# Evil: Sauron or Cersei?



## ProfessorBrainfever (Jun 12, 2012)

Which is your preference? The overwhelming, unrepentant personification of all that is dark and destructive and terrible? Or a character with clear motivation that, while they do horrible things, their justifications make them feel as if they aren't the villain of the piece?

The former is easier to write, but the latter feels so much more satisfying to me.

Thoughts?


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## Jabrosky (Jun 12, 2012)

Definitely the latter, and I predict most of the other posters will vote that way too.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jun 12, 2012)

Cersei for certain. She has so many flaws, an unquenchable lust for power, but she she loves her children fiercely.

She combines elements we loathe with qualities we empathize with. For my money that's always a more intriguing villain.

However, in comparing the 2 stories I'd place Sauron more on par with The Others.


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## ProfessorBrainfever (Jun 12, 2012)

I imagine they will...but there's something viscerally satisfying about the Sauron-style evil all the same.

Maybe because its more satisfying to destroy a personification of evil than a 'real' person?


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## Devor (Jun 12, 2012)

ProfessorBrainfever said:


> Or a character with clear motivation that, while they do horrible things, their justifications make them feel as if they aren't the villain of the piece?



How can you _not_ think of Cersei as a villain?  That she uses her children to justify herself is only another evil that she's committing.  After all, the betrayals started happening before there were children.


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## Xenodeus Blade (Jun 12, 2012)

Devor said:


> How can you _not_ think of Cersei as a villain?  That she uses her children to justify herself is only another evil that she's committing.



Thank you. That is one of the many problems I have with A Song of Ice and Fire. Despite George RR Martin saying that there are no good or evil characters, many of his characters ARE good and evil. Cersei is an example. She follows after her father. Both Tywin and Cersei never truly loved their children, but saw them as their property. Also in many ways, Cersei is more evil than Sauron. Her actions have inadvertantly destroyed the unity on an empire(the Seven Kingdoms are an empire in my mind), costed the lives of hundred of thousands of innocent people, left the entire empire bankrupt, and because of that, Westeros is ill prepared to handle Aegon, Dany, and the Others coming through the Wall. All because her husband called her the wrong name.

Sauron however wasn't like his master Morgoth, who wanted to destroy every thing. Sauron wanted to conquer Middle Earth. His evil was focused. 

But that was my too cents.


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## ProfessorBrainfever (Jun 12, 2012)

Devor said:


> How can you _not_ think of Cersei as a villain?



She's definitely a villain. But Cersei probably doesn't view herself as a villain. Whereas Sauron (or the Devil, for example) might view himself that way. 

"The villain is the hero of their own story", as someone once said.


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## coolstoneman (Jun 12, 2012)

I agree, I prefer the latter.  Maybe because we can understand them easier.  The ultimate villain who is completely evil in every way is hard for most people to relate to.  Just like when we see in the news about someone killing innocent people or children, or other horrific crimes;  we look at it and say how can that person do those things?

But when we see a villain that has clear motivation for their evil or misguided ways, we can at least see their reasoning behind their "bad guy" ways, why they do what they do.

But I think mainly they are just more interesting characters when they are complicated, and not 1-dimensional evil villains.


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## Devor (Jun 12, 2012)

ProfessorBrainfever said:


> She's definitely a villain. But Cersei probably doesn't view herself as a villain. Whereas Sauron (or the Devil, for example) might view himself that way.



I don't . . . I don't understand what kind of difference self-perception makes.  Is Cersei somehow more real?  I've had people tell me, pretty frankly, that they were bad people, that they'd done things which were unacceptable by their own standards, that they'd still do them again.  What kind of difference does _denial_ make?


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## ProfessorBrainfever (Jun 12, 2012)

Devor said:


> I don't . . . I don't understand what kind of difference self-perception makes.  Is Cersei somehow more real?  I've had people tell me, pretty frankly, that they were bad people, that they'd done things which were unacceptable by their own standards, that they'd still do them again.  What kind of difference does _denial_ make?



