes on the cake, however, is the fact that before the DC War began, he gave the Kurogane -arguably the strongest of the 3 Space-Noah vessels- to Elzam Braunstein, a supporter of the DC movement who promptly used it battle against Laker's own subordinates. Of course... come Elzam and company's Heel Face Turn, the Kurogane gets one too and serves as the heroes' "shadow", stepping in and helping when things look hopeless, and getting supplies from Laker and the Far East all the while.
- Aside from that, there's also Ingram Prisken, who on top of infiltrating the EFA way back before the events of the game even starts, helps put together the best team of mecha pilots in the world, trains the SRX team, and then makes a Face Heel Turn for the purpose of motivating the team into becoming strong enough to not only defeat him in his transformed stolen and extremely powerful mecha, but also to become strong enough to defeat Levi Tolar in her Judecca. The defeat of Judecca deeming their race a dangerous enough threat to wake the Adjudicator to destroy them, and thus the team suitably motivated to become powerful enough to defeat that, and fulfill the biggest Xanatos Roulette of the game..
- The Phoenix Wright franchise is full of them. Manfred von Karma and Kristoph Gavin are quite worthy of this status for playing magnificent long-term Xanatos Gambits to ruin other people's lives. Matt Engarde also deserves a special mention for being able to pull a brandy sifter out of nowhere during his Reveal. Whilst in police custody, no less! Sure, all the villains in this series get their comeuppance, but some of them were just better at getting their evil ways before their eventual Villainous Breakdown.
- Luke Atmey. Dear God, where to start? He manages to set himself up as an Ace Detective while at the same keeping afloat and benefiting from the thief he's hunting. He then falsely gets himself indicted for being the thief to keep from being convicted for his real crime of murdering a CEO. Then the only reason he's even caught is a slip of the tongue and this is after successfully having four of the five crimes he was on trial for has been proven to have not been his doing.
- Axel was this in Kingdom Hearts:Chain Of Memories, where he played both sides of an Organization conspiracy and backstabbed many of his allies in order to benefit himself.
- Xemnas qualifies in 358/2 Days, and when you think about it, KH II, as well. Xemnas was the driving force behind the entire plot of the former, and played some serious Xanatos Speed Chess in the latter. The whole time in KHII, Sora could only do exactly as Xemnas wanted, and knew it. Every time Sora killed a Heartless only brought Xemnas that much closer to his plan. No wonder Saix stabbed Axel in the back joined up with him....
- Etna from Disgaea takes Enigmatic Minion to glorious new heights. By the time she's through out-Xanatos Gambiting a Big Bad who was blackmailing her, he's literally on his knees weeping and pleading for his life. What's more, she does a masterful job of
annoying motivating Laharl to become a competent Overlord while hiding her true nature and motives from everyone. (The player included if you don't find her secret diary.)
- Kain is what happens when you mix this with Heroic Sociopath.
- Ghaleon from Lunar is a Well Intentioned Extremist and an Anti Villain. But his Genre Savvy humor, his sheer skill at using the party's altruism for his own purposes and his sheer joy in playing out the villain part for the protagonists definitely qualify him for this trope. Of course, that's before his Heel Face Turn in the sequel.
- City Of Heroes has its share. Take Requiem for example.
Requiem: I cannot say that you will have gained my respect, but I will acknowledge that you fought well. Drink deeply of your success. Bask in the adulation of your peers. Savor this victory. Know that you have saved your world and this moment from the shadow of history. But you have only saved it for now. Do not think that you have saved the world for your future. Know that you have saved this world for my coming Dominion.
- But the undisputed king of them all is Nemesis. Looks like a goofy Steam Punk villain, but is somehow responsible for nearly every development in the game world for the past hundred years (and even more so if you believe the Epileptic Trees).
- Jade Curtiss in Tales of the Abyss. Openly mocking everyone from royalty to the game's antagonist to even his own teammates, Jade's sarcasm is easily the best part of the game.
