the ask@AAR: Who is the most loathsome character in romance?
One of my very favorite romances is Anne Stuart’s Reckless. Not only does it have lovers for the ages–Adrian and Charlotte–AND a stellar secondary romance, it has a truly evil villain in Etienne de Giverney. By the book’s end–spoiler alert–readers thrill to see Etienne dead and gone. He is, from the moment we first encounter him, irredeemably dreadful. As isVadim Zhoglo, the uber bad guy in Shannon McKenna’s Extreme Danger (McKenna’s book almost always feature a truly horrible human being doing horrific things). Zhoglo deserves to live in all of Dante’s circles of Hell and even the most soft hearted may find herself thrilled to see him sent there.
There are absolutely horrid women in romance as well. (Although I can’t think of any as black hearted as Cathy from Steinbeck’s East of Eden who is, for me, the most vile female in literature.) Melisande Shahrizai from Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart made me shudder when I encountered her.
Whom do you find utterly loathsome in romance? And why?
And I’m going sort of sideways here…..there are so many tortured and dark entries. But one of my absolutely most loathsome characters is Mrs. Norris in Jane Austin’s Mansfield Park. I’ve hated her for decades.
Anne Stuart’s villains in Ruthless. The nasty fellow who bought Elinor when she was 17 Sir Christopher Spatts. And the true villain, her “cousin” Marcus. It was horrible about the poor lawyer thinking of his wife.
Yes–Marcus is AWFUL. He reminds me of the evil brother-in-law in Sophie Jordan’s One Night with You.
An author whose European historicals feature truly horrific people is Jo Goodman. The father from The Price of Desire is chillingly amoral and cruel as are characters in several others of hers.
And that father does not get adequately punished!
No he does not. Jo Goodman, in those historicals, routinely created terrible people whom did not really get their comeuppances.
I loved that the heroine in Ruthless is just as bloodthirsty as the hero. I love it when she just says “good” when the hero kills off the baddies who wronged her. I hate it when the heroine has to be “better” than the hero.
When you say “better” than the hero, I assume you mean that nonsense when the heroine isn’t allowed to have vengeful thoughts because that sort of thing might draw the ire of romance readers who want their heroines to be always sweet and nurturing? If so, I agree with you. I always liked that unexpected line in Gone with the Wind when Scarlet shoots the would-be rapist and Melanie says, “You killed him. I’m glad you killed him.” I’m definitely in the camp of wanting villains to get their comeuppance- and am extra happy when the good guys are happy that their attackers can no longer hurt them.
And isn’t it great that it comes from Melanie, who is basically a saint on earth?
I don’t mind books where the author is of a forgiving and kind nature and that comes through in their books with both the hero and the heroine. Some of Carla Kelly’s books are like that.
I don’t like it when the hero is the only one who is allowed to get vengeance especially when the wrongs were against the heroine. Even if he does the actual dirty work she can be glad about it.
I’m wracking my brains trying to think – it’s not often I actively LOATHE a fictional character – it takes quite a lot to get me from dislike to loathe, but I remember the villainess in Stella Riley’s Garland of Straw being particularly despicable.
Seriously, I think the most loathsome character I’ve read is the”hero” in Anne Stuart’s Reckless. I’ve always disliked the “I’ve had it hard so now I’m bad” excuse for despicable behavior. Despite all the good reviews I’ve read, I’ve never been able to bring myself to read another book of hers.
Adrian? Really? I love him. What bothers you so about him?
I’ve managed to obliterate most of the detail but I think it’s his utter callousness. He treats people as nothing but things.
Huh. That’s true for the Scorpion, but not so much, for me, for Adrian. He’s lovely to his parents and actually, in the past, kind to Charlotte.
Oops. I meant Ruthless, not Reckless.
This makes WAY more sense!
That sounds more like Breathless to me. The hero (villain) in that was seriously crazy and bent on revenge. If I had read it first I don’t think I would have read the series either.
