Hey guys, I've been fiddling with my book and whether or not to add an element of 'evil personified'. I feel i have a good strong protagonist and antagonist, the latter definitely not being a goody two-shoes although she believes she fights for a good (albeit selfish) cause. Most epic fantasy novels i've read have some form of 'dark one' though, basically the devil or one of his lackeys. I'm thinking of stories like the Wheel of time, harry potter, lord of the rings etc. My question is: are there any good fantasy stories that do not have this type of 'evil one' but a different kind of antagonist? Can anyone name me any good novels, movies, stories that I'm forgetting right now that don't have this dark force and are still awesome stories? Or am i looking for something that doesn't exist?
The King of Elfland's Daughter, by Lord Dunsany The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe Hayao Miyazaki's manga and films typically have a number of factions in conflict, each often having relatable motivations- there is no personified evil. Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga has an array of malevolent powers but the real problems chiefly emanate from the hero Elric himself and his dependency on his demonic sword.
Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy is about Prince Aillas and his (unintentional) journey from minor prince to the king of the whole island of Lyonesse. There are characters he is in conflict with, primarily King Cassander who plots to make himself king of the island, but he plays more of a background role. The final battle between the many kingdoms takes up about a page or two out of three books. It's about the many diverse obstacles Aillas has to overcome. There's one whole series of chapters in the second book where he chases after a woman he is fascinated with, captures her, travels with her, lets her go, and then she promptly gets killed shortly afterwards (by Aillas' own forces).
I am setting my story after the big bad guy has been killed. the rest of the conflict comes from what do the people of this world do when there is a massive power vacuum. Reading your comment I thought of Hunger Games. Yes, Snow is seen to be the big baddy, but he is just another product of the system, on the opposite end of the spectrum our MC is just as much of a pawn in the game.
There are probably some works I enjoyed which I'm forgetting about here, but off the top of my head these should fit what you're looking for: 1) The Witcher book series. None of its antagonists qualify as a satanic archetype or lackeys thereof. Indeed, many of them have a great deal of moral ambiguity. Especially those from the two short story cycles which start the series. 2) Avatar: The Last Airbender. An animated series whose target audience was children, but it holds up very well for more mature audiences. Again, no satanic archetype or lackey here. Firelord Ozai does come across as a relatively generic Evil Overlord/Conqueror-type villain, but he's out of focus for the vast majority of the series and the villains who are in the spotlight have much more texture. 3) The Legend of Korra. The sequel series to #2. Although the main villains of Season 2 are more or less a personification of evil (well, chaos) and its lackey, the antagonists of the other seasons more than make up for it. Two different terrorist movements, a couple corrupt politicians/rulers, and an almost full-blown fascist dictatorship.
Finally, someone else who knows and enjoys this series. My dad showed me it years ago and I've been a fan ever since.
A very good example is the whole Earthsea series by UK LeGuin. In particular my favorite one, The Tumbs of Atuan. The main antagonist in the fourth book is extremely evil (yes both bold and italic) but it's a very human, unfortunately realistic sort of evil. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin is an interesting example because while the human factions sort of divide along the lines of a conflict between the gods, both sides of the conflict had faults to begin with and the most unequivocally evil characters are humans rather than the gods they work for...
The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch (so far at least, only three books of a slated seven out so far!) It has really great antagonists but no one as powerful as the ones you list. Like one of the comments above mentioned, it's more set up to make the main character very complex and questionable himself. I really want the next one to come out already!
The Sight and it's sequel, Fell, by David Clement-Davies. The first features a she-wolf antagonist with sorceress-like powers, but certainly not a "dark one" figure. The second's Big Bad is a human nobleman knight and usurper of his Order. Most of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories feature powerful antagonists, but usually not overpowered, earth-shattering world-conquering overlords.
There's the Warcraft universe where you've got the "Dark one" who turns out to be serving the "Darker one" who in turn is only dark because he wants to purge the galaxy of the "Even darker ones" who are in fact only creations of the "Even even darker ones". So there isn't one plain evil, but a myriad of evils in different layers - there is almost zero interaction with the evilest of evils (Void Gods). That is to say, Warcraft is inherently lovecraftian which means the same applies to Lovecraft's works and his "Old Ones". ASOIAF has a sort-of dark one, but the narrative + world could function without him perfectly. I understand that compared to the series and its botched last season, GRRM will involve the Night King far more in the conclusion of the story. Sure ASOIAF isn't epic fantasy, and stripping away the Night King pretty much leaves it as the lowest of low fantasies. The Elder Scrolls universe is in the same shoes as the Warcraft universe, with multiple lesser and major "dark ones". The major success of Morrowind is that the "dark oneity" of the antagonist is wholly ambiguous and throughout the narrative the player/protagonist learns that he may not have been at fault + may actually be the right/good one. I think this is an example for a perfect + meaningful subversion of the trope. I've got no "dark one" in my world, I've clashing ideals personified in demigods / powerful mortals (fate and liberty). I found it far more meaningful to weave the story around that instead of creating a strawman dark one. I was mostly inspired by the narrative of Nehrim - where the antagonist is the goddess of destiny. Hope that gives you some pointers, wish you the best with your idea!
