# An Evil Retarded Character?



## Stormcat (Dec 16, 2015)

One of the main villains in my story is the King. This king cannot rule properly because he sustained a brain injury that keeps him from ruling properly. His Regent is pretty evil, But the King does some terrible things in spite of his lack of power. He murders his wife in a fit of rage for instance. He also regularly sends people to their death, fully aware they will be killed.

I'm having a hard time with trying to decide if this character is truly evil or just "malfunctioning". If he's evil, I will kill him off, but if he's malfunctioning then I will let him live. I'm also having a little difficulty developing his personality.

Can anyone help?


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## dale (Dec 16, 2015)

you could read research nero caesar and henry the 8th. might give you some ideas.


edit: on a side-note, i can already imagine the overly sensitive types cringing at your
use of the word "retarded". ha ha


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## InstituteMan (Dec 16, 2015)

"Malfunctioning" may be the same as evil for all practical purposes. Could his injury/malfunction that causes his evil actions lead to his ultimate death?


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## Harper J. Cole (Dec 16, 2015)

If you're going to portray him sympathetically then you might want to step inside his mind and show your readers how he perceives things. Perhaps when he murders his wife he's seeing her as some horrific demon that's menacing him?

 Showing him periodically becoming lucid and being wracked with regrets about his crimes could be another approach.


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## Blade (Dec 16, 2015)

Stormcat said:


> I'm having a hard time with trying to decide if this character is truly evil or just "malfunctioning". If he's evil, I will kill him off, but if he's malfunctioning then I will let him live. I'm also having a little difficulty developing his personality.



Allow the malfunctional to survive in order to perpetuate evil?:sorrow: Developing a characters personality must be a little rough if you are intending to bump him off.:cookie:


InstituteMan said:


> "Malfunctioning" may be the same as evil for all practical purposes. Could his injury/malfunction that causes his evil actions lead to his ultimate death?



This might be a good idea.:thumbl:


			
				dale said:
			
		

> you could read research nero caesar and henry the 8th. might give you some ideas.



Actually the Medieval and Middle Ages British monarchs faced this sort of problem all the time. The highlight, IMHO, was Henry II murdering the Archbishop of Canterbury using four armed knights in front of an audience.


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## dale (Dec 16, 2015)

Blade said:


> Actually the Medieval and Middle Ages British monarchs faced this sort of problem all the time. The highlight, IMHO, was Henry II murdering the Archbishop of Canterbury using four armed knights in front of an audience.



yeah. i think most of them went nuts from syphilis.


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## Stormcat (Dec 16, 2015)

Ah, so it looks like I will have to kill him.

So now comes the hard part of describing his mannerisms, severe maladaptive behaviors, and general quirks. Where to start...


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## Blade (Dec 16, 2015)

dale said:


> yeah. i think most of them went nuts from syphilis.



That was supposed to be the case with George III, at least.

In any case with reference to the OP history, at least up to the very modern era (and even here somewhat) is full of issues with power, madness and intrigue.

From eyewitnesstohistory.com



> The king's exact words have been lost to history but his outrage inspired four knights to sail to England to rid the realm of this annoying prelate. They arrived at Canterbury during the afternoon of December 29 and immediately searched for the Archbishop. Becket fled to the Cathedral where a service was in progress. The knights found him at the altar, drew their swords and began hacking at their victim finally splitting his skull.
> 
> The death of Becket unnerved the king. The knights who did the deed to curry the king's favor, fell into disgrace. Several miracles were said to occur at the tomb of the martyr and he was soon canonized. Hordes of pilgrims transformed Canterbury Cathedral into a shrine. Four years later, in an act of penance, the king donned a sack-cloth walking barefoot through the streets of Canterbury while eighty monks flogged him with branches. Henry capped his atonement by spending the night in the martyr's crypt. St. Thomas continued as a popular cultist figure for the remainder of the Middle Ages.



Weird considering that Becket and Henry had once been best of friends.



			
				Stormcat said:
			
		

> So now comes the hard part of describing his mannerisms, severe maladaptive behaviors, and general quirks. Where to start...



