For: Villain (disambiguation) A villain (sometimes, the "heavy") is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, 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." In an interview seen on the DVD release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Ricardo Montalban says that he realized early in his career that the best type of villain does not see himself as villainous. He may do villainous things, but the character feels that he is doing them for righteous reasons. Likewise, with heroes, Montalban said he always tried to find a flaw in the character because no one is completely good or completely evil. He then compared Khan to this, saying that while Khan had a rather distorted view of reality and therefore comes the villainous acts, he still feels that his acts of vengeance against Captain Kirk is a noble cause because of the death of his wife whom he loved dearly.

Word origin

image:Villains before going to Work receiving their Lord's Orders Miniature in the Proprietaire des Choses Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century Library of the Arsenal in Paris.png The etymology of the word is probably Middle English villein from Old French villain, in turn from Late Latin villanus, meaning serf or peasant, someone who is bound to the soil of a villa, which is to say, worked on the equivalent of a plantation in late Antiquity, in Italy or Gaul. It meant a person of less than knightly status, and so came to mean a person who was not chivalrous; because many unchivalrous acts, such as treachery or rape, are villainous in the modern sense, and because the word was used as a term of abuse, it took on its modern meaning.

Folk and fairy tales

• a story-initiating villainy, where the villain caused harm to the hero or his family,
• a conflict between the hero and the villain, either a fight or other competition
• pursuing the hero after he has succeeded in winning the fight or obtaining something from the villain.

None of these acts must necessarily occur in a fairy tale, but when they occurred, the character that performed them was the villain. The villain therefore could appear twice: once in the opening of the story, and a second time as the person sought out by the hero.