Boba Fett's showing in the original trilogy is truly disappointing
Creating good villains is difficult. Any character needs personality, motives, flaws, and agency, but villains also have to be threatening or relatable. By analyzing bad examples like these, we can learn what to avoid.
1. Scarecrow – Batman Begins
Scarecrow has a strong start as a menace to Batman, but a lackluster finale leaves us a with a forgettable and subpar performance.
More Villains Means Less Focus
Characters take time to develop; spend too little time on them and they’ll be flat, rushed, or both. Villains are no different, and the spotlight needs to shine on them in order to make them threatening and clearly defined. Ra’s al Ghul and Scarecrow compete for center stage, and this weakens both of their performances. Time that could have been spent developing one is divided and diluted.
Villains Need Motives
What exactly drives the Scarecrow? Ra’s al Ghul wants to destroy stagnant and corrupt governments and then rebuild from the ashes. Joker just wants to watch the world burn. However, it’s never made clear whether the Scarecrow is after money * or if he just wants to spread terror far and wide because reasons. While we know he’s a psychologist with the power to use the fears of his enemies, we see little of his underlying layers, and this lack of development severely limits his impact.
Showdowns Should Be Serious
Every other final showdown is a serious fight for Batman. While I’m all for giving the love interest agency by having her beat the Scarecrow, getting tasered in the face and dragged away by a horse isn’t a dignified end. A villain is only as serious as they’re written, and mixing comedy and drama together is hard. This is even worse when the comedy comes at the expense of your villains, who need to remain threatening. Your audience will only respect your villain as much as you make them respectable.
2. Lex Luthor – Superman
While I hate Superman, Lex Luthor is one of my favorite villains. He’s cunning, proud, and truly believes that Superman is a risk to mankind. But sadly, in the Superman move from 1978, he’s a buffoon.
Bad Villains Make Bad Plans
Lex Luthor is supposed to be a criminal mastermind, but that doesn’t stop him from coming up with a plan that’s thoroughly insane. Nuking the western seaboard to create a new coastline, thereby manipulating real estate prices, is a plan riddled with consequences. For one thing, the fallout would make wide swaths of his land uninhabitable, and the economic recession due to the catastrophe would seriously cut his prices. For another, the government loves playing the eminent domain card in times of need, like after a nuclear strike kills millions and sends thousands of square miles into the drink. He also fires a decoy nuke at New Jersey to distract Superman, even though he’s already incapacitating the hero with kryptonite. You’d think he’d at least wait for his poison plan to fail before bombing a city.
The Minions Make the Man
By being mostly competent, the Scarecrow makes his master Ra’s look good by comparison. By employing a moron, Lex makes himself look just as stupid. It’s never explained why Lex employs Otis, who constantly jeopardizes his plans and struggles with basic instructions. I could buy that Lex is employing Otis because an idiot would be less likely to snitch or betray him, but he also works with Eva, who is considerably more intelligent than Otis.* While he is meant to be comedic relief, Otis makes Lex seem much less threatening.
Show – Don’t Tell
Villains need to maintain an aura of menace. It doesn’t matter whether it’s mad science, super powers, magic, or pure intellect, they need to use their teeth on heroes. Everyone assumes that Lex is some kind of mastermind, but all we see him do is make crazy plans, verbally abuse his dim-witted assistant, and almost miraculously figure out Superman’s weakness. Ability and competence can’t be taken for granted, and shouting about something you’ve done only goes so far.
3. Faith – Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Betrayal can be a potent moment in stories, but it requires proper setup to pull off well. The emotional impact when Faith, the other vampire slayer, turns on Buffy and the Scooby gang is limited by poor preparation and a lack of clear motives.
Arcs Shouldn’t Be Abrupt
Character changes take time to develop because if it happens too fast, it will seem artificial and jarring. In a handful of episodes, Faith goes from charismatic-yet-hotheaded slayer to a violent psychopath after killing someone by accident. Rapid character changes like these reveal the normally invisible hand of the writer, breaking immersion in the story.
Betrayal Is a Big Decision
Faith unraveling after a traumatic event makes sense, but it was never really explained why she switches sides. The weight of the treachery is completely undermined by the lack of clear motivation and warning. Much later when Buffy and Faith switch bodies, we get a strong sense of envy from Faith, but that is built up way after the treachery. The big reveal is marred by the confusion surrounding her defection.