What about Steve Morgan, the Rosemary Rogers hero?
Do you see Steve as a villain?
Although it’s been well over 40 years since I read those books, I think of Steve as very much descended from the “unknowable hero” so popular in Gothics of the 1960s & 1970s. He keeps the heroine off-balance by running hot & cold and by being emotionally inaccessible to her—traits we would not accept in either our male partners or our romance heroes today but which were perfectly acceptable in gothics and bodice rippers five decades ago. Think of how many Victoria Holt gothics had ambiguous good/bad male characters and how many stories didn’t resolve that dichotomy until the last chapter. In my opinion, Steve is pretty much a bodice-ripper hero which means by today’s standards he’d be a villain, but not so in 1976.
Yes–I didn’t/don’t see him as evil although I sure as sh*t wouldn’t want to date him.
That book has many men and women far more odious than Steve. It really is a litany of horrors.
For me, there are books with romance “heroes” worse than Steve, and which don’t have the excuse of being published in 1974. There is a Rebecca Brandewyne novel, NO GENTLE LOVE, where the heroine is kidnapped by an African village chief who lusts after her. She escapes, but shortly afterwards the hero and his loyal men storm the village to rescue her, only to be told that she’s lost in the African jungle and most likely dead.
So the hero drops to his knees screaming at the sky while his men rape all the women in the village and then kill everyone. Then they walk off, and the author describes how a child who’s survived the slaughter crawls out of cover, sits among the corpses, and cries.
This book was republished by Dorchester in 2002.
….what
Good lord!
There is a Johanna Lindsay book I read once, back in the 80’s called Paradise Wild. The hero rapes the virginal heroine ( but it’s “her fault” though because she’s somewhere you wouldn’t expect a woman who doesn’t want to get raped to be like a gambling den or something?). Then she gets married off to her rapist who not only keeps raping her but as I recall hits her leaving her black and blue or with a black eye? It’s just bad. But of course she grows to love him! Because what woman wouldn’t?
I also remember a Victoria Holt book where the female artist (doing a commission at the “hero’s”estate is drugged and raped by the “hero”. He literally roofies her and she wakes up the next morning like “what the hell happened?”
With heroes like that who needs villains?
“With heroes like that who needs villains?”
It sounds to me like a happy ending to that story would have been if the heroine put a hit on the rapist and ran away to live her HEA with the gangster who helped her dispose of the body. If you want your romance dark, at least she might end up with a man who stands by her side in tough times and respects her. ;)
I’ve actually read some MC romances where something similar happened- and they were a lot more satisfying than the stories up above.
Oh Rebecca Brandewyne—a favorite of mine from the 1979s/1980s—she could bring the racist/imperialist/misogynist crazy-sauce! Shirlee Busbee is another writer from “the Golden Age of Bodice-Rippers” who had every rapey-slut-shaming-virgin-defiling-white-savior hero trope show up in her oeuvre. Ladies, I’ve said it before and I’ll undoubtedly say it again, but perhaps it’s best to think of bodice-rippers the same way we think of puberty: something we had to go through to get where we are today, but not necessarily something we’d want to revisit.
I look back on some of the books I read in the 80’s and shake my head. At least from the 70’s to mid 80’s I can’t think of many nice romance novels that were published . It’s no wonder I read as many Barbara Cartland books as I did. The heroes were pompous and old fashioned but never violent or abusive.
It’s funny–I read both the Sweet Savage Loves and Cartland. Cartland didn’t have enough… oomph for me but she was a good antidote to all those horrible men.
I was quite young when I was reading the Cartlands. They were my first toe in the water of romance, along with Victoria Holt and others. The Cartlands didn’t have much in terms of relationships- if I’m honest I read them for the dress descriptions as much as anything. The actual romance novels at the time I started reading were really quite brutal for the most part, with these very aggressive, older, bossy guys and these very young innocent heroines who just get pushed around by everyone, don’t have a great time but somehow fall in love with the lead jerk by the end.
