Throughout history, writers have always found ways to create characters that manage to produce feelings of revulsion and compassion from readers. This is a result of the characters committing crimes that can be both gruesome and enchanting. In this short piece, we take a look at some of these characters that have managed to keep us spellbound and wanting more.

We start off with perhaps the greatest villain ever created in the literary world. Enter Hannibal Lecter;

Lecter is a fictional character created by Thomas Harris and was idolized on the screen by the performance of Anthony Hopkins in the movie adaptation of the silence of the lambs. The first book "Red Dragon" introduces Hannibal Lecter has a Psychologist who aids FBI agent Will Graham in solving murder cases but is later incarcerated after attacking agent Graham who was very close to figuring out his identity.
In the prequel Hannibal Rising, Hannibal is seen as an orphan who was deeply influenced by the murder of his sister by Nazi Soldiers in his presence. He became enamoured with his Uncle's Widow (was adopted by he and his wife at 16 ) and commits his first murder while in Medical School when a fisherman insults her. Becoming obsessed with getting revenge for Mischa's death, he systemically searches for each perpetrator, murders them and feeds on their flesh. In the process sacrificing his relationship with Mirasaki and loses all traces of humanity.

He later regains something close to normal human feelings when he forms a strange relationship with Agent Clarice Starling, whom he captured and attempted turn her to his sister Mischa using classical conditioning and mind- altering drugs. Starling tells Lecter that Mischa's memory can live within him instead of taking her place. She then offers him her breast, and they become lovers. The novel (Hannibal) ends three years later with the couple living in Argentina.

It seems Hollywood just can't get enough of Hannibal, with NBC currently airing an adapted version of Red Dragon by Bryan Fuller. In this adaptation, Hannibal is portrayed as a man with a "God Complex" who believes he's not of us but is enamoured of mankind and loves people for who they are. Mads Mikkelsen plays Dr. Lecter with class, deviating from the Brian Cox or Anthony Hopkins , acting more or less as Lucifer experimenting on people. Gauging their reaction when forced into a corner and discarding them when done without remorse.

In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is described through Clarice Starling's eyes as "small, sleek, and in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own".

Red Dragon firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. In the film The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter's keeper, Dr. Frederick Chilton, claims that Lecter is a "pure psychopath"; however, in the novel, Dr. Chilton calls Lecter a sociopath. Lecter's pathology is explored in greater detail in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, which explain that he was irreparably traumatized as a child in Lithuania in 1944 when he witnessed the murder and cannibalism of his beloved younger sister, Mischa, by Lithuanian Hilfswillige. One of the Hilfswillige members claimed that Lecter unwittingly ate his sister as well.

In 2003, Anthony Hopkins, the actor that portrayed Hannibal in three adaptations of the books was named the Best Movie Villain by the American Film Institute and in June 2010, one of the 100 greatest characters of the last 20 years by Entertainment Weekly.

Just can't beat that.

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