Video Game Villains Who Romance The Heroes

The subject of love is one that has fascinated and frustrated artists, poets, and scholars for millennia. The result is the creation of many a narrative about odd circumstances from which love can arise. Somewhat fascinating love stories arise from romantic liaisons between good and evil.

These can be fun, in part because of the idea of love as this all-conquering force. Sometimes love can overcome any barrier, other times it is merely a false pretense from which another agenda ends up being carried out. Whatever the case, through various circumstances, these characters can find themselves romantically involved with the heroes.

5 Maria Thorpe

A Star-Crossed Lover

As a straightforward example of this kind of character, Maria was an English noblewoman who was a templar, in love with Altaïr, a Levantine assassin, who acted in direct opposition to the templars. Maria first met her future betrothed when she was used by her superior as a decoy to trick Altaïr, although the assassin did not kill Maria, either. Maria is notably a tomboyish character, participating in fights and at times, acting as a man, due to how little women were allowed to participate in war. Unfortunately, for a long time, she channeled her drive to fight for glory towards the efforts of the Crusades. That said, once she was aligned with Altaïr, she was able to act as his voice of reason.

Maria inadvertently fed Altaïr information about the Templar Order while they were still technically enemies. Eventually, Maria grew to oppose a New World Order, the ultimate goal of the templars, and consciously allied with Altaïr directly. After Altaïr killed the Grand Master of the Templar Order, Armand Bouchart, he settled down with Maria. The pair married and had two sons, the youngest of whom, Sef, was a maternal ancestor to Desmond Miles. Unfortunately, siding with the heroes did not save Maria’s life, as she was killed by Swami, another member of the Levantine Brotherhood of Assassins, who gained power as the organization became corrupted and forgot its creed. Altaïr was deeply traumatized by her death for the remainder of his life.

4 Benny

A Foe With Benefits

Sometimes the gender of a player’s avatar can significantly alter the trajectory of romanceable characters. Although more recent games have gotten better at representing different sexualities, it is still a fact that some characters only go for a certain sex, in a way that can change the gameplay. Thus, certain characters are only avilable partners for a certain gender. One example of the following is Benny, from Fallout: New Vegas.

Benny is a subordinate to Mr. House, having been part of one of the tribes who supported his control of Vegas. This gave him control and access to House’s technology, while those in opposition were displaced, suffering death and starvation. Nonetheless, this new power still wasn’t enough for him, and he actively conspires to take over New Vegas under House’s nose. His duplicitous nature makes him disliked by virtually everyone who knows about him.

Although he is played by the late Matthew Perry, who was known for starring in films and television with an emphasis on romance, Benny is probably one of his least romantic characters. He first encounters Courier Six and shoots them in the head, to steal the package they were delivering, not exactly anyone’s ideal meet-cute. Nonetheless, a female courier, specifically one with the Black Widow perk, is capable of sleeping with him anyway. He will be somewhat confused as to why someone like the courier, who is against him, wants to sleep with him, but will still ultimately take the player to his room if they want.

This can be a pretense to kill him on the Las Vegas strip, although the player can leave him alone after the deed is done if they desire. This will result in him being subsequently found in Caesar’s tent, where his exact fate is once again left up to the player. Although this relationship is far from affectionate, the player can take extra steps to ensure Benny is freed from the Legion, but after this point, they will never see him again.

3 Megaera

A Romanceable Boss Character

Hades makes the most out of the more repetitive aspects of its structure. This is partially achieved through the affinity system, which allows Zagreus to build bonds with the characters he continually meets throughout the game’s four levels and the hub world. One such character is Megaera, the eldest of the fury sisters. She is tasked by Hades to help take care of matters in the Underworld and torture transgressors. To this end, she is tasked to battle Zagreus, being the first boss in the game he must face before escaping Tartarus.

This boss fight can vary once played enough times. Frustrated with Megaera’s supposed incompetence, Hades will occasionally swap her out with one of her younger, scarier sisters, Alecto or Tisiphone, neither of whom are allowed in the House of Hades. It is also possible to fight all three of the furies at once.

As Zagreus made his initial attempts to leave the Underworld, Megaera grew cold towards him. However, as Zagreus began to rebuild his relationship with his father, Megaera and him managed to repair their own friendship. Depending on the player’s actions, the story can go further. Maximum affinity with Megaera allows her the option to romance Zagreus, which the player can choose to accept. Furthermore, the two have the option of not being exclusive. Megaera is one of three love interests Zagreus can have. Most notably, Megaera can engage in a polyamorous relationship with both Zagreus and Thanatos, providing that Zagreus has maxed out affinity with the pair and entered separate romantic relationships with each of them.

