Daddy's Little Villain

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    If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it's important to spend quality time with the grandkids.
    —Evil Overlord List, #143

    She's the daughter/niece/granddaughter/etc. of an Evil Overlord, who shares her parent's ambition, cunning, and/or cruelty. She could be anything from a simple Spoiled Brat to an Overlord in waiting. Also likely to be a Princess (but almost never wear pink, almost).

    But she is a villain just like her guardian. Viewers should neither expect her to be The Ingenue nor expect a Heel Face Turn from her, even if she falls for the hero. That would more be her just wanting him for herself than willingly joining his side (and his refusal is likely to inspire Woman Scorned, however little reason she had to believe that he might accept). She may be a Dark Action Girl, or more rarely be a Dark Magical Girl.

    Okay, she might team up with the heroes, but only for the same reason any other dragon would team up with them. Then it's enemies again.

    Of course if she's above a certain age, she is going to be hot, is often a cooler character than the female lead, and might wear less. If the bad guys are the Yellow Peril or otherwise "Asian-themed", expect her to be a Dragon Lady.

    If her father ever gets defeated, she will be the one doing the avenging. In the meantime, mom and/or dad may give her a first rate education by sending her to the Academy of Evil. If it turns out her Evil Parents Want Good Kids, expect a disappointment. To correct this acquired morality they may send her to a Super-Hero School.

    Of course, she might get impatient waiting for Mommy and Daddy to die so she can take their place. In this case, she might decide to become a Self-Made Orphan and The Usurper all at once.

    A Sister Trope to Overlord, Jr. (the Spear Counterpart to this).

    Compare Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter (while also the child of the Big Bad, eventually does a Heel Face Turn), The Evil Prince, Protected by a Child, Dark Mistress.

    Contrast Princess Classic, Capulet Counterpart, Evil Parents Want Good Kids, Mafia Princess.

    Examples of Daddy's Little Villain include:

    Anime & Manga

    • Eureka Seven's Anemone is very much this trope towards her commander Dewey Novak, with a dash of Yandere thrown in for good measure. Unlike most, she actually does make a Heel Face Turn in the end, after she realizes just HOW depraved Dewey is and her love for Dominic changes her for the better.
    • HUGE subversion in Dangaioh. Pai Thunder, the Big Girl from the Five-Man Band, was actually the daughter of Big Bad Garimoth and had a Face Heel Turn once she recovered her memories. But when Garimoth told her to kill her teammate Roll before taking her back, Pai rebelled and rejoined the group.
    • She's not actually his daughter, but the Millennium Earl and Road Kamelot of D Gray Man behave like this.
    • Rue from Princess Tutu is a normal ballet student, until she becomes her alterego, Princess Kraehe. Later it's revealed that The Big Bad Raven actually kidnapped her as a baby. Meaning he'd lied to her about her being HIS daughter. The Raven is definitely not going to win the "father of the year" award.
    • A Certain Magical Index: We're not entirely sure if Amata Kihara is Telestina Lifeline's father or if Gensei Kihara had another son, but they're both him and Telestina really fits this trope well. Really, really well.
    • Mariemaia Barton from the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing OVA. She is (allegedly) the illegitimate daughter of Treize Kushrenada and a nurse. She tries to take over the world at the age of eight, "the way her father would have wanted." Some evidence, however, suggests that she is not Treize's daughter at all, but just a random girl found and groomed by Dekim to assume the role.
      • Treize's daughter or not, the ultimate irony is that Kushrenada was more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist who ultimately believed in peace, while Mariemaia knowingly tried to start another war just after a rather devastating one had finally wrapped up.
    • She's far from childish or spoiled, but Princess Kycilia Zabi still fits the trope, sharing her father Degwin's philosophy and remaining loyal to him even after his death.


