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"Let me relieve you of your head! Bwahaha!"

Lekain: You're quite tenacious for a heron. I thought your entire fragile race had been exterminated...
Reyson: Evil... You are pure evil. I hear it in your heart. How do you even survive?
Lekain: How pathetic. Hated by a heron, the only sub-human so weak as to actually be incapable of violence. This must feel just like the massacre to you: completely helpless before your inevitable doom!

Fire Emblem has many characters, and the villains come in many varieties, but only a few are Complete Monsters.note 
Folders are based off information from here and here. In each folder, entries are organized by game release date.

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!


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Archanea/Valentia/Jugdral Timeline

    Examples 
  • Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light & Mystery of the Emblem (includes remakes): Gharnef the Dark Pontifex was once a pupil of the great Gotoh. Enraged at being passed over for his fellow pupil Miloah, Gharnef stole the Darksphere and gave himself wholly to evil. Reviving the Shadow Dragon Medeus, Gharnef started a world war to devastate entire kingdoms; murdered Miloah; and manipulated his allies to ruin through various tactics—including kidnapping their children—then leaving them to die once they were no longer helpful to him. Gharnef even planned to backstab Medeus to rule the world himself. Returning after his supposed death, Gharnef used Eremiya, a kind bishop who, devastated by the loss of her orphanage, had been brainwashed by Gharnef into kidnapping children as Child Soldiers for him. Starting a new war to see the world destroyed, Gharnef even restored Eremiya's mind in her final moments all to bask in her final, despairing screams at the horror of what she had done.
  • Gaiden note : Desaix is the chancellor of Zofia and the head of a rebellion to overthrow King Lima of IV and seize the throne for personal gain. He clandestinely murdered many of the children fathered in Lima's Royal Harem to keep away any and all rivals to the throne. When Sir Mycen tried to stop him, Desaix put the blame on him and had him banished. One particular instance involved a fire, during which Desaix ordered Slayde to kill both Princess Anthiese, better known as Celica, and Prince Conrad during the king and the royal guard's absence, as well as killing everyone else in the royal villa in order to avoid witnesses. By the game's beginning, Desaix conquered the Zofian castle and killed King Lima. Although the Deliverance was formed in order to oppose Desaix, he manages to capture the Zofian knight Mathilda, Clive's lover, to use as leverage to force his surrender. After suffering a defeat from the Deliverance led by Alm, Desaix retreats to his fortress and announces Mathilda's execution as a show of power. When the Deliverance arrives, he orders his archers to kill her slowly and painfully. Although he claimed he could be a better king than the hedonistic Lima, Desaix is nothing more than a power-hungry, traitorous, and murderous man driven by personal ambition rather than the good of Zofia.
  • Mystery of the Emblem: Duke Lang of Adria betrayed his nation to the Dragon Empire of Dolhr so he could rob from his own people. When Dolhr started losing, Lang defected back to Archanea. Taking advantage of the now Emperor Hardin's Despair Event Horizon, Lang gets himself appointed as Overseer of Grust, a defeated nation that in the previous war allied with Dolhr. The sadistic Lang commits various atrocities on Grust, including killing men that could oppose him; capturing young girls to rape and pimp; ordering the massacre of family members of those who participated in the rebellion; and executing the preteen heirs of Grust. When confronted over his actions, Lang tries to put the blame for his action on the Emperor so he could trick his foes into letting their guard down. Selfish, loyal to no one and willing to do anything to satisfy his own greed and sadism, Lang is among the worst Archanea has to offer.