I don't think it's necessarily denial. It's a difference in morality and what actions you view as acceptable or unacceptable.

If you've done something you view as unacceptable and would do it again, that speaks to me more of a cognitive dissonance. If the action really wasn't acceptable, they wouldn't have done it.


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## Elder the Dwarf (Jun 12, 2012)

I like both.  Personally I hate Cersei much more than Sauron, but both are suited for their own stories.


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## Devor (Jun 12, 2012)

ProfessorBrainfever said:


> If you've done something you view as unacceptable and would do it again, that speaks to me more of a cognitive dissonance. If the action really wasn't acceptable, they wouldn't have done it.



People aren't as simple as a simple statement of logic would ask them to be.

An example of what I've personally heard, how about someone who walks out on their kids because if they stayed, they'd end up being abusive?  That person had a clear perception of himself as a bad guy, and didn't have any denial about what he _should_ have done - which is to stay, and to not be abusive - and still he would do it again because it was easier, because he thought of himself as weak, because he wasn't willing to fight with himself.

He clearly thought of himself of a bad guy, and had come to accept it.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jun 12, 2012)

Cersei is certainly a villain but is she truly evil? I don't think so. She is delusional yes. She is misguided for sure. However she still has human qualities I can relate to. 

She feels wronged in how she was given to the king and had to endure a loveless, philandering marriage. She feels slighted because women are viewed as weaker. She does love her children, albeit in a warped sense. She feels irrelevant without power. Losing her children & her power are her greatest fears. 

She's not as black & white as saying that she's a villain because her husband called her another woman's name. If you think that you're missing the character's point entirely.

Sauron is pure evil and malice. A one dimensional personification of evil. That character creates zero sympathy for the reader (that's Gollum's job).


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Jun 12, 2012)

Devor said:


> I don't . . . I don't understand what kind of difference self-perception makes.  Is Cersei somehow more real?  I've had people tell me, pretty frankly, that they were bad people, that they'd done things which were unacceptable by their own standards, that they'd still do them again.  What kind of difference does _denial_ make?



The difference is that ProfessorBrainfever said 



> Or a character with clear motivation that, while they do horrible things, their justifications make them feel as if they aren't the villain of the piece?



and _you_ replied:



> How can you not think of Cersei as a villain?



PBF was talking about characters who don't perceive themselves as villains, and you were talking about the _reader_ perceiving characters as villains. The difference between those two things is pretty obvious. You guys are talking about two different things.


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## Mindfire (Jun 12, 2012)

This is going to sound like a cop-out, but I choose both. Why? Because when you have both villain types together in the same story they play off of one another in very interesting ways. In fact, I'm doing that in my WiP right now. The main antagonist(s) are of the Cersei type- incredibly selfish or sociopathic individuals who, while not wholly diabolical, are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want and to hell with anyone who gets in the way. However, unknown to them, they're all actually pawns in the scheme of a larger, more diabolical force that's a lot closer to the "evil personified" archetype. This creates a dynamic where the more human villains find themselves slowly losing more and more of their humanity as they give in to the power of the diabolical entity. Personally I find it more satisfying than having just one or the other alone.


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## Feo Takahari (Jun 12, 2012)

I think every fictional villain in a non-comedic work should have at least a spark of reality, but it would be foolish to insist that they always be less cartoonish than the worst real-life villains. (Case in point: Amon Goeth.) I guess all I ask is that, before writing a certain type of villain, you do a bit of reading about real people who were like that--it's hard to properly balance banality with horror when you're working entirely off of speculation.

Edit: On second thought, I'd better clarify this, because there's no spark of reality in an outright Lovecraftian antagonist, but I can't say there's anything wrong with that type (so long as they're portrayed as unknowable rather than as the amalgam of your personal conception of evil.) I'll restrict this comment to villains that are supposed to be at least borderline human.


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## Queshire (Jun 12, 2012)

TOO LONG DIDN'T READ!!! X3

Anywho, I've never read whatever story you're refrencing, but I prefer the more morally grey, think what they are doing is neccesary / justified type of villian, for the simple fact that they, almost by definition, are more well rounded then the personification of evil.