Try checking out the English king Richard III. I think you have lots of range to pick from here.:eagerness:


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## PhunkyMunky (Dec 16, 2015)

If he's malfunctioning because of his brain injury, can he be cured? Can his injury be medicated or repaired to bring him round? If not, then why not treat him as an evil tyrant? If he lives, he's just going to come back and do what he's done all over again, would he not? Injury or no, someone who does evil things is an evil person. 

I agree, look up Nero and Henry. While they may not have had some head injury, they were indeed as evil as one could get. You could look up Hitler and many others as well, depending on the sort of evil you are trying to portray. It may be that you find a combination of these to base your characters personality on. 

Is he a sexual predator/deviant? Does he throw wild (possibly rape) orgies and then have the women he forced to participate killed? Is he paranoid, always believing someone's out to get him?


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## Kevin (Dec 16, 2015)

'Evil' or just adept? Certainly evil is and was a subjective term. Some the best perpetrated what is considered the worst. I s'pose if you're writing fantasy and not history then you can evil away. Not accurate though, not in 'those' days.  I mean you'd really have to narrow it down, Bloody Mary or something. J M O


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## Jeko (Dec 16, 2015)

> If he's evil, I will kill him off, but if he's malfunctioning then I will let him live.



I'd do it the other way round. It reeks more of conflict if the 'bad king' stays on the throne, and even more if we discover that the 'bad king' is actually a well-meaning guy just unable to do the right things and then he dies for his 'crimes' that we can actually sympathise with.

A story with transparent morality that's black and white to the point that bad guys get punished, good guys get rewarded, is often a let-down. We may want the bad guy to die, but we don't want him to die just because he's the bad guy. The longer we keep him alive, and the more numerous and complicated reasons we give the reader to want him to bite the dust, the better. Likewise, a story that challenges who we see as good/bad guys, or rewards and punishes differently to how we'd expect karma to work, has a far more realistic and modern sense of 'morality'.


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## Wandering Man (Dec 16, 2015)

For the sake of credibility, don't call him "retarded," unless he was actually MR (Now referred to as Intellectual Developmental Disorder - IDD) when he was a child.  TBI and IDD are different things.  

It is possible to be both, but it is important to keep the two diagnoses separate.

Being IDD would make him more susceptible to the machinations of the Regent, in terms of gullibility, an acquiescent attitude, lack of abstraction ability, etc. 

Your frontal lobe injury might also make him susceptible to manipulation due to loss of planning ability and impulsiveness.


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## Plasticweld (Dec 16, 2015)

I have always liked the idea of the villain being just evil, no excuses, no reasons beyond his control, but a purposeful and deliberate method for expressing it.  


I have always liked balance, we expect the good guy to do good things because it is just the right thing to do, it may be from social or religious convictions, it maybe out of just pure old kindness or love.  If all of that is possible and is certainly believable, then why would not the polar opposite of it be true as well. 


I would go with the opposite approach, if your character has a legitimate reason for evil, the reader and sympathize with him making him less powerful.  You should have the reader hate him for what he has done and be cheering for the good guy.  That is the battle that sells books and keeps the audience glued to the story teller's every word.



An if all else fails remember no one ever asked why the boogey man was out to get you... he just was


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## PhunkyMunky (Dec 16, 2015)

I agree with Plastic in that every "blockbuster" story I've read... The bad guy is, just the bad guy. And the good guy is just the good guy, no middle ground for either. It's a model that works. Do I, in any way, have to empathize with, say, Hitler? Or Timothy McVeigh? Nope. They were evil SOB's and deserve to be dead. There's nothing about them that I care to "empathize" with. To me, they're NOT human. Less than human. No redeeming quality, no "it's not their fault because...", they're just evil, inhuman garbage and now they're dead. 

Pretty much the same way I feel for child molesters. No, they're not "good people who make bad decisions", no you can't "rehabilitate them" any more than you can make a person sexually like, or dislike, the opposite sex. They are simply who they are and I think it's the same for someone who preys on children, or people like Hitler, McVeigh, the Paris shooters, the whole lot. Evil is evil, no matter what their family might lie to say. 

