A Machiavellian character is someone who employs cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous tactics to achieve their goals. The term originates from Niccolò Machiavelli, a 16th century Italian politician and philosopher who wrote The Prince, a political treatise on how rulers can gain and maintain power. Though Machiavelli did not advocate immorality, his pragmatic approach to politics often involved sacrificing conventional morality for political gain. As a result, “Machiavellian” has become synonymous with manipulation, deceit, and ruthlessness.
What are the key traits of a Machiavellian character?
Some typical traits of a Machiavellian character include:
- Puts their own interests and ambitions first
- Willing to compromise ethics and morality to achieve goals
- Uses deception, manipulation, and exploitation to get what they want
- Lacks empathy and has little concern for how their actions impact others
- Highly strategic, intelligent, charming, and persuasive
- Skilled at concealing their motives and manipulating how others see them
- Feels little remorse for harming others to further their agenda
- Believes the ends justify the means
In summary, Machiavellian characters are cunning, self-interested, manipulative, and willing to engage in unprincipled acts to accomplish their ambitions. They are driven by a desire for control and dominance over others, using their intelligence and charm to strategically manipulate people and events.
What motivates a Machiavellian character?
There are several key motivations that drive Machiavellian characters:
- Power – Machiavellians crave positions of power, control, and authority over others. They enjoy the feeling of influence that comes with making decisions that impact people’s lives.
- Ambition – Machiavellians are highly ambitious and goal-oriented. They desire success, achievement, and recognition, often in the form of status, wealth, and fame.
- Winning – Machiavellians have an intense drive to win and prevail over competitors at any cost. For them, losing is unacceptable.
- Self-interest – Their own personal gain almost always takes priority over ethical concerns or the well-being of others. The ends justify the means.
- Reputation – While they may privately engage in unscrupulous acts, Machiavellians public reputation and how they are perceived matters a great deal to them.
- Intellectual challenge – The cunning schemes and strategic manipulations provide an intellectual challenge that Machiavellians enjoy.
In essence, Machiavellian characters are motivated by a relentless desire to accumulate power and status, win at any cost, serve their own self-interests, and intellectually outmaneuver others – even if it requires deceit and exploitation to do so.
What are some examples of Machiavellian characters in literature?
There are many compelling examples of Machiavellian characters across different literary works:
Iago – Othello
Iago is the primary antagonist in Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. With cunning and deception, Iago manipulates other characters including Othello, Roderigo, Cassio, and Desdemona to create chaos and ruin Othello’s reputation, marriage, and life. Iago is driven by a jealousy and hatred of Othello.
Edmund – King Lear
Edmund is the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester in Shakespeare’s King Lear. He secretly forges a letter to frame his legitimate brother Edgar for conspiring to kill their father. Edmund is motivated by a ruthless ambition to usurp his father’s title and lands.
Rosalind – As You Like It
While most of Shakespeare’s Machiavellian characters are villains, Rosalind in As You Like It stands out as a protagonist. To achieve her desire of marrying Orlando, she disguises herself as a man and uses her wit and intellect to manipulate situations and people around her.
Thomas Cromwell – Wolf Hall
In Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell rises from his common origins to become the right-hand man of King Henry VIII through shrewd cunning. He devises ruthless schemes to help the King rid himself of unwanted wives.
The Marquise de Merteuil – Dangerous Liaisons
The Marquise in Pierre Choderlos Laclos’s novel is a wealthy widow who operates behind the scenes to emotionally and socially destroy others. Her weapon is cunning seduction and manipulation disguised under a facade of respectability.
Tom Ripley – The Talented Mr. Ripley
In Patricia Highsmith’s novel, Tom Ripley is hired by a wealthy man to persuade his son to return from Europe. When Ripley fails, he then murders the son and impersonates him, using deception and forgery. This launches Ripley’s life as a serial con artist and killer.
Kathryn Merteuil – Cruel Intentions
In this modern retelling of Dangerous Liaisons set among wealthy teenagers on the Upper East Side, Kathryn Merteuil makes a wager with her stepbrother Sebastian that he cannot corrupt the virtuous Annette Hargrove. Kathryn uses seduction and manipulation to inflict anguish on those who she feels have wronged her.
