When Villains Become Heroes
I’ve always been opinionated. I haven’t always been as vocal as I am about my opinions, but I’ve always had strong personal views of things and historically most of those views have held fast. I don’t change my mind that often. It’s a strength, because I can hold to my ideals even when many people disagree and are hammering me about them, but it’s also a weakness. I’m wrong a lot, but when it comes to my beliefs, I tend to not take that into consideration – could I possibly be wrong? Nowhere could this be more problematic than in how I see other people. My tongue is sharp and I often use it as the weapon that it is. I can think brown (not that I do) is ugly and no one gets hurt, but if I believe something negative about a person, there is a great chance for that person to be harmed since I rarely keep my opinions to myself.
Last week I began to read another book in Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series, One Silent Night, and it made me think a lot about those characters we view as heroic and those we see as evil and villanous. In the series, Acheron is the ultimate hero. He saves humans and dark hunters alike. He took 11,000 years of torture with a selfish goddess who mistreated him, abused him, watched as he was castrated rather than embarrass herself, all for the good of the dark hunters. He often trades “favors” with the goddess so his hunters could have a chance to be freed from service. His life was horrifyingly bad, but he does the right thing and gets nothing in return but a lot of trouble and the scorn of his enemies.
None of his enemies hate him more than Stryker. Strykerius was an Appolite turned daimon. Appolites are a race cursed to die a distrurbing, painful death at the age of 27. Daimons are appolites who kill humans and take their souls in order to extend their lives beyond 27. The daimons are the reason for the dark hunters. The hunters job is to keep the humans safe from the daimons. Daimons are the enemy, evil and hateful. They despise humans and see us as nothing more than an easy food source and are always looking for ways to destroy the hunters so they can have their buffet of human souls without interference from Acheron and his crew.
Naturally, Stryker, being the lead daimon, hates Acheron. His entire life seems to be devoted to finding ways to kill Ash so he can unleash his daimon army onto the human world. He is the villain. As I’ve read the books, I’ve so disliked Stryker. Apparently the daimons don’t like anyone other than themselves and any demon they can get to serve them, though if the demons cease to be of use, they are quickly disposed of, like dog droppings or garbage. Stryker cut his own son’s throat for marrying an Appolite (what daimons are before they start eating souls). Daimons don’t even like the race that they start out as, seeing them as somehow weak for not being willing to do anything to stay alive. They’re nasty creatures and they’re the bad guys in the story.
One Silent Night is Stryker’s story. It begins with him “hiring” War (a nasty, angry god that was contained with magic because of how dangerous he is) to kill Acheron and the guy who used to be Ash’s human helper, Nick. Cue Zephyra. She is Stryker’s first wife whom he left pregnant during a time when women were nothing more than property of a man, any man, and couldn’t even shop for food without a man present. Isn’t this guy dispicable? Zephyra was sent to kill Stryker by Artemis, the goddess who abused Acheron for so long, because she still loved him and didn’t want Ash to die. Oh, bit of important trivia. If Acheron dies, the world ends.
You wouldn’t expect there to be any circumstance that would make him likeable, would you? I certainly didn’t. I thought I knew what he was all about from all the stuff I had read of him in the more than a dozen earlier books, but I was wrong.
Styker left Zephyra because his father, who happened to be a god, threatened to have her raped and killed if he didn’t. He kept the ribbon she wore in her hair for thousands of years. His father emasculated him and demanded that he be a rotten prick, basically expecting hateful behavior and berating Stryker for any attempt. Then he (Stryker’s father – Apollo) cursed the Apollites, to die at the age of 27 because someone killed his mistress when she was 27. He told everyone his dad cursed him by accident, not intending for his own son to be cursed too, but he knew the truth was his dad didn’t care at all that he did this to his flesh and blood.
None of these things excuse his hateful behavior, but they do explain it. And they cause me to feel a lot of sympathy for Stryker. I can’t imagine growing up in those conditions, with no love, finding love and having to leave her behind in order to save her. It tugged at my heartstrings. It also made me think about some of the fan fics I’ve read, most notably Finding Forever and She Holds a Key, where the villains of Twilight, the Volturi guardsmen, are featured and explained. Getting to see the “human” side of the villains really makes it hard to feel the disdain that I first had for them. When a writer can take a character who is despised and make people empathize with his situation, it impresses me, mostly because I do hold strong opinions and I don’t usually feel sympathy for people who mistreat others. I think there is a lesson in here for me somewhere.
What a great column, Meesh. While I haven’t read the Dark Hunter series, I have read other books where I have come to “hate” the villian a little less after their background has been explained. So often, we tend to view charaters as all good or all evil, but most creatures have more layers to their personalities than just black and white.