Ultimately, every villain in a given chapter of my life has never been evil. Our living stories are seldom epic battles of good versus evil. Rather, wars are waged and grievances accumulated over selfishness. That is it. Nothing more. 

But these selfish people will rob from you your comfort hoping to increase theirs. They will steal from you the truth hoping to change the confines of their reality. They will deliver harm to you hoping to add to themselves, protection. They will replace your justice hoping to bring an excess of mercy for them. And no matter what evil they leave on your doorstep, they will always lack, always be victims of want and need. Always, there will be some sense that they wish things could have been different. How different things will need to have been for them to have chosen better will always be undefined and unattainable. Ultimately, the villains who has hurt me the most simply chose their own interests over me.

I am trying to craft a storybook villain with this in mind. I want to exaggerate his lack of other flaws rather than his multitude of them. Ironically, I am finding that he must be carefully written and rewritten so that any other flaw that may come from his selfishness, however naturally, grows late in the story.