Discworld

In the Discworld, the incredible series by Terry Pratchett, the city of Ankh Morporkh is ruled over by the scheming and authoritarian  Lord Vetinari. He thinks nothing of having problems eliminated by the Guild of Assassins and will ensure that he has leverage over everyone in the city. He is amoral and self serving but he is also one of the most relatable characters in the books. I always love the stories which he controls from the background. For example, Making Money sees him controlling the central bank by employing Moist von Lipwig as the manager because he has allowed him to literally cheat death at the gallows and knows that Lipwig can be put back there if he so chooses. This kind of control exercised by anyone else other than Vetinari would be frightening but with the urbane, cultured and occasionally amused Lord Protector it is merely business. I think that is a large part of the appeal of Discworld. The heroes are never fully heroic and the villains are rarely as bad as they seem.

I was wondering which category to put Death into, because he is one of the most complex and compelling literary creations of the past century of writing in any genre. He is a skeleton with a scythe and a horse and is utterly implacable. If your time is up it is up and there is no room for appeal. Pratchett has given him one of the most fascinating hinterlands of any fictional character. We watch his growth over five books as he becomes more sympathetic and more like the human beings he oversees. His approach is to lead them across the threshold into death with respect and kindness and there is an odd beauty in some of his scenes. In The Hogfather, his most riotous adventure, he deliberately interferes with humanity by taking on the role of the midwinter gift bringer to keep belief alive as that belief is crucial to the survival of the Discworld. Death is a hero dressed in villains clothing and a true highpoint of 20th Century writing. If nothing else, you need to read his view on belief at the end of The Hogfather which is angry and absolutely right.

For the record, Pratchett only wrote one set of villains with no redeeming characteristics, The Auditors. They are a race of detached managers who hate anything that interferes with what they see as the right way of doing things. As we all know, management types are soulless and have no redeeming characteristics in our world so why should they have redeeming characteristics in the Discworld?!