Who Needs a Megalomaniac?

Epic works require a supremely evil character who can persist through multiple novels, but megalomaniacs work best when viewed through a filter.

In The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Sauron is so evil that he is beyond the ken of the hobbits. Pippin interacts with him once through the Palantir and is almost destroyed by the experience. The Hobbits’ daily struggles involve Sauron’s minions.

Similarly, in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, Harry faces Lord Voldemort only a few times in the seven book series. Instead, Harry battles a man possessed by Lord Voldemort, a memory of Tom Riddle and multiple Death Eaters. The Big Bad Guy is mostly off stage.

The Sharpe’s Rifles series by Bernard Cornwell, tells of the struggles of a common English soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon Bonaparte was certainly a megalomaniac, but the protagonist never comes in contact with him. Sharpe spends much of each book in mortal combat with French soldiers, but they aren’t really the antagonists. His true foes are incompetent officers, backbiting English soldiers, and the hardships of war.

Protagonists with their necessary limitations and weaknesses cannot be pitted directly against an omnipotent antagonist. The most interesting conflicts occur between the little people.