Legends of Windemere

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This is a spontaneous post born from an interesting statement on a review.  The person asked why the villains don’t kill the heroes or why I explain the reason for such an action.  You know what?  I’m betting we all think this at some point.  I’m going to go into the individual Windemere villains later behind a spoiler tag, but first I’m going to give my opinion on why this happens.  My mind is rather distracted and ‘in a place’, but I think I can do this.

If the villain simply walked up and shot the hero dead then that would be the end of the story/series.  Is it realistic?  Yes.  Is it good storytelling?  Not really.  It’d just be the murder of somebody that leads to a courtroom drama story.  Let’s forget the whole decision about killing characters because this is about villain mentality.  In various genres, these tend to be ‘larger than life’ characters that you’d never find in reality.  The closest you can find is genocidal dictators and I don’t think those are taken out by a gang of ragtag adventurers or a single hero.  There’s a speech that I’m reminded of whenever I work on my villains.  Let me share it:

Again, is this realistic?  No.  Yet it does demonstrate that most villains in a series have a flaw that prevents them from doing a ‘I shoot you dead’ scene.  They have arrogance, pride, ego, love of the fight, and so many things that can hold them back from that simple, brutal, real world finish.  We as the readers don’t think this way, so we tend to see their actions as ridiculously self-destructive.  Even when a villain tries and fails, many can point out the one thing that could have been done to get the kill.  Yet, the truth is that they’re characters designed to tell a story and evolve together in a fantastical adventure.  I could have had my heroes die at any point, but where would I be then?  Onto the next series and leaving a ‘the bad guy wins’ one behind.  It probably wouldn’t have even made it beyond ‘Beginning of a Hero’ if I let the villains take the easy kills.

It’s also really hard to explain this mentality because villains aren’t always aware of it.  To have the hero or narrator bring it up can get a little too much as well.  Villains that have a known reason tend to keep it a secret as well.  It might get mentioned once or twice, but it’s not an easy thing to do.  Mostly, who wants to hear a villain tell the hero why he won’t kill them?  That kind of takes the fear and power out of them.  It also brings up the question of why does the hero not kill the villain?  That probably comes down to morality, which I’ve noticed many readers seem to ignore and call for death.

So, what’s stopping the big heavies in Legends of Windemere?  *SPOILERS BELOW*

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