2 Gangrel

The Madly In Love King

“Mad King” Gangrel is the earliest major villain in Fire Emblem: Awakening. He is the initial ruler of Plegia, who started as a common thief. Apparently descended from nobility, he reclaimed power by allying with the Grimleal, a religious cult centered around the Fell Dragon, Grima. Although Gangrel is not an adherent to the cult, he used their influence to secure his own position and considered himself a “Grimleal in name only.”

For the first stretch of Awakening, he makes an active effort to instigate a war. The end result is a lot of needless bloodshed that ends with his presumed death. He is known to treat his subordinates poorly and relish the cruelty his power affords him. His crass speech and upfront manner of being are also in contrast to the manners of most rulers in the game, likely to highlight his background as a lower-class criminal. His actions led to the Ylissean Exalt, Emmeryn, attempting suicide in a failed gambit to prevent the subsequent war. Although she survived, the fall she took in the attempt gave her severe brain damage and rendered her amnesiac. She was also presumed dead prior to being potentially recovered by the Shepherds.

After Gangrel’s own presumed death, he joins a Ylissean pirate crew led by a berserker known as Zanth. Here, he was mistreated by the pirate, and left to stew over all the horrible selfish actions he committed. In spite of all the suffering Chrom endured at his hand, he is still capable of recruiting Gangrel, by talking to the fallen king during three separate turns. The ultimate result is Gangrel agreeing he would rather die for Chrom’s cause than continue working under Zanth. His fate after the war is unclear, with the only consensus being that he died “within a matter of years.”

In spite of it all, Gangrel is capable of finding love with a female Robin, as well as fathering her son, Morgan. After a series of support conversations where Gangrel makes an effort to scout her for his own purposes, a potential final support conversation can be unlocked if Robin is unmarried. In this conversation, Gangrel reveals his requests were little more than a pretense to ask Robin for her hand in marriage. Although moderately unnerved, Robin ultimately accepts, claiming she would be “honored” to share her life with him. Staring at his betrothed, he questions how “she got [him] to love [her],” and claims that if she’s trying to make a new man out of him, it’s working. His exact fate in this timeline of events is unclear, but like any other partner taken by an incarnation of Robin, scholars agree that she loved him above all else.

1 Dahlia Hawthorne

A Toxic Relationship

Although there is a turbulent nature to college romance, few were likely as disastrous as Phoenix Wright’s relationship with Dahlia Hawthorne. Hawthorne was a deeply self-interested woman who had committed multiple murders to cover up her crimes. She was notably involved as both a witness and the ultimate culprit in the first two trials of Mia Fey. She poisoned the coffee of Mia’s colleague and eventual boyfriend, Diego Armando, resulting in him falling into a coma until a couple of years after her murder.

She achieved this by using a bottle necklace with poison stolen from her then-boyfriend, Doug Swallow. She subsequently planted the evidence on a young, law-illiterate, Phoenix Wright, as a “love gift.” She planned to kill Wright, but her near-identical twin, Iris, instead persuaded her to merely retrieve the necklace. To this end, Iris swapped places with her sister, and developed a genuine romance with Wright. However, this did not stop Hawthorne from using that pretense to her own selfish ends.

Becoming frustrated with her sister’s inability to retrieve the necklace, Dahlia tried to poison Wright’s cold medicine. However, Doug Swallow wished to warn Wright of his girlfriend’s duplicitous nature. Unfortunately, this only led to Wright’s anger, with him pushing Doug and escaping, before Dahlia electrocuted him to death with nearby power cables.

This resulted in Wright being the prime suspect for murder, with Mia Fey acting as his defense attorney. Although it took extra effort on Mia’s part to break Wright from her sway, she succeeded in proving Dahlia was the guilty party, which resulted in her eventual execution. The whole incident was deeply traumatic for Wright, and he refused to discuss it with anyone for quite some time as a result. From that point forward, Phoenix dedicated himself to studying law, and became a protégé of Mia Fey, before her untimely demise. Phoenix would later find out the truth about his romance with Iris, whose existence Phoenix was unaware of until years later.