- Maximilian of Valkyria Chronicles. That he's voiced by and has a similar back story to Lelouch Lamperouge are small indications of this fact before he even shows it.
- The World Ends With You has Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu. Certainly he fits with intelligence, dubious morality and punch-in-the-face obnoxiousness ("Good going, Neku.") What makes him a magnificent, manipulative bastard though is The entire ending, and every single Secret Report. He is the ultimate Composer god-thing, with the power to resurrect people, steal memories, and generally screw with everyone's heads while hitting stuff with game breaking power and having, among other things, clairvoyance. Even the Higher Planes, the great heavenly powers that rule over everything, can't predict this guy, and his powers of manipulation are so great that even after revealing that he murdered the protagonist and manipulated him in to possibly destroying his entire home town, and even with all the trouble he's caused Neku doesn't shoot him. So he follows that up by shooting Neku, and he still manages to get out of that with the guy's trust in the end, and with making everything alright. Actually, he managed to plan things out so that just about everybody came out of it for the better, except of course for the guy he was competing against in the first place. A god damned asshole-which is why we love him.
- Even with all that, Mr. Hanekoma tops Joshua as a Magnificent Bastard. Mr. Hanekoma not only motivates Neku to become a better person through his inspirational speeches but also plans to destroy Joshua at the same time by teaching taboo technique to Sho Minamimoto. That way, he ensures that either Neku becomes a better person and manages to change Joshua's mind about destroying Shibuya (since Joshua's reasoning for destroying Shibuya was that people did not change) or Sho Minamimoto usurps Joshua's place and ends Joshua's plan to destroy Shibuya. What makes this even more magnificent is that Mr. Hanekoma manages to pull this off without directly interfering with anything (Joshua had to briefly team up with Neku and take down Sho in order to make his plan work) and not even the Higher Plane is able to fully comprehend what he did. The fact that the Higher Planes mark Mr. Hanekoma as "the Fallen Angel" just draws even further comparison to Satan, who nowadays is shown as manipulative but charismatic and charming.
- World Of Warcraft honorable mention: Drakuru. An ice troll who is friendly enough to talk to you and actually genuinely appears to like you. He came out of nowhere, was trapped in a cage as a lowbie mob and without leaving his cage or really telling you much of anything except he had a cool idea and wants to learn some stuff manipulates you into taking down the entire Drakkari empire. By the time you get to Zul'Drak, the trolls inside are almost all dead or killing and eating their own gods in a desperate attempt to stave off the Scourge. Yes, you just took out the strongest remaining non undead native faction to Northrend. Oh, and they're also undead now and didn't really get much chance to fight back. Of course, Arthas had to pick up his villain ball and kill him in a totally pointless YouHaveFailedMe moment. Sigh. He was one of the best characters introduced in this expansion and now he's gone.
- Given the shadiness of some of the things he asks you to do, he can't hold a candle to Loken. Just about every stage of your unwitting complicity in his plan involves you doing nice things for people- rescuing an enslaved innocent, repairing relations between a bereaved demigod and his former friends- and half the time he didn't even have to tell you to do it. Then the last Watcher remaining at large and uncorrupted is captured by Yogg-Saron as you look on, helpless to do anything to stop it and knowing that you made it possible. Pity he then forgot the Evil Overlord List prohibition against "laughing at him then leaving him to his own devices".
- Ash Crimson of The King Of Fighters has been manipulating every single one of his teammates since day one. He chooses his teammates based on the best ways to manipulate them. Oh, and did we mention that he's managed to steal Chizuru Kagura's and Iori Yagami's powers. Yes, you heard me: a gender-bending Scrappy kicked the ass of one of the most popular characters in King Of Fighters. To add to the humilation, Iori got his ass kicked while in Riot of the Blood mode, which makes him stronger. Proof that Ash is Obfuscating Stupidity. One can only wonder how he's going to take Kyo's powers...