    Comic Books

    • Sin, the Red Skull's completely Axe Crazy daughter. She was a looker until in Captain America: Reborn where she gets an extreme makeover courtesy of an exploding mecha. Now she truly is her father's daughter.
    • In the comic book series Empire, Golgath, supreme villainous overlord of the world, has only one joy in life: his sweet, innocent daughter. Only she's not as innocent as he thinks, as she's been sleeping with one of his lieutenants and eventually convinces him to betray her dad for her. Then it turns out she had been manipulating the guy all along, intentionally setting him up to be caught and executed just for her own amusement, and the whole thing was just a way of expressing her disturbing obsessive feelings toward her father.
      • Even worse, she poisoned her own mother and made it look like a suicide because she felt she was making Golgath soft.
    • Captain Marvel has a good example of the difference between this and Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter. Marvel's archenemy Sivana has four kids. Two of them are beautiful and good, siding with Captain Marvel. While his other two children are ugly and evil like him.
      • Though in some appearances, his beautiful children where bad as well.
    • Planetary: Flashbacks explains how Doc Brass fought mysterious Fu Manchu-like Hark and eventually convinced him to join the side of the good guys. Hark's daughter Anna, however, had been raised as a villain, survived her father and became a thorn in the heroes's side.
    • It Takes A Wizard: The little girl the Corrupt Corporate Executive valued so much that he busted the hero out of his impending death sentence so he could rescue her? Not only did she join the Big Bad in the wasteland of Manhattan, her father supported her decision to do so. Sending the hero on this mission was all part of a grand Evil Plan -- to avenge Gaia by dethroning humanity from its place at the top of the food chain.
    • In Superman Superman's sister-in-law Lucy Lane has become Superwoman, a supervillain, because she believes dear old dad, General Sam Lane's idea that Superman and the other Kryptonians are a threat to national sercuity.
    • Alexandria von Fogg from PS238.
    • Winnowill from Elf Quest was vaguely retconned to be Haken's daughter, though the hinting started pretty early on in the series. She really takes after him... and once she starts living inside Rayek's mind, she flesh-shapes his body to look pretty much exactly like her father's.
    • X-Men villain Mastermind had two daughters with similar powers who have been villainesses. The younger one, Regen, even briefly joined the X-Men under the guise of a Heel Face Turn before showing her True Colors.
    • Kraven's little girl, Ana Kravinoff. She's just as good a Hunter as her dad.
    • In All-Star Superman, Lex Luthor has a niece, Nastalthia, who's eighteen, speaks 30 languages and wants to conquer the world.
    • Sybil Mayhew, daughter of Blackhawk's Evil Counterpart Death Mayhew, who follows in her father's footsteps after his death.
    • Trigon wants his daughter Raven to be this. How well he succeeds is Depending on the Writer. Most of the time, she resists...It's when she can't that her teammates are screwed.
    • Angel Top, the daughter of the infamous hitman Flattop from the Dick Tracy comics.
    • The Justice Society of America have had to deal with two of these. First is the daughter of The Mist, the arch enemy of the original Starman, who took her father's place after his death. The second is the appropriately named Junior, daughter of the first Ragdoll.


    Film

    • In the Danish film Pusher 3, Serb druglord Milo's daughter clearly wears the pants in the family, ordering her flustered father around to prepare for her 25th birthday party. After Milo discovers that her boyfriend is an independent drug dealer and forces him to buy his product for distribution, his daughter finds out and hardballs his price down. What a family!
    • Though we don't get to see them in action, Mr. Han from Enter the Dragon trained his daughters to be his most loyal guard. As Roper says upon finding out how tough they can be, "No one's more loyal than Daddy's little girl."
    • Yellowbeard: Triola, daughter of the greedy religious leader El Nebuloso.
    • In Bulletproof Monk, Nina, who pretends to be a human rights activist, is the granddaughter of the Big Bad Nazi, who has been chasing the titular monk since World War Two. She later tries to seduce the monk and has a Designated Girl Fight with Jade. She's enough of a Badass that she has no problem breaking into a mansion owned by a Russian mobster.
    • Daughter Of The Dragon has Fu Manchu's daughter, played by the stunning Anna May Wong.
    • Conan the Barbarian (2011). Marique, witch daughter with Wolverine Claws of Khalar Zym.


    Literature

    • Fah Lo Suee, the daughter of Fu Manchu embodies the "beautiful but at-least-as-evil-as-he" version of the evil mastermind's daughter, making this Older Than Radio.
    • Sonia Steiglitz is the beautiful and sadistic Knife Nut daughter of the ex-CIA chief/archaeologist villain of The Takers, a modern Two Fisted Tale by Jerry Ahern.