The Audience Needs to Be Invested
Villains need to have positive qualities in order to remain threatening. Personality flaws make characters realistic and relatable. While I can appreciate giving Faith some actual flaws, she changes too drastically. On the good team, she’s a bit hotheaded, violent, and jealous of Buffy, but she’s also competent, charismatic, and generally has good intentions. When she flips, she rapidly and inexplicably becomes a cruel sadist. These extra negative qualities are heavy handed and inconsistent with her past self, making her unbalanced. It’s hard to care when she turns on Buffy and the Scooby Gang as we have little reason to be invested in her.
4. Joffrey Baratheon – Game of Thrones
While the young king of Westeros easily inspires an incredible level of hatred, he does nothing else as a villain.
Good Villains Aren’t Outshone by Everyone Else
Every other villain in GoT is capable. Petyr is cunning and manipulative. Tywin is intelligent and driven. Even Ramsey Bolton, another sadist, is competent and clever enough to execute his own plans. Joffrey has nothing but a notable name and few people willing to slap him when he’s being a bratty bastard. Joffrey is enabled and outdone by everyone around him, making him even more unlikable. Better villains are relatable or respected.*
Incompetence Isn’t Taken Seriously
Joffrey’s abilities begin and end with pointless cruelty. He bullies, sucks at fighting, has no appreciable skills, and is uncharismatic enough to earn everyone’s ire. A crown doesn’t make you tough; it just makes everyone less likely to say no when you say jump. Respect is earned with actions and abilities. The fact that he can’t back up his threats makes him a bad joke with a really mean punchline.
Unrelateable Villians Are More Monster Than Man
Joffrey is unlikable to the point of being monstrous. He might be human, but his lack of positive qualities, personality, and compelling motives kills any empathy we’d have for him. The strength of monsters is that they rally and motivate heroes by being credible threats. The Mountain is a vicious and inhumane killer that revels in wanton violence, and his size and skill make him a terrifying foe. Joffrey inspires his opponents through hatred but lacks courage and the mind to maneuver in the great game.
5. Boba Fett – Star Wars
Boba Fett has a tough reputation as a bounty hunter, but you wouldn’t know it by just watching the original trilogy. If you want to see him in action, read Enemy of the Empire; he’s vastly underwhelming in the movies.
Villains Shouldn’t Have a Slapstick Demise
Villains can’t be dramatic if they aren’t respectable. Every time Vader fights, there are serious consequences, as he is a capable opponent. But Boba Fett is accidentally hit in the back by a blinded man before careening into a ship and falling into the mouth of an immobile monster *. This type of defeat is typical with Team Rocket villains, which makes him a bit silly.
Skills Are Better Than Gear
Vader’s armor is iconic and awe-inspiring, but he also has strength and skill. Boba has an impressive array of gadgets, some fancy armor, and a unique ship, but none of it saves him from mediocrity. He tails Han and then lets Vader capture them. In the next movie, we see him fight briefly before an untimely and embarrassing defeat at the hands of his own jetpack. It doesn’t matter how many toys you have if your moves are barely competent and followed by laughable failure.
Mystery Isn’t a Replacement for Personality
We learn next to nothing about Boba, making him enigmatic. Lines like “No disintegrations!” make him seem dangerous while giving us little. Mysterious characters are fine, but we’re not fed anything to keep us interested after his first few appearances. If we’re not going to learn about him through dialogue, then we have to learn about him through actions. As previously covered, this doesn’t say anything good. A whole bunch of smoke and nothing still amounts to mostly nothing.
Villains need to be taken seriously, and if you crack jokes at their expense, it can be difficult to repair the damage. It’s also hard to care about characters that are completely unlikable and incompetent. Bad guys need personality like any other character, only with bigger teeth.
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You don’t like Superman?
Is it the cape, or the whole outside underwear thing? I mean, either is cause enough, but, for me, it’s mostly that he does so little with the power he has.
I don’t expect Batman to drive his Batmobile to the Middle East and fix that mess, but Superman? Slacker!
I’m not bothered by flyboy’s indifference to mankind or his silly get-up. I’m bothered by the fact that he’s practically perfect, and his only real weakness is a physical one. The prettyboy ends up boring and uncomplicated. At least Batman is kind of crazy. I’ll take a kooky psychopath over a cardboard cutout any day.