It’s not surprising looking back that my idea of romance was really formulated by Anne of Green Gables, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and even old Beverly Cleary teen books where the couples had friendships and actually liked each other.
I love collecting the out-of-print ones — and reading reviews of them on Goodreads.
Say what you want about romance covers, but there are some bodice rippers with fun — and even gorgeous — covers. George Ziel is better known for his mystery and Gothic covers, but a few years before his death, he illustrated some of the earliest Jude Deveraux covers.
http://lynn-munroe-books.com/list62/Ziel_checklist2/image048.jpg
Read more here:
http://lynn-munroe-books.com/list62/GEORGE_ZIEL2.htm
I absolutely love paperback covers from the 60s through the 80’s! Gothic romance ones in particular were amazing. Now many covers just seem so bland in comparison.
I think half the Cartland books I read were because of the beautiful covers. And most of the artwork they used for the paperbacks was original and unique. Thanks for the links!
I didn’t know the name of the cover artist, but his covers were unique and gorgeous. By the way
I read the gothics by Holt and others in German. The publisher obviously used the original covers what happens not often. I think because they were so good and represented the character of the books the best way.
I’ve noticed that a lot of books I have enjoyed, particularly romantic suspense and historical fiction were published in Germany as well.
There was an American author I loved Judith Merkle Riley who was a professor and wrote historical fiction and for years one of her books was only published in German. It drove me crazy as it was the third book in a series she wrote but it wasn’t published in English for years.
I gave this one a “smile” response because there is no :-O
I disliked that book too, even as a teen, but I have to correct the record here—I read it NO GENTLE LOVE in the mid-1980s, and according to Goodreads, it was first published in September of 1980.
I see him more as a loathsome hero. Maybe he’s not as bad as Anthony, the controversial hero from Catherine Coulter’s “Devil’s Embrace” — Anthony was more premeditated in his actions. But Steve Morgan stands out to me because he was in one of the proto-bodice rippers.There are other bodice ripper heroes who are worse, but many of the most awful books are out of print and hard to find. So we’re more likely to remember the Rosemary Rogers heroes than, say, the hero of “Stormfire.”
Sometimes, I think authors made the other men sooo bad in their books so that their heroes would look better. Anthony of “Devil’s Embrace” kidnapped the heroine and sexually assaulted her repeatedly because he “loved” her. So as the AAR review mentions, maybe that’s why the heroine is later gang-raped by four awful men. Anthony gets to rescue her, and it makes him look better.
https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/devils-embrace/
I hadn’t realized Rogers died. It astonishes me she started writing Sweet Savage Love as a child!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Rogers
That Wikipedia article needs an edit! The first sentences are written in present tense as if Rogers is still alive, it even includes her current age (87), but then it lists the date and age she was (86) when she died.
I still can’t believe romance Twitter didn’t cover that news. Even if younger fans tend to avoid bodice rippers, many writers and readers were huge fans.
And I am still in awe that both Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss were discovered in the “slush pile.” They sent their full manuscripts to the Avon (unsolicited), got accepted, and changed publishing. Publishing has certainly changed.
“Sometimes, I think authors made the other men sooo bad in their books so that their heroes would look better.”
Oh, absolutely. Ginny was also gang-raped in “Sweet Savage Love”, to make the Steve-rapes look better in comparison. Any time there’s an abusive hero, chances are the villains do far worse to the heroine so she’ll know on which side her bread is buttered.
God Anthony was so fucking gross.
To be honest, I read so much “dark” romance (non-con, dub-con, abduction, captivity, “Stockholm Syndrome”), along with crime/mob/mafia romance, where sometimes the only difference between the hero and the villain is that the hero is “marginally” better, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with the worst villain. In fact, in one of Skye Warren’s very dark trilogies, the vicious and sadistic villain of the first two books was—twist!!—revealed to be the hero of the third book.