  • Genealogy of the Holy War: Bishop Manfroy is a Dark Priest and leader of the Loptousian cult. Manfroy was determined to obtain revenge on the entire continent of Grannvale for forcing him to live in the desert, and thus spends years patiently paving the way for the return of the evil dragon, Loptous. Using assassination and manipulation, Manfroy creates a massive war, which initiates the chaos necessary for his plans. To create Loptous's vessel, Manfroy kidnaps Deirdre, the wife of Sigurd, cruelly and gleefully erases all her memories of her beloved husband and son, and places her for his pawn Arvis to find, fall in love with and marry, despite the fact that she is his unknown half-sister. With his goal achieved, Manfroy awakens Loptous in Deirdre's son Julius and sets about constructing a nightmarish dictatorship where children are sacrificed and any who resist are massacred. In the end, Manfroy, with nothing less than sadistic relish, exerts mind control over Julius's twin sister Julia to make her kill her beloved friends. In his cameo in the Interquel, Thracia 776, it is revealed that Manfroy murdered his own son-in-law, and drives his own daughter into madness. If Manfroy's granddaughter, Sara, is not recruited, Manfroy will zombify his own granddaughter into one of the Deadlords to do his bidding. Manfroy manipulated everyone around him, was cruel even to his own family, and enacted a endless regime of nightmarish suffering on the entire continent. It is clear that Manfroy has abandoned all potential good qualities solely to facilitate his own greed and personal desire for revenge.
  • Awakening:
    • Validar, the leader of the Grimleal cult and the Archnemesis Dad of Robin, desires nothing less than to bring his draconian master, Grima the Fell Dragon, into existence. Eugenically breeding his child to be an ideal vessel for the evil god, Validar's plots were initially foiled by his wife, who spirited the baby away, causing him to decide to lie low for more than a decade. He takes over the country of Plegia following the apparent demise of its ruler, King Gangrel, and promises aid to Ylisse, Plegia's traditional enemy in whose army the now-grown Robin serves, against The Empire of Valm; secretly, Validar only does this to corrupt Robin and eliminate Valm's threat to himself. Once Valm is defeated, Validar betrays Ylisse and steals its holy relic, the Fire Emblem, to use to unseal Grima. Validar takes over the minds of the majority of his country's population, forcing them to march on foot toward a Grimleal holy site and then tries to make them commit a mass suicide to offer their souls to the Fell Dragon. Throughout the game, the one human he appears to be close to is his right-hand woman Aversa, but it is eventually revealed that when she was a young girl, he massacred her family and then edited her memories to cause her to believe he had saved her life after their murders.
    • Grima himself is the self-proclaimed Fell Dragon. Attempting to destroy humanity with his human proxy, Grima is stopped by Naga and the First Exalt. Before his sealing, Grima created the Grimleal, a cult of madmen that worships Grima as a god—despite Grima faking being a god—and dedicates itself to eugenically creating another vessel for Grima to possess. After a thousand years, the cult eventually produced a successful vessel, Robin, but they escaped. In an alternate timeline, Grima possessed Robin, keeping his spirit conscious, so must watch Grima kill all his friends and exterminate humanity. Grima taunts survivors about killing their parents, and mocks Robin's loved ones about stealing his body. When Lucina escapes to an alternate past, Grima follows her back, taking control of the Grimleal. Grima takes control of many Plegians to make them commit a mass sacrifice to revive his past self, intending to kill the past Robin after refusing to be the vessel for the Past Grima. Omnicidal, sadistic, and uncaring about even his closest followers, Grima lives up to his title.
    • Death's Embrace DLC: While the main Algol is just an ineffectual Grimleal, this Outrealm version is far more monstrous. Part of an evil cult, he is in the business of assassination. He grew tired of normal humans constantly failing him thanks to their inherent weaknesses, leaving him with a desire to create the perfect assassins. To that end, Algol dabbled in necromancy, finding the dead to be more much efficient and subservient. He's had his undead assassins massacre villages, the actual number long left his memory, including the one Chrom and the Shepherds find at the start of the DLC. While the rest die away, Algol kidnaps the ones who fought the hardest and, before he converts them into Risen, he manipulates them in their dying moments to convert them to his side from beyond the grave. His victims retain a semblance of their humanity even afterwards but can do nothing but kill in service of Algol. His masterpiece, a Risen Chief, suffered a similar fate but is in a more crudely abominated state. In the ensuing fight, Algol's base of operation is lined with powerful spikes that badly hurt both the Shepherds and his "children." Though he fully intends to leave, Algol sticks around long enough to see the Shepherds suffer. A Card-Carrying Villain with boundless sadism and working off bloodlust, the alternate Algol is a surprisingly dark villain for someone so minor in the grand scheme of things.