- Albert Silverberg of Suikoden III constructs the entire plot of the game single-handedly and then casually derails it, confident that he's proven his genius and increased his reputation as a strategist.
- The Spy of Team Fortress 2. This video says it all.
- Mario series: No Dimentio? This guy manages to nearly bring about The End Of The World As We Know It without ever really needing to lift a finger, and even kills Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser in a fantastic subversion of No Sneak Attacks that comes out of nowhere, and is only really hurt by the fact that they got better. Granted, that was part of the plan, and things were set up to still go through even if he himself was defeated.
- He doesn't kill them he merely sends them to the Underwhere alive. But considering that he fakes his death and comes out of nowhere with another sneak attack that if Nastasia had not jumped in front of, he would have easily succeded and secretly placing a mind control device on Luigi as he fakes a Taking You With Me.
- Kotomine in Fate Stay Night. Only really prominent in Heaven's Feel route where you know perfectly well he's a bad guy and even Shirou knows. Lancer dies, the Grail changes hosts, Zouken Matou is involved, Gilgamesh gets eaten and dozens of other cards are going against him and he still makes it to the final fight after beating Zouken and True Assassin at the same time. His Xanatos Speed Chess skills and utter truthfulness throughout the game even make his mullet forgivable.
- In the greater Nasuverse history, it is possible that the most magnificent of Magnificent Bastards is Kishua Zelretch Schweinorg the Wizard Marshal. Even if indirectly, or through other people, he's pretty much had some influence with everyone in the series. He killed Brunstead of the Crimson Moon, helped raise Arcueid, is trolling the Mage Association and the participants of the Fuyuki Grail Wars, which he started by jury-rigging a potential link to the root of all things and knowledge, the Akasha, and travels alternate dimensions, among other things.
- Ovan from ./hack/G.U.. Not only is he the real Tri-Edge, he P Ked Shino, is responsible for the infection of AIDA, gave Sakaki the AIDA cores required to turn himself and others into coma-inducing P Kers and has been manipulating Haseo, along with the Twilight Brigade and the members of G.U., since the very beginning with the purpose of defeating and killing himself just so he can cleanse the system of the virus and free his little sister from his arm along with bringing everyone back from their comas.
- Fire Emblem has Naesala, that lovable victim of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. He betrays people in ways that for anyone else would be well beyond crossing the Moral Event Horizon...but he is just so masterful that characters (and fans) are willing to look past it. It reaches the point where he gets a Blood Knight telling him Its Personal to leave, by convincing him that there is someone else with a higher right to his head (which, admittedly, is true)...then proceeds to get said someone else not to come after him simply by becoming Sanaki's bodyguard, meaning that if Tibarn (the aforementioned someone else) kills him, he will face the diplomatic wrath of the world's most powerful country. And this move kills two birds with one stone for him by letting him abuse a loophole in his contract with Begnion, thus allowing him to betray Lekain...who has no idea about any of this until Naesala decides to casually inform him, a move that is timed right before Naesala brutally kills him. And all of this is just him in Radiant Dawn. It isn't even touching his manipulations in Path of Radiance.
- The Legend Of Zelda's Ganondorf certainly counts. More often than not, the games' plots are his masterminding, as he's always cooking up plans to come back to life and retake Hyrule, succeeding several times. There's also the fact that in Ocarina Of Time, he plays an organ as you come up the stairs, eagerly waiting for a fight. His Chessmaster skills really show up, though, in the Subspace Emissary.
- Though she may not have managed to impress fans sufficiently, Amelissan from Baldurs Gate II: Throne of Bhaal would qualify based on her actions. She had almost everyone convinced that she was a kind of activist dedicated to helping the weaker of the mortal children of Bhaal, the dead god of murder, while she was secretly herding them all in one place to be killed. She had the most powerful five convinced they could become demigods by destroying their lesser siblings in order to resurrect Bhaal, while her intention was to destroy them as well. And she had the dead god himself convinced she was going to resurrect him from the essences of his children, when she intended to use the power to become a god herself. When she encountered the Player Character, she had them kill all the other powerful Bhaalspawn while making sure they stil couldn't save the weaker ones in the city where she had led them. The reason why she's not really hailed as a Magnificent Bastard may be that she wasn't very convincing to the player from the start... and that she was a bit of a psycho when she showed her true colours.
