Villain motivations: Power
Creating villains who make sense can be tough. They want to do awful things, and why does anyone do awful things? While it’s said that everyone is the hero of their own story, I think it might be more accurate to say that everyone is the center of their own story. Main character syndrome? Perfect villain stuff. But the heroes of our stories think about others and risk their lives to defend them because those lives matter, right?
So a villain who wants conquest, domination and power, obviously isn’t trying to save or protect people. It’s all about them. Why would anyone ruin other people’s lives for power? Capitalism, for one. But we already did the write-up on greedy villains, so let’s delve into some other desires just as relatable.
Let’s take Anakin Skywalker. He was enslaved as a child. He was powerless to save his mother, powerless on the Jedi Council. He was afraid of losing his wife and child (children). Is it any surprise that a man with so little control over his own life sought power? What would anyone do to save their family? Maybe not purge thousands of Jedi and straight-up murder kids, but you get the idea.
A villain who comes from a place of powerlessness might go to extreme lengths to gain some control over the world around them. Give them a reason they want to use that power and you get something with a little more complexity — like the way Killmonger seized Wakanda to address global racial inequality and oppression in Black Panther.
Here’s another reason for pursuing power: jealousy. Take Melkor / Morgoth of Middle Earth. (Well, Beleriand before that, Valinor before that, and Ea before that, where his jealousy began). Morgoth interjected his own ideas for shaping creation into the cosmos and was basically shot down. Denied the ability to create true life, he twisted the beings shaped by the other Valar. I’m no Tolkien scholar, but if you’re not into the deep cuts of his works, Melkor basically rebelled against god because he was jealous of what god could do and he couldn’t.
A villain that covets something needs power to take it. (The coveting itself is a form of greed, I know, but a lot of these motivations touch on each other.) The baddies might sacrifice their own forces and allies, trample people’s rights and kill to get what they need.
Just for funsies, I think it would be cool if there was some cosmic creature — maybe Old One’s style — that’s an addict and they get their fix by eating realities or something. Just an elder god with the shakes coming for your universe.
The drive for conquest and power can be even more basic. Think about what Gmork, servant of the power behind The Nothing says in The Neverending Story: Why destroy people’s hopes? “Because people who have no hope are easy to control. And whoever has the control, has the power.”
Power is just seductive. Power, like money — which is just power in the form of bills or coins — protects you from harm and provides comforts. But the more power you have, the more power you need to keep it. You have more to lose and more people who would take it from you. A tyrant survives an assassination attempt by the people (because he’s a tyrant), so he uses force to clamp down and maintain power. People don’t like being clamped, so they rebel harder. The tyrant has to use more force to hold on. And as a very wise princess once said, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
There’s always a reason that any villain wants power and it doesn’t have to have a thousand layers. In fact, simple motivations usually work best. The more complicated the motivation or backstory, the more failure points in it. I will become the most powerful sorcerer in the world so that no one can hurt me again is easily understandable, and relatable. It might even be the root of some great conflict — what if the villain hurts the player characters? Isn’t their path of revenge merely walking in the antagonist’s footsteps?
So go ahead and make your villain power mad, just be sure there’s a reason for it. It doesn’t take much to motivate their madness.