Kati Wilde’s Hellfire Riders MC romances have some great (as in terrifying) villains: neo-nazis, white supremacists, oily-smooth glad-handling politicians who are running underground death-cage matches, etc. And Shannon McKenna’s McCloud Brothers series features a group of evil scientists who are trying to develop a secret weapon and using the McCloud brothers as guinea pigs and fall guys. There’s a similar mix in the bad guys of Lexi Blake’s Masters & Mercenaries books.
But overall, I’m not a big fan of the totally psychotic bad guy in romance (or any other type of fiction, really). And I especially dislike the “crazy-bitch-ex” character that pops up in a lot of romances (so that the heroine looks even better in comparison, I suppose). I like the villains to be presented with some nuance—so, yeah, they’re irredeemably evil, but there’s some small element there that indicates at one time they weren’t all bad—until they went over to the dark side.
Any Catherine Coulter hero except for Burke in Night Fire Period. Special shout-out to Alec Carrick from Night Storm, whose dick I would gladly use as a pincushion.
I really dislike St John Rivers in Jane Eyre. Possibly because I look at him with modern sensibilities but he’s just so cringeworthy, smug and self-entitled. He makes anyone forgive Mr Rochester of any possible character failings. Good on Jane for choosing him.
PS: Agree that Jack Randall is disgusting and so is Stephen Bonnet.
That’s also good! So many people just think of him as the blonde, devout one when really, St. John is a Svengali. Rochester appreciates Jane for who she is; St. John wants to mold her into something maximally useful for himself. “You were born for labor, not love” – get stuffed.
Can I pick a hero?
If so, it’s the one in Anne Stuart’s BREATHLESS. His mentally unstable sister commits suicide because some man dumps her. So he sets out for revenge against that man’s innocent sister by paying accomplices (on two different occasions) to sexually assault the sister. Then he kidnaps her, threatens to murder her younger brother if she doesn’t comply with him, takes her far away from her family, forces himself on her (naturally, she enjoys it), decides that once she has a couple of “brats” he’ll leave, and finally arranges for her to be gang-raped by a crowd of perverts.
And the worst thing about a disgusting, cowardly creep who’s meant to be the hero of a romance is that he doesn’t get a satisfactory comeuppance in the end. Even remembering this book makes me want to read something else, anything else, just to get it out of my head.
I hated him. The only redeeming thing in that book is the utterly lovely secondary romance between Jane and Jacob, the King of Thieves.
Thank you! I hate this book SO MUCH. The hero is a full on psychopath.I want to fling the book at the wall and jump up and down on it.
And I absolutely love the other books in this series and the author.
I’m going to have to go with Black Jack Randall from the Outlander series. I can think of other really horrible characters but not one that has generated more outrage. Even more so now that the TV show has created even more fans of Jamie and the books.
On the TV show, I find myself giving him (a tiny) pass because he looks like Frank whom I like.
The show runner/creator is very sympathetic to Frank and did a great job of showing his viewpoint. Some readers weren’t happy, saying because he’s a man he made Frank seem more sympathetic than he was in the books. I think it’s also that in the books it’s all Claire’s POV where in the TV show his feelings are explored more. Frank is flawed, like all the characters in some way, but I did really feel for him and I think you have to explore why his character would choose to support Claire when she reappears and stay married to her for decades.
Yes. He is pretty standup. I think a lot of the bitch about him is that he is sexist but, hey, think of the time he lived in.
That’s a really good pick. He is utterly loathsome.
I think it’s because he’s so deliberately cruel. Some villains are written like wild animals on a rampage, hurting people who get in their way of their end goal but his seems so calculating and the whole point of his cruelty is to inflict pain.
Lizette in Eloisa James’ A Duke of Her Own. The puppy scene, can’t get over it.
Yikes. I’d forgotten that. It was an awful moment. I did kinda feel sorry for Lizette–she’s clearly mentally ill. But still. You can’t throw a puppy.