So, I’ve been asking lots of people, who’s the biggest badass in literature when it comes to males we love to hate in books .

Out of all the novels filled with Bluebeards and Byronic men, who’s the biggest baddie?

Of course, the conversations have been captivating.

(I’m talking about male protagonists here – discussions about the worst women will naturally follow soon.)

But who would you pick? Who’s the villain we love to hate? Or love, despite being so bad? (Why would we love a baddie? Let’s analyse that one.)

Who’s dangerously charming, disarming, manipulative, psychopathic and irresistible? Or just plain evil?

I’ve asked a lot of people this question, and I’m fascinated by who they choose. And why.

And I’m also really interested in the ones we leave out, and why we do.

We have to start with ourselves. What attracts us to the bad guys in books? Why do we sometimes find them more interesting than the good ones? Let’s call this the Heathcliff/ Edgar Linton argument.  

Heathcliff is dark, wild, and vengeful as the stormy moors, while Edgar is fair, refined, and safe as his posh cultured home. When Cathy chooses Edgar, readers groan.Don’t we?

Heathcliff is an orphan. (I’ll say more about his background another time..watch this space.) He’s treated like a servant, worse, and Edgar is wealthy and entitled. I think the big sell for Heathcliff is his passion too – what woman would want the jealous, cold fish Edgar?

Do we choose to ignore Heathcliff’s brooding, vengeful cruelty and prefer him over Edgar, who is civilized, forgiving, and passive?

I’ve heard the argument that we pick Heathcliff because Tom Hardy plays him in the film. OK. I’d counter that with the suggestion that the casting of Heathcliff and Edgar is deliberate, and underpins our choice of the wrong man to root for. I can’t even remember who played Edgar in any film of Wuthering Heights, but I can name most of the Heathcliffs.

Many people to whom I ask the question ‘Who’s the most evil male character?’ will respond by suggesting it’s Iago from Othello. He’s manipulative, a misogynist and he takes pleasure in enjoying destroying lives. I agree – he’s a great contender. We need to ponder his motives, although evil villains’ motives tend to be simply to do bad because they can and it gives them pleasure. There’s a film version of Othello with Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh, in which Iago is in love with Othello. It adds a really good dimension to his villainy, and we understand him better.

I recently saw Toby Jones do Iago too. The play was really well directed and was a great interpretation of all major roles.

There are villains whose evil traits we can’t ignore, and we dislike them because they have no redeeming features. There’s the bloodthirsty Dracula. The angry bully Bill Sikes, the terrifying Hannibal Lecter. But do any of them have redeeming features? Motivation and history are always interesting factors – did you see Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal?

Thomas Hardy gives us some bad male characters. That’s Thomas the author, not Tom the actor, although Tom’s Alfie Solomons epitomises a character that I should dislike and I can’t. Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge is about a man who sells his wife. He gets drunk and auctions her off. Alec Durberville is a rapist. Angel Clare – I dislike him so much – is the gutless hypocrite who rejects his wife Tess on their wedding night after she confesses her past, even though he admits to his own sexual history.

I have absolutely no time for Angel Clare.

Byronic villains are dangerously seductive egotists. Bluebeards murder their wives and put their bodies in a cupboard. And our views of which villains are the worst, in my brief survey, seems to be based on whether they have any redeeming factors.

Of course they don’t. They are villains.

Edward Rochester locks his wife up in the attic when she behaves badly, and has a drunken servant guard her. Then he attempts to commit bigamy with his child’s nanny. It’s only when he’s lost his sight and suffered a bit that he becomes worthy of the stoical Jane Eyre. And if you compare him with the cold, self-righteous St John Rivers, then Edward as a potential husband soars into first place. I totally loathe the sanctiumonious character of Rivers.

But couldn’t Jane have found someone else? Or just lived by herself?

There are other popular villains – Richard the Third, Voldemort, Sauron, Moriarty. Some we love and some we love to hate.

And sadly it seems from my research that it depends entirely on how handsome they are in the book, or who plays them in the film. Not the best intellectual criteria. But it made me smile.

Which brigs me to the question – why are we ready to forgive some characters’ acts of villainy and judge others more harshly? Is there a bit of vicarious reading or viewing going on here? I’m as guilty as anyone else. I love Tommy Shelby.For me, his good points outweigh his bad points.

What good points are they?

And on a final note – it’s probably quitw safe to be a bit morally wobbly about a villain in literature. We can afford to make bad choices. We can afford to let our hearts rule our heads sometimes in books.

But how might we fare in the real world, when we’re faced with a real villain, a solipsist leader, a babbling dangerous narcissist who threatens our lives every day?

What will we think then? What will we do?

Perhaps that’s much more of a burning issue.