In designing a good villain character there's a wide range of paths one can follow. From the grandiose villains that want to take over the world and live in volcano islands, waiting for the hero to fall into their elaborate death trap to humanized villains with complex backstories that explain why they have become this way: trauma, abuse, neglect, or simply being taught by an adult in such a way that corruption sets in early. There's also the ones with personality disorders that compel them to be catastrophic to their environment, both social and natural.

For this article, I'd like to talk about one of the potentially most dangerous and insidious types of villains with a motivation that, while humanizing them, does not make them sympathetic to the audience: the villain born of unjustified resentment.

This villain is usually very weak in some way or other: they may lack in looks, assets, family connections, popularity, or any other parameter that is valued within their society, even if their social circle doesn't. They are often propped up and helped by other characters who do have these things, but instead of being happy to get the help and/or work on building their own assets, they resent the helper. While, of course, taking and often abusing the help offered.

This resentment builds and builds until everything the helpers do is perceived as a slight on the resentful character. It blinds them to any reason and they seek to retaliate. And once they decide to do so (often when they are refused something they really want in some way), they cross the Rubicon from being annoying to becoming an actual villain.

A villain that remains invisible to the helper characters, because the helper characters never are privy to the resentment-filled hateful thoughts and logic this villain employs. And where they are potentially too potent for other villains to vanquish them, they are completely vulnerable to this one because they turn their back to this villain and trust them. And yes, the resentful villain is almost always a backstabber and a chameleon until irreparably exposed.

In the cover image I used, which comes from the latest c-drama I watched (Love of the Divine Tree if you're curious), the woman pictured is one such villain. The story is full of tremendously powerful wizard characters, able to bring people back from the dead and shatter the cosmos if they really put in the effort, and she is totally devoid of significant (or any) magic. She's a ‘normal mortal’ among powerful wizards on the road to becoming immortal, solely because her sister is one of them and she tags along.

And yet, out of all the (equally powerful and imposing) villains in the drama, the ‘normal mortal’ girl inflicts the biggest damage at the largest scale. Only because she is resentful of her sister for having the magic talents when she does not and deciding to destroy her.

There's a certain tragedy to such a villain, because the way they invest themselves in their effort to ‘get back’ at the characters they resent and envy, they prove that they do have capacity and potential for acquiring skills. They just invest it all in destruction rather than self-betterment, so in the end, after they run their arc and everyone abandons them or turns on them, they are left with less than what they had when they started of… except for their resentment.

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