I don't understand the need to make an evil SOB be loveable or even have some kind of "poor guy" moment with them.


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## Stormcat (Dec 16, 2015)

PhunkyMunky said:


> If he's malfunctioning because of his brain injury, can he be cured? Can his injury be medicated or repaired to bring him round? If not, then why not treat him as an evil tyrant? If he lives, he's just going to come back and do what he's done all over again, would he not? Injury or no, someone who does evil things is an evil person.
> 
> I agree, look up Nero and Henry. While they may not have had some head injury, they were indeed as evil as one could get. You could look up Hitler and many others as well, depending on the sort of evil you are trying to portray. It may be that you find a combination of these to base your characters personality on.
> 
> Is he a sexual predator/deviant? Does he throw wild (possibly rape) orgies and then have the women he forced to participate killed? Is he paranoid, always believing someone's out to get him?



Due to the severity of his injury, he is unable to be medicated or "repaired" in any way. I've found that frontal lobe injuries really wreck a person's impulse control, so it looks like he'd be doing bad stuff anyway, but now he does it without thinking.

I haven't given much thought into his sexual tendencies, he has an alcoholic mistress, but other than fool around with her, he seems normal in regards to sex.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Dec 16, 2015)

I think the best suggestion anyone has given you is to research other rulers like what you have in mind. Your king actually reminds me a lot of Caligula, who was an emperor of Rome. He was certainly "malfunctioning" (he put his horse on the Senate and once ordered his troops to collect seashells), and also evil. You could research him along with some of the other ones people suggested.


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## PhunkyMunky (Dec 16, 2015)

Caligula! Yes! I was thinking about him as I typed the name Nero out, thank you! Was right there on the tip of my tongue.


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## dale (Dec 16, 2015)

PhunkyMunky said:


> Caligula! Yes! I was thinking about him as I typed the name Nero out, thank you! Was right there on the tip of my tongue.


cool movie with malcolm mcdowell. you might not wanna have the kids in the room when it's on, though.


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## PhunkyMunky (Dec 16, 2015)

Certainly.. I believe such a movie might be when I leave my wife out of it as well, she gets queasy with more graphic scenes and is susceptible to suggestion. She went with her girlfriends to watch that new Moby Dick movie with Hemsworth and said while visual things were fine, the suggestion of cannibalism grossed her out. 

 I'll have to see if it's on Netflix!

Google search says the movie came out in 1979... She might not be too bothered with it then. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion! I wonder how accurate to history it is...


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## dale (Dec 16, 2015)

PhunkyMunky said:


> Certainly.. I believe such a movie might be when I leave my wife out of it as well, she gets queasy with more graphic scenes and is susceptible to suggestion. She went with her girlfriends to watch that new Moby Dick movie with Hemsworth and said while visual things were fine, the suggestion of cannibalism grossed her out.
> 
> I'll have to see if it's on Netflix!
> 
> Google search says the movie came out in 1979... She might not be too bothered with it then. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion! I wonder how accurate to history it is...



it's basically x rated. not xxx rated, but definitely x rated. he was a sex fiend. i think he went crazy from syphilis, too.


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## PhunkyMunky (Dec 16, 2015)

Ah OK. Well, we'll see then LOL. I was just reading on it.


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## shadowwalker (Dec 17, 2015)

dale said:


> edit: on a side-note, i can already imagine the overly sensitive types cringing at your
> use of the word "retarded". ha ha



Not an overly sensitive type myself, but that's the first thing I noticed and was not pleased. I really thought we'd gotten past that term eons ago.


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## dale (Dec 17, 2015)

shadowwalker said:


> Not an overly sensitive type myself, but that's the first thing I noticed and was not pleased. I really thought we'd gotten past that term eons ago.



i don't like how we have to change words every few years that mean the exact same damn thing that the
 other word meant, but somehow...it makes people feel better just to rearrange the letters. it makes no sense
 to me and gets on my nerves.