Tellius Timeline

    Example 
  • Path of Radiance: Ashnard, the "Mad King" and the pinnacle of a Social Darwinist, became the King of Daein by getting his father to sign a blood pact, and then invoking it, killing everyone who was in his way to the throne, as well as countless other innocent people. He then proceeded to kill his own father, therefore becoming king. After finding out about the Dark God (really the goddess of chaos, Yune) sealed in Lehran's Medallion, he decides to release it. This requires a war that spans the whole continent, so he decides to begin by invading the next country over. He also, after finding out that his own son Soren was unable to transform into a dragon like the child's mother Almedha used to be able to, decides to hold him captive to get hold of the kid's uncle, the oldest son of the king of Goldoa. He then proceeds to warp Rajaion's body and turn him into something resembling a wyvern, and then uses him as a mount. His ideal world, the one that he wishes to create, is one where the only thing that matters is power.
  • Radiant Dawn:
    • Izuka, Ashnard's demented chief scholar and a Beorc Mad Scientist, is no less evil than his master. In his brief cameo in Path of Radiance, he appears onscreen just long enough for it to be revealed that he is the developer of the Feral Ones, Laguz who are forcibly mode-locked into their beast forms and driven insane to be used as Cannon Fodder. In his base at Gritnea Tower it is revealed he has a basement devoted to storing the corpses of his experiments' victims. Izuka takes on a much greater role in the second game, where he has been hired by Lekain to bend Daein to Begnion's whims. He takes on the role of strategist to Daein's weak-willed Prince Pelleas, where it is demonstrated that he would gladly sacrifice good strategy for pointless destruction. He injects the innocent Muarim with the Feral One drug, which would have annihilated his mind if not for Rafiel's intervention. When Begnion offers to make peace with Daein, Izuka springs his trap, telling Pelleas to sign a "peace treaty" that is actually a Blood Pact, mystically binding Pelleas and thus all of Daein into virtual slavery to Begnion. Finally, it is revealed that he's tested his drug on the Beorc, his own race, too, including turning Elincia's noble Uncle Renning into the Tragic Monster known as General Bertram.
    • Vice-Minister Lekain, Duke of Gaddos, is a high-ranking politician of the Theocracy of Begnion and senior-most member of the country's corrupt senate who is driven by his insatiable desire for more power and hatred for the Laguz. When Begnion's Empress Misaha emancipated the country's Laguz slaves and planned to reveal that the royal lineage of Begnion was Branded, Lekain had her poisoned, then, pinning the crime on the peaceful Heron Laguz, whipped his countrymen into a genocidal frenzy, reducing the Herons' population from thousands to four in a single night. He then conspired for Misaha's young granddaughter Sanaki and a young senator by the name of Sephiran to be elevated to the positions of Empress and Prime Minister respectively, the only positions higher than his own, while he held the real power from the shadows. After Daein lost the war to Crimea, Lekain had the defeated nation annexed by Begnion, and gave Duke Numida and General Jarod free reign to do what they pleased with it. When Daein declared independence, Lekain tricked its new king, Pelleas, into making a Blood Pact with him, a mystical document that conscripts one nation in service to another under penalty of its citizens dropping dead one by one. Using this magic Lekain enslaves Pelleas and the Daein army to act as his accomplices in a war which Lekain plans to use to wipe the Laguz species off the face of the Earth.

