For: Villain (disambiguation)

A villain (also known in film and literature as the "bad guy," "black hat" or "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."

Etymology

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 Villain comes from the Anglo-French and Old French vilein, which itself descends from the Late Latin word villanus meaning "farmhand." 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 referred to a person of less than knightly status and so came to mean a person who was not chivalrous. As a result of many unchivalrous acts, such as treachery or rape, being considered villainous, in the modern sense the word, it became used as a term of abuse and eventually 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.

When a character performed only these acts, the character was a pure villain. Various villains also perform other functions in a fairy tale; a witch who fought the hero and ran away, which let the hero follow her, was also performing the task of "guidance" and thus acting as a helper.Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, p 81 ISBN 0-292-78376-0

The functions could also be spread out among several characters. If a dragon acted as the villain but was killed by the hero, another character -- such as the dragon's sisters -- might take on the role of the villain and pursue the hero.