- Azura from The Elder Scrolls orchaestrated the Nerevarine Prophecy that drives the third game's plot in order to punish the Tribunal for a centuries-old insult. Not only does it go just as planned, but it ultimately leads to the world being saved three times.
- Viking Battle For Asgard: Freya raises one warrior from the dead with the promise of being given another chance to gain entry to Valhalla. What does she get in return? She gets one dead God and an entire world at her fingertips essentially. Too bad Skarin doesn't look kindly on her not living up to her promise and killing her and the entire pantheon.
- Doviculus from Brütal Legend. Dangerously Genre Savvy (e.g. he utterly averts a Why Dont Ya Just Shoot Him), dishes out scathing insults like spare change, and . . . well, he's disturbingly sexy to boot. Oh, and he's voiced by Tim Curry.
Web Comics
- Thief of 8-bit Theater. In a team full of bastards, Thief is the magnificent one. He has total control over the team and all its assets, (and those of anyone he meets) due to his extremely convoluted and loophole-laden contracts. He is capable of stealing anything from anyone that isn't bolted down and on fire (and has broken that distinction at least once), and once stole The Lich's soul out of its gem with nothing but logic (and can cause aneurysms with the same method). And to cap it all off, he stole his own class change from the future. Case in point: Black Mage's response to Thief's Super Ultra Fine Print.
- Arguably, the strip's creator, Brian Clevinger. He not only planned out a single gag five years in advance, but he also planned the events of the entire strip so that the Butt Monkey that is the Onion Kid eventually becomes the damn-near-omniscient Jerk Ass that is Sarda.
- Sluggy Freelance actually uses the phrase here.
- Not to mention Bun-Bun, especially during the Holiday Wars arc — "Well-a-ho-ho-freakin'-ho. Are we in for a year of great holiday fun or what???" Too bad his shadow was such a Xanatos Sucker....
- Aldran of Anti-HEROES. There's many examples, but this comic can be taken as proof all on its own.
- Lampshaded in Ansem Retort, where Zexion rates Xanatos Gambits on a scale of 1-5 Michael Corleones.
- The character Ki, from Harkovast. He enjoys lengthy, cynical inner monologues. For example, his philosophy on heroism is an interesting one!
- Dominic Deegan has several: The Infernomancer, his demonic patron Karnak, and, at least some of the time, Celesto Morgan and Jacob Deegan (the latter two sometimes act more like Worthy Opponents, too honorable for true Bastardry). Helixa might be considered one, too, and Dominic himself has certain tendencies in that direction, being at times insufferably smug about his abilities, and given to manipulating events to suit his interests (see especially the Snowsong story arc).
- The IFCC, a trio of fiends from Order Of The Stick, most definatly count. Vaarsuvius using his newfound power to strike at Xykon, convinving him to stop playing around? Just as planned.
- This Nothing Nice To Say comic
- Schlock Mercenary has General Levaughn Matsui "Hugo" Xinchub, a magnificent bastard who controled pretty much everything for quite a while, until outdone by Tagon, a magnificent bastard in his own right. The true mark of Ximchub's magnificence was in becoming King of the planet he was exiled to, and escaping various plots by faking his own death.
- But, no one compares to Petey Or, as I call him, God when it comes to bastadry magnificent.
- Charlie, from Erfworld, is laid out to be the Magnificent Bastard of the Wargame world of Erfworld. However, it turns out that Parson is too alien and unpredictable to make his Xanatos Gambits work, just because of how differently Parson sees his world (as a Wargame world, while its inhabitants only see it as "world"). More recently, as Charlie thought he was being clever in his mindgames against Parson, Parson showed him that he discovered more than Charlie out of the deal (namely that Parson's Mathamancy artifact could predict the future).
