Motivations for Female Villains That Aren't Centered Around Jealousy or Heartbreak

Females are people, just the same as everybody else.

And so are female villains.


So there's a thing people are talking about right now concerning female villains and their motivations. They're pointing out how the motivations of most lady villains are centered around one of two things:

1) Men who broke their hearts, or
2) Jealousy over a female who's more beautiful than them.

Both sound kind of shallow and have been overused to the point where they're almost eyeroll-worthy. I mean, let's genderbend this for a minute. If a man was destroying lives and chasing people down because he was angry over a girl who broke his heart or because(even better) he was mad that another, more handsome man existed, he would look crazy! Or stupid. Or both. It would be absurd. So why is it acceptable the other way around?

Let's fix this. I've got a few ideas for you to consider.

Motivations for Female Villains

1. Protecting home and hearth.
Call me weird, but I think there is nothing more beautiful and powerful than someone doing evil things to protect the land and the people they love. Paired with a female's natural maternal instinct, I think this could make such a beautiful lady villain.

2. To keep something bad from happening to a loved one.
Another rather endearing motivation, even if it is applied to a bad guy. To do something for the love of another person will always tug on my heartstrings.
Bonus points: The person she loves finds out what she's been doing for them and begs her to stop, for their sake. Oh, the drama! The heartbreak! I love it.

3. Insanity.
I do love me a good crazy villain. The madness in their eyes, the ridiculous justifications they have for everything they do... I'm all over it. Give me some good crazy girl villains. I especially love the ones that act almost normal, but with that certain unsettling twist of unnatural.

4. Will to survive.
Whether something terrible is happening to her body, like cancer or some kind of rare infection, or whether something else is threatening our villain's life and limb, doing what she does out of a will to survive will always make her so deliciously desperate. And I love to see what characters do when they're desperate.

I'm evil, I know. And I'm okay with that. 

5. Determination to be remembered.
A lot of people today live in the extreme, looking to do something that will ensure their immortality through reputation. They want to be remembered for what they've done. Imagine what would happen if someone pushed it too far and became a villain because of it. I would read that novel.

6. Looking for favor.
Very important question: whose favor is your villain seeking? Is she looking to please a parent? A valued friend? A lover? And why does she crave their favor so badly? Very important questions. And just one more: Will she get the attention she seeks in the end and get her happy ending, no matter how bloodily bought? Or will the person she loves never be satisfied, leaving her more broken and twisted than ever?

7. Looking to control the chaos.
I'm kind of taking inspiration from Lord Business here, I'll admit. But this is such a good motivation for any villain. She wants to control what can't be controlled so badly that she'll bend heaven and earth to feel happy. Even if it comes at the cost of other people's happiness.

Bonus points: Why does she want control so badly? Is it because of something in her past? Or is the desire for control coming from something else in her life that she can't control, making her want ultimate power over everything in order to cope?

8. Ambition.
A classic. Similar to #5(determination to be remembered). In this case, the villain does what she does out of ambition to achieve some kind of goal. Bonus points if it's an ambition to do something that the hero has put them up to, with or without realizing it.

9. Serving an overlord.
Of course, this could just double your workload since you would then need to find a motivation for the overlord, but it's always an option to have your villain serve someone higher up.

10. Reaction to a catastrophe that the heroes can't see.
Perhaps the cliff hanging over our villain's beloved hometown is on the verge of falling. Maybe some kind of financial crisis is nigh for her or someone she loves. Or maybe there is something even more dire, something that affects everyone in the world, and the heroes just aren't aware of it.

11. Grief.
This links in with the idea about insanity. I love watching villains corrupt as a result of grief. It's epic. And the best part? If she's grieving this hard, it might mean that she has lost everything and has nothing more to lose.

12. Rebellion.
Ooh. Who is she rebelling against? A parent or other authority? The government? Those who bullied her during her growing-up years? And why?

13. Looking to corrupt everyone.
The villain who uses this motivation knows she's in the wrong, knows she's crazy, and what's more, she wants everyone else to be too. She wants everyone to feel the euphoria of having no restraints, no morals, and no consequences. She loves how evil she is, and she's a-ok with everyone else knowing it.

14. Twisted justice.
Think Javert here. Some villains are certain they're right, certain that they are the only ones who understand right and wrong, certain that it is up to them to serve justice to the corrupt. Even when they're wrong and the people they're seeing as 'corrupt' aren't corrupt at all.

15. Doing the wrong things for the right reasons. 
Always a fascinating turnout. Some villains want the right thing, sometimes even the same thing as the hero(which always makes for a good moral crisis for the hero). But the way they're going about it is all wrong, and everyone can see it... just not her.


And now for the final motivation...


16. Escape or achieve destiny.
The way different characters react to having a destiny is fascinating. Some cling to it and aim to achieve it, come hell or high water, and others(the more interesting ones I think), seek to find any way they can avoid that destiny. Even if it means tearing the world apart.

Bonus points: She gets the opposite of what she wanted. If she sought to avoid the destiny, she gets it anyway. If she wants the destiny(and I think this is my favorite idea on the list), she gets the opposite of what she bargained for.

And now the final motivation...

This list was so exhilarating to write! And what's more, all these motivations could just as easily work for male villains as well as female villains! Or AI villains! Robot villains! Alien villains! All the villains!

Now, I've mentioned this before, and I'll mention it again: Just because I'm saying this doesn't mean that I'm one hundred percent, all of the time, totally hating on when writers build female villains centered around the two motivations above. People have mentioned that this trope is becoming a problem, and I got excited about it, so I wanted to make a few suggestions.

If you think you can use one of those two tropes in an A+ way, do it! If you have a better way to wield it, go for it!! I am here to aid you and inspire you, not tell you what to do! Write your story! Create hateful females! Love your craft!

And don't forget to wander around my blog and read some other things! ;)