Others

    Examples 
  • The Blazing Blade has two Morphs who prove to be worse than Nergal himself:
    • Ephidel is one of Nergal's most trusted and wicked Morphs. Preying on the envy and power lust of Lord Darin, the Marquess of Laus, to organize a rebellion against Ostia, Ephidel intends on the quintessence of all the dead to be harvested in a prospective Civil War. Gleefully sending his forces to murder the young heir Eliwood and his friends under the pretension of scaring them off, Ephidel stabs his reluctant ally Marquess Santaruz for calling him out on his actions and leaves him to die a drawn-out death. Ephidel convinces Darin to send his son Erik to eliminate Eliwood and when that fails, abandon him to likely death. In their subsequent attack on the neighboring Caelin lands, Ephidel attempts to murder the local Lord Hausen to further ensnare Darin, privately relishing his control over the man after the remaining Laus army—and eventually the renegade Marquess himself—are left to die as distractions. Discovering Leila, the rookie Black Fang operative, is a spy, Ephidel has her murdered and strung up for Eliwood's allies to find the body. Later manipulating the brainwashed dragon girl Ninian to open the Dragon's Gate, Ephidel taunts Eliwood and his friends over the unleash horrific devastation being unleashed upon the world.
    • Sonia Reed, one of the chief Morphs of the mad sorcerer Nergal, is a heartless seductress who wins the heart of Brendan Reed of the Black Fang. Subverting the Fang to Nergal's purposes and using them to cause conflict and enact assassinations, Sonia commits them to bloody conflicts to harvest quintessence for Nergal's plots. Getting one of Brendan's sons killed, Sonia is also a horrifically abusive mother to her daughter Nino, whom she adopted on Nergal's orders after murdering Nino's family. Sending Nino on an assassination, she gives orders to murder her as a "scapegoat", while later cutting down Brendan himself. Fancying herself a perfect human, Sonia intends to assist in the opening of the gates to the dragon realm, uncaring of the mass bloodshed.
  • The Sacred Stones: The Demon King Fomortiis, especially on Eirika's route, shows himself to be a particularly depraved and sadistic monster. After possessing the Prince of the Grado Empire, Lyon, Fomortiis resurrects Lyon's father into a soulless puppet and uses him to initiate a series of brutal invasions to destroy the Sacred Stones of the other countries that have sealed the rest of him away. With a huge war and massive amounts of death, Fomortiis eventually reveals himself while also reviving monsters and undead creatures to run rampant throughout the land and kill those in their path. In Eirika's route, where Fomortiis possesses the prince completely, Fomortiis explicitly leaves a part of his mind intact to torment him as Fomortiis destroys everything around him, and also kills the heroic dragon king Morva before reviving him as an undead abomination while seeking to corrupt and dominate the world itself.
  • Fates:
    • Hans is a Nohrian criminal previously arrested for murder who, after his release from prison, served as a soldier for the Nohrian army. When ordered by King Garon to test Corrin's abilities, on what was meant to be a simple recon mission, Hans murdered a Hoshidan to initiate a conflict. Despite initiating the conflict as ordered, Hans continued to try and kill more Hoshidans for fun, abandoned the group during the conflict, and later on attacked Corrin on a bridge, needlessly trying to kill Gunter in the process. In the Birthright route, Hans gets promoted to a commander, and demands that his men fight against each other for real saying that he wants to see real blood. When he finds Corrin and the group, he orders his men to throw their lives away if it means weakening Corrin, and threatens to have King Garon kill the families of those who hesitate. In the Conquest route, when ordered to suppress a rebellion occurring in Cheve, Hans ignores the rebellion and decides to slaughter innocent villagers who took no part in it. He later gleefully kills Hoshidan prisoners who were promised to be spared if they surrendered. Hans is willing to do anything if it means he'll get ahead in life, and while he claims to kill out of loyalty for King Garon, Hans only follows Garon's orders if it means he can be rewarded for what he loves doing.
