The Morally Grey Hero: 5 Main Characters That Could Have Been Villains

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A few months ago, I was reading Chlorine by Jade Song, a book about a competitive swimmer who is convinced she is a mermaid, and was struck with how interesting it is to read a book from the perspective of someone morally compromised. It is only nature to want to root for the main character, but what happens when that character wants something that is inherently bad for them? When it is within the story’s best interest for them to fail? Or when it becomes unclear whether or not they are truly the hero of their story?

While Chlorine isn’t the kind of book to have heroes and villains, it did get me thinking about books with morally grey main characters and how we are primed to believe that the main character will always be the hero of the story. But, what if it’s more complicated than that?

Just because we are seeing the story through their perspective doesn’t inherently make them a hero. But, that also doesn’t mean we can’t root for them.

BookTok has long since been obsessed with the morally grey love interest. Rhysand from A Court of Thorns and Roses. Xaden Riorson from Fourth Wing. Jacks, the Prince of Hearts from Once Upon a Broken Heart. The morally grey MMC and the enemies-to-lovers trope. People are obsessed with a love interest that could be the villain. But what about a main character that could be?

There are plenty of morally grey main characters out there, characters who are driven by desires or goals that are not exactly heroic in nature. People view these characters as morally grey, but never their potential to be the villain like we do with the love interests that BookTok loves so much. So, why not? It’s what makes them interesting, the things that separate them from being the villain. Sometimes it is as little as a single choice that turns them from the villain into a hero. A single person. Or maybe it’s simply the fact that the story is written from their perspective. Maybe they are the villain, if you could see them from a perspective outside of their own.

No time is better than Halloween season to dive into what makes a character truly villainous, so here are five of my favorite characters that could have been the villains of their stories.

Kaz Brekker – Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Kaz Brekker, the Bastard of the Barrel, 17 year old criminal prodigy, is most definitely the villain in many stories.

By the age of 14 he had been arrested 6 times, was banned from every gambling den on the Stave because of his gift for cards, robbed a bank, and earned the nickname “Dirtyhands” for his ruthlessness as a lieutenant with the Dregs

Kaz has lied, cheated, stolen, killed, and will cut down anyone who gets in between him and the vengeance he has so desperately craved since he was 9 years old, penniless and alone, with nothing but hatred burning in his heart. He has all the makings of a villain, and has certainly committed enough crimes to land him the title of one. But this is his story. His and the Crows, as they take on an impossible job and fight tooth and nail to emerge victorious with their prize in hand.

Instead, we are rooting for him. Cheering him on from the sidelines even as he makes decisions no hero would. Because sometimes the main character is not a good person, but there is always someone worse. A bigger, badder villain, who most certainly deserves what is coming their way.

So, Kaz Brekker isn’t a villain, even if he could have been one. Even if he might have turned into one, if not for Inej. Or Jesper. Or Nina, Matthias, and Wylan. If not for learning to fight for something other than himself and his revenge. Well… If not for learning to fight for something alongside himself and his revenge.

Fang Runin – The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War is not a story about good versus evil, or the hero versus the villain, so it only makes sense that its main character is quite morally grey in nature.

Rin is not the hero. She is not likeable. And that is entirely the point.

Fang Runin, otherwise known as Rin, attended Sinegard Academy, the most prestigious military academy in the empire, where she trained to fight and be prepared to do whatever is necessary during times of war. But, Rin was not just any soldier. After accidentally calling upon the Phoenix during her combat trials at Sinegard, she awakens as a shaman, someone with the ability to channel the powers of a specific god by acting as a conduit for them.

Rin’s connection to the Phoenix complicates an already morally intricate person. The Phoenix is the embodiment of fire, its only desire to burn and purge the world and everything within it. His shamans are often driven by that same primal rage, fueled by bloodlust and a desire for revenge.

So, Rin, a dark-skinned orphan who finds out she is one of the last surviving Speerly, who were thought to have all died after the genocide of the Isle of Speer during the Second Poppy War, Rin, who is an outsider and placed in the Cike military division, a group for military outcasts used to carry out the empress’s most unsavory missions, is just a bomb waiting to go off with the power of the Phoenix flooding through her veins.

When you look at the plain facts of her character, as someone who chooses violence over and over again, who almost kills an entire nation of people, it is easy to see her as a villain. But the thing about Rin is that as morally corrupt as she may be, her actions feel justified. You can’t help but sympathize with her, not when experiencing her pain and grief right alongside her as she has to come to terms with the atrocities committed against her people.

Fang Runin may be a shaman, the living vessel for the Phoenix, but she is still human. She may have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people, but she is still the same person who fought her way into the Sinegard academy to escape a betrothal to a man three times her age. She is the same person who got her period and incinerated her uterus inside of her body due to the sheer inconvenience of being a woman during a time of war.

And, honestly, is she really the one at fault here when she was trained for war, given the power of an angry vengeful god, and then used to wreak havoc on the enemies of the empress?

While some versions of her story would certainly paint her as a villain, considering she is a villain to many, we still root for her. We want her to have her revenge, to kill everyone who deserves killing, even if that might not be the right thing to do, and definitely not the heroic thing to do. But sometimes a villain is what the story needs. It is certainly more interesting that way.

