Affably Evil/Literature: Difference between revisions

* The ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'':

** [[The Thrawn Trilogy|Grand Admiral Thrawn]] is almost terrifying because of this combined with his tactical genius. He's such an Affably Evil [[Magnificent Bastard]] that he reached the second-highest formal rank in the xenophobic Imperial Fleet despite being visibly alien. His troops revere him, and his enemies respect him. A single line in the novel ''Dark Force Rising'', when a pregnant Leia despairs that he's going to succeed in his attempts to kidnap her, is what really makes his charming demeanor creepy.

** Thrawn's [[The Watson|Watson]] and protégé, Captain Pellaeon, starts out this way before the ''[[Hand of Thrawn]]'' Duology, where he's a protagonist in his own right and really can't be called evil despite being the head of Imperial forces.

* Rupert of Hentzau from ''[[The Prisoner of Zenda]]''.

** The White Court is labeled as the most dangerous of the three vampire courts because many of them act like this. The rest are [[Faux Affably Evil]], but are still quite skilled at being friendly and nonthreatening up until they rape you to death or kill you through sheer terror. In particular, Lara Raith is shown to be a genuinely civil and affable woman who tries to limit bloodshed and talk out her issues with others, before resorting to cat's paws to kill her competition in inordinately elegant manners. In ''Turn Coat'', Lara hangs a great big lampshade on this. "A monster. A habitually neat, polite, civil, and efficient monster" as she's feeding wounded employees to her kin. One of the creepiest scenes in the whole series.

** And Marcone. He's a mob boss, responsible for much of the drug and sex trade in Chicago, along with various murders and the like, but he does have a highly developed sense of honor, and has helped pull Harry's ass out of the fire more than once. The heroes reluctantly admit that a united Chicago criminal underworld in Marcone's control tends to be less dangerous for bystanders (thanks to the Mob Bosses' [[Freudian Excuse]]) and sex workers. They still think he's scum, but know well there's worse humans out there.

** Also, {{spoiler|Aurora, the Summer Lady}}: kind, caring, friendly, and helpful to a rather angry Harry Dresden, right until she goes batshit insane.

*** Played with: later books suggest that {{spoiler|she'd been purposefully driven crazy by the Black Council, seeing as Mab is becoming (even more) aggressively unstable lately.}}