    "My mother would drink while my father was out searching for the damned Gladstone Log. Some nights she'd beat me because she couldn't love him. I'm twenty-six years old. I stopped playing with dolls twenty years ago. I taught myself to hurt things and feel nothing -- all so I could be with him when he searched -- be with him! It was never my mother -- I don't know if he loved her. It was always finding the Gladstone Log...the power...the power he wanted..."

    • Harry Dresden's nemesis Nichodemus has a daughter named Deirdre who is just about as evil and dangerous as he his. Doesn't hurt that she appears to be his lover too. The RPG even refers to her as Daddy's Little Denarian in her character sheet.
    • Lila Zacharov of The Curse Workers by Holly Black is the daughter of a manipulative, murdering crime boss, and wants nothing more than to be his heir. However, she's portrayed as more of an Anti Heroine than a villian.
    • In William Shatner's novel Ashes Of Eden, the Big Bad's daughter has been brainwashed by her father into doing everything she can to kill Kirk. Why? Because her mother was killed by Klingons shortly before Kirk helped sign the peace treaty, preventing her father from exacting revenge on them. She opts to die with her father rather than let Kirk save her.
    • Vestara Khai from Fate of the Jedi comes from a whole society of Sith, and both she and her father Gavar are major villains. Though for now, at least, she's in an Enemy Mine with Luke Skywalker and his son Ben agaisnt an Eldritch Abomination which is manipulating her people- and while Ves herself would be horrified at the idea, many fans hope she'll make a genuine Heel Face Turn before everything is over.
      • Indeed, in Vortex, she saves Luke and Ben from the Sith. Twice. Also, this trope takes an interesting turn when Vestara killed Lord Taalon, who was "too far above her station", thus making her own father (and lots of other Sith) want to kill her. Afterwards, she decides to stick around and help Luke and Ben.
    • Devereaux D'Orsay in (the last book of) Cinda Williams Chima's TheHeirTrilogy is male, but he's still the spoiled, bratty, and thoroughly villainous (though handsome) child of one of the main villains.
    • A Song of Ice and Fire
      • Petyr Baelish is trying to get Alayne Stone/ Sansa Stark to play this role, although there is much speculation as to where this will lead.
      • It seems likely that Cersei would have been this to Tywin Lannister when she was younger, except she never forgave him for failing to deliver on his promise to secure her marriage to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. After years of being married to Robert Baratheon, their relationship has soured considerably.
      • Asha Greyjoy appears to be this while her father is alive, but after his death proves to have a much different and more sensible agenda.
      • The HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones has a scene where Cersei is showing Crown Prince Joffrey how to be Mummy's little villain. Unfortunately, he takes her advice re: "you are king and can do whatever you want" very much to heart, while ignoring her lessons on prudent policy and government.
    • Phaidor, daughter of the Thern (White Martian) Priest King from the second and third John Carter of Mars novels. Her dad is the head of a planet-spanning Path of Inspiration which manipulates the other Martian races into being slaves and/or food for their people, and she's not only completely cool with it, she finds the idea of any other way of life unthinkable, and while she's attracted to Carter, it's mostly because he's Badass and she's utterly dumbfounded by why he does the things he does. Then she gets a dose of Break the Haughty when she finds out that another Martian race, the Firs Born, are using the Therns the same way the Therns use everyone else, followed shortly by Carter exposing the whole thing and toppling it. Then her dad gets offed by the First Born warlord he'd been in a very tense Villain Team-Up with, and she avenges him before comitting suicide, though she does express repentence in her last moments.


    Live Action TV

    • Despite not really being his daughter, Faith winds up very much playing this role to The Mayor on the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—she's his loyal Dragon, of whom he is clearly protective. Buffy sending her into a coma led to his one swear word and Buffy taunting him about said loss led to his defeat. Many scenes between Faith and the Mayor involved him giving her gifts and general life advice alongside assassination missions.
      • Nice little call back in the Season Eight comics, showing that Faith remembers him fondly despite her Heel Face Turn.
    • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King," the daughter of a former villain in hiding uses their cover as a performing theater troupe to kill off the remaining witnesses to her father's previous crimes as a way of "protecting" him from recrimination. In a subversion, however, her father is extremely displeased with her when he finds out, having hoped to start a legitimate new life in their cover identities, and appalled that the blood on his hands had irreversibly stained her, as well.
    • Elle from Heroes.
    • Astronema from Power Rangers in Space toward Ecliptor.
    • Princess Ardala of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
      • Did her dad (or any superior) actually ever show up?
    • Young Dracula has Ingrid, the elder sister of the title character, who at least in the earlier seasons would love to be this. Unfortunately for her, her father is utterly sexist, and so despises and ignores her in favour of her White Sheep brother.
    • Mr. Yang from Psych.


