Writing Romance: Villain Love Interests
I should point out from the get-go that this is primarily focused on addressing a romance between a hero and a villain, though villain x villain ships will also be addressed in this discussion. I want to talk about what is needed to make a villain viable as a romantic interest for another character. In this case, I am primarily talking about making a villain worthy of a ship within the actual context of the medium, not just creating a thirst-worthy villain that generates a lot of smutty fanart. If the goal is to turn a villain you’re writing into someone swoon-worthy, we need to determine how this is done.
Firstly, we need to address that not all villains are created equal. Some villains are easier to convert into romantic partners than others. Roughly speaking, there are about 7 archetypes for us to address: Anti-Villains, Comedic Villains, Fallen Heroes, Partners in Crime, Henchmen, Nemeses, and Big Bads. And yes, these dynamics are allowed to overlap. With the obvious exception of the Big Bad, these villainous archetypes might be a major villain, but are rarely the endgame final boss of a story. Typically, they’re ultimately a minor threat to a greater evil, although not always. It should be noted that a big bad is not always the biggest threat in the story, just the most commonly faced one. Dr. Drakken is the Big Bad of Kim Possible and her archnemesis, but Shego is easily Kim’s biggest recurring threat.
THE ANTI-VILLAIN
The Anti-Villain is a character who is on the antagonistic side of a conflict, but is morally and personally a good person. Zuko from Avatar: the Last Airbender is a perfect example of a villainous foil to protagonist Aang. However, the story dedicates just as much time to showing his story and his arc as much as the heroes. The audience is allowed to see his struggles, shortcomings, insecurities, and his growth. That, paired with him becoming a certifiable hottie in Book 3 cemented Zuko as one of the most shipped characters in Avatar. Similar Anti-Villains like Scorpia from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Lotor from Voltron: Legendary Defender (until his contradictory and uncharacteristic re-write), and Poison Ivy from Harley Quinn are three villains with sympathetic enough desires and beliefs that the first two end up reforming into good guys by the show’s ending, while Poison Ivy is a villain in name only who keeps insisting she’s not an actual villain. Because the Anti-Villain tends to lack many traditional villainous traits, they have a high chance of redemption, and as such, frequently end up becoming late game teammates to the heroes, which increases their chance of creating romantic or sexual tension with a hero that can actually build into something.
THE COMEDIC VILLAIN
This villain is easily shipable because they’re so incompetent, stupid, relatable, or sympathetic that they’re not really a genuine threat to the heroes regardless of how evil their intentions or motivations. Jessie and James are the most iconic comedic villain ship to date, but other villains like Jack Spicer from Xiaolin Showdown, Ice King from Adventure Time, and Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb are all villains so charming, stupid, and inept that fans either actively ship them with someone, or would be okay with them finding a romantic partner in the canon of the series. Despite some of them being legitimate card-carrying villains and darn proud of it, they’re all so hopelessly harmless that their repeated failures endears the audience to how hard they try, yet ultimately fail. Many of these antagonists fall into the trope of the Friendly Enemy, such as Ice King, who can hang out with Finn and Jake to have chili together one week and then next week get into a fight with them because Ice King tried to kidnap a princess without her consent.
THE FALLEN HERO
The Fallen Hero was once a trusted friend and colleague to the main characters, but has since become a card-carrying villain, betraying everyone and everything they have ever known, usually in pursuit of power or vengeance. I’d say a good 99% of the time, the villain starts as a good guy in the story proper and then gets corrupted by another villain, so the Fallen Hero often ends up a Dragon with their corruptor being the Big Bad as Orocimaru was the Big Bad that corrupted Sasuke… at least at that point in the narrative. But every once in a while, you get a fallen hero villain whose fall the audience doesn’t see, leaving the audience with only the villainous aftermath and their heroic past filled in with backstory or flashbacks. However, the emotions hit much harder if the audience can form a bond with the villain before their Face-Heel Turn. This is by far the most angsty and emotionally impactful villain love interest, as the sense of betrayal and the pain of lovers fighting can have a visceral reaction in the reader or viewer. It’s a large part of why this is also one of the most effective villain love interest types. The characters and the audience already have a strong emotional attachment to the character, and now that they’re a villain, that emotional angst is worked over every time the hero and villain square up.