Ah, but the BEST I think is if you start out with what seems like a type A then turns out to be a type B later like the Incarnation of Evil in Piers Anthony's Incarnation of Immortality series.


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## The Dark One (Jun 13, 2012)

I think you guys are all skating over the real question here?

What exactly IS evil?

It's probably worth its own thread, but it's possible to perceive evil from almost any perspective. To recycle an analogy I used on another thread...what if cows were the true philosophically beautiful avatars of the universe and everyone and everything elsewhere perceived that, how would we look as we tucked into our steaks and chops and sausages? Like the gross monsters we are. But if we don't know that we are farming the gods, how can we really be evil? If we found out we were farming the gods and continued to do so then we would certainly be evil.

I should write a short story called Farming the Gods...you're not allowed to pinch it!

Did Hitler regard himself as evil? Reinhard Heydrich? Osama? No way. Hitler is still revered by some (however misguidedly) including my uncle, who was a child during the Third Reich and believes Hitler did great things for Germany post-Versailles.


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## Feo Takahari (Jun 13, 2012)

The Dark One said:


> What exactly IS evil? . . . Did Hitler regard himself as evil? Reinhard Heydrich? Osama? No way. Hitler is still revered by some (however misguidedly) including my uncle, who was a child during the Third Reich and believes Hitler did great things for Germany post-Versailles.



For the purposes of fiction, I don't think good and evil matter so much as protagonist and antagonist. You usually (though not always) need to make the protagonist at least slightly sympathetic, but there's not necessarily harm in having the antagonist be sympathetic to some or even most of your readers.


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## Queshire (Jun 13, 2012)

yeah, if it's all the same to you all, I'd rather avoid another pointless debate on the nature of good vs evil...


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jun 13, 2012)

Queshire said:
			
		

> yeah, if it's all the same to you all, I'd rather avoid another pointless debate on the nature of good vs evil...



Although i agree that the general good versus evil debates may be too broad a topic. I think these more specific character questions on the topic are interesting & potentially productive.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Jun 13, 2012)

The Dark One said:


> I think you guys are all skating over the real question here?
> 
> What exactly IS evil?
> 
> It's probably worth its own thread



It's actually been its own thread several times. 

In a nutshell, evil is relative, because good and evil have to be judged relative to a moral code of some kind. The laws of physics do not care about good or evil, so it's meaningless to say that something is inherently good or inherently evil. (Unless you're one of the several billion people who believe that there are morals inherent to the fabric of the universe, as dictated by a certain deity or other... the problem there is that there are multiple competing sets of morals in play. Religion A claims moral set A, and religion B claims moral set B, which may overlap but are not identical...)

Certain things are "universally" considered evil, but just because everyone agrees on something doesn't make it inherently true. Societies that _don't_ consider murder to be evil also don't tend to survive very long, because their people all murder each other all the time. But this doesn't mean murder is _inherently_ evil; it just means it's not practical to allow it, if you want your society to survive.

It's simpler to just say "murder is evil," but what this really means is "murder is evil according to my moral code." Someone else could have a moral code that says that murder is a-ok, and they're not _wrong_, they're just really likely to get preemptively (or post-facto) killed by societies that don't like murderers.


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## Devor (Jun 13, 2012)

Ohh not again.


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## Xenodeus Blade (Jun 13, 2012)

Queshire said:


> yeah, if it's all the same to you all, I'd rather avoid another pointless debate on the nature of good vs evil...



Not to be a cynical jerk, but the philosophical question of the nature of good and evil is a question that has existed for thousands of years are you will see over and over again.


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## Graylorne (Jun 13, 2012)

Removed for irrelevance.


