5 Great Female Villains In YA And Why We Need More Of Them

Female villains in Young Adult Fiction are few and far between. There are dozens upon dozens of strong female protagonists such as the famous Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, the fan-cult favorite Feyre from A Court of Thorns and Roses, and lesser-known Emika Chen from Warcross. There’s one thing each of the previous examples have in common: their foils are all men. 

What makes a good antagonist is often their motivation, so why have female villains been neglected for so long? YA often falls into tropes and stereotypes, one of them being that the greedy power-seeking antagonist is male because women usually have deeper motivations than that. But the deeper the motivation, the more compelling the villain. That’s why Marvel’s Thanos is far more intriguing than, say, the Dark Elves from Thor: The Dark World. 

This list has female villains in YA that fall into the deeper motivation stereotype as well as break it. Marissa Meyer’s Queen Levana, Kendare Blake’s Queen Katharine, and Stephanie Meyer’s Victoria fall into the former category while JK Rowling’s Bellatrix Lestrange (and as a bonus, the villain everyone loves to hate – Umbridge), and Sarah J. Maas’s Maeve fall into the latter. 

Queen Levana — The Lunar Chronicles

Marissa Meyer took the fairy-tale Evil Queen/Evil Stepmother character and gave her depth and viciousness that turned her into one of the most terrifying YA villains out there. Readers learn about Levana’s backstory in the prequel book, Fairest. Bullied by her sister and her parents from a young age, young Levana is a difficult character not to sympathize with. In a fight with her sister, Channary, Levana ended up pushing Channary into a glamoured fire. Channary then used her own glamour to force Levana into the fire herself.

Levana lived with burn scars on her arms and face for the rest of her life and was consistently called the “ugly princess of Luna.” Later on, Levana loses any sympathy readers might have had for her when she falls in love with a man who doesn’t love her back and uses her glamour to force him to be with her. She also tried to kill her niece in a fire so that she could rule Luna instead. This all happens before the events of The Lunar Chronicles.

Levana wreaks havoc on Earth with a plague she released so that she could control the leaders of Earth with the cure only she had. She also steals children from her own subjects to genetically modify them for her own army.

Levana may be cruel to the core, but she is one of those villains readers love to hate. They will spend the entire series waiting and hoping for Cinder and her friends to take Levana down. It becomes impossible not to root for her demise, and that’s when you know an author has done a villain right.

Queen Katharine — Three Dark Crowns

Much like Levana, Kendare Blake’s Queen Katharine is very sympathetic in the beginning and only becomes more evil as the series moves on. Katharine is the Poisoner Queen but lacks any powers to be immune from poison. In order to train her into her powers, her family tortures her with poison from a young age. She is thin, frail, and weak from all the vomiting and only being fed poisoned food her entire life; readers can’t help but to feel bad for her.

That is, until she is chucked off a cliff and drags herself back from death imbued with the power of all the dead poisoner queens before her. She continuously eats poisoned food and is fueled by revenge. In order to make her previous lover jealous, she marries Nicholas who she later poisons to death. After some time, she’s eaten enough poisoned food that anyone she touches will be poisoned.

Everyone loves an underdog, and when that underdog comes back as a possessed poison revenge-monster, the world gets tipped upside-down. Queen Katharine is certainly an underrated villain in the YA canon.

Victoria — The Twilight Saga

Though not the main villain of the series, Stephanie Meyer’s Victoria creates the conflicts of the first three books in The Twilight Saga. Though she does play a part in Twilight, her role in New Moon and Eclipse is far greater. Feeling lost and vengeful after her mate James is killed in the first book, Victoria latches onto Riley Biers. She then manipulates him into creating a newborn army for her. This army takes over Seattle while Victoria strengthens her knowledge on how to evade Alice’s visions.

Cunning, brilliant, and devious, Victoria encompasses the “villain-in-the-shadows” trope. She is fueled by both revenge and survival instincts, a dangerous combination. She attacks Bella and the Cullens for what they did to James without letting Alice catch on to her plans the entire time.

As far as villains go, Victoria is definitely not one to be messed with. Just because her motivations aren’t as compelling as the two previous antagonists, Victoria still has strong development in other aspects of her character, like her intelligence, that makes her an interesting villain.

Bellatrix Lestrange & Dolores Umbridge — Harry Potter

Without much motivation other than her fanatic bigotry and loyalty, J.K. Rowling’s Bellatrix Lestrange garners no sympathy from readers. In the books, Bellatrix becomes the sole focus of Harry’s hatred after she kills Sirius Black, therefore becoming a target of the readers’ hatred as well. She is also the person who tortured Neville Longbottom’s parents, and when readers see them it is difficult not to rage at the witch.

Helena Bonham Carter’s portrayal of Bellatrix brought fans to a new sort of reverence for the character because of how well she brought Bellatrix to life. Fans’ hatred for Bellatrix only rises when she kills Dobby and Tonks, but she still doesn’t reach the notoriety of one of Rowling’s other female villains.

That, of course, is Dolores Umbridge. No one, not even Voldemort, is hated as much as Umbridge. The Harry Potter fandom will always cite Bellatrix Lestrange, a sadistic murderer psychopath, as a better human being than Dolores Umbridge, a power-hungry torturer with a superiority complex.

Either way, fans can boast two female villains they love to hate in a single series. Neither female antagonist can claim the title of the main villain of the story, but they can both boast arguably much more fanfare than Voldemort himself. The amount of traction behind Bellatrix and Umbridge goes on to show that even without complex motivations, female villains can still be incredibly compelling.

Maeve – Throne Of Glass

Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series is full of so many twists and turns and crazy reveals that it’s hard not to talk about Maeve without major spoilers. Fair warning, there are spoilers to come.

(( Spoilers BEGIN )) Anyone who is a fan of Throne of Glass will tell you they hate Maeve with a burning passion for what she did to Aelin. Aelin had been broken down to nothing, whipped, trained to murder, and ripped from her homeland. After several books about character growth, learning to use her powers, and coming back from the horrors of her past, Aelin is stronger than she’s ever been.

Until Maeve captures her in an iron coffin and tortures her continuously for months. Without the human boundaries of ethics and morality, Maeve crossed every line, used every weakness Aelin had to her advantage and exploited the man Aelin loved and the people Aelin cared for most to try to get what she wanted. (( Spoilers END )). After looking at so many villains from so many different books, it is still hard not to classify Maeve as the cruelest of them all.

YA Needs More Female Villains!

Young adult fiction needs more female villains because they can be just as complex and compelling or just as stereotypical and entertaining as the plethora of male villains it currently has. It was a struggle to think of the five on this list, and that shouldn’t be the case.

There is a fine line to walk between demonizing stereotypically female attributes and recognizing a woman’s strength and power, but that doesn’t mean authors shouldn’t try. This is a call for another female villain readers can love to hate, so if you’re a YA author, pick up your pen and start writing!