How to transform a tragic hero into a villain?

Question

First things first: let there be a tragic hero with some (yet undefined) personal characteristics. Let there also be a grim world, in which the stories take place (no fairies, knights in shining armor and unicorns, please).

Now, from the standpoint of narrative, story telling and/or role playing, let's knock down the hero from the mountain of heroism deep into the pit of villainy. My question is: how to make such a transformation a great story? I.e. how to transform the hero into a villain in a theatrically rich way?

From an abstract perspective, a pitfall of a hero might involve some "powers that be" playing the weaknesses of a hero against his own, making him "lose it". A bonus sub-question is: which personal characteristics/weaknesses are a good starting point to prepare a pitfall?

And from the applied point of view, i'd really, really like to see examples that are distinct from the ever-lasting cliche of losing a loved one (an example: a good guy's wife dies, and so the guy decides to project this newly acquired pain of his on all the surroundings).

Answer 1

Borrow from the story of Walter White ^wikipedia

Might I suggest watching the AMC TV series Breaking Bad? ^wikipedia It is the story of the transformation of a low-key high school chemistry teacher into a drug lord.

American author and essayist Chuck Klosterman said that Breaking Bad is "built on the uncomfortable premise that there's an irrefutable difference between what's right and what's wrong, and it's the only one where the characters have real control over how they choose to live." ... the central question of Breaking Bad is "What makes a man 'bad' — his actions, his motives, or his conscious decision to be a bad person?" ...[I]n the world of Breaking Bad, "goodness and badness are simply complicated choices, no different than anything else."

The story of the downfall of a distressed man, not because of evil intent of others, but because of events random and of his own choice can be very compelling.

If you can't think up the reasons for someone to turn someone to the dark path, just take each item in Walter White's personal history and map it to something similar for your budding villain.

Here's some example possible mappings:

              Walter White          NPC
Job:          H.S. teacher   ->    Tax collector
Crisis:       Cancer diagnosis ->  Now being blackmailed for an old dalliance
Complication: Wife pregnant ->     Mother needs $$$ meds
Choice:       Cook meth for $$$ -> Doctor tax records for $$$

Then do the same for each of the season summaries until he's deep enough in the dark hole to be your brilliant, rational, and normal - evil baddie.

Once you've woven that narrative in your mind, you'll have a beloved arch-nemesis for your heroes. After all, he's got completely legitimate reasons for the choices he made. Oh, yeah, and always allow for a way of escape if they confront him early. Don't want to waste all that characterization without sharing it!

Just, whatever you do, don't clone the hackneyed story of the downfall of Anakin Skywalker.

Answer 2

Tragic heroes can become villains when they decide the ends justify the means. As their willingness to do "whatever it takes" to achieve what they consider to be righteous goals grows, "whatever it takes" tends to become more and more terrible.

As with blackmail, these things start small and snowball: once you've lied to the king about how his lost son died to keep him from going mad with grief, it becomes easier to justify to yourself assassinating the evil chancellor who knows the truth, which in turn makes it easier to convince yourself that it's OK to torture a captured spy to find out who he's working for, which in turn makes it easier to accept torturing a villager that might be a spy, and so on.

After the hero is well down the path to evil, his/her friends & allies, who haven't been aware of these deeds, witness the next one, something truly horrific; without the benefit of the chain of justifications the hero has built in his/her mind, they see the hero for the monster s/he has become. The sense of betrayal the hero feels when their allies reject them then pushes them further towards being a villain: after all the hard work the hero has done, all the sacrifices they've made, the people they're trying to save abandon them?!

A hero generally won't tumble down this path on their own, but with some mental manipulation by dark powers, or possibly blackmail or other extortion (if they can still justify their actions to themselves by saying that it's for the good of the people), they can fall surprisingly quickly.

As I pointed out in the comments discussion, very few people see themselves as villains, and even fewer want to. People, even heroes, can do all kinds of things as long as they can justify it to themselves. That's also what makes the hero's allies abandoning them work: from the outside, it's obvious they're doing it because the hero has become a monster, but in the hero's eyes it's an inexplicable betrayal, because the hero still sees him or herself as "the good guy".

Answer 3

There recently was a very good comic, Irredeemable that followed this story line (along with a transformation in the other direction, Incorruptible). I'd recommend that one- it has a pretty good twist for a Paragon-Type hero becoming the most despicable of villains.

The hook was that he was always despicable, arising from a couple of unique problems. In his origin, he was shaped by a mentally ill mother (Munchhausen's Syndrome) that damaged him from birth. Added to that was a step-father than was able to shape him into a force for good, but had a problem with 'never being appreciated' when he did his own deeds.

Aside from that example, I'm actually taking a character through this currently- the hook was a push to the dark side as old conditioning temporarily takes hold (he had amnesia as to the powers that had shaped him, which made him into the hero he was). He personally is going through a fight between three warring sides of his psyche (who he thought he was, who he had been conditioned to be, and who he really was before he was brainwashed), and the perceptions of others now that they've seen his brainwashed side in action.

Added to that complication is the fact that he's not been able to prove that his evil actions were a result of his former conditioning, so the other characters have to decide whether to take him at his word or not.

One thing in all of this, and one thing that I think is key in an effective transformation on this scale is choice. That free will can be constrained by his own internal conflicts, the perceptions and experiences of those around him, or any manner of other obstacles. But there has to be choice, no matter how fleeting, for it to be truly effective and dramatic.

Answer 4

If your world is divided into a pretty objective good and evil and the hero becomes a villain by moving from good to evil then this is more difficult, because it's a big (and therefore improbable) change in personality. So it's pretty tough not to make it seem contrived, and not to completely repeat a cliche.