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## Robert Donnell (Jun 13, 2012)

No I don't think this is a question on Good vs Evil but a question of Vanilla Evil vs Chocolate Chip Evil.  As a Writer I like Cersei as she is much more three dimensional.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Jun 13, 2012)

ProfessorBrainfever said:


> Which is your preference? The overwhelming, unrepentant personification of all that is dark and destructive and terrible? Or a character with clear motivation that, while they do horrible things, their justifications make them feel as if they aren't the villain of the piece?
> 
> The former is easier to write, but the latter feels so much more satisfying to me.
> 
> Thoughts?



I actually like a mix of the two - Saurcei. 

I like my villains powerful, evil and larger than life, but with sensible goals and personalities that go beyond:_ "Dark Evil Darkness!"_


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## Garren Jacobsen (Jun 13, 2012)

Wouldn't the kind of villain really depend on the kind of story you are writing. Say for example in your story it is a struggle of people. Certainly if the person your hero was going against was human then a more grey villain is needed. But say your hero is going against a god or semi-deity that has been at war with God. With God in this case wanting his creations to live and the opposite deity wanting only destruction of their kind. What would be the point of giving an extra dimension to something that craves destruction.

In short one villain is not better than another, both serve a purpose.


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## Devor (Jun 13, 2012)

Robert Donnell said:


> As a Writer I like Cersei as she is much more three dimensional.



Admittedly, in LOTR we never actually get to meet Sauron and hear what he has to say.  So in that sense I think it's a bad comparison.  Maybe Voldemort would be a better example?   Cersei or Voldemort?


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## Anders Ã„mting (Jun 13, 2012)

Devor said:


> Admittedly, in LOTR we never actually get to meet Sauron and hear what he has to say.



That's sort of the point, though - we don't need him to be walking around and making speaches because he's not so much a character as he is the personification of evil as a concept. He's always treated more as a _force _than a person.



> Maybe Voldemort would be a better example?   Cersei or Voldemort?



Eh, Voldemort was never quite "evil incarnate." He did have clear motivations beyond just being evil and aside from the horcrux immortality plot he was basically just a rather glorified faschist psychopath.

Actually, the one thing I never liked about Voldemort was that he doesn't really feel like a main villain - he was more like an evil liutenant or elite henchman type of guy, except there was nobody worse for him to serve.


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## Androxine Vortex (Jun 13, 2012)

even though the "sauron" evil is more cliche and especially so in fantasy novels I still believe that as long as the book itself is good then it wouldn't matter. sometimes I prefer the "sauron" evil just because it adds a greater need for the protagonist to succeed


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## The Dark One (Jun 14, 2012)

If you think it's pointless then you haven't quite put your finger on it yet...

Ahhh, just realised that this is a well trodden path here, and that lots of fingers have been all over it. Fair enough. (I'm still fairly new.)

That won't stop me adding my tuppence...

We like exploring these characters and the nature of evil because such characters when well drawn can have profound impact on story and plot. Evil kicks more plot than good.

A possibly useful definition (no, definition is wrong...insight perhaps) is that a truly evil person must be from the same moral narrative as the protagonist but deliberately chooses to go against that narrative for whatever purpose. A person or entity from a different moral narrative is not so much evil as simply dangerous.

On topic, I've always loved and hated the fact that Sauron is not really a character in LOTR. There are few more powerful images than his brooding thought manifesting as a storm over the Emyn Muil.


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## Steerpike (Jun 15, 2012)

Xenodeus Blade said:


> Not to be a cynical jerk, but the philosophical question of the nature of good and evil is a question that has existed for thousands of years are you will see over and over again.



Not to mention that any debate on this site can be avoided by not clicking the relevant thread, or by scrolling past the unwanted posts.


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## Steerpike (Jun 15, 2012)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> In a nutshell, evil is relative, because good and evil have to be judged relative to a moral code of some kind.



That's one viewpoint, but not the only one (or necessarily the right one). In other words, it isn't imperative that this viewpoint reflects the true state of things. The reason this question has been debated for thousands of years is that none of the various "sides" can demonstrate unequivocally that they are correct.

For purposes of fiction writing, I suggest adopting a view of good versus evil that fits with the story, and then just run with it.


