The Case for Villains.

I have always been drawn to a good villain.

Not the flat, mustache-twirling caricature, but the kind who pulls you in with charm and humor. The kind you fall for before you even realize you’re in trouble. I want to know what shaped them, what they’ve lost, what they want, and why.

Good villains carry a distinctive, magnetic presence, and many of them are, frankly, unfairly beautiful. I’m fascinated by the contradiction of them: effortless charm balanced against savage ruthlessness, beauty against monstrosity, seduction against brutality. Dracula embodies that tension perfectly. That’s why I gravitated to him for my debut novel. He is the ultimate villain, the perfect case study to pull apart, layer by layer, to discover what’s hidden beneath.

This fascination also grew out of my lifelong love of horror. Dark stories have always felt more vibrant and honest to me. Monsters, vampires, beauty inside the grotesque, and the atmosphere: a dark, misty forest, a creepy castle, a swamp with murky water and gnarled, moss-covered roots. These places feel alive to me. They become characters in their own right. And what horror gives us, in a way other genres can’t quite touch, is permission to look at our darkness: the lie behind the beauty, the realness of humanity in all its messy glory.

That is what I love most: characters who are complicated, even contradictory, and deeply human, even when they are anything but human. I’m drawn to sympathetic villains because most of them don’t see themselves as villains. Their motives make sense to them. Their choices follow a logic, sometimes a misguided or brutal one, but a logic nonetheless. When you take the time to understand these characters, your perspective can start to shift, sometimes dramatically. I like villains best when I can empathize with them, when I can see the validity in their logic or cause, and even better, when I agree with them.

To me, that is a much richer experience.

The devils we dare to love

Lalo Salamanca (Better Call Saul)
That smile. That goddamned smile. You do not want to cross paths with this charming villain (or maybe you do, we don't judge), but if you're gonna die, there are worse ways to go.
Ben Linus (Lost)
He’s easy to hate at first, but something changes by the end and you feel for him.
The Phantom of the Opera
This one is possibly the most obvious. Phantom’s life was a tragedy and he became what the world made him — but in spite of that, he loved ardently. How many of us wanted Christine to choose him over Raoul, despite everything that had happened?
Dr. Frankenstein
Not to be confused with his creation, who is also labeled a monster for no reason other than what he is. Dr. Frankenstein himself is the villain, but his motives are understandable, if misguided.
The Sanderson Sisters
They’re awful but they’re also popular for a reason.
Sarah Fier (Fear Street)
Yet another innocent woman murdered under the guise of witchcraft, when her only crime was pissing off the wrong man.
Sweeney Todd
He’s a serial killer, but you can’t help but root for him.
Severus Snape
Love to hate him, hate to love him. Despite his actions, heroic or villainous, he was at his core a bully. Severus Snape is the embodiment of “hurt people hurt people,” but he was also capable of profound love and great acts of valor.
Hannibal Lecter
He’s cruel and manipulative, but he’s also elegant, intelligent, and capable of a kind of twisted devotion that makes him dangerously irresistible.
Negan (The Walking Dead)
Awful in ways that are impossible to defend, and yet he’s so damn entertaining you can’t help but get excited whenever he's on screen.
Raoul Silva (Skyfall)
Pure theatrical menace, and that is a large part of the appeal. He is wickedly intelligent, gloriously flamboyant, vindictive, and clearly having a marvelous time making himself unforgettable.
Killmonger (Black Panther)
He’s angry and completely serious about it — but it all comes from something real. You may not agree with his choices, but you get how he got there, and that makes him hit a lot harder.
Magneto
Magneto’s story is so tied to his pain that it’s hard not to understand him. He can be brutal, but his worldview didn’t come out of nowhere. At the end of the day, he’s someone who’s seen the worst of humanity and refuses to believe it’ll ever be better.
Lestat de Lioncourt
Depending on whose story you’re hearing, Lestat is very often cast as the villain — and to be fair, he can be vain, selfish, reckless, and cruel. But that version of him is rarely the whole truth. His emotions and affection run deep and he's far more human than his worst moments suggest.
Joker
Chaos with a smile, and there is something perversely delightful about a villain who seems to enjoy himself that much.
Dracula
Dracula is the blueprint for a reason. He’s charming and elegant, and capable of such effortless seduction that you're probably just better off accepting your fate.

Of all the bad boys, Dracula was my first. He set me on this path, he was the beginning. He’s cheeky, wry, entirely unapologetic, handsome and disarming, and capable of an unsettling amount of violence, yet his greatest crime is survival. If vampires existed and you were turned into one, you’d be labeled a monster instantly. Of course you would. People don’t tend to sympathize with something that wants to eat them.

But aside from the fangs and the hunger, what if you hadn’t changed? Would you think it fair to be condemned for what you are? For surviving the only way you can? Dracula is almost always viewed through the eyes of his victims. I’ve always wanted to see the world from his point of view. And I’m far from the only one who’s been drawn to him. For more than a century, Dracula has captivated our collective attention. We keep resurrecting him, romanticizing him, reimagining him, even parodying him, because something about him fascinates us.

Part of Dracula’s staying power lies in how seamlessly he’s been woven into our cultural consciousness. Films, shows, plays, musicals, comics, cartoons, children’s parodies. Adaptations, retellings, prequels, sequels. Even home decor, Halloween swag, cereal mascots, countless collectibles. He’s everywhere. And it starts early. We’re introduced to Dracula before we’re old enough to be afraid of him. When you grow up with a character like The Count on Sesame Street, Dracula comes to feel less like a monster and more like someone you've known your whole life.

It's no real mystery why we love him so much, even when we hate him. Dracula is one of the most compelling and enigmatic villains ever created, and I wanted to tell the story of who he was before he became our monster.