If the people in your world are like people in the real world, they pretty much all think of themselves as the heroes of their own story, and only play the role of the villain in the perception of others. So they may not have to change personality at all to become villains, they may just need their circumstances to change so that others perceive them that way.

For example (similar to JohnP's example, though I thought of it before I read his answer), a hero might be an idealistic, charismatic leader that overthrows a tyrant. But he isn't a good ruler. Maybe he trusts those who helped him overthrow the tyrant too much, even though some of them have happily helped themselves to the rewards of power. Now he's been forced to use some of the tactics the former tyrant used to keep power, because he fears the next ruler will be worse than he has had to become. He fights against the PCs with everything he has because he thinks they will be part of that.

You asked for a theatrically rich way to stage this, so how about if the Hero's tragic flaw that makes him into a villain is the same thing that made him a hero? In many tragedies the fatal flaw is just the other side of a positive trait essential to the character, and had the hero been destined for a kinder fate that dark side might never have mattered. Othello might have gotten away with loving not wisely but too well if not for Iago, Romeo and Juliette's youth and impetuousness were essential to what made them "heroic" but need not have lead to their death.

So you can pretty much think of whatever heroic traits fit your campaign, and think about how they could go bad (without really changing the hero). Loyalty could be to the wrong person or cause. Bravery can be foolish, dragging others down with you. Virtuous can become judgmental, or hidebound and unable to adapt. Generosity can be misplaced, or ruinously excessive, or require going to far to attain things to be generous with. Refusing to let the ends justify the means could lead to the hero fighting desperately against those (such as player characters) trying to avert tragedy.

To quote from Hamlet:

But, orderly to end where I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own

Answer 5

A hero that has to make an impossible choice can easily become a villain, as far as someone else is concerned.

For example, from a real game I played a few weeks ago, the idealistic Leonardo da Vinci brutally murdered the Pope to prevent the Spanish from gaining control of newly-unearthed Atlantean technology on the Canary Islands and using it to rule over all of Europe. There was an epic battle between the Dragon form of Artur Pendragon and the Pope throwing lightning bolts. Da Vinci had brought the Pendragon and the Pope to see his new dirigible technology, with the hopes of uniting Europe behind the ideal of peaceful technological progress and acceptance of the emerging super-heroes.

What happened instead was the dirigibles let them notice from the air the Spanish's incursion onto British-held Canary Islands. The Pope threw in with the Spanish, with the intention of solidifying the Vatican's iron grip on Continental Europe, to better marginalise the upstart English and their superheroic Dragon champion who was his rival.

Faced with the impossible choice to violate his personal ethics either by standing by and letting darkness fall over Europe, or intervening with direct violence (which was his only real option, as his superpower—splitting off clones—wasn't the sort of thing that would let him just impose a cease of hostilities), he chose to intervene and flew into the lightning Pope with an ornithopter's whirling blades while he was distracted by the Pendragon.

Da Vinci definitely became a villain to the Spanish and the Holy Roman Empire at that moment, and possibly in his own eyes. We didn't find out what happened after that in Da Vinci's personal story, but I'm sure things became very complicated.

In that same game, the Atlanteans invaded and occupied all of coastal Europe, definitely becoming villainous in many humans' eyes. They did it to end the Anglo-Spanish War that they'd had an unwitting hand in starting, and a witting if misguided hand in continuing. Again, they made a hard choice and became villains thereby: stand by and let the war boil on, or forcibly end it. It was a dark time for everyone concerned.

(That was a game of Microscope, by the way.)

Answer 6

Start with the seven deadly sins, my favorite being pride. Pride is a wonderful one, because you can have great heroes who start out selfless saviors who corrupt themselves. The praise. The rewards. The reputation.

Consider Shakespeare - such as Macbeth. Life was pretty good for MB at the beginning. Loved and praised by the king and his men. Victorious in battle. Then a group of hags suggest something greater - a secret dream he's held, but would not otherwise act on. He never would have gone forward with his plans without a) a harbinger of greater reward (hags) and b) confirmation and compulsion by a trusted confidant (Lady MB).

Pull out some nuggets from great stories -

• someone you do not know who may have some sort of authority or foreknowledge says you deserve more

• someone you DO know insists its true, perhaps even creating some event that makes it possible to move forward

• some possible consequence can ruin everything; however resolving the consequence is contrary to your values - do you bite the bullet or do you cross the line and become the monster?

Answer 7

It depends on the hero and how he/she is set up before the first step onto that slippery slope, as to what kind of a "hook" you will need to drag them through the muck and the mire, or if you even need a hook at all.

If you look at the original tragic hero, Oedipus, then he was destined from birth to do the things that he did, and everything that happened moved him along that path, whether he knew it or not.

Other hero figures it depends on how virtuous they are, or if they have bits of dark streaks running through them. It may be as simple as a holy knight completely dedicated to his king, who goes on a quest to find the only herb that will save the king from a ravaging illness, but by taking that herb in that spot at that time, a small child dies instead. Later, the knight is told/shown what happened by taking that herb, and now the knight doubts himself. Self doubt is a wedge that can be exploded bit by bit in various ways.

Edited to add: I noticed you didn't want knights. Another of the legion of possibilities could be something as easy as Hero X decides he is much better suited than Weak Leader Y, and for the good of Community Z, he deposes WLY and becomes New Leader X. Now, he believes he is doing good by being the leader, and since he's already killed to get there, who knows what he would do to keep it?

There are myriad ways to do it, it doesn't always have to be a bludgeon.

For want of a nail...