Joker and Harley Quinn
Now, Joker and Harley Quinn never got married, but this is something that gets overlooked a lot. In fact, I’m having trouble remembering any husband/wife married couples. There are probably very few that have a stable relationship because most people think of villains as untrustworthy. Marriage vows would be easily broken by these characters. Also, people might stop seeing them as monsters or caricatures of humanity if they loved someone.
Then again, why do we have to take that away from them? Not all villains are loners that see everyone as tools or ants. I hear a lot of people go on about not wanting their villains to be sympathetic or human. Yet, very few of them are true monsters. Magneto has a tragic background and cares about mutant-kind. Some incarnations of Joker do care about Harley Quinn. Darth Vader killed the Emperor to save his son. Let’s face it, people. Many of our greatest villains have some kind of heart, so it’s strange that so few of them are married. Now, I admit this is all personal perspective and people can point out that I’m stretching things. Fair enough. Though it is strange that Chucky might have the most stable marriage out of the all of villainy.
I can’t say that they’ve never been married. Some villains turn evil to resurrect, rescue, or avenge the death of a spouse. That’s all good, but it always leads to that character’s death. They never get their loved one back because of their actions. The lesson is that evil doesn’t pay. Even though a hero doing the same thing might only be the hero because the story follows him.
That’s only when a villain is married to a non-villain too. Why is it that two villains that show they’re in love and marry always turn on each other? It’s typically adultery, one has a change of heart, or one wants to rule the other. I’d really love to see a story with married villains that are in a healthy relationship. They just happen to share evil goals like world domination, raising hell, melting all ice cream in the world, etc. You don’t have to go the betrayal route here, but so many people think it’s shocking. I probably have some stories outlined with this twist too. Not sure what’s so appealing about it since most people see it coming.
So, what do people think of the idea of villains with a healthy marriage? What if they were more stable than the heroes and their relationships? Does being the villain really mean you can’t get that happy ending?
Legends of Windemere 
I really love this idea, and now I’m going to be keeping my eye out for such happily married villains. One thing I try to do with Aryneth is to create more of a blur between the lines of good and evil; the bad guys do bad things, sure, but they’re still human, and many of them actually wind up in fairly committed relationships, though they’re not exactly the healthiest things in the world or they’re pretty unconventional. I think therein lies the catch. A villain is doing things outside the status quo; the concept of a “happy marriage” is the status quo. So a “happy marriage” might not be so happy for someone who doesn’t follow the traditional idea of how to live their life. That’s why I find your choice of the Joker and Harley such a good one. In several versions, it’s just downright toxic, but you still kind of root for those crazy kids to make it.
I like the idea of a married couple working in cohesion with each other in their evil-doings, which I try to do a little bit in a few of my stories. Their twisted intentions brought them together, so why not join forces? I feel like I have read something like that before, and it’s just at the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t quite place it.
LikeLike
Funny thing is that some villains don’t fit the mold of toxic partner and it comes off strained. The ones that feel they’re saving the world might be very stable.
I just remembered that I will be playing with villain marriage. In my next series, the villains are a happily married vampire noble couple. They might even be more stable than any if the hero relationships.
LikeLike
Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack in “Arlington Road” play a couple who are very sweet, almost saccharine, who are very much the villains of the film–highly recommended. In the film “Badlands” Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek go on a Bonnie and Clyde style rampage. Then there’s Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer in “Pulp Fiction”. In two different seasons of “Dexter”, Michael C. Hall had a romantic lead who assisted him on kills (Jaime Murry as Lila in Season 2, Julia Stiles as Lumen in Season 5). I’m sure I could come up with more.
So they are out there, it’s just not a dynamic that is common. I suspect that it is disturbs people. I like being disturbed, though.
LikeLike
Interesting. Do you think it’s more of a TV/movie trend than literary? I’m thinking now of Spike & Dru from Buffy now, but that’s still TV.
LikeLike
I really like the story line of happy couples. I think happy evil folks would be really interesting. I am thinking right now of Bonnie and Clyde. Simular goals, liked each other, happy to be together.
LikeLike
Classic villain couple. Ashamed I forgot about them. Thanks for the reminder.
LikeLike
We all didn’t want to see them die either.
LikeLike
I never thought about villians not being able to have a stable marriage. Suppose that if they did, then they’d be too much like the good guys and suppose you can’t have that sort of goings on. Then again, when you look at the marriage stats in the U.S. you might think there’s one hell of a lot of villians. Here in Italy they have a comic book named Diabolik his faithful companion is Eva Kant … by the way he’s a super fantastic cold-blooded murdering theif. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabolik … the creators by the way were two little old ladies!
LikeLike
It is strange how we hate to see villains humanized in any way. It’s terrifying to some even though real world villains are human. Interesting characters there. Female spy/thief types are always exciting to read about.
LikeLike
Diabolik is a man … his wife is Eva Kant and she’s also his side-kick. They aren’t spys, they usually steal diamonds and stuff like that. Yeah … we need to live in a black and white world withoug shading too.
LikeLike
It varies greatly by writer, but I’ve seen some really excellent and thoughtful writing around the Harley/Joker relationship. Mostly about how broken it is, how Harley decides to break away and go straight, but gets drawn back into Joker’s web — just like couples in real, abusive relationships often do. So, ironically, the Harley/Joker thing is more truthful than most of the plotting in comics.
LikeLike
I’ve been wondering if they’ve broken that relationship up completely in the comics. I keep reading about Harley getting her own series or being part of hero teams.
LikeLike