THE PARTNERS IN CRIME
This is the only ship dynamic that is strictly Villain x Villain. Partners in Crime is when two villains aid each other in their villainous schemes, and no matter how dangerous, evil, or amoral they may be, they love and care for one another. Blowing up a wing of a hospital is hard to find endearing in a villain x hero ship, but blowing up a wing of a hospital because the guy that donated it insulted your S/O? That’s a twisted kind of romantic. This ship dynamic is the epitome of “I would burn the world to the ground just to see the light dancing in your eyes.” A lot of the appeal of this dynamic is the juxtaposition between how they treat the hero(es) or world vs how they treat each other. While the Addams family are not actively villainous in personality or role whatsoever, they often make jokes about decapitation, homicide, Satanism, human sacrifice, gratuitous violence, witchcraft, and torture, which gives them a villainous coat of paint, if only one layer thick. It’s no surprise that Joker x Harley Quinn is the most famous example of this, despite how toxic and abusive their relationship is. While Partners in Crime can be a pair of seriously nasty types, they also have a tendency to be Comedic, such as Jessie and James or Shego and Dr. Drakken, or Anti-Villains like Harley and Poison Ivy in the Harley Quinn adult animated series.
THE HENCHMAN
The Goon, the Dragon, the Partner In Crime, the Henchman is a villain who is little more than a mini-boss, though that has some exceptions. Typically, the Henchman villain will intersect with another type. The outdated stereotype is of the seductive Femme Fatale second-in-command falling inexplicably in love with the male protagonist and aiding him for no real reason other than he’s kinda cute and the hero needs a way out. This has led to the common tendency for the genuinely villainous henchman to be redeemed through love, though if it overlaps with another type, it’ll tend to resolve another way. Shego from Kim Possible is probably the cleanest example. She is a straight up villainous Dragon to Dr. Drakken. Shego and Drakken are also both Comedic Villains and Partners in Crime, helping to endear the audience to Shego’s sarcastic ragging on Dr. D. Terra from Teen Titans is a Fallen Hero with a pre-existing relationship with all of the heroes but especially Beast Boy, and we spent several episodes being endeared to her before her betrayal. Mai and Ty Lee from Avatar: the Last Airbender are this to Azula, with Ty Lee even being shipped with Azula herself. Because Mai and Ty Lee are just henchmen following Azula’s orders, it’s easy for the audience to be more forgiving of their villainous actions, especially since they turned against Azula and stood up to her. They’re more Anti-Villains, simply being citizens of an Evil Empire, with Ty Lee only helping Azula because she was threatened, and Mai because she’s so bored and helping Azula gives her something to do.
THE NEMESIS
The Nemesis is a personal foe to the protagonist. Often overlaps with either a henchman, big bad, or fallen hero variety of villain. Catra from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a henchman nemesis to Adora, Slade from Teen Titans is a Big Bad nemesis to Robin, and Sasuke from Naruto is a Fallen Hero nemesis to Naruto. Of these three, the Big Bad Nemesis is the least common romantic choice. Catra and Sasuke get their fair share of shipping fodder, but characters like Slade or the Joker don’t tend to get paired with their hero nemesis very much, at least, not by the canon material. The Nemesis shares a benefit with the Fallen Hero. Being so closely linked to a specific hero drastically increases the sexual and/or romantic tension that plays out every time they fight. While not a canon ship in the show, Kim Possible may refer to Dr. Drakken as her nemesis, but she almost always ends up fighting Shego because Shego is the actual threat between the two of them. As such, Kim and Shego have been shipped together driven primarily by being nemeses. The nemesis tends to be more petty and emotional with the hero. There’s a more personal need to one-up each other and prove themselves superior. The nemesis is also more likely to use the hero’s flaws against them. More than most of the other villain ship dynamics, this one drips with inter-character related angst and drama.
