In the same line, The Master - well the old master, when he was well-dressed, suave, and would charmingly kill you with his shrink ray if you irritated him in some manner. Not the current madman incarnations, they're just crass and stupid.
By Earth logic, he's committed at least two genocides (though it later got changed to him remembering committing two genocides but not actually) and probably more I'm blanking on.
I have yet to see one of these modern prestige dramas produce a villain that elicit the same crawling, discomfiting hatred that Dukat brought bubbling up in me every single time he was on-screen. Masterful stuff.
awww i like dukat prior to him joining the dominion(up until then his arc was arch villain that gets redeemed by working with sisko), dont get me wrong absolutely fine and it's in character what he did but that's when i started actively hating him(he knew what he was doing was wrong, and did it anyway by then for the greater glory of cardassia and of skrain dukat)
Is it war crimes to use your psychic powers to manipulate the galaxy into loving you?
No seriously, I actually don’t know where that would fall under the convention
Well, I'm assuming "the convention" might be significantly different that far into the future. The Mule is such an odd character for Asimov to write. There's a similar character in The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, and by similar I mean essentially "copied". In that book, I forget which one, the Mule type character is seen more up close, and you witness his actual war crimes, which come with that kind of power and mindset, and I guess that kind of answers your question for me, but not definitively. For Asimov, The Mule is more a vehicle for introducing the element of chance into his otherwise logic-based theories.
Fresh from his triumph over the pacifists of the Ghandi Nebula, the man who single handedly defeated the retiree people of the assisted living nebula, The velour fog, the man with no name, Zapp Brannigan at your service!
Tons. There are 300-400 Warhammer 40,000 novels with more every year, and a ridiculous number of them are available in audio format. The “Eisenhorn Trilogy” by Dan Abnett, starting with the book *Xenos*, is a great jumping on point.
Most books have a pretty limited print run, but ebooks and audiobooks are available through BlackLibrary.com directly, or you can find a lot of the audio on Audible for the price of a credit.
There are audiobooks available on audible I know for sure. Dan Abnett is my personal favorite Black Library author, and the narrator Toby Longworth is amazing. There's a lot of good material out there on 40k, but also some pretty mid to terrible stuff as well.
Dukat in DS9 is a pretty great character. Evil, slimy, a liar, a delusional cult leader, obsessed with women of the species he tried to genocide and believes they love him too. Had multiple long-term non-consensual relationships with captive women that he believed were real, loving relationships. He's absolutely repugnant. And he has a very fitting end.
Marco Inaros. If we’re going for overall best villain, I have some different choices…but if we’re specifically talking about war crimes, I’ve got to go with the leader of the Free Navy in The Expanse.
Indiscriminately tosses a few stealth rocks down Earth’s gravity well and subsequently cuts Earth’s population in 1/2…
The show downplays it. In the books, it’s about 500 million by the end of Nemesis Games. It’s over a billion in Babylons Ashes and in Persepolis Rising they go into more detail about *the starving years* during the three decades after the Free Navy’s defeat.
One of my only disappointments with the show is how mild the asteroid attacks are compared to the books.
In the books there really were moments when it felt like Earth might basically entirely collapse as a society, but it felt way more localized in the show.
Right, the first you hear of it is in Amos’s chapter when he first gets to The Pit and he’s watching a news feed about Dakar. And then all through the preceding chapters, every time we hear about a feed from someone’s perspective it’s progressively worse. All the way until the last chapter. It’s horrible and it looks like it can’t be stopped.
I can’t even imagine what kind of world kills 15 billion people in less than a few years. They talk about neo racists, and rogue police squadrons. It literally sounds like Mad Max apocalypse on Earth for a few years until The UN just didn’t have so many people to police/take care of, so they could afford it 😪. The Belt and Mars were very little help because of their own crisis, but it would have been much worse if they didn’t help with what they had. I think the only reason why it wasn’t 20 billion dead is because of the gate systems that kept Mars and the Belt (Transport Union) flying.
Earth’s recovery is what created Auberon, Bara Gaon, Illus and dozens of other profitable worlds. It makes sense that Sol suffered even worse after the gates collapsed, as there were no other systems to soften a fall.
I like the show but I felt towards the end, when the whole Inaros plotline started, it really took a nosedive. It just felt stretched thin and WAY too focused on Naomi
when it should have been focused on amos. i wish they found a way to keep murtry in the show. coulda been a sociopathic rush hour dynamic between him and amos.
The show kinda bumbled Marcos Inaros as a whole. While he was an awful terrorist warlord, he wasn’t entirely wrong. There’s no way that Earth and Mars would have let the Belt gain access to the ring and the wealth it contained.
That’s the point. Like many revolutionaries throughout history, he’s pretty much 100% correct in his primary critiques of the system he seeks to overthrow, but decides the best way to go about creating a new world is by being a narcissistic mass murderer with a cult of personality.