Hmm . . . I never saw him as perfect because he mostly acts for his own self-interest. Now, granted, it’s not a flaw in the same sense we see batman, but a flaw it is.
I should also mention, I’m only referencing TV shows and movies. I’ve not read any of the comics, so I don’t know how he comes off there.
I always thought the TV and film characterizations were far from perfect and more catering to male fantasies of lots of power with little responsibility. Nowhere is that put up in display more than in the diner fight scene at the end of Superman II.
But, I understand. No one likes perfect . . . why so many people dislike me, I’d wager. Wait . . . perfect me would not brag like that . . . DAMN!
. . . I still gotz work to do . . .
The struggle continues on.
Superman acting in self-interest, huh? I was about to disagree with you, but then I stopped and thought about and you’re not wrong. He does a lot of self-serving and petty things, at least in the movies. Weirdly enough though, the film never addresses those oddly selfish moments, and always pretends that he’s the perfect example of men and citizens. So yea, I’m a bit bothered by that.
I have no idea what he’s like in comics. I read a lot of comics, the couple Superman examples I’ve looked at were either forgettable, or memorable for reasons that weren’t him. Either way, comics are expensive and there are much better things to read than Supermand and even Batman really.
I have to agree with David. Supes is just too perfect to be interesting. He seems to have any power that he needs at the moment. In the movies he makes Lois forget his secret identity with a kiss, something we haven’t seen before or since (except in Robot Chicken). He even returned from the dead just because. They had to reduce his power in the Justice League cartoon because otherwise the solution to every conflict would be “Superman flies in and saves the day.” Then there’s the whole Jesus analogy which I don’t want to get into.
Oh yea, I totally forgot about the creepy mind powers that come up in that movie and thankfully they never come up again. The expansive breadth of his powers is a problem, but then again old-school Batman carries around a canister of shark repellent, so I can’t give him too much crap for that. Even the scale of his power is workable since he’s week to kryptonite. Sure, without kryptonite, almost none of his villains would stand a chance, but at least writers gave themselves an out so at least something could challenge him. Mostly, it’s his complete lack of personality and simplistic motives.
The whole Jesus thing is weird. It would be interesting to see a Superman story with a creepy cult of the personality around him, but so far every writer seems interested in making him like Jesus, and not in pointing out how bizarre that is or how it’d affect culture.
The more interesting takes on Superman have been done in the indie comics. I’m a big fan of Irredeemable by Mark Waid. The idea is “what if Superman decided to become a super villain”. Irredeemable has a linked series called Incorruptible that explores how one super villain reacts to this change.
Another comic that recast superman was The Boys by Garth Ennis. Ennis turns the entire idea of superheroes on its head in that series.
All worth a read, especially if you are sick of Superman.
Apparently Tyson and I read some of the same comics, because I was thinking of Irredeemable and the Boys. Irredeemable is completely terrifying, because honestly, Superman could totally wipe out entire continents and we’d be able to do absolutely nothing but watch. I had not heard of Incorruptible, that does also sound like an interesting read.
While the boys is often sophomoric and kind of silly (also, VERY graphic), it is a biting commentary on the way we look at superheroes and is probably a much more realistic vision of what would happen if gods walked among men. Spoilers: very few of them turn out nice or well-adjusted. I never did like it as much as Preacher though.
I’ve also heard good things about Miracleman, Alan Moore’s take on Superman. Haven’t read it yet, but I heard it deals a lot with Miracleman coming to grips with being a demigod among mortals. Way more interesting stuff.
Haven’t heard about Miracleman, David, but I’ll have to look it up.
Incorruptible has Max Damage as the main character, you’d have seen him in a few of the crossover editions. Well worth the read.
And I agree completely that The Boys does feel more like how most superheroes would behave. As a huge Ennis fan I find this series to be one of his better ones, and probably his best exploration of superhero hate – he did a couple of other series, like Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, along this line.
The thing with kryptonite is that it’s supposedly rare but people just keep finding it whenever it becomes convenient. It’s like cars on an episode of Oprah.
“You get some kryptonite! You get some kryptonite! And YOU get some kryptonite!”
The Justice League cartoon said his powers were less effective against magic (which also kinda fits into the whole Jesus thing from a certain POV) which is good but I think an overall reduction of power would help the character. There should always be someone else who is stronger, tougher, or faster, or in some way superior to Superman. Make him great at a bunch of stuff, just not the greatest in anyone thing.
