Top Ten Tuesday – Book Villains

Villains: you love them, you hate them, your favourite books wouldn’t be the same without them. This week’s topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is dedicated to the best of the worst.

As an aside, when making this list I had to separate the literary villains from their film versions. Someone like Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs is memorable to me mainly because of Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal rather than the original novel, so these are my favourite picks based on books alone. 

1. Jadis the White Witch

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
Villains who represent the abstract evil don’t usually appeal to me all that much, but the tyrannical ruler of Narnia definitely captured my imagination, maybe because of her glamorous, seductive quality.

2. Dolores Umbridge

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
Voldemort might be the Big Bad of the wizarding world, but Dolores Umbridge is hands down its most despicable character, with a brand of evil that’s infinitely more ordinary and recognisable. Under her fluffy saccharine image, she is cruel, bigoted, authoritarian and power-hungry.

3. Patrick Bateman

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
I would file American Psycho under “books I’ll never read again”, but that’s not to take anything away from its villain protagonist, a shallow materialistic Wall Street yuppie who is secretly a psychotic serial killer.

4. Annie Wilkes

Misery by Stephen King
Annie Wilkes might be the ultimate toxic fan, and probably the scariest one. When she discovers that her beloved fictional heroine has been killed off by her favourite writer, who happens to end up in her care, things don’t go well for him. Kathy Bates’ terrifying portrayal in the film version is rightfully iconic, but it says a lot that Annie was actually toned down for the screen.

5. Vorbis

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
Discworld series has a gallery of memorable villains, but Deacon Vorbis, who heads what is basically the Discworld version of the Inquisition, is my pick. He is the embodiment of the wrong hands you never want the power to fall into, and worst of all, he turns other people into versions of himself.

6. Milady de Winter

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Milady is the ultimate femme fatale: beautiful, diabolically cunning, ruthless and manipulative. I was obsessed with The Three Musketeers as a teenager, and I absolutely loved to hate her.

7. Baba Yaga

Slavic folklore
Baba Yaga is a classic old witch who lives in a hut with chicken legs and flies around in a mortar. Interestingly, she is not always portrayed as evil. In some fairytales she’s a monster who eats children, while in others she is a wise woman who tests the heroes or offers them guidance.

8. Belikov

The Man in the Case by Anton Chekhov
Belikov, a teacher of Greek in a small Russian town, is not strictly speaking a villain, but he represents one of my least favourite sides of humanity. A rigid, anxious and joyless man, Belikov imprisons himself inside the set of written and unwritten rules, and imposes his fearful attitude on the rest of the town residents, who are too intimidated and cowardly to push back.

9. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
One of the most startling and macabre books I ever read, Perfume tells the story of a man born with a sense of smell more powerful than any other human’s. His mission in life is to create the most exquisite perfume that ever existed, and he’ll stop at absolutely nothing to fulfill it. A creepy, repulsive, yet horribly compelling character study.

10. Rebecca de Winter

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Mrs Danvers is a classic antagonist for a reason, but my personal favourite villain from the book never actually appears in it. Despite being dead, Rebecca has a powerful psychological influence on the living characters, especially the unnamed second Mrs de Winter who is made to feel hopelessly inadequate in comparison. In some ways, Rebecca triumphs in the end even from beyond the grave.