Why I Write Morally Complex Villains

The best villains aren't the ones you hate. They're the ones who make you uncomfortable—because you understand them.

I get a particular kind of email from readers. Not the ones praising Cassian's redemption arc or asking when the next book drops—those are lovely, and I treasure them. No, the emails that keep me up at night are the ones that say: “I think Lucian might be right.”

And honestly? Part of me agrees with them.

The Problem with Pure Evil

Here's a confession that might surprise you: I don't believe in villains. Not really. Not in the cartoonish, twirling-mustache, motivated-by-malice sense that fantasy has trafficked in for decades. I believe in people—broken, desperate, brilliant people—who make catastrophic choices for reasons that feel inevitable from the inside.

When I sat down to write The Exile's Return, I knew Lucian would be the antagonist. I knew he'd murdered witnesses, burned a cathedral, and orchestrated a conspiracy to seize the throne. What I didn't know yet was why—and I refused to start writing until that “why” made my chest ache.

Because if I couldn't feel Lucian's pain, how could I expect you to?

The Lucian Problem

Lucian Valdrath is, by any objective measure, a monster. He assassinates three witnesses to delay a succession. He burns a cathedral—a sacred place—to destroy evidence. He poisons Father Matthias, a man of peace, leaving him crippled. By The Shadow War, he's orchestrating a campaign of terror that kills dozens.

And yet.

And yet, when readers reach the revelation in Book 6—that Lucian has known for years he isn't Daveth's biological son, that the throne he murdered for was never his to claim, that the father whose approval he killed for never saw him as a true heir—something shifts. I've watched it happen at readings. The room goes quiet. Not with shock, but with grief.

Because suddenly every ruthless act recontextualizes. The boy who trained harder than anyone, who built a shadow network of spies and soldiers, who mastered every political maneuver in the Valdrath playbook—he was trying to earn something that was never available to him. He was performing worthiness for an audience that had already decided he wasn't worthy.

That's not evil. That's tragedy.

The Philosophy of Empathy as Craft

I write morally complex villains because I believe fiction's highest purpose is to expand empathy—not to confirm what we already believe, but to make us hold contradictions.

When Cassian spares Lucian after their duel in Book 1, it's an act of mercy. When that mercy leads to Father Matthias being poisoned, to a kingdom torn by shadow warfare, to dozens of innocent deaths—it becomes something more complicated. Was Cassian's mercy weakness? Was it still the right choice, even knowing the consequences? These aren't questions with clean answers, and I distrust any fiction that pretends otherwise.

Lucian forces those questions. He is simultaneously the victim and the victimizer, the abandoned child and the calculating predator. He didn't choose his bastardy, but he chose his response to it. And that gap—between the wound and the weapon it becomes—is where the most interesting moral territory lies.

I think of it this way: a villain motivated purely by greed or power is a plot device. A villain motivated by pain that the protagonist helped cause? That's a mirror.

Building Lucian: The Craft Behind the Character

When I build a morally complex villain, I follow a few principles that I've refined across the eight books of The Warrior Prince Saga:

Give them a legitimate grievance. Lucian's pain is real. He was raised in a family where bloodline determined worth, and his bloodline was a lie. The system that elevated Cassian, Theo, and the other brothers was the same system that would have discarded Lucian if the truth were known. His rage against that system isn't irrational—it's the logical response of someone who's been fundamentally betrayed.

Make their logic internally consistent. Lucian doesn't see himself as a villain. From his perspective, he's the only one willing to do what's necessary in a kingdom built on hypocrisy. The Warrior Code demands strength—and Lucian is, in many ways, the strongest of the brothers. His methods are extreme, but his diagnosis of Valdrath's corruption isn't wrong. Theo's reforms, which the narrative supports, are built on the same critique Lucian articulated through violence.

Let them be right about something. This is the one that makes readers truly uncomfortable. Lucian's observation that the Warrior Code has been corrupted—that it rewards brutality and calls it honor—is validated by Marcus's historical research. The difference between Lucian and Theo isn't their analysis; it's their prescription. One wants to burn the system down. The other wants to reform it. And history suggests that sometimes the burners are necessary for the reformers to succeed.

Never let them be fully sympathetic. Empathy is not absolution. I work hard to ensure that understanding Lucian doesn't mean excusing him. He poisons an old priest. He terrorizes innocent people. He kidnaps and threatens to execute a young king. The emotional whiplash of feeling for Lucian and being horrified by him is the point—that discomfort is where moral growth happens.

The Final Duel: When Empathy Breaks

The moment in the series I agonized over the most was Lucian's death in Book 6. When Cassian offers mercy a second time and Lucian refuses it—when Cassian is forced to kill his own brother—I needed both choices to feel inevitable.

Lucian's refusal isn't theatrical defiance. It's the final expression of everything he's become. Accepting mercy would mean accepting that the system Cassian represents has the authority to forgive him—and Lucian has spent six books proving to himself that it doesn't. His death is, in his own twisted way, the most honest thing he's ever done.

And Cassian's act of killing him—his first intentional killing since the Seven Farmers Incident that sent him into exile—mirrors the violence that started the entire saga. The brother who swore off killing must kill the brother he once spared. If that doesn't make you feel something contradictory and painful, I haven't done my job.

Why This Matters Beyond the Page

I write morally complex villains because the real world doesn't have simple ones.

The people who cause the most damage aren't cackling in towers. They're the ones who feel justified. They're the ones whose pain is real even when their actions are monstrous. They're the ones we might have become if we'd been dealt a different hand.

That's not a comfortable thought. But comfort was never the point.

The Warrior Prince Saga asks its readers to hold empathy and judgment simultaneously—to understand Lucian without forgiving him, to love Cassian without excusing him, to believe in Theo's reforms while acknowledging they were built on a foundation of blood.

If that makes you uncomfortable, good. That discomfort is the sound of a moral imagination stretching.

What Readers Have Taught Me

Something unexpected happened as the series progressed. Readers started writing to me about Lucian with a kind of protective tenderness. Not defending his actions, but mourning the person he might have been. “What if someone had told him the truth earlier?” “What if Daveth had loved him anyway?” “What if Cassian had fought harder to save him instead of just sparing him?”

These “what ifs” are the highest compliment a villain can receive. They mean the character has become real enough to mourn.

And they've taught me something about my own craft: the goal isn't to make readers love or hate a character. It's to make them grieve the distance between who someone is and who they could have been.

That gap—between potential and reality, between the wound and the choice—is where all the best stories live.

Lucian Valdrath first appears in The Exile's Return, the first book in The Warrior Prince Saga. If you want to experience the full arc of the most complex villain I've ever written—and decide for yourself whether mercy was the right choice—start there.

→ Read The Exile's Return

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