Pragmatic Villainy: Difference between revisions

* In Tony Hillerman's ''People of Darkness,'' the hit man Colton Wolf kills as few people as he can manage (aside from his assigned targets), because the fewer people that are killed, the shorter the resulting manhunt is.

* This is one of the defining traits of [[Evil Overlord|the Lady]] in the ''[[Black Company]]'' novels- she's almost entirely devoid of compassion and mercy, and totally devoid of remorsely, but neither is she cruel for the sake of cruelty- everything she does is to get some kind of advantage, and her empire is designed to be stable and enduring. She's deliberately contrasted with her psychotic rival {{spoiler|and sister}} Soulcatcher, who is pretty much pure chaos, and her ex-husband, [[Sealed Evil in a Can|the Dominator]], whose empire, rather than being opressive but stable and organized was almost literal [[Hell on Earth]].

* In [[Belisarius Series]] Narses is a partial example. His chief motive seems to be delight in [[Because I'm Good At It|craftsmanship]] however given that, he has utter contempt for incompetent evil. Damadora is a better example. He is willing to do evil things up to and including war crimes-but only if he thinks it necessary to achieve his goal which seems to be roughly, keeping him and his family from being executed first, and stopping the war second.