    • Iago, the right-hand tactician of King Garon of Nohr, excels at sorcery and illusions. In Birthright, Iago tries to instigate a feud between Corrin and the Wind Tribe by disguising some of the tribalists as Faceless to be killed. Later, Iago cruelly attacks Flora despite being in the wrong, tries to have Corrin and their group digested alive by a resurrected Fort Dragonfall, and is implied to be behind Takumi's aggressive state. In Conquest, fueled by nothing more than contempt for Corrin, Iago constantly tries to get the heroes slain, including a Faceless ambush in the Woods of the Forlorn and telling the warring Hoshidans where they'll be. In one notable instance, a Faceless tries to attack Corrin, but this results in Lilith's demise instead; Iago remarks he never liked her anyway. By the time Nohr's invasion begins, Iago's worst crime is his enabling and organization of the genocidal conquest of Hoshido, personally slaughtering anyone who stands in the way of Nohr, and relishing in the violence he causes. Finally, his dislike reaches the point where he outright attacks Corrin at the end of the route in front of the Nohrian siblings, going against his own king's initial orders. Manipulative and cruel, none of the heroes approved of Iago's actions, and even the peace-loving Corrin wanted him dead.
    • Kotaro, the Daimyo of the Kingdom of Mokushu, is a cold-blooded tyrant driven entirely by his own ambitions of conquest and power. Making a secret deal with King Garon to aid in his invasion of Hoshido in exchange for gaining its territory after the war's end, Kotaro plays both sides to maintain the illusion of neutrality, capturing and executing any Hoshidans who visit Mokushu to ensure no one knows of his dealings. Before the events of the story, Kotaro had a dispute with Saizo and Kaze's father, whom Kotaro proceeded to murder in cold blood for lecturing him on the inhumanity of his actions. Invading the nation of Kohga some time after, Kotaro launched a genocidal invasion on the peaceful nation, slaughtering entire villages and killing all of Shura's friends and family while scattering the few survivors. While he attacks completely unprovoked in Birthright and Revelation, he holds off due to his alliance with Nohr in Conquest, which leads to Corrin and his allies discovering him holding Kagero hostage, making Kotaro act to kill them all as a "tragic accident". As a final insult, Kotaro gloats about all the suffering he caused, and taunts that he will build his new castle over the graves of his enemies.
  • Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE: Gharnef and music producer Yatsufusa Hatanaka are the duo responsible for the turmoil in the story. After Gharnef is banished following his attempt to destroy the world with the Shadow Dragon Medeus, he meets the equally vile Hatanaka, and the two sacrifice an entire opera house full of people to Medeus. Seemingly beaten back, the two attack present-day Tokyo with their monstrous Mirages, attempting to revive Medeus again, Hatanaka laughing as they sap people of energy for their plot. When encountered for the final time, both eventually give their souls to power Medeus, intent on destroying the world at all costs.
  • Heroes:
    • Book II: Surtr, the King of Muspell, expresses a lust for carnage and domination. He begins by invading the Kingdom of Nifl, and caps off the conquest by burning Fjorm's mother alive before her eyes. To oppose the Order of Heroes, Surtr forms an alliance with the Embla Empire, but quickly reveals his intent to burn the young Princess Veronica alive slowly and painfully in the Rite of Flames. Surtr tries to force an early surrender from Prince Alfonse by forcing the Order to choose between their lives and an innocent Askran village. Later, when Fjorm's older sister Gunnthra enlists the help of the Summoner and the Order to cull Surtr's invulnerable Muspellflame, he finds Gunnthra and proceeds to incinerate her in front of Fjorm, mocking the girl all the while. Showing no regard to even his own people, Surtr kept the village of his top soldier Helbindi, including his younger sister Menja, under the threat of a fiery death should he fail, a fate which unfortunately comes to pass. His boundless cruelty even extends to his daughters, who are treated as expendable tools he expects to obey his will and take every punishment for failure. Eventually betraying Veronica and even kidnapping the youngest princess of Nifl, Ylgr, Surtr plans to have them sacrificed to sustain his immortality. A sadistic and heartless excuse of a tyrant, Surtr provides no reason for his senseless and disgusting evil other than it being the blood right of a king.
