Tragic Villain
A villain (also known in film and literature as the "antagonist," "baddie", "bad guy", or "black hat") is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist (though can be the protagonist), the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters. A female villain is sometimes called a villainess (often to differentiate her from a male villain). Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines villain as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot".
Read more about Tragic Villain: Etymology, Folk and Fairy Tales, Villainous Foil, Portraying and Employing Villains in Fiction, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words tragic and/or villain:
“It’s a tragic irony. The sick stayed well and the healthy became blind.”
—Philip Yordan (b. 1913)
“Hamlet. There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he’s an arrant knave.
Horatio. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
to tell us this.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)