- Seth from Sorcery 101 definitely counts. At one point, he fingered a woman he was fighting. While she had the heel of one of her stillettos lodged in his skull.
Web Original
Western Animation
Real Life
- Not, ironically enough, Erwin Rommel. Yes, him. The Trope Namer. General Rommel was admired by Patton for being a tricky, devious commander with flair and skill, which may sound close to the trope, but that was his generalship, not his personality. Given his unambiguously heroic actions, including concealing the Judaism of Allied prisoners of war from his superiors, it's clear that we don't cheer for Erwin because he may have been a bastard but he did it with flair, we cheer because he wasn't actually a bastard at all, but a pretty swell guy. He was, in fact, the very model of the Worthy Opponent.
- Patton, on the other hand...
- Hollywood example: Robert Evans. The former pretty-boy acting sensation became Head of Production for Paramount Pictures, turning the failing studio from the ninth largest to the most successful in the world, all while marrying seven times and living a life of frantic hedonism. Even after being convicted of attempting to buy cocaine and being tangentially linked to the murder of one of his films' investors, Evans was able to return to producing. Evans himself narrates the story in the popular documentary The Kid Stays In the Picture, based on his autobiography. Comedian Patton Oswalt describes the audiobook version as sounding like "The Devil dictating his memoirs."
- Alcibiades, as depicted in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. Within the course of the war he switches sides five times, boffs the Spartan king's wife and Socrates, and sweeps the Olympic games. He was such a magnificent bastard that even after he betrayed them the Athenians chose to give him command of the army when it looked like they were losing the war and needed someone truly brilliant to lead the troops.
- Otto von Bismarck. Did he use his mastery of he diplomatic art to engineer an elaborate Xanatosian policy that would, over decades, bring Germany to a position of first unity and then European dominance? ''Or'' did he evade every threat, ride out every crisis, and seize every opportunity before retiring and successfully cultivating a myth that he had been a master of schemery? He was too much of a Magnificent Bastard for us to be sure either way, but either way, he was a Magnificent Bastard.
- Whatever he did, he probably got some help from that Nice Hat.
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Qualifying for Manipulative Bastard for most of his career and a notorious Wild Card, Talleyrand managed to work himself into the favour of four separate governments of France, Royalist and Revolutionary, both before and after the chaos of the Revolution, always by foreseeing their ascent and positioning himself in order to support the next ruler - befriending and later aiding Napoleon's ascent, opposing the punishment of Prussia at Tilsit and befriending the Russian Czar at Erfurt, disassociating himself from Louis XVIII before the July Revolution). He hit true magnificence with the Congress of Vienna, however. Intended by the victorious allies as a means to suppress France and reshape Europe, he took on a role as champion of the smaller, "unimportant" nations, befriended the Spanish ambassador in order to force himself into the decision-making process (and later dropped Spain when their ambassador became a burden). He successfully split the Coalition between France-Austria-Britain and Russia-Prussia after the Saxon crisis, and despite the devastating losses France had taken in the war, secured France's original borders with the addition of several minor enclaves and borderlands (like Papal Avignon).
- While still Napoleon's trusted advisor, he started actively scheming to overthrow the Emperor, and even though Napoleon caught him at it (and famously called him "a lump of shit in a silk stocking",) Talleyrand still got away with it. In his own words: "Governments come and go; I do not!"