Also give him survivor’s guilt or some kind of psychological issue. He’s one of the last of his kind, even if he hardly remembers them, that’s gotta affect him. He got lucky and he should be aware of it and be an aspect of his personality.
Kryptonite is the crutch with which they prop up Supes’ villains, plain and simple. The change made sense for JLA, but another weakness is not the same as scaling back the power. I would have preferred the latter, but they probably didn’t do that to maintain continuity or something.
Now, Supes with some survivors guilt would be interesting. Likely terrifying (imagine a god with PTSD), but still interesting.
That’s why I find Supergirl a more interesting character – she does remember Krypton, which makes her loss, grief, guilt and rage more visceral than Superman’s could ever be.
I thought the point of Joffrey was not to be a villain but to be loathed. I always took him to be an analogue for the spoilt rich kids in society who get away with everything. We weren’t meant to be thinking of him as the villain, we were meant to be thinking of how unfair the world is.
If that’s his point, I suppose he succeeds. Honestly though, I mostly find him a big disappointment when you compare him to some of the other stellar villains that show up in the series. The Boltins are equally hated and do a great job of teaching everyone the lesson that the world sucks and life isn’t fair, but they’re terrifying and at least Ramsey garners some respect. I suppose none of them are really spoiled though.
I thought this scene summed up him being the spoilt rich kid that was meant to be loathed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRZmVvMyaog
In all fairness, I’m not actually a fan of GoT. I found that while it is well written (books and TV) there aren’t many characters with redeeming qualities to get behind…. Well, none that last. Kinda feels like just one long stream of bad things happening with no end in sight. Which is why I stated the above as a question to see if others with more GoT experience had gotten that impression.
Oh sure, you’re not wrong. As someone who mostly enjoys the books, I can confirm, he is totally a spoiled child with a crown. Also, it never seems like Martin ever intended him to be anything but loathed. All the same, plenty of other characters in that series are equally loathsome, yet are way more compelling and interesting. I find him disappointing compared to everything else Martin has come up with.
We spend a lot of time on him if he’s really just supposed to inspire hatred.
But if there are so many other villains, why does Joffrey need to be perfect? He’s just the figurehead for his cause, albeit one who occasionally dishes out some pain because he can, and kind of provides a wild card for the competent villains on his side to deal with. For instance, intelligent and competent villains like Tywin would not have killed Ned Stark, for the reasons that happen on the show – Robb secedes from the kingdom and is declared a king and is now bound and determined to avenge Ned. Joffrey is a little asshole who screws over his own side, BECAUSE he’s that dumb. Also, it’s a story about a struggle to take over a kingdom. A very competent villain would presumably be good at that, so the stakes if he takes over are not all that bad in the grand scheme of things. If the Lannisters were super capable and intelligent, their being in charge might be a good thing for Westeros. It’s because Joffrey is such an irredeemable shitstain that you worry about it.
For the ones I saw, totally agree. Boba Fett looked cool, but his awesomeness is almost soley to the EU.
Captain Phasma/Zam Wessel could easily be seen on a list like this too. So over-hyped in the run up to the movie release.
I was very pleased with Kylo Ren though.
http://onenerdydad.com/2016/01/22/kylo-ren-is-the-best-dark-jedi-since-darth-vader-heres-why/
Captain Phasma was another big letdown- so much build up for nothing. Hopefully she’ll get another shot in one of the sequels, but we’ll see.
Liked the article. Fan of Ren, mostly because he is kind of flawed personally, but also because of the emotion. Good stuff.
I like that you called Faith out here. In Season Three, BtVS did not have as strong a central arc as it did in the previous season. Faith was introduced very early but often sat out entire episodes, diluting the chance for character development. While I didn’t have problems with her joining the Mayor and becoming his replacement Dragon, the season by that time had very little room to manoeuvre. Worse, the writers ploughed on with several more standalone stories, leaving a total of two episodes to a) establish Faith’s villain credentials (they largely failed) and b) establish the Mayor’s Ascension arc in the minds of both the audience and the protagonists. You see, the Mayor had been seen and used very sparingly in the first two thirds of the season, and by the time Faith joined him, the Scooby Gang still had absolutely no idea that he even HAD an ‘Ascension’ scheme. The horrible episode ‘Enemies’ does two things at once – it has Buffy & Angel ‘tricking Faith all along’ so they can learn about the Mayor’s schemes, but also so they can expose Faith as batting for his team. We’re informed that the scoobies somehow knew about both already, but how they came to this realisation is never revealed.