THE BIG BAD
This is the one that only tends to work under a few circumstances. Typically, the Big Bad isn’t a very shippable character because they need to be defeated by the end of the story. So, the romantic Big Bad tends to primarily overlap with either: the Nemesis, the Partners in Crime, or the Fallen Hero. Big Bads that get a romantic subplot often end up being revealed to be the dragon to a bigger and more evil villain, such as with Lord Hordak in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. However, there is one variant that debunks this: the Big Bad with loved ones. A great example is Kingpin from Marvel comics. He is a villain, he is a legitimate threat, but he has a wife and child. In this context, the love interest of the villain does exist, but is rarely a major focus of the narrative. The villain is often driven or motivated by the grief of losing the people they love, or driven to desperation to be reunited with the people they care about. Honerva from Voltron: Legendary Defender is a very stupid and weak attempt at this, but does apply. When she becomes the end game villain, she is motivated by reconnecting with her family, even if she has to wipe out every other reality in the multiverse to do it. The last variant comes from the Only One Allowed to Kill You trope, where villains form a personal vendetta with the hero, treating their fights like some cosmic clash of ideologies, destined to remain in constant conflict. The Joker and Batman have this sort of relationship, as does Megatron and Optimus Prime. Often, this is more of a villain-sided thing, as heroes are usually surprised when villains save them to invoke this trope. It almost always overlaps with a Nemesis Big Bad, but takes it a step further because the villain is actively invested in their clashing with the hero. It’s more than just a fierce rivalry. All things considered, Big Bad villains with love interests are hard to write, and it’s easy to see why they don’t tend to show up very much.
ALWAYS A BIGGER FISH
While it’s not a strict rule, and people shipping Joker x Harley is clearly proof of this, the majority of the time, the villainous love interest is not the biggest baddest person in town. Catwoman is a small time thief, nowhere near the destructiveness of Joker. While villain love interests often convert to the side of good, that’s not the only reason why they’re typically smaller villains. For a villain to feel like a compelling love interest, they have to have an interesting dynamic with the hero. They have to be likable enough that them ending up with the hero feels like an acceptable outcome. Where they’re a small enough threat that even if their hero/villain dynamic never changes, the villain winning every once in a while isn’t the end of the world, allowing them to reach a nice equilibrium. It’s easier to pull this off with smaller villains because they don’t look as bad as the puppy kickers or world enders. If the final boss fight is between the hero and their villain love interest, it can only end one of two ways: the hero converts the villain to an ally, ending the conflict, or the pair have to fight, running the risk of turning it into a tragedy. Granted, they could be fighting because of an external thing like war, but in this context, the hero can either stop the thing that puts them and their love interest at odds, or talk their love interest into surrendering peacefully. A similar thing sometimes happens where reformed villain love interests aren’t always pushed by the love of a good woman to change. Sometimes, it’s literally jut a bigger more threatening villain comes along, and it arbitrarily puts the villain and hero on the same side, with the possibility for the alliance to end up sticking, as we see with Vegeta and Bulma in the Dragon Ball Franchise. Vegeta starts off as a Big Bad who nukes his own Henchman just to prove how evil he is, then Freeza poses a threat to all of them, and Vegeta slowly goes from Not Technically The Problem Right Now to Unofficial Token Evil Teammate, and eventually simmering down into Grumpy Anti-Hero mode.