- Catherine II, the Great. In 1744 she was selected by the empress Elisabeth of Russia, to be the wife of her heir Peter. She came only from a minor German state and therefore needed to make sure to please the empress and the Russian people. To do so, she took the name Catherine, learned Russian and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. She also read a lot and made contacts with people abroad and at the Russian court. Her marriage was unhappy and after the death of Elisabeth, she made sure to contrast her behavior with that of Peter, for example at Elisabeth's funeral, where she mourned while he behaved disrespectfully. He was simple, but favored Prussia. This made many Russians angry, as they had just been in a war with Prussia. Like Elisabeth before her, she used the army to stage a coup. Soon she was proclaimed empress of the Russians. Peter was disposed and later murdered by Catherine's lover. She choose capable advisors and during her reign large portions of land were added to Russia after war with Turkey. She was a great proponent of the ideals of the enlightenment. Because many Russians were afraid to be vaccinated against smallpox, she was the first person in Russia to receive vaccination. She also had many lovers, but always managed to hold onto the throne, despite being not even Russian-born. (Admittedly, the same was true for Peter, who didn't even bother to learn Russian, other than Catherine.)
- A sadly obscure but nonetheless magnificent example: King Clovis, the first king to unite all the Franks, as related by Gregory of Tours. He was, amongst other things, a master of the Batman Gambit, making his various relatives and other enemies kill one another for his favour and then punishing the others as well. The definitive example came towards the end of his life, when he bribed the army of Ragnachar (a rival chieftain and a relative) to capture said Ragnachar and Ragnachar's brother, then killed Ragnachar for dishonouring the family by allowing himself to be captured, then killed the brother for allowing his brother to be captured; and when the people he bribed complained of being given fool's gold, he told them that they were lucky he didn't kill them for treason as law demanded it, and they promptly dropped their claims and begged for mercy. "When they [the king and his brother] were dead Clovis received all their kingdom and treasures. And having killed many other kings and his nearest relatives, of whom he was jealous lest they take the kingdom from him, he extended his rule over all the Gauls. However he gathered his people together at one time, it is said, and spoke of the kinsmen whom he had himself destroyed. "Woe to me, who have remained as a stranger among foreigners, and have none of my kinsmen to give me aid if adversity comes." But he said this not because of grief at their death but by way of a ruse, if perchance he should be able to find some one still to kill."
- Hernan Cortes: sent to Mexico by the spanish government to "establish trade with the natives" in order to get rid of him, he decided instead to conquer one of the largest empires on earth. Horribly outnumbered and underequipped (there is some debate about how underequipped you can be when you have guns and the enemy has rocks: the answer, when they have thousands more rocks than you, all very, very sharp, is pretty damn underequipped), he convinced his men to go along with his scheme, manipulated Aztec politics and religion to his advantage turning smaller states against the larger empire, and "convinced" the Spanish army sent to arrest him to become his reinforcments. He retired as the governer of Spain's largest and wealthiest provinces.
- Cosimo de' Medici: Second head of the infamous Medici banking family, he exercised massive power over Florence during a considerable portion of the 15th century. In 1433 his chief rival Albizzi essentially set him up and tried to execute him, but due to his massive popularity (even Albizzi's allies in the ruling council refused to sign on), it doesn't work. The Venetians, nobles, the head of the Florentine mercenary army, and even the Vatican under Pope Eugenius IV intervene to prevent him from being executed, due to Medici's position as head of an immensely powerful bank. Albizzi backs down and Medici is exiled for ten years. He's back in a year after flaunting his weath in Florentine ally/rival Venice, doubling the profits of the Venice branch of his bank, making friends, and saving the Pope's ass. He immediately exiles Albizzi and essentially runs Florence until his death thirty years later.
- Yolande of Aragon. After the battle of Agincourt was won by the English in 1415, there were few people in France still supporting prince Charles' claim to the throne. Yolande of Aragon gave him refuge at the lands of which she was regent. His mother queen Isabeau ordered him to come back at court. Yolande's response: "We have not nurtured and cherished this one for you to make him die like his brothers or to go mad like his father, or to become English like you. I keep him for my own. Come and take him away, if you dare." She then let Charles marry her daughter and surrounded him with councillors of her choosing. The duke of Brittany was persuaded by her to support Charles. She was one of the supporters of Joan of Arc, some things pointing that she played a bigger role in her rise than was known openly. Soon Charles could be crowned and parts of France were regained. Advisors she disliked, she had removed and she had an extensive network of spies at all the courts of important nobles. Her actions kept the hopes of the French party alive and allowed Charles VII to regain his kingdom.