Oh yea, that whole season was a bit of a letdown for me. She could have been great as a traitor, but instead we don’t see her much for the season, and the bits we do see are weird.
My inner nerd is compelled to tell you that Boba Fett did NOT die in the Sarlacc pit. His escape is chronicled in the anthology The Tales from Jabba’s Palace, in the short story “A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett” by J.D. Montgomery. You better believe a skilled hunter like the Mandalorian King wouldn’t be brought down that easily.
Hopefully Disney won’t retconn that part of the Extended Universe as it’s a really great story.
They already have retconned it. The old EU in its entirety is gone. Given some of the truly awful stories in it, I can’t say that is a bad thing. Though Clone Wars made many of the same mistakes regardless, so a new brand of lousy has replaced the old.
This is one of those examples of how hard it is to be a hard core Star Wars fan. The continuity is such a convoluted mess regardless of which version you use that the only good canon is the one that you make up in your head.
In any case, the fact that the EU had to invent a new story is the problem, it shows that the films themselves were flawed in this respect. It’s just like trying to justify the plot of The Phantom Menace by pointing out that one of the EU books filled in the plot holes. Moving the problem to a tie in book doesn’t eliminate it from the film. You can’t expect an audience to do homework to enjoy a movie.
What’s funny is that Captain Phasma in The Force Awakens had a similar problem in the film of not really doing anything other than showing up in armor that looked cool. The random stormtrooper with a staff that Finn fought was far more effective in every possible way.
Why wasn’t that random Storm Trooper Phasma? WHYYYY?
Would have been super easy and awesome to do that. They missed a big opportunity there just so they could throw her down a garbage chute.
Oh yea, I never read that story, but I had heard about it. Really sad since the best Fett stories are not in the trilogy. I doubt they’ll retconn it, mostly coz Disney likely realizes that people love Fett, and they love money.
I can’t quite agree on Faith. Her mode was always, underlying, survival in the sense of the very young street wise-gal she almost certainly ha d been most of her life e before meeting her Watcher. And when she felt she had lost any status she could have on one side, she both switched an d adapted to it with the sadism you mentioned. And the cruelty was nothing new; even before the killing, she had used Xander ruthlessly for a one-night stand, with no thought of how he’d react.
Interesting. I had never though of as sadism as a replacement for her deep survival instinct. They do establish the survival instinct as an important factor, though I do wish they played it up or worked with it a bit more. However, I disagree that cruelty is the same as being sexually open or manipulative. Sure, she used Xander, but that is not the same as torture. Entirely two different things.
Very informative man. I really like this article a lot and I can still appreciate the villains for what they are in spite of what happens. I will use this to study when thinking about my villains.
Joffrey isn’t the villain, he’s barely even ‘A’ villain. In terms of narrative role he’s mainly a plot device that causes the conflict between the Starks and Lannisters to go on even though it would be more rational for both sides to go home and rule their respective slices of Westeros in peace. The villains of the first 3 books of Game of Thrones are Tywin and Cersei Lannister.
I haven’t seen all of GOT but I thought Joffrey Baratheon wasn’t a villain so much as a puppet – a place holder for power for those who control him. Likewise Faith is not so much a villain as “complicated”. She’s a Slayer will falls from grace, falls in with a bad crowd, and is then redeemed on ANGEL by saving the title character.
When it comes to Lex Luthor, well that version of the character has always bothered me, because that 70s version of Superman has more to do with the 60s live TV version of Batman than it does with the Superman comics of the time. The version of Luthor in “Superman Returns” is slightly better, but the one in Supes vs The Bats is thrown away as someone who seems to already know or guess Clark’s and Bruce’s alteregos, but does nothing about it (deleted scenes at fault perhaps. However I have a low opinion of that film and the one after it – they both seem to be based more on VIDEO GAMES than anything else, hence the endless indless (and pointless) slugfests that pervade both.