    • Book III: Hel, ruler of the homonymous realm of the dead, seeks to have whole populations forcibly join her ranks so that she can dominate the Nine Worlds. Her campaigns have brought desolation to many alternate lands directly or indirectly, including Lif and Thrasir's worlds, where she manipulated their despair over their failures to gain their assistance in her cause. In the present day, Hel and her entourage have targeted Askr and Embla, slowly but surely killing more individuals through murder or curses to add as undead soldiers unable to fight back against her thrall, including Gustav, Alfonse's father. Most horrifically, Hel murdered Eir's real parents, constantly tormented her to steal her many lives for empowerment, and expected complete obedience for a suicide mission. Cold and dispassionate, Hel was nothing more than a ruthless excuse for a goddess of death.
    • Book VII: Njörðr is the king of Vanaheimr who secretly despises mortals for continuously growing in numbers yet also being inferior to the gods who are declining, and plots to end every single mortal through the erasure of time itself. As part of his plan, Njörðr would order Seiðr to have a baby with Kiran so that Heiðr would be born, and would then proceed to transfer the Golden Seer's curse on her, turning Heiðr into a monster. When Kiran and Seiðr are forced to kill her, the curse would then transfer to Seiðr, beginning her transformation into Gullveig, with Njörðr gloating on how he masterminded the situation and intending to turn Gullveig into his pawn to destroy all of time.
  • Three Houses:
    • Thales is the chief member of "Those Who Slither in the Dark", and a ruthless schemer dedicated to achieving the power of the gods. Approving ghastly experiments on multitudes of innocents to destroy their minds, Thales initiated a massacre of nobles to blame an innocent land, resulting in the near genocide of its people, oversaw the killing and replacing of many members of the Church, threw "Javelins of Light" to obliterate fortresses, and manipulated the war of the Flame Emperor in order to tear the country apart and destroy its people. Having his own forces kill those they can to revive the monstrous Nemesis and unleash him on the world, Thales even spitefully tries to nukes his own base and the last stronghold of his people to kill the heroes upon defeat.
    • Solon, Thales's Mad Scientist, is responsible for horrendous experiments on many innocent people, even children, to destroy them and twist them into monstrosities that his group and allies may use as weapons. Having murdered and replaced kind librarian Tomas to infiltrate the Church of Seiros, Solon kidnapped Monica as a means to have her father potentially deliver a Hero's Relic to his group and to have Kronya use her body for when she infiltrates Garreg Mach, and drove the people of Remire Village insane though his blood experiments to see them rip one another apart, just to see what would happen. Willing to sacrifice members of his own orgnization, such as Kronya, to further his goals, Solon stands out as one of the worst members of an already evil organization.
    • Nemesis, the "King of Liberation", was in reality a barbarically power-hungry warlord who was the catalyst for the bloody history of Fódlan that unfolded down the line. Originally a bandit, Nemesis became associated with the original members of "Those Who Slither in the Dark", who asked him to murder Sothis, the Progenitor God, while she slept. With her remains, they created the Sword of the Creator from her spine and gave him the Crest of Flames by having him drink her blood. Subsequently, Nemesis stormed into Zanado, the city of the "Children of the Goddess", and slaughtered every Nabatean there to create more weapons like his from their remains and give his army more power by giving them crests from the Nabateans' blood; all so that he could declare himself the king of Fódlan. Being killed by Lady Seiros, the only survivor of the massacre, Nemesis is revived by Those Who Slither in the Dark in the Verdant Wind route, immediately going back to rampaging through cities to get back to Seiros for having killed him all those years ago.

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