Basic Trope: The main character, viewpoint character, and protagonist of a story, is also the story's villain.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz is the protagonist of the story Emperor Evulz Takes Over the World, which contains Exactly What It Says on the Tin (of course). He acts in every way like a traditional Evil Overlord Big Bad, but is the main character who narrates the story.
- Exaggerated: Evulz is a both a Complete Monster and Card-Carrying Villain, who mercilessly and repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to lampshade how he's the villain.
- Downplayed:
- The focus necessarily isn't on Evulz, but it is focusing on the misadventures of General Drake, Head Scientist Butcherstein, and Clay the Psychopathic, Left-Handed Glaswegian.
- Nominal Hero protagonist
- Anti-Villain Protagonist
- The characters in the story can't be neatly divided into good guys and bad guys, but on the shades of grey within the show, Evulz is an obviously darker shade of the morality spectrum.
- The protagonist is a Well-Intentioned Extremist and genuinely believes that his actions will create a better world. He might have been an actual hero, if not for the horrific measures he takes to achieve his goals.
- "Villain" maybe too strong of a word, but the protagonist is certainly a Jerkass.
- The protagonist is a Lovable Rogue Gentleman Thief based on the stereotypical thief in the average heist movie, and has some sort of strict moral code.
- The protagonist is evil but his enemies are much worse.
- Despite being evil, the protagonist works with the good guys.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist
- Villain Deuteragonist.
- Villain Episode.
- Justified:
- The story is Evulz writing down his memoirs for posterity: Obviously he'll not be able to use anyone but himself as the viewpoint character.
- Evulz is on trial.
- Its an Evil Versus Evil setting, and thus would be impossible to have anyone but a villain be the main character.
- The story is about Evulz' Heel Realization.note
- Inverted:
- The Hero Antagonist, who is typically the main opponent of a Villain Protagonist.
- Hero Protagonist and Villain Antagonist, the traditional roles for the good guy and bad guy in most stories.
- Subverted:
- The story starts of with Emperor Evulz for the first half of the book, before suddenly switching viewpoint and main-characterhood to Bob Badass instead.
- Emperor Evulz is Good All Along.
- Emperor Evulz does start out as unreptantly evil, but he gradually becomes less evil, or outright makes a Heel–Face Turn.
- Double Subverted:
- It eventually switches back to Evulz for the final chapters, who remains the protagonist for the rest of the book. The parts narrated by Bob turn out to be unimportant in the grand scale of the story's narrative.
- Evulz is an Unreliable Narrator who really is a villain, but has been trying to paint himself more sympathetically.
- Parodied:
- Evulz starts the story by beating up the narrator and taking his protagonist-hood via Hostile Show Takeover. The entire rest of the story concerns Evulz abusing his narrator privileges to turn the narrative into a bad case of Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue", while the Bob tries to break free from the story and boot Evulz out of the narrator seat.
- Emperor Evulz is a bumbling Harmless Villain and the story is about his repeated failures in proving himself to be more competent than he seems.
- Despite still being villainous and heroic respectively, Evulz constantly makes heroic speeches that would fit right in with The Cape, while the hero Bob cackles and raves like a supervillain on his plans for world peace.
- Zig Zagged:
- The story constantly switches viewpoint characters. Emperor Evulz is only one of them and is only the protagonist ever so often.
- The protagonist is a Heel–Face Revolving Door
- The protagonist is in a Video Game where depending on your choices, you can either be a Villain Protagonist, a Hero Protagonist, or a neither good or evil protagonist.
- The protagonist is Elliot, a Nice Guy who's most-well known for playing the villain Emperor Evulz in a Show Within a Show.
- Averted:
- Emperor Evulz is The Hero. The story is a standard following of his hero's journey to take down Bob Badguy.
- No Campaign for the Wicked
- Enforced:
- The writer wants to make a story where the main character is a bad guy who gets defeated at the end so we can see the rise and fall of a villain.
- The writer wants to make the villain the main character for the audience to relate and identify with.
- Lampshaded:Emperor Evulz: "Admire me? You fools. Do you not know that I'm the villain of this tale."
- Invoked: The land was taken over by the Forces of Goodness long ago; what with there being no more conflicts, the only way the story can have anything to do is if it follows up-and-coming wannabe Emperor Evulz on his path to upsetting the status quo.
- Exploited: The antagonists know that Evulz is the protagonist, so they create their own Hero Antagonist just to stir up a conflict between them.
- Defied: Evulz begins the story by ensuring us all that he is the hero, and this will not be one of those 'follow the villain stories'.
- Discussed: Evulz and Bob have a discussion over the traditional narrative roles of hero and villain, and note that so far Evulz has been the one to go through the traditional hero's journey even though his goal is the evil one.
- Conversed: Evulz and Bob are watching a show where the villain is the main character, and have the above conversation.
- Deconstructed:
- Having Evulz in charge does in no way lessen his villainy, causing the whole story to turn into a serious case of Black-and-Gray Morality where the distant and ineffectual heroes have no connection to the audience and the only people given care and attention are unsympathetic and evil. All the events that would normally be Offscreen Villainy in a traditional story gets described in livid detail, showcasing just how horrible villains are in such stories and how many lives get lost while the heroes tarry and go through their personal flaws and demons.
- Due to being a villain protagonist, Evulz is as disgustingly overpowered as you'd expect a hero to be. This allows him to absolutely lay waste to any and all opposition in his way, causing him to be a Karma Houdini who can get away with anything because nobody is strong enough to actually challenge his might.
- After using the power of New Game Plus to rebirth himself, Evulz becomes Malevulz. However due to the butterfly effect, he eventually gets his ass kicked by the heroes who make it a point to ensure that Malevulz is Deader than Dead.
- Reconstructed: When the heroes finally turn up, they turn out to be good and nice people, even as Evulz's viewpoint tries (and fails) to paint them in an unflattering light. Evulz eventually gets defeated in a traditional fight in the climax, with the final chapters being him lamenting his position from inside his Tailor-Made Prison and swearing eternal vengeance as goodness and light falls across the liberated land once more.
- Played For Laughs: Emperor Evulz is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist or a Heroic Comedic Sociopath with a 'villanous' goal, Laughably Evil, or a Harmless Villain whose 'Evil Plan' is villainous but completely harmless.
- Played For Drama: Emperor Evulz does some truly horrifying things. The story treats him with every bit of reverence as deserved and does not sugarcoat any of his horrible deeds.
Now follow this link back to Villain Protagonist if it pleases you, your vile troperness.