There’s a lot to Boba Fett if you read between the lines. We see in the way Vader interacts with him that he’s competent and dangerous. The guy who passively watched Tarkin blow up a planet and oversaw Leia’s torture feels the need to look Boba Fett directly in the mask and say “No disintegrations.” When Han hides in the ship’s garbage, Leia is so impressed she actually gives him a backhanded compliment…but we see Fett saw through it and manages to track them to Bespin. Even though Lando is the political boss in Bespin, Vader blows him off and changes their deal at will, but when Fett complains, he placates him with an offer of compensation. Clearly he perceives Fett as having more potential to make trouble for him than Lando. Vader yanks Fett’s gun down when Chewie goes berserk during Han’s freezing. Fett is used to working alone and dealing with dangers personally, while Vader is like “Calm down, this is what we have minions for.” Fett extricates frozen Han with minimal fuss despite Luke’s attempted ambush. He shoots to keep Luke’s head down and concentrates on getting away with his meal ticket rather than winning. He’s not supposed to be the arch villain, he’s there to explain how Han gets caught, in spite of all of his outlaw wiles that are so effective against the Empire and useful to the Rebellion. Fett out-outlaws the outlaw. It also takes Han out of the story, without killing him, because why would the Empire bother? Finally, he serves as the mechanism to pay off Greedo’s threats in the prior film.
As a character, we get as much competence and capability as we need. As a narrative device, he does what is needed, without taking over the story or shoving Vader, the actual antagonist, out of the spotlight.
In Jedi, Fett is hanging around Jabba’s because he’s finally achieved the big score of his career. Greedo talks about the potential bounty Jabba will offer, the rebel General is sufficiently impressed by it to give Han some time off to clear the matter up and Fett is agitated enough about the potential loss that he talks back to Vader, who seems to think his complaint is reasonable. Too many fictional characters would bank that score and go right back to doing their thing, but in real life, lots of people like to rest on their laurels and celebrate their accomplishment. So Fett hangs around Jabba’s schmoozing and probably humble-bragging and dropping mentions that, oh, yeah, I’m the one who brought in that frozen guy on the wall there, it’s Jabba’s favorite decoration, and I got him when the Imperial Fleet failed. Yeah, Vader called me in to do what his admirals and Star Destroyers couldn’t no biggie, so you doing anything later tonight?
And then some new punk comes in with Solo’s much more formidable partner on a LEASH. Not helpless and frozen in a block of carbonite, but conscious and pissed. And then “he” stares down Jabba with a thermal detonator to squeeze a bigger payout out of a powerful crimelord. Suddenly Fett doesn’t look like the biggest badass on the block anymore and you can practically see the iciles coming out of his visor when he gives disguised Leia that nod of acknowledgment. And that’s how he gets killed, trying to one-up the fake bounty hunter who almost freed Han and whose actions have led to this dramatic execution. His father and role model died fighting a Jedi, so he’s even more motivated to make a dramatic capture and tries to use a rope to subdue a guy who has a lightsaber. He’s so busy trying to get the big prize he doesn’t pay any attention to the people he dismisses as less important, and gets humiliated. Before his big score, he’d have never got careless, or engaged in such risky stunts, he’d have just shot Luke when he was distracted, or blown up the skiff. Or jetpacked away until someone offered him a reward to subdue the clusterfuck the execution turned into.
A tale of pride bringing a man low is all there, if you just think about it for a moment. The same thing goes for the Ewoks, too. They’re the most badass sapient species in the movies, if you think about it.
It’s not a lot of depth, but I always took Scarecrow’s motivation to be gaining power over others through his position as a psychologist. He’s a sadist that likes the feeling of being in control. That being said, he’s just a puppet to the League of Shadows, and likely an example of what the League sees as what’s wrong with Gotham.
I suppose the reason his showdown goes down so quickly, is because he’s just a puppet? Really cheapens Rachel’s contribution, though maybe it’s meant to make the audience feel that much more shocked when she’s kidnapped and killed in the second movie. Just going off my observations.
at last some!ody sees how useless bobba fet is
I disagree with your opinion on Joffrey. He is of course stupid, needlessly cruel and inefficient which makes him loathsome and unpleasant, but he has the dangerous power of being king in an empire with enough oath-and-honor-driven inertia, that this fact alone makes him a significant threat – just ask Ned Stark. This has a lot of paralleles with real world (I shall not name any for obvious reasons), and is therefore easily accepted by the audience.
He is of course not the main villain of the story, but I think that he is written well.