- Oliver Cromwell: Love him or loathe him, he rose from obscurity to Head of State in a dozen years and even his enemies bitterly commented on his magnificent bastardy. In fact they make him seem more magnificent than his praisers as they emphasize what they see as a ruthless Machiavellian facet of his personality. The bastardness is a contentious issue (unless you're Irish) on just how much of one he was but Magnificent? Definitely.
- Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Even his enemies generally admit that he was magnificent, and even his supporters generally admit that he was a bastard.
- Ditto for his protege Jean Chretien.
- Oda Nobunaga(1534-1582). An utterly brilliant general who started out in the tiny province of Owari, then conquered his way through a third of the daimyo. Known for innovating the musket reloading technique that the British army would use to devastating effect Two Centuries Later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobunaga_Oda. (I'll thank someone to continue this and find a better source.)
- Anne Boleyn. Not part of the high nobility in England, Anne was nevertheless made a lady-in-waiting to the French queen Claude. At her return to the English court her French mannerisms, charm and wit attracted a lot of attention. King Henry VIII became infatuated with her, but she refused to become his mistress. The king then started a process to divorce his wife, so he could marry Anne. The church refused Henry an annulment of his marriage and encouraged by Anne, he broke with the catholic faith, installing himself instead as head of the English church. She also had a hand in the destruction of Cardinal Wolsey, who had been Henry's chief advisor. Many English people disliked all this change and in response she had the clothes of her servants embroidered with: 'Let them grumble, that is how it is going to be." Henry married her and she held a magnificent court, while at the same time pressing forward the ideals of the reformation. She argued a lot with Henry, at one point telling her brother that Henry was impotent. The cause for her downfall however was not this, but the fact that she didn't have a son. She was put on trial for crimes that she did not commit, at which she showed great courage in her defense. Still, she was executed in 1536. Her only child was Elizabeth, who would become queen in her own right and is another Magnificent Bitch.
- Diego Portales Palazuelos, Chilean statesman of the 19th century. He never was the Chilean President, even when he could have been due to his talent, but he always was the Man Behind The Man.
- Randall Monroe.
- Vladimir Putin surely must qualify for this by now. At the very least, his troops marching into Georgia while the rest of the world was watching the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony was pure magnificence. Also, go to That Other Wiki and look up the graph of Russian GDP growth during his presidency.
- Be honest, tropers: how many of you have forgotten, at least once, that Medvedev is the current president?
- We don't, but still we get to call this...formation "one and a half presidents" for a reason.
- Despite his treatment by Dumas, Cardinal Richelieu qualifies. Starting as minor nobility, he managed to not only acquire influence under Marie de Medici, who was ruling in the name of her son Louis XIII, he managed to return to politics after a period of exile, arrange peace between mother and son, and rise to become Louis's Prime minister. And then he pulled France through a couple wars and coups. He pretty much transformed the French monarchy from a relatively weak throne constantly threatened by the nobility to the absolute rule associated with Louis XIV and later.
- A man does not get something named the Day of the Dupes on his resume without qualifying for this trope.
- Gnaeus Pompey Magnus deserves some recognition for magnificent bastardry. An excellent example comes early in his career, when upon being ordered to return to Rome alone he claimed that his soldiers insisted on coming too, and showed up outside the city with six legions, then demanded and got a triumph (which he wasn't eligable for). Even when the dictator of that time and fellow Magnificent Bastard, L. Cornelius. Sulla, rebuffed Pompey for this, he reportedly turned around and reminded Sulla that he was in a position to take over the city, and since Sulla was in the midst of murdering his entire political opposition, he would not be missed. Pompey went on to bastard his way into four consulships, three triumphs, finishing off Spartacus, wiping out piracy in the mediterranean and finally to make the fatal mistake of taking on Gaius Julius Caesar.
