BY: Chris Acuff

I love a good tragedy. 

There’s something about having a character who is unable to overcome their flaw that is so compelling to me. We the audience, can understand what they need to do to solve their problem, but for whatever reason, they just can’t. 

Fall from grace villains are a great tragic arc, and be it Anakin or Macbeth, in the west this kind of story find its origin in the original fall- Lucifer, or otherwise known as Satan, a fallen angel of great power, doomed to forever fight in opposition, best depicted for our case here in paradise lost. Keeping this in mind can help us stay on track to create a compelling fallen villain

I believe there are three features that make this work.

1. Greatness- Before the fall, our tragic character is great. That greatness can be in skill, personality or power, but there is something there that makes them worthy, makes us want them to succeed. 
2. The Flaw- Something within them, just like something within anyone, is broken. This flaw can be something they are aware of, or not. The key point though, is it is something they are unable to deal with or overcome. It changes them and haunts them. Pulling them into a direction that is villainous. Bonus points if you can make the fall an otherwise good trait 
3. The Fall- the most important part, what makes a fall from grace villain work, and what needs the most focus on as a writer. In my mind, the fall has two different types, a choice, or a tragedy

Let’s focus on the fall, since it’s the most important part. And also, this binary of choice~tragedy is better thought of on a spectrum, with “the character had no push to fall, they just jumped” on one end and “they were holding on to a ledge and someone came and kicked their fingers off” on the other. In reality, our character will have outside pressure to fall, but also still maintains some element of choice – somewhere in the middle. 

The pressure and choice to fall should stem first and foremost from the flaw. In the satan example, he bears the original sin- pride. Satan, in paradise lost, is described as having a fixed mind and unconquerable will, courageous. This causes him to chafe under God’s authority, and he grows jealous of “the son of God” (a yet-unborn Jesus) who God anoints, and therefore Satan views himself as lesser. 

First comes a self-deception, and then, because he contains greatness, a deception of others, and he forms a rebellion against God. Here we have the first fall- a choice is made to rebel, but it is one driven by the greatness and the flaw. One thing that I think Milton does in writing his bible-fan fic though, that elevates it even further into the legendary story it is, is that Satan falls twice. There is a further corruption, and it is a corruption by choice. 

Not only does Satan rebel against God, but when God creates Adam and Eve and gives them the garden, he makes the decision that this creation must too be corrupted. This action is the final evidence of Lucifer turning into Satan or the Devil, the father of lies, and a corrupted being beyond redemption. 

There’s a lot more going on in paradise lost, obviously, but I would argue that this *is* the archetype for a fallen villain. 

…There is a secret, other type of fallen villain. And that is the poor man, the greeblie, who tries to be good in a hard, cruel world, and is never rewarded for their virtue. All of a sudden, power is offered to them, a great power, but it comes at the cost of their soul. The Faustian Bargain. 

I think this type is actually not all that different from the Satan archetype. Their greatness is their virtue, their flaw lies usually comes in one of a few ways, either they are so virtuous, to the point of being self sacrificial, that their flaw is external, like another, weak, person they must take care of, OR, the “one bad day” finally takes them over the edge. If this sounds similar to the way a tragic hero might work, its because it is the same framework, just a different choice is made in the end. 

Batman is Batman because a little boy chose to become Batman after his parents were killed, and according to “The killing Joke” – The Joker is the Joker because he was a good man in a cruel world who just had “one bad day.” The difference comes from the choice made after the bad day. 

The major difference in Satan vs Faustian dynamic is power. A satan type character is one with power willing to give it up for their flaw as part of the fall, and a Bargain character has no power, and in order to gain it they are willing to fall. 

In a story telling context, be it a passive medium or active like a TTRPG, I believe the effect of a fallen villain only works if we watch it happen. A villain that is encountered later, who happens to be fallen, is still just a regular villain, only with a backstory. It might make them more compelling, but they will not have the punch. 

To my mind, the difficulty of pulling this off lies in making the choice to fall believable. We are so used to heroes overcoming every temptation and fault that to watch one give in feels wrong. The fall has to be gradual, a slow descent before the inevitable leap, there should be a tension with the chance that the character will pull themself out from their fall at any moment, that they will not truly give in, until they make their final choice. 

If you put a fallen villain in your TTRPG, it should be someone your characters interact with, but not too much, not enough to grow suspicious. It should be someone of power and respect who occasionally makes dark decisions, compromises in the name of victory, and the players don’t find the secret until it is too late.

Working off of either of these archetypes should give you plenty to build from.