THE TROPE IN ACTION: MEGAMIND
The entire premise of the movie is about the villain getting the girl, so what better way to address the dynamics I’ve discussed than with this movie? First things first is classifying Megamind’s villainy. He’s technically A Big Bad, just not THE Big Bad of the movie. He’s a Comedic Villain with his quirky mispronouncing words shtick and the general tone of the movie being a comedy as well. He evolves from a Big Bad to an Anti-Villain to a Reluctant Hero over the course of the film, growing tired of running rampant through the streets, only to find a new purpose in making Roxanne happy. The film also gives Megamind a Bigger Fish villain in the form of Tighten, contrasting the possessive incel mindset of Hal who feels Roxanne owes him her affections because he’s ‘the good guy’ with superpowers, while Megamind actually learns about who Roxanne is, why certain things matter to her, and then sets to fixing the city he wrecked because it’s important to Roxanne, which makes it important to him. Megamind isn’t even actively trying to win her heart. He bonds with her over how Metroman gave them both a sense of hope and purpose, and as he discovers more about Roxanne as a person, he begins to care about her, and funnels his energy into doing things for her sake. He doesn’t even technically take the credit for cleaning up the litter or returning stolen goods. She has no idea that she’s talking to Megamind, so all of these gestures come out of nowhere from her perspective, and Bernard (who Megamind is disguised as) has no connection to these little miracles as far as she’s aware. Because it’s not about proving it or winning brownie points with Roxanne for Megamind. He genuinely cares about her happiness and changes as a result of caring for her. Likewise, he steps up to being a hero because when Roxanne rejects Tighten, he decides to go full supervillain. And with Tighten threatening both the city, and more importantly, the woman Megamind was willing to change for, Megamind goes from trying to recreate his hero/villain relationship with Metroman to stepping up and becoming the good hero that rises up against the villain Tighten, save the day, and get the girl. Sorry to gush so hard. Megamind is just a seriously good movie and an excellent deconstruction and parody of the superhero genre that deserves more praise than it gets.
LOVING TO HATE THEM: CERSEI LANNISTER
Cersei Lannister is a fantastic villain. She’s undeniably evil, powerful, and dangerous, yet the viewer still finds her sympathetic to a certain extent. If you put a knife to my throat and asked me who is the Big Bad of Game of Thrones, I’d tell you it’s Cersei Lannister. She’s on screen moving the plot and serves as the political final challenge, where as The Night King is an external threat engame boss who is only actually seen in a small handful of episodes. Yet despite being a Big Bad, Cersei doesn’t easily land in any other category. You could say she’s a Partner in Crime with fellow Season 1 villain Jaime, but this dynamic doesn’t stick once he loses his swordfighting hand. She’s sort of vaguely an Anti-Villain, except she dies as a petty, jealous, vengeful woman. So, what is she exactly? Cersei is simply put: humanized. Cersei has very few sympathetic traits, but she is a loving mother, and despite her eldest son being a complete bastard, it still hurts to watch her cry in agony over his body because those screams of anguish belong to a grieving mother, not just to a villain whose evil scheme was just foiled. And as her children are taken from her one by one, the slow descent from condescending bitch to tyrannical overlord makes sense as each devastating loss makes her more and more heartless and careless about who she’s hurting. Cersei told Jeoffry in season 1 that their family are the only people in the world that matter, and now she’s alone in a world of people that don’t matter. Expendable extras to be used as pawns in her game of vengenace and petty self-satisfaction. Cersei is not a likeable person, but the failings and shortcomings of her love life are still compelling because of how she’s humanized.
Ultimately, Villain love interests are as numerous and varied as villainous backstories and motivations. What works for one villain doesn’t necessarily work for another. But hopefully, this analytical deep dive will give you the necessary tools to write your own villainous heartthrob. Just remember that there’s a difference between romanticizing villainy, making a villain sexy, and making a villain someone whose love life an audience will root for. The Joker is often romanticized, Aaravos is a nasty boy of the stupid sexy Satan variety, and Megamind is a Big Bad Heel-Face Turn Big Good motivated largely by the love of a good woman.
