Do Villains Need Backstory? (Guest Post by Vashti Valant)

The question of whether evil is born or bred lies at the heart of many works of fiction. From Frankenstein to Harry Potter, glimpses of “villains’ ” or “monsters’ ” perspectives are usually given to provoke that discussion. Of course, there are also those who decide to keep their villains’ secrets. Here are some bad guys whose motivation we never really learn. They’re just evil, plain and simple.

The eye of Sauron may keep watch and his voice is heard from time to time, but we really only get a few brief accounts of his masterful manipulation of all Middle Earth, creating and gifting the rings of power to each race and saving an all-controlling ring for himself.

Other than that, he’s more of a looming threat than hands-on villain (maybe he would have been more directly involved if he had more of a body to work with). He has henchmen and minions that do his dirty work, but there is never any insight into why he went about subjugating the races of Middle Earth. While some history for Sauron is provided in the Silmarillion, in the more popular Lord of the Rings, Sauron is simply an evil that must be vanquished for the survival of all.

Similarly, the Emperor in Star Wars gets little backstory, even in the three prequels. Darth Vader’s fall from protective Jedi knight to a Sith Lord and the Emperor’s right-hand man are well explained, but how did Palpatine become a Sith? He proves adept at planning and deception, working his way into the established governmental system before setting off a chain reaction that would trigger a coup. Was he born with the Dark Side already flowing through him or, like Vader, was he turned from a different path?

While Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein goes out of its way to give the monster a voice, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is told only from the letters and diaries of those fighting the Transylvanian vampire. How someone becomes a vampire and how to kill a vampire are covered, but only some vague speculation regarding Count Dracula’s pre-vampire days. Nor do the brigade of vampire-hunters care. That is actually a common trait among the heroes of these stories: they have very few if any qualms about their actions. If they debate or question anything along the way, it is restricted to means, method, the plan of action; there’s never a doubt about the desired outcome.