    Mythology

    • Medea of Classical Mythology is an excellent illustration of what this character type is like when they are in love with the hero, and how just dangerous said characters are if you betray them. After Hera made her fall madly in love with Jason, in order to aid him she betrayed her father, then cut her brother into several pieces to distract her father in a bid to gain Jason more time and distance, and then tricked Jason's cousins into murdering their father - Jason's treacherous, usurping uncle. Jason then promised to marry her, but when he changes his mind and abandons the very powerful witch on an island to go marry someone else, she not only murders her own children by Jason but had her revenge by magically incinerating Jason's wife. She's also a major Karma Houdini, since her fate was to become a goddess and get paired with some handsome hero in the Elysian Fields. Although it makes some sense as she was part-divine, and from her actions she was clearly following in the footsteps of the rest of that pantheon, and Jason himself was the one to blame for most of it.
    • Similarly to the above, there is a Jewish folktale about a merchant's son who fell in love with the daughter of the Demon-king Ashmodeus and while she aided him against her father, found that her spouse had a roving eye, and likewise killed his entire human family.


    Video Games

    • Tabitha/Larissa from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, who is Caulder's/Stolos' Dragon. She's also the most loyal to him (though not slavishly so; for some reason they seem to have a relatively normal father-daughter relationship).
    • Nina Cortex, the niece of Dr. Neo Cortex (although it has been speculated that she may actually be his daughter) in the Crash Bandicoot series.
    • Wendy O. Koopa from the Super Mario Bros. games.
    • You'd think Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord would feature this... but it doesn't, exactly. The current Darklord is all Evil Overlord, but according to the intro and the previous game, My Life As a King, her father was an Anti-Villain who just wanted to protect monsters and provide them a place to live in peace.. but was more than willing to kill those who stood in the way of this goal. So... she doesn't take after her father in that she's more unambiguously evil and less sympathetic than him.
    • Elenor Lamb in the bad ending of BioShock (series) II
    • Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin plays with this: while Stella and Loretta aim to take down the heroes, they do it independently of Brauner, who insists they stay out of harm's way. They're also not actually his daughters, having been brainwashed to believe that Brauner is their father.
    • The Dragon Fable villain Sepulchure (one of the more serious bad guys in the normally lighthearted game) is revealed to have a daughter during on the Elemental Orb storylines. You may think of her as an innocent baby, but that's only unless you haven't played Adventure Quest Worlds, AE's MMO, which shows her already a grown woman (or teenager, it's hard to tell) and takes over as the leader of the Evil faction in the game. The two even wear the same Doomknight [dead link] armor.
    • Puchi Oguras #1 and #5 from Densetsu No Stafy 2.
    • In Mystery Case Files: 13th Skull, the actual villain of the story has a disturbing little girl who is fully aware of and involved in their plan to use and then kill the protagonist.
    • Final Fantasy X: Yunalesca being one of these to her father Yu Yevon is one of the reasons Spira is such a Crapsack World. Apparently she could have designed the Final Aeon to be able to permanently destroy Sin and Yu Yevon, but she just couldn't bring herself to kill what was left of her father and Zanarkand. Cue 1000 years of suffering.


    Webcomics


    Web Original

    • Maybe half the girls in the Bad Seeds, the club at Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe for children of supervillains. Jobe is the child of Gizmatic, and as such is now the heir apparent and princess of Karedonia.
    • The Evil Overlord List recommends that if an evil overlord ends up having kids, make them get involved in the family business early and shower them with love. That way when the hero shows up you have a no win situation for the big hero: they either kill the evil overlord in front of his little girl, walk away, or convince said little girl to come with them (at which point she pulls out her little gun and shoots him in the kneecap).