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## SlimShady (Jun 15, 2012)

To be honest I prefer Cersei over Sauron.  Villains like Cersei just seem so much easier to hate.  I mean it's a realistic character that does terrible things.  The most terrifying aspect of villains like Cersei is the fact that they are humans and are only showing things that humans are capable of.  

  Sauron just seems flat.  I mean he sounds like a badass and all, but I can't find myself hating him or fearing him.  Sauron is more of a force than a character and I find it hard to dislike forces.  Although, villains like Sauron can be done differently and it's all down to taste.

  Generally I just base it on how memorable the character is and how evil they were.  In my opinion Cersei beats Sauron.  But, only because we never got too see Sauron as a character.


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## Alex97 (Jun 15, 2012)

I look both personally if they are used right.

Of course  both Sauron and Melkor don't start off evil but when they become evil they become "fully evil."  Same with the devil in Christian mythology in the fall of lucifer (read paradise lost if your interested in that).  Anyway I think both types of antagonists work well depending on the story they're in although it is much easier for a super evil character to become laughable.

As mentioned before, Sauron works because he's a force not a person even if he wasn't always the way he was.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Jun 15, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> That's one viewpoint, but not the only one (or necessarily the right one). In other words, it isn't imperative that this viewpoint reflects the true state of things. The reason this question has been debated for thousands of years is that none of the various "sides" can demonstrate unequivocally that they are correct.



It's not a viewpoint about what specific things constitute good or evil; it's an explanation of the fact that the words "good" and "evil" only have meaning relative to something. If that statement isn't true, then something can be inherently good, which forces one to ask, why? Why is something inherently good? The only two responses to that are either "it just is" (which is easily demolished: if something can be declared good without explanation, than _anything_ can be so declared, demonstrating that good and evil are arbitrary); or "because of some other moral principle." And then you get to ask, Why is _that_ moral principle one we should accept as true? And eventually it comes down to an axiom somewhere: You axiomatically assume that X is good (or evil), which leads to everything else.

I'm not making any statements about which specific actions constitute good or evil; merely that it's semantically meaningless to talk about good or evil without a referent. (Sometimes that referent is commonly assumed by all involved and doesn't need to be mentioned, but it still exists.)


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## RedMorningSky (Jun 30, 2012)

I think that there is a place for both types of evil, but I prefer when evil is done from some sort of motivation which is explained, so even if you disagree with the choices the character is making you can still try to understand them. This makes them characters as opposed to just caricatures. Even if a person is completely evil, I like when I can see where they are coming from as opposed to just believing that their only motivation is to make other people suffer.


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## Saigonnus (Jun 30, 2012)

I asked my wife that very thing; curious as to what her response would be and she feels of the two, Cersei is probably the more "evil" considering as far as anyone knows, Sauron hasn't killed children (or attempted) just to hide his goings-on; his is more of a simple obsession with power. She also feels sauron isn't really a good comparison for Cersei Lannister and instead pitted her against Lord Voldemort (Tom Riddle) in subsequent discussions since they are both "modern" characters and both have their elements of humanity. In that discussion Tom Riddle was more evil because of the sheer lengths he would go to accomplish something he felt was worthy... he tried to kill a baby for pity's sake.


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## Varamyrr (Jul 4, 2012)

As someone stated earlier, Sauron isn't really a character in LOTR. You never actually get a bond with him/it. Sauron is what we call the definition of evil, according to our morality. Long story short, I like his concept/force more than I would love his character. The Dark One(Wheel of Time), while similar, is far more interesting.

Personally, I like Cersei. Purely based on the feeling I get when reading/telling her name. She believes that she does is the right thing, she loves her children, and yes, she makes mistakes. Which makes her human. Heck, you could even say that Stannis is evil. Same could be said for Jaime ('the things I do for love...').
For me is Sauron like... meh, just another guy that wants to rule us all.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Jul 4, 2012)

Sometimes I think Cersei's name arose because one of GRRM's beta readers would say "Seriously?" every time she would do something horrible, and that got abbreviated to "Cersei"


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