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## dale (Dec 17, 2015)

i still use the word "mongoloid" for those type of people. it's the word i was taught to use as a kid
and i'm not gonna change it in the name of "political correctness".


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## aj47 (Dec 17, 2015)

I learned "mongoloid" too, but specifically referring to PKU, not a general term.  I was taught that with a proper diet (avoiding certain foods) that these folks weren't mentally deficient enough to be classed as retarded.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Dec 17, 2015)

Hey, guys, let's see if we can stay on the topic okay? 


I thought of one you may want to check out, Stormcat. How about Idi Amin of Uganda? If you ever get a chance to see the King of Scotland, you might get a glimpse on someone whose marbles we're certainly not stable.


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## Kevin (Dec 17, 2015)

....


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## Stormcat (Dec 17, 2015)

mrmustard615 said:


> Hey, guys, let's see if we can stay on the topic okay?
> 
> 
> I thought of one you may want to check out, Stormcat. How about Idi Amin of Uganda? If you ever get a chance to see the King of Scotland, you might get a glimpse on someone whose marbles we're certainly not stable.



I'd rather not focus on "crazy Rulers" and focus more on "People in general with frontal lobe injury". Anyone can write a crazy king, I want an ACCURATE picture of someone with frontal lobe injury, who just so happens to have oodles of money and lots of power.

PS: I deliberately used the word "retarded" to grab people's attention. Even though this guy does not have a congenital condition, he does have the brain of a child so I feel the usage of such a term is appropriate.


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## shadowwalker (Dec 17, 2015)

Stormcat said:


> PS: I deliberately used the word "retarded" to grab people's attention. Even though this guy does not have a congenital condition, he does have the brain of a child so I feel the usage of such a term is appropriate.



Not appropriate. May want to consider that using such terms can do just the opposite: If the poster is so ignorant of their subject to begin with, why should I bother to offer advice? The impression is that the poster hasn't even done preliminary research.

And that's all I'm going to say on the matter.


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## Bishop (Dec 17, 2015)

I expected a far larger war out of this thread. I'm almost disappointed...

On topic, though, I think you're approaching this entirely incorrectly. These types of things are best done in vague terms that makes the reader analyze the situation some--if you ask me. Show us his brain injury, tell us what happened... but don't tell us how it affects him. Show us. Have him act irrationally, make poor decisions, have trouble concentrating on his rule, acting on pure impulse. Showing us the after effects without clinically stating a cause makes us connect more deeply--how many people do you see out on the street that walk up and offer a medical history explaining their actions?

This also allows you to avoid barbarous words, incorrect diagnoses, or risk inaccurate research. If you simply have the injury happen and then have him act according to someone with mental issues, you reader will connect the dots. And their reading experience will be that much more rewarded for it.


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## Stormcat (Dec 17, 2015)

Bishop said:


> On topic, though, I think you're approaching this entirely incorrectly. These types of things are best done in vague terms that makes the reader analyze the situation some--if you ask me. Show us his brain injury, tell us what happened... but don't tell us how it affects him. Show us. Have him act irrationally, make poor decisions, have trouble concentrating on his rule, acting on pure impulse. Showing us the after effects without clinically stating a cause makes us connect more deeply--how many people do you see out on the street that walk up and offer a medical history explaining their actions?
> 
> This also allows you to avoid barbarous words, incorrect diagnoses, or risk inaccurate research. If you simply have the injury happen and then have him act according to someone with mental issues, you reader will connect the dots. And their reading experience will be that much more rewarded for it.



I'm not writing in first person, so showing how he acts should be easy.

So far I've shown:

-He hastily arranges a marriage between his son and a girl that they just found, without giving any thought to the politics of the matter or realizing who this girl was.
-He designs her wedding dress and it's a hideous, atonal mess.
-He demands everything is "clean and white", this includes food, his home, the city, and people. Naturally it's impossible to make absolutely everything white, but servants are forced to go the best they can.
-He constantly changes his mind about wedding details, from the flowers to the food.


