At first, this Winter Lord,
who eventually acquired the name Kargor, had little presence as a
character. Like Sauron, he was a
distant menace, seen in occasional distant glimpses, but mostly by the effects
of his oppression. When he finally made
a direct appearance, though, he pretty much ran the gamut of Standard Dark Lord
Behaviour, insulting and abusing enemies and minions alike. I think I resisted having him cackle, but
little else.
Not that the character was
entirely generic — I did put some thought into the psychology. Kargor has a flame (now called the Tryst
Flame, though it was unnamed back then) which ensures his invulnerability, and
I did somewhat develop the duality of the confidence and the paranoia this
gives him.
Nevertheless, there was
little originality about him, even though the heroes (male and female) were
evolving nicely from idealistic action junkies into vulnerable, reluctant
heroes. Fortunately, the version I
wrote in the late 70s failed to interest publishers, and when I finally came
back to The Winter Legend, ten years later, I'd evolved enough as a
writer and a person to rethink my villain.
There were two main
problems. Well, three, counting the
simple fact that the character was just plain clichéd. The first was that I had another, more minor
villain, a mortal king, who was almost exactly the same. There was actually more justification with
this character, Jekaini. For one thing,
he was very much in the tradition of rulers who are delicately balanced between
insane and psychopathic — my original idea for him was a kind of mash-up of the
Emperor Caligula, Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin.
For another, he only makes a couple of brief personal appearances, and
the main point about him is the effects of his personal and political tyranny,
especially on his children. This worked
well enough, but I didn't want two such similar villains.
The other problem was a more
practical issue. When we first meet
Kargor, he's only recently been defeated and exiled, yet within a year he's
established a kingdom and gathered a large, loyal following. While minions might take abuse from a
successful leader whose power they hope to share, why would anyone follow a
powerless exile who clearly doesn't value them?
The revised character who
emerged from my cogitations was very different: pleasant, charismatic, cultured
and genuinely loyal to his friends and followers, yet still vacillating between
confidence in his invulnerability and morbid terror of what might happen to him
if he were to lose this. Kargor's
overwhelming concern is his own safety, and it's this obsession — treated very
much as an addiction — that leads him conquer and commit atrocities.
He also gives some hints of
his earlier life, and the circumstances that led to the obsessions and grudges
that drive him. I've recently begun
writing stories about that very young Kargor (then called Karaghr, or Kari) and
his girlfriend Failiu. Two largely
clueless teenagers dabbling in sorcery they don't fully understand, they are
charming, amoral and driven by insatiable curiosity as they wander through
their world. Nevertheless, in these
stories (including The Temple of Taak-Resh) Kari and Fai are the people the reader's meant to root for, and I find
it fascinating to explore this very different side of my villain.
It's been largely through
this process that I've discovered a simple fact which, however many older
and/or wiser people might tell us this, each author has to discover for
themselves — that villains, like heroes, are nothing more or less than
people. They may be people we admire or
people we hope we'll never encounter, but people. It's when we let go of thinking about the creation of a Villain
that we can finally start creating genuine villains.