Attack on Titan, although not a traditional high fantasy, has no ultimate evil. There are villains, but they’re mostly nuanced.
I generally don't use Dark Lords, actually. My Big Bads tend to be more just very dangerous people who want something very specific and are willing to mess up the whole world to get it. I tend to go for very personal motivations, because I think it's important that the readers are able to understand what drives the villain. I guess they are closer to comic book-style supervillains than embodiment of evil and darkness. They certainly tend to be very powerful and have extreme opinions or ideologies, but they're not even necessarily especially bad people, and even the ones who are tend not to make an effort to appear "evil." You know, skulls and spikes and black cloaks and all of that. I don't really understand the mindset of bad guys who deliberately go out their way to advertise how bad they are. Isn't that like admitting you know you're wrong? Like, take Voldemort. I never got that guy. He was basically just a racist wizard serial killer in charge of a terrorist organization, dangerous but not really capable of operating on a particularly large scale. And yet he seemed to try very hard to come across as the most evil person ever. Who does that? Like, who actively tries to convince everyone that everything they stand for is "bad"? He even changed his name (from a frankly much more intimidating one) to make it as edgy as possible. His gang is called the "Death Eaters" for goodness sake. His whole image seems like something he came up with when he was fourteen and just never grew out of. (I like to think Lucius Malfoy and the others secretly thought the whole thing was silly but just quietly went along with it for purely ideological reasons.) But I digress. Point is, it's fine to have a very imposing and powerful main villain who constitutes a major threat to the whole setting. But ask yourself if he needs to be overtly evil - like he publicly stands for that - and if so why. Could perhaps the readers figure the whole "evil" part out just from the fact that he wants to take over the world or genocide a type of people he doesn't like or whatever it is he wants? Of course it's perfectly fine to have some sort of dark god as the big bad, but it's actually pretty easy to come up with a good fantasy villain who's just some bastard who doesn't even consider good and evil to be noteworthy factors in whatever they're trying to accomplish to begin with. Actually, I'm not sure anime does this very much in general these days. Maybe it's just the type of show I tend to watch, but I can't recall a lot of anime fantasy villains who were straight up evil personified, as opposed to just very messed up people. There's the stereotypical Demon King of your Standard Dragon Quest Pastiche, but that one mostly just shows up as a subversion, parody or red herring. I'm not sure I've seen a straightforward attempt. Maybe that was more common a couple of generations ago, but is now seen as cliché? I dunno. "Evil is like an onion." "It stinks?" "Yes... No." "Oh, it makes you cry?" "No!" "Oh, you leave it out in the sun, it gets all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs?" "No! Layers! Onions have layers. Evil has layers. Onions have layers. You get it? They both have layers!"
I'm a little late to the party, I know, but you definitely don't need a "dark one". While I have such characters in my books, they aren't ever the real threat. It's definitely fun to have a story with a generic BBEG as the villain every now and then, but I like when villains have at least a little bit of complexity to them.
The Gormenghast Trilogy The King of Elfland's Daughter The Worm Ouroboros Lud in the Mist Phantastes Mythago Wood / Lavoyndyss (I've only read these two, but the series is much longer) The Wood Beyond the World Most good, classic fantasy doesn't have Dark Ones. This is obviously just a tired trope written by unimaginative authors. It's the same with anything really, the obscure 1% is always better--more artful, poetic, rich, full of meaning--than the generic, mass produced trash which fills the remaining 99%. You can't go wrong with any of those books, although I admit one or two of them I can't entirely recommend for various reasons.
My story doesn't have a dark one but the antagonist is a goblin though, I hope that is original, though The Hobbit has a goblin as an evil one.
There are many which do not have "evil personified". Most of them are about conflict between humans (e.g. Temeraire, which is Napoleonic wars but with dragons), but it is possible to also pull it off with the enemy being an impersonal evil force: zombies, plague, zombie plague, magical object, magical object releasing zombie plague which creates zombies... there are quite a few possibilities. But they could be said to have a "dark one" - first the Beast Titan (though as you noted he is revealed to be quite nuanced), and then The Evil Empire. And then... well, spoilers.
Storm Constantine's Wraeththu series doesn't contain a dark one. The core conflict is Character vs Self. There's a mysterious one - Thiede, the Aghama, first of all Wraeththu - but he's not a dark one. He's not the Big Bad™. The Wreaththu are a new species, descended from us, and still very much finding their way in the world and in their very new, very altered bodies. The conflict is about the search for their true nature. No dark one.
