A To Z 2024 - Villains! - X Is for eXtras

 In all the, the years I’ve been doing the A to Z Challenge, I’ve only had one occasion when I got a real X word - during my Greek Mythology posts. That’s because there are X words in Greek. The X post was about the immortal horses of Achilles, Xanthus and Balius. 

Every other year I’ve cheated with “Extras” which gave me the chance to slip in things I didn’t do last time, as there are only so many I can use in each post. This year will be the same.

So, just a few…

M is for Medraut and Minotaur

Medraut, or Mordred, is the incestuously born son of King Arthur. In Malory his mother is Arthur’s sister Morgause, the Queen of Orkney, wife of King Lot. His half brothers are Gawain, Gareth, Gaheris and Agravaine. Morgause sleeps with her brother, who doesn’t know they are related. Medraut ends up fighting his father and they kill each other in battle. He is responsible for wiping out the Round Table fellowship. 

He is in pretty much all of the Arthurian legends and retellings, because he has to be, but there are plenty of novels in which he is not really a villain, it just works out badly. For example,  Mary Stewart, author of the Merlin series, said that she had read an account which just said that Arthur and Medraut had died in a battle, not that they had been fighting on different sides. She would have liked to go with that but she had already established that they would be on opposite sides. But her Medraut was basically okay and tried unsuccessfully to prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled. For the most part, though, he is the baddie, as in the film Excalibur, in which the role was played by Robert Addie, who went on to play another villain, Guy of Gisburne, in Robin Of Sherwood. Before going off to fight his father, this Medraut kills his mother(played by a very young Helen Mirren). 

By the way, even Guy of Gisburne had a couple of novels in which he was the goodie and Robin Hood was the villain! 

The Minotaur is a creature from Greek mythology, son of Cretan Queen Pasiphae, who was also the mother of Ariadne who helped Theseus in the Labyrinth. King Minos had kept a white bull sent him by Poseidon for sacrifice, so by way of godly vengeance Pasiphae was made to lust after the bull. She had the craftsman Daedalus build her a cow she could hide in and… Anyway, the result was a bull-headed man, which Minos sent to live in the Labyrinth designed also by Daedalus, and fed with teenagers taken as tribute, until the hero Theseus killed it.

In Mary Renault’s The King Must Die, Minotaur was simply the title of the heir to the throne of  Crete, like the Prince of Wales, and his father was a Hittite bull dancer.  Theseus killed him anyway, while he was about to be crowned; he was the villain of that book. The Labyrinth was the name of the palace, not a place under it, so he didn’t have to hide there. 

C is for Carcer

Carcer is the villain of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel, The Night Watch. Usually the Discworld books are hilarious. This one is more serious than the others though it has some humour in it. 

Sam Vimes, hero of the City Watch novels in the Discworld series, time travels while chasing Carcer, who is a serial killer, who just kills for the pleasure of it. They both end up in their city, Ankh Morpork, thirty years before the time in which the series is set. Ankh Morpork was not at that time the likable place it became. The City Watch was not nice. There is corruption. There is killing. Carcer fits right in. Vimes, who remembers a mentor, a John Keel, who had arrived in the city to join the Watch, only he doesn’t, because the first thing Carcer does is murder him, so Vimes has to become John Keel and mentor his younger self. And deal with Carcer. And get involved with a rebellion… 

Fortunately he has the assistance of the History Monks, who specialise in time travel. But he has three days to do what needs to be done and get history back where it needs to be. 

Carcer gets his comeuppance. 

T is For Mr Teatime

Mr Teatime is another Discworld villain, in the novel Hogfather. The Hogfather is the Discworld  version of Santa Claus. Mr Teatime, a member of the Assassins Guild, is commissioned to kill him. His method involves ensuring he doesn’t exist, by removing belief in him. He is utterly insane and worries even the head of the Assassins Guild, Lord Downey. 

Fortunately for the future of the world, he is beaten by Susan Sto Helit, the granddaughter of Death, who in this world is a likeable skeleton, and taking over the Hogfather’s round, in a desperate attempt to keep belief going until Susan can fix it. 

Susan, a governess, fights the monsters under her charges’ beds with a poker. A poker that only kills monsters, so right through Death and into Teatime. 

See you on Monday for Y!