Category:Tragic

Villains who, although acting for primarily evil goals, have understandable reasons for their motives due to suffering; hence, the reader/viewer can sympathize with them. Most of these villains are not in full control of their actions/emotions due to them not being evil by choice, but rather by them being, for the most part, a victim of circumstance.

These characters are often suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and can develop into delusional, insecure, or egotistic villains because their experiences develop their beliefs into obsessions, twisting them to insanity.

There are three ways to declare a Tragic villain:
 * A villain with a backstory that has caused them anger and depression, shaping them into destructive and hateful beings. However, the broken heart is what is causing their evil actions. Rather, they're forced upon a path of darkness, and their past has caused them to become distrustful and misled. This can happen if the villain was a loner or became addicted, loses loved ones, gets bullied in childhood, was severely scarred, and so on (e.g. Atrocitus and Count Bleck).
 * Protective villains who commit crimes to protect the ones they care about. They are only looking out for whoever they love or care for, but use extreme measures to do so; due to this, they are sometimes confronted by the heroes, or even the people they protect, making it even more difficult to save them (e.g. Johnny Klebitz and Walter White).
 * Possessed or brainwashed characters who are either controlled or corrupted by some kind of evil presence. Therefore, they are not willingly evil, but are manipulated by the power that is controlling them (e.g. Cujo, Gollum and Ice King).