Dark lord: Difference between revisions

The Dark lord is a stock character in fiction and mostly fantasy who is normally an evil villain who is very powerful.

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, people called The Devil, The Prince of Darkness, the Lord of Darkness or Satan. So when John Milton wrote his book Paradise Lost which had Satan as the protagonist he called him Satan, Lord of Darkness and called him the Dark Lord (though he usually just called him Satan.)

In his Christian science-fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis had each planet be ruled by an alien space angel called an Oyarsa who was sent there by Maleldil son of the Old One. But the Oyarsa of Earth tried to start a rebellion against Maleldil so he was banished to Earth and while there tried to make everyone evil to destroy Maleldil’s laws so Maleldil came to Earth and became human to stop the Fallen Oyarsa to the point where Maleldil died to save the world from him. In the sequel Perleandra, the narrator calls the Fallen Oyarsa the “Dark Lord of the Silent World” and the Fallen Oyarsa turns out to be The Devil.

J.R.R. Tolkien in his book The Lord of the Rings has an evil wizard named Sauron who creates a ring that makes everyone who wears it evil as part of a plan to take over Middle Earth. In it there is a poem about Sauron

“Three rings for the elven kings under the sky, seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone, nine for mortal men doomed to die, one ring for the Dark Lord on his Dark Throne in Mordor where the shadows lie, One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them in Mordor where the shadows lie”.

In George Lucas’s Star Wars movies, Emperor Palpatine is known as the Dark Lord of the Sith.

In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel The Last Hero, Pratchett parodies the idea of the Dark Lord by having a character named Evil Harry who always hires stupid people as his evil sidekicks and makes them all wear masks that look exactly alike and makes sure that he always gives the hero a chance to escape so that the heroes will follow a code of honour where they always have to let him get away after beating him so he can continue to be a villain and their story can continue.

J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter books has Lord Voldemort be an evil wizard who wants to kill all wizards and witches whose parents didn’t have magic (called the Muggle-born). And Voldemort wants to take over the world. Voldemort’s supporters called Death Eaters always call him the Dark Lord.

In the 1990s, someone named Jack Butler on his blog created a list of mistakes that a lot of Dark Lord characters make saying that he would not do any of those things if he were a Dark Lord, called The Evil Overlord List. Since then a lot of different people have added to the Evil Overlord List.