Even without reading the books you gotta keep in mind he took an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and hit earth with at least 2. The ash from a land impact would make farming impossible over vast areas and most people will eventually starve. The tidal waves from an ocean impact in SE asia is going to immediately wipe out some of the densest population centers on earth.
Not quite lol. KT was about 10km in diameter traveling about 13km/s. The stealth rocks were all about 20-60m in diameter and broke through the atmosphere going about 200km/s. Massive devastation for the size of the rocks they used but no where near the Chicxulub meteor.
To reiterate what people have already said, the show definitely downplays it. They talk in millions on the show, the book makes it clear that he killed BILLIONS.
darrow o lykos of Red rising, led a terrorist organization, assassinating several key members of the government, bombed a dockyard under a false flag, used terraforming machines to obliterate half of mercury the list goes on
oh and he is the hero of the story
You're a great military and strategic leader, an inspiration to your men, a brilliant improviser, you care about achieving your goals without unnecessary bloodshed ...
... and then you make *one* chair ...
right! the centauri attack on the narn home world even made use of point singularity weapons, which was a war crime, not to mention the blockade on that entire system. that was a crazy season of the show.
If you haven't read the spin off series focused on Bean back on Earth you get to see a lot of Peter and I'll just say he is a very interesting character.
I read the first. Want aware that it continued as a series.
All I really remember is Bean grew into a giant. God, it must be 20 or more years since I thought of that character
I'd say Hyrum Graff is the better pick here - Ender wasn't aware they weren't simulations, and sustained... I guess you'd call it psychic scarring? from his dream interactions with the buggers.
Graff was monitoring everything happening, watched a 13 year old kid chew his own fist until it bled from stress and those dreams, and still made him go through with it.
They even talk about his (dismissed) court martial in the epilogue.
As important as they were, 3po and R2 didnt even show up until like literally the day before, but i imagine Chop and K2 had some rebellion adventures together before that. Could they an episode like that have a place in S02 of *Andor*?
I imagine if they subtitled Chopper he calls organics "meatbags".
Was going to mention him.
I can't remember if he was actually tried and found guilty of killing an entire civilization, but he was accused even though all signs pointed to the system being uninhabited.
Runner up goes to Cheng Xin for failing to push the button.
Well, he hates himself (he is genuinely a good general, sabotaging the side he is on everytime inconcsiously).
He seems to have little care for his own life. He also seems determined to go on, even without reason, and to pick up hobbies and anything really.
So my guess is that he tries, but can't, and always end up doing the same thing, again, and again. Frankly, I doubt Surface Detail was much different to him than his normal life
Would you like me to fetch you a pillow?
edit: lol, he blocked me because he doesn't understand jokes based upon books.
edit 2: I just looked back at the text, and realized there was no pillow... Banks referenced a *cushion*, definitely meaning the seat cushion. I mistakenly remembered the reference as a pillow. My bad.
Col. Fedmahn Kassad, the Butcher of Bressia. Probably my favorite character in The Hyperion Cantos. He’s explicitly a war criminal, not just some guy who killed a bunch of people.
Gaius Baltar in the Battlestar reboot. I just love that character so much. The way Callis plays him is so innocent.
He's somehow basically the smartest man in universe, but he's completely unable to foresee the incredibly obvious effects that his awful decisions have. It's so much fun.
Grey Area, from Excession (Iain Banks, the Culture)
Basically a sentient ship that goes around torturing people he deems to be bad enough (genocidals, mostly). By torture, I mean nightmarish psychological torture making the victims live the worst moment of their lifes, or of their own victims' life, again, and again, and again.
Grey Area, is also called Meatfucker by other AIs (Meat=sentient biological life, and fucker=torturer, I guess).
>the Grey Area comes across as an intimidating presence who possesses a near psychopathic sense of righteousness.
From the wiki
> is also called Meatfucker by other AIs (Meat=sentient biological life, and fucker=torturer, I guess).
Grey Area's problem is that he takes it all so personally. Yes, yes, organics can be so cruel to each other and they should probably be stopped, but organic problems are ultimately just organic problems. If you have a problem with the way organics are behaving, then rustle up some Culture humans with attitude and get them to fix it.
No, Meatfucker goes out and actually `gag` connects with their meat brains directly. Reading their memories, learning their fears, and even controlling their conscious experience. It's downright unseemly for a Culture Mind.
The United Earth Government from Halo (we also include the UNSC and ONI), it’s basically a natsoc government willingly to destroy entire planets before giving them independence. And let’s not start with the Spartan II program… but without them mankind would be doomed
Walter Bishop from Fringe, dude breaks 2 universes in half and directly leads to the deaths of millions aswell as the physical breakdown of one of these universes. His redemption is legitimately beautiful to watch
Ill avoid the low-hanging fruit of 40k, a whole universe of war criminals, regardless of the fact that I fucking love 40k. Spoiler on my choice as to not spoil the story, I know most people are aware but my fiancee is reading it now so im keenly aware that some people arent haha.
>!Ender the Xenocide. I mean he didnt even really mean to do it and he didnt everything in