- Why does Julius get his mention only in reference to Pompey?
- King Gustav Vasa of Sweden qualifies: Starts out as an imprisoned hostage, escapes, manages to gather the support of the peasantry of Dalarna, gets many of the local opposition to defect. Gets proclaimed regent and then king, systematically betrays and removes just about every one of his earlier allies to increase his own power. (Including ruthlessly crushing rebellions by his former allies) radically strengthens the Swedish monarchy, initiates the Reformation in Sweden, at one point manages to push his decisions through by threatening to abdicate. (in an awesome speech, too) manages to get his debts annulled by fighting the German city of Lübeck. Dies as the wealthiest man in Europe.
- Grigori Rasputin, After some moderate success nursing Alexei back to health, Rasputin took the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the royal family, becoming spiritual adviser to the Tsar's wife. Given his humble origins and the foreign roots of Alexandra, this bond quickly aroused the distrust of the Russian elite, who circulated rumors that the two were having a romantic affair. and made this prophecy "I feel that I shall leave life before January 1 [check] ...If I am murdered by boyars, nobles, [check] ...Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. [check, check, check] ...If it was your [Tsar Nicholas'] relations who have wrought my death, then...none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people. [Jesus Christ, check]"
- I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned Tamerlane yet. The later part of the 14th century was mostly about him assfucking the entire world, after all, earning him the honour of being one favorite Magnificent Bastard for european playwrights for hundreds of years.
- Bruce Willis, according to Kevin Smith.
- He may be the one man even more evil than Hitler, but Stalin. Oh god Stalin. Born the son of a drunkard cobbler, he joined the Communists and was viewed as a nobody by his much more charismatic rivals such as Trotsky and Zinoviev. By the age of 45, he had utterly defeated his flashier rivals through sheer stolidness and cunning and took complete control of the party and the Soviet Union, and than turned the Soviet Union into an industrial powerhouse, albeit at extreme cost. He then managed to completely outsmart Hitler and caused someone who hated the Russians and didn't want war with the West to attack the West and pay the Russians with territory to leave him alone. Although stunned by the Nazi attack, he proved to be a more able administrator and beat Hitler at the conquest game. After that, he's left with an exhausted Russia and facing a newly-powerful America that had a nuclear monopoly and was barely affected by the war, and then proceeded to outsmart them by bluffing aggression and playing for time until the Soviet Union had their own bomb and had recovered from the war (mainly by looting the Germans) and could begin the Cold War.
- Absolutely, King Louis XIV of France. Known during his reign as the Sun King, it was an apt title as he pretty much had every single European nation practically revolve around him, willingly or not. Apart from being amongst the most stylish, opulent, and arrogant monarchs in European history, he was at the center of virtually every single major war on European soil during his reign, increasing his power at the expense of his rivals, the Austrian Hapsburgs. At one point, he tried to place his own grandson on the Spanish throne, which had long been ruled by the Hapsburgs, and succeeded. Though France seemed to lose most of the major wars, Louis always managed to not lose anything significant, and at times, seemed to get exactly or close to exactly what he wanted in the first place. Try as they might to dislodge him, Louis still managed to be the longest-reigning monarch in European history. Unfortunately, his successors inherited none of his magnificence.
- Three words: Juan Carlos I. When Francisco Franco agreed to change Spain from a dictatorship to an absolute monarchy, he started trying to groom the 'Prince of Spain', Juan Carlos, into a good successor who'd maintain the authoritarian state. The prince went along with this, publicly supporting Franco, enduring harsh criticism from reformists and moderates all over... Until Franco fell gravely ill in 1975 and handed him absolute authority as King. Only a couple of days after Franco's death, Juan began to institute reforms at an incredible pace, turning Spain from western Europe's strictest dictatorship into a functional parliamentary democracy in less than three years.
|
|
