As the people who read my articles know, I absolutely adore personality types. I love analyzing people without them knowing and assigning a specific type for all without even consulting them. If I’ve spoken to you, I’ve analyzed you from a personality type perspective. It’s a guarantee. Just a total breach of mental privacy.
What’s even more fun though, is “typing” fictional characters. I absolutely love it. Me and my girlfriend do it all the time whenever we watch anything. We have the most fun with the Enneagram.
I feel like I go over the Enneagram in every article I do. 9 types, 27 subtypes, motivations and coping mechanisms, you know the deal by now. Something relevant today that I don’t believe I’ve went over is the different centers of intelligence. In the Enneagram, the three aforementioned centers are the Body center, types 8,9, and 1, the Thinking or Head center, 5,6, and 7, and the Heart or Feeling center, 2,3, and 4. In today’s article I’ll be talking about the Heart types in fiction, but specifically in villains!!!
The Heart types are driven by their feelings and have a preoccupation with their image, how they relate to people and how those same people respond to them.
This makes for extremely interesting villains in my opinion, because they’re usually emotionally driven and care too much about what other people think of them, which I find intriguing and just in general can relate to!
We’ll go type by type, starting with Type Two.
Type Two villains are often emotional, egotistical, and have a desire to be important. They’re power hungry and are usually in it for themselves. A trope I’ve seen with Type Two villains is arrogance related to the passion of Pride that drives all Twos. For example, my favorite one, Anakin Skywalker, desires to have the power to save the one he loves. In seeking this power, he goes mad with it and his original good intentions take on a more selfish tone, because now he is the all powerful. Similar with Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. Dany is EXTREMELY prideful, like Anakin, and it ends up getting to her head. She believes she’s doing the right thing, and many times she is, but the more she exerts her power, the more she wants it. Type Two villains include:
Type Three villains are often ambitious and cutthroat, willing to do anything to reach their self-interested goals. They are conscious of how they appear to others and make sure to present the perfect image in order to gain power and manipulate, whether it’s Emperor Palpatine creating just the right public persona to schmooze and play the Republic and manipulate Anakin, or Tywin Lannister being ruthless and seeking prestige to secure his family’s legacy. Type Three villains include:
Type Four villains often want to be special and unique, and in doing so try to exert their (false) superiority over others. They are often elitist and hateful, striving to make everyone as miserable as they are. This can include Cersei Lannister’s arrogance and cruelty to anyone she comes across, or Lord Voldemort’s overwhelming desire to be the greatest wizard of all time with the goal of exterminating the entire race of Muggles whom he sees as beneath him. Type Four villains include:
Do keep in mind that these are what the types look like in fiction at their most unhealthy. Hope you enjoyed this one, to whoever reads! I really just make these for fun, I love posting about stuff I’m passionate about. I’ll probably make this a series with other types! Love you all!