    Western Animation

    • Princess Azula in Avatar: The Last Airbender actually gets much, much more screen time than her similarly-evil progenitor. She also serves as a foil to her brother, Zuko, succeeding repeatedly where he fails and eventually failing spectacularly, miserably, where he succeeds.
    • Rava from Galtar and the Golden Lance (pictured above) is even more full of scheming and betrayal than her uncle Tormak.
    • The daughter of Killer Moth in Teen Titans. She steals her father's technology purely to create mayhem and get Robin's attention, and when her boyfriend Fang dumps her she latches on to Robin purely as a trophy boyfriend to make Fang jealous. And unleashes a horde of man eating moths on the city.
    • Shreeky from the Care Bears series is a different type. She is spoiled and bratty. And as a villain, she and Beastly act like a Terrible Trio (with No Heart being the leader).
    • From Dave the Barbarian, Princess Urmaplotz is pretty much a parody of the concept, as well as the Princess Classic.
    • Cerina in Skysurfer Strike Force
    • Goldie, Goldfinger's daughter in the animated series James Bond Jr..
    • Charmcaster has this sort of relationship with her uncle Hex in Ben 10.
    • On the cartoon show Jimmy Neutron, Beautiful Gorgeous, the Femme Fatale daughter of Professor Finbar Calamitous, constantly bickers with daddy when they scheme together. Their one mission together involved kidnapping Action Hero (real and TV star) Jet Fusion.
    • Phineas and Ferb's resident Mad Scientist, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, likes to think that his daughter Vanessa is this. While she was completely unreceptive to the idea at first, later episodes seem to hint that she might be heading in that direction after all, even if she still denies it.
    • Played completely straight with Creeping Ivy, daughter of Thorn, in Herself The Elf. She also shares her father's competency and motivation, to the delight of the protagonists. The extremes to which she takes after her father in personality are actually quite surprising when one considers that she is also The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter.
    • Numbuh 86 from Codename: Kids Next Door is a subversion of this. She's extremely unpleasant, is feared by just about everyone, and is the daughter of Mr. Boss...who happens to be the bad guys' leader. However, she herself is actually one of the good guys' leaders. Doesn't stop her from getting along with her Dad, though.
    • Super Mario Bros Super Show cartoon amps up this tendency in Bowser's daughter Wendy O. Koopa, as mentioned in the Video Games folder. Bowser (called Koopa in the cartoon) lets all of his kids wreak havoc in the episodes where they appear, but is particularly adoring of his only daughter.


    Real Life

    • According to histories, Julia Drusilla, the toddler daughter of Caligula himself, was shaping up to be one of these. Upon being told that his daughter had attacked her playmates and tried to scratch their eyes out, he bragged that there was no dispute of who her father was. She was also stated to have attacked her mother's assassins during Caligula's fall. This might have all been true, or simply a justification for the soldiers to have seized a two year-old girl by the ankles and swung her head against the wall.
      • Caligula's sister, Julia Agrippina the Younger, was the ultimate example. Because of her brother's unnatural devotion to her, Julia held sway over the politics in Rome. She made an attempt to overthrow him after he went completely nuts, but was caught and exiled. After his assassination, she returned triumphantly to work her way back to the top and marry the new emperor, Claudius - her uncle. After living the high life again for a while, she convinced Claudius to name her own son his heir. She then killed him and put her young son on the throne as her puppet. That son would be Nero. She is perhaps best described in Badass:

    "Julia Agrippina was 'Rome's Sweetheart,' kind of like Julia Roberts, only if instead of acting in charming romantic comedies she hacked Osama Bin Laden's arms off with a chainsaw, nuked North Korea, and poisoned half of the House of Representatives to death with cyanide cupcakes."

    • Gulnora "Guli" Karimova, daughter of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, is likely to inherit control of Uzbekistan from her father. As the Uzbek ambassador to the UN, she has tried to cover up her father's acts of tyranny and give the Karimov regime a pretty face. She has also launched a clothing line made from cotton picked by child labor, sent mercenaries to kidnap her ex-husband's family, taken control of the Uzbek tea industry, and filled Uzbek radio and TV stations with her pop songs, released under her diminutive name "Gugusha." As she is only 40, there is still plenty of time for Gulnora Karimova to step out of her father's shadow and develop her own form of depraved tyranny.
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