Does a compelling villians need to have redeemable qualities?

[Erebus]

A dark sorceress has discovered a form of immortality. By transferring her soul into a still living body, she can extend her life. The spell's success rate will depend on the relationship between the praticioner and the victim. They must share the same blood and lineage for the transfer to be successful. The sorceress has decided to use her own children for the process, as they would be the most effective at containing her soul.

At the moment of birth, the spell transfers her soul into that of her child, reincarnating herself through her own daughter and snuffing out her life. Through this she has managed to avoid death for centuries. However, there is a problem that she has begun to notice: the bodies that she takes over eventually starts to rot. Each successive body begins to decay faster than the previous one, forcing her to perform the process sooner and more frequently.

I am doing the story from her perspecrive. Does the villians need to be relatable to the audience in order for her to be interesting.

 

[WooHooMan]

At the end of the day, a good characters just needs to be motivated. They can be pure evil or semi-heroic but as long as they are highly motivated, they'll be engaging (if not, interesting).

I think the problem here is that the character is essentially murdering her children for the sake of living longer. I think a character with that kind of agenda will just be inherently hate-able.
If I was in charge of this premise, I would make the story from the point-of-view of her baby-daddy and portray this woman as a pathetic villain who is desperately doing whatever it takes to keep from dying. That's just me.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Do they need redeeming qualities? No, I don't think so. Charisma, however, is important if you want a villain who is truly compelling, and that can be tricky to pull off.

I would say, don't worry too much about making her relatable. Worry about making her interesting. And remember, the villain is the hero of their own story.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

A dark sorceress has discovered a form of immortality. By transferring her soul into a still living body, she can extend her life. The spell's success rate will depend on the relationship between the praticioner and the victim. They must share the same blood and lineage for the transfer to be successful. The sorceress has decided to use her own children for the process, as they would be the most effective at containing her soul.

At the moment of birth, the spell transfers her soul into that of her child, reincarnating herself through her own daughter and snuffing out her life. Through this she has managed to avoid death for centuries. However, there is a problem that she has begun to notice: the bodies that she takes over eventually starts to rot. Each successive body begins to decay faster than the previous one, forcing her to perform the process sooner and more frequently.

I am doing the story from her perspecrive. Does the villians need to be relatable to the audience in order for her to be interesting.

If it's from her POV, isn't she the protagonist? that does cause some issues.

 

[Heliotrope]

I think, perhaps, her motivation needs to be compelling.... maybe one of those “ doing the right thing in the wrong way” situations....

Let’s look at some villains who were not likeable, but still compelling....

Cercei Lannister wanted to protect her kids. Admirable, even though the way she went about it was not.
Norman Bates loved his mother and wanted to preserve her... admirable, but killing hotel guests and absorbing his mother’s personality, not so much.

I think if you give your character a compelling motivation than readers will at least buy into her actions and be interested in her story. If she does not have rock solid motivations though, reader buy in might be more difficult.

 

[Night Gardener]

Totally agree with Heliotrope. I'm all for villains that have compelling 'reasons' to do what they do, especially sympathetic ones. Does this character 'want,' or 'need', to be immortal? Why does she want to keep living?

What compells her to sacrifice her own children and by doing so, have to grow up all and mature all over again?

That is an especially jarring proposition to me, that a character who's sole desire to physically reincarnate would risk her very immortailty through a mishap of... parenting? If she transfers her soul to an infant daughter, does the Mother Character's birthing body die immediately because her soul has transferred? That means that, the Sorceress has to go through infancy, childhood, puberty, adulthood and near to menopause, then choose to birth/die to start the process again. Is she also "mortal" this whole time between reincarnations and prone to illness, injury and death? And she'd need several batches of daughters in a lifetime as a contigency plan... because What if the body she reincarnates into eventually has fertility problems and she can't gestate a new body to inhabit? That's all one hell of a gamble for immortality each successive lifetime. Why is she risking it?

I'm a details person. The Devil dwells there. So, YES motivations absolutely matter. Even chaotic or 'evil for the sake of evil' intentions matter. Upon reading and thinking through this process she's undertaking to perpetuate her soul, I expect a compelling reason, or a personal motivation that horrifies me.

( Incidentally, How does the 'father' or 'caregivers' work in this situation? The Sorceress gives birth, then she physically dies as she takes over the body of her infant daughter. So, to outsiders, it appears that the mother died in childbirth? And the sorceress is raised as a widower's daughter? What if it was a one nighter, there's no family unit and she's orphaned with no daughter-siblings to care for her? Again, a lot to gamble. I think researching desireable genetics would be a 2nd supplementary past-time for your Sorceress. And then there's being found out by others who think how she does (not necessarily why) this is heinous. Or, conversely, associating with potential genetic donors that know the plan and are totally cool with infanticide and caring for their sorceress-spouse through infancy until... what? It all keeps unraveling into weirder, darker things the more I think about it. )

 

[Laurence]

Could work if she had a lot of internal battles or some reason why it was important that she stay alive.

She could, for example, have heard some prophecy stating that only she can stop a cataclysmic event that will happen in 200 years. Later she realises that the one who told her the prophecy just wanted her daughter dead and bam, you pass the baton of villainy to another character.

 

[Erebus]

Could work if she had a lot of internal battles or some reason why it was important that she stay alive.

She could, for example, have heard some prophecy stating that only she can stop a cataclysmic event that will happen in 200 years. Later she realises that the one who told her the prophecy just wanted her daughter dead and bam, you pass the baton of villainy to another character.

Her goal is to find a true permanent form of immortality so she could he a god

 

[Night Gardener]

Her goal is to find a true permanent form of immortality so she could he a god

I imagine that her (failed) experiments will make for an interesting read. And THAT is some motivation.

 

[Hallen]

A villain needs to be relatable. At some level, the reader should understand the motives. The character must behave constantly within their own goals.

In order to do this, your villain should probably have some depth. A villain who is all evil, all the time is not only boring, it's lazy.

White Walkers from ASoIF have no knowable motives or goals other than everybody understanding they are going to invade and they want babies. Do you need to know more than that? In this case, no. It's a palpable threat that heightens all the other petty rivalries and wars that the humans fight against each other when they need to be facing the real threat from the White Walkers.

If your villain is an actual character, then they should have some depth. And that means that they probably should have some normal things they like that isn't involved with pealing skin of some hapless victim. They should probably have some emotions of some sort even if it's a total lack of emotion. Or, whatever is necessary to ground the villain in the reality of the story so the reader will be able to relate.

Figure out what your villain wants and what makes them tick. Then go from there. I think if you can do that, it starts becoming apparent what you need to show in your character that will enable readers to relate.

 

[skip.knox]

I have only the foggiest notion what "relatable" might mean in this context. A character needs to be believable. I can't say that I "relate" to any character I read, in any book. I'm fascinated by them or bored by them or horrified by them or happy for them, but "relate" is too vague a term to work with.

I did not understand the character as described. Why did she have children in the first place? That seems like the very last thing such a self-centered person would do. Once she'd figured out the racket, then turning herself into her own brood mare makes a clumsy sort of sense, but on the whole it feels like a contrivance to engineer a character who does terrible things. What sort of men does she get to sire these sacrifices? Do they not care? How old does the child have to get before being harvested? What if the child dies in infancy? Does she birth a few, just to have spares? These are the questions that occurred to me.