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## Tettsuo (Dec 17, 2015)

Sounds like the dude has an issue with impulse control.  This can actually happen after a head injury and is very tragic.


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## InstituteMan (Dec 17, 2015)

Honestly, any dude with opinions as to "wedding details" for his son is not neurotypical. 

I had to work hard to have opinions about the details of my own wedding (other than to agree with my bride over her mother). My only hope for my daughters' weddings is that they not happen for a while, not be too expensive, and make them happy. I love my daughters dearly, but thoughts of my them marrying makes me jealous of fathers of sons, as they are expected to have even involvement in the wedding than are fathers of brides. 

If your addled character has opinions about the flowers and food of his son's wedding, that right there is showing (as opposed to telling) that he's not neurologically a typical man.


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## Stormcat (Dec 17, 2015)

InstituteMan said:


> If your addled character has opinions about the flowers and food of his son's wedding, that right there is showing (as opposed to telling) that he's not neurologically a typical man.



Yes, this is a nice example, but I want to show more about this character's behaviors. We'll see him again in later scenes, but I need to have him do something else to show his addled mind.


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## BeastlyBeast (Dec 19, 2015)

In ASOIAF, Joffrey is king... while he has insight into the land he's ruling, he is also extremely tyrannical and a theory behind it is: since he was born out of incest (brother-sister) he is, perhaps not retarded, but a mental misfit. Retardation is actually a pretty good justification for evil as they, by their very nature, don't function like normal humans. Also, if he is 'malfunctioning' don't be afraid to kill him off anyway. Westeros was happy when it happened to Joffrey.


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## BobtailCon (Dec 20, 2015)

dale said:


> edit: on a side-note, i can already imagine the overly sensitive types cringing at your
> use of the word "retarded". ha ha



heh heh


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## dale (Dec 20, 2015)

BobtailCon said:


> heh heh



ha ha. yeah. i'm a prophet and shit.


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## PhunkyMunky (Dec 20, 2015)

BeastlyBeast said:


> In ASOIAF, Joffrey is king... while he has insight into the land he's ruling, he is also extremely tyrannical and a theory behind it is: since he was born out of incest (brother-sister) he is, perhaps not retarded, but a mental misfit. Retardation is actually a pretty good justification for evil as they, by their very nature, don't function like normal humans. Also, if he is 'malfunctioning' don't be afraid to kill him off anyway. Westeros was happy when it happened to Joffrey.



Game of Thrones, awesome example! I hadn't even thought of that but you're right, Joffrey was NUTS! I haven't read the book series or even watched the whole TV series, but I remember being quite satisfied when Joffrey was assassinated. If anyone in the story needed to be dead, it was him.


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## Stormcat (Dec 21, 2015)

PhunkyMunky said:


> Game of Thrones, awesome example! I hadn't even thought of that but you're right, Joffrey was NUTS! I haven't read the book series or even watched the whole TV series, but I remember being quite satisfied when Joffrey was assassinated. If anyone in the story needed to be dead, it was him.



I didn't read the books or Watch the series either, but I think the whole world knows That bastard king is dead!

But another problem I have is that this mad king I'm creating, He's only physically present for a small portion of the story. I need to show the effects of his irrational judgments and tyrannical reign.


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## BeastlyBeast (Dec 21, 2015)

Stormcat said:


> I didn't read the books or Watch the series either, but I think the whole world knows That bastard king is dead!
> 
> But another problem I have is that this mad king I'm creating, He's only physically present for a small portion of the story. I need to show the effects of his irrational judgments and tyrannical reign.



I suppose the best way to do that is through dialogue and exposition. If your city of 'Tamrock' is facing economic meltdowns because the Mad King destroyed the reservoirs in a fit of unbridled rage, explain that in exposition or dialogue. If your character 'Timmoly' has no family because the Mad King slaughtered them in a delusional mindset that something was owed him, have Timmoly explain that through dialogue. Main thing, is don't do infodumps, but weave this Mad King's insanity into your story. You already won half the battle; you know you need to SHOW that this king is retarded or delusional, not just TELL it.


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