Jude Duarte – The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Jude Duarte was almost a villain.

All Jude wanted was to be a knight and become a permanent member of the Faerie King Eldred’s Court, a thing that has been denied to her over and over again, despite that her adoptive father, Madoc, is the Grand General of Elfhame. Madoc, who has trained her to be a knight worthy of the Court and a killer any redcap would be proud to call his child. But when she is forbidden over and over again from becoming a knight, she turns to something more unsavory in nature.

Jude becomes a spy in Prince Dain’s Court of Shadows, an organization put together with the sole purpose of helping Dain become the next High King of Elfhame. While being human made her the weakest and most unmagical of the Court of Shadow’s members, it also gave her the unique ability to lie, which not a single faerie can do.

So, instead of becoming a noble knight of the Court, she becomes one of Dain’s spies. She could have been the reason all of Elfhame came to ruin, with the royal family slaughtered and its people thrown into chaos. Anything, as long as it put Dain on the throne. Except someone beat the Court of Shadows to it.

Her father and Balekin, the firstborn son of King Eldred, stage a coup that ends with the death of the entire royal family. All except Balekin and Cardan, the youngest son, who Jude helps escape the slaughter, despite the fact that she despises him.

It’s interesting to think of what would have happened if Balekin had not reached for the crown first. If Dain had been the one to stage a coup and become the next High King. What Jude would have done to secure his crown and protect it. If she would have been the one to spill blood that day instead of protecting the one and only Greenbriar to have been spared from the bloodshed. Would she have been the villain, like her father?

We know she is capable. We see it in the way she takes the reins of the Court of Shadows once Dain is dead. In the way she schemes and manipulates and bends the people who have power over her to her will.

And even after everything, she could have ruled faerie at Madoc’s side. She was always his favorite child, the child who has always been the most like him. But instead she becomes its savior. It’s Queen. And that is the story we are told, with Jude as its hero instead of its villain.

Wei Wuxian – The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mó Dào Zǔ Shī by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù

Wei Wuxian is an interesting case because he is both the villain and the hero of this story.

A war hero turned villain in the eyes of most. He was the perfect villain for the story the real villains wanted to tell. A young, bright-eyed and talented cultivator who grew up during a time of war. Whose home was burned to the ground and entire sect slaughtered. Who did what no one else dared and took up the art of demonic cultivation to hunt down, torment, and slaughter the man responsible. Who turned the tide of war, the final key to destroying the Wen Clan and saving the cultivation world.

Wei Wuxian was the perfect hero in a time of bloodthirsty fighting and revenge. Until the bad guys were defeated and everyone’s eyes turned to him. Unpredictable. Dangerous. And defending the remnants of the clan that had tried to rule them all.

It was only a matter of time before they turned on him, before they turned him into the villain they were so desperate to see him as. But Wei Wuxian was never a villain. He was just a man who lost too much, with a heart too big, with unflinching morals, and the drive to do the right thing no matter what it cost him. And he got crucified for it.

But luckily for Wei Wuxian, he was given a second chance. A second chance to be the hero he always was, even with his sharp mouth, his crazy schemes, and the unsavory art of demonic cultivation. Still, the world refuses to see him as anything other than the dreaded Yiling Patriarch, and work tirelessly against him even as he fights by the side of the esteemed Lan Wangji to save the world from a threat everyone might have noticed if they weren’t too busy trying to hunt down Wei Wuxian and kill him for the second time.

Neil Josten – The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic

It’s not so much that Neil Josten could be the villain of this story if it was told from a different perspective, but that he could have so easily been, if he weren’t obsessed with exy and an angry blonde man named Andrew Minyard.

Neil Josten, or rather Nathaniel Wesninski, is the son of a notoriously dangerous mafia boss and was groomed his entire childhood to be the next Butcher of Baltimore, and that is what makes him such a threat to people like the Moriyamas. He knows too much, was raised with a knife in his hand, and has a pension for violence that can’t be cut out of him or smothered down no matter how hard he tries. And, boy, did he try. It is simply part of who he is.

Who knows what he could have been if his mother hadn’t swept him away from it all. From both his father and the Moriyamas.

The queen Nora Sakavic herself said that we would have found out just how much like his father Neil could be if anything had happened to Andrew at the hands of the Moriyamas. That he would have dismantled them piece by piece in a very bloody and very violent manner, becoming the very thing they feared him to be. But, luckily for everyone involved, he only wants two things: to be left alone and to play exy. And to keep kissing his short and equally violent prone boyfriend, so I guess that’s three things.

Still, the villain within him is there. In the way he orders a hit on Jean’s abuser on the back of a napkin with a pen he sweetly asked to borrow from his waitress. In the way he orchestrated Riko’s demise when it benefited him and the Foxes to have him out of the picture, permanently. In the way he has to force his father’s maniacal smile off his face with the palm of his hand. It’s there, the villain that could have been, the heir to his father’s bloody throne.

But silly little Neil Josten just wants to play stickball and that’s why we love him so much.