What makes these characters Machiavellian?
There are some common traits and tactics these literary Machiavellian characters share that make them cunning and unscrupulous manipulators:
- Intelligent, strategic, and charismatic
- Motivated by ambition, power, status, control
- Willing to employ unethical means like lying, cheating, exploiting
- Manipulate and deceive others to do their bidding
- Conceal true motives beneath facade of respectability
- Remorseless and indifferent to harm they cause others
- Use schemes, plots, blackmail, seduction
- Operate from behind-the-scenes or disguise their identity
- Take advantage of trust, naivety, emotions of others
- Believe they are above morality, social rules, laws
These shared traits make them master manipulators who wield significant influence as they pave their path to power, status, and control over others through duplicity and guile.
How do Machiavellian characters drive the plot?
Machiavellian characters significantly impact the plot due to the schemes and chaos they unleash on other characters. Some ways they drive the narrative include:
- Creating complications and conflicts between characters by manipulating them against each other through lies, mistrust, and betrayal
- Forcing the protagonist into dilemmas that test their morals, ethics, relationships, reputation
- Pitting characters against one another in a battle of wits and cunning strategization
- Building tension as their plots develop and other characters grapple with the deception
- Sudden twists and revelations when their schemes and true motives get exposed
- Instigating the central crisis or conflict in the story that sets the climax into motion
- Propelling other characters to change, evolve, or turn against each other
- Meet an ironic downfall due to flaws in their own machinations
Overall, the dramatization of the chaotic outcomes and power struggles that ensue from the secret schemes of these cunning characters provides intriguing plot development and confrontation.
How do Machiavellian characters affect other characters?
Machiavellian characters can profoundly impact those around them in multiple ways:
- Make other characters distrustful, uneasy, suspicious, paranoid, angry
- Turn characters against each other by exploiting emotions like jealousy, fear, hatred
- Pressure characters to compromise morals and values
- Prompt unethical behavior as others attempt to counter their cunning
- Lead others down a path of corruption and wickedness
- Force characters into deceit and betrayal against their normal inclinations
- Ruin reputations, careers, aspirations of other characters
- Turn characters’ worlds unstable and chaotic
- Catalyze dramatic personal transformations in other characters
In essence, Machiavellian characters spread corruption – they normalize and rationalize immorality while demoralizing those committed to virtue. Their capacity to strategically destroy relationships and twist emotions can profoundly alter the arcs of other characters within the story.
What are the pros and cons of using a Machiavellian character?
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Ultimately, Machiavellian characters are a high-risk, high-reward choice. While their cunning brings tension and conflict, writers must ensure their schemes remain believable and their motivations relatable if they are to resonate with the audience and not come across as a contrived plot device.
What are some key tips for executing Machiavellian characters well?
Some strategies writers can use to craft compelling and effective Machiavellian characters include:
- Give them real dimension – don’t make them stereotypical villains
- Establish believable motivations and psychology
- Make their manipulations plausible and intelligent
- Allow glimpses of their empathy, vulnerabilities, insecurities
- Let readers understand their perspective and worldview
- Reveal their cunning slowly rather than all at once
- Make them charming and likable on the surface
- Give them broader goals beyond just evil schemes
- Allow them to evolve over time
- Focus on the emotional consequences of their actions
By making Machiavellian characters psychologically complex and building their manipulations steadily, writers can craft richer villains who come across as strategic people rather than absurd plot devices. The key is balancing their cunning with relatable human qualities and understandable motivations.
Conclusion
A well-executed Machiavellian character – one with psychological depth and complex motivations – can capture readers’ imaginations as an impactful villain or antihero. Their ruthless pragmatism in pursuing ambitions raises thought-provoking questions about ethics, relationships, and responsibility. However, writers must be careful not push the limits of believability too far. With sophisticated schemes rooted in human desires and thoughtful portrayal of the consequences on others, Machiavellian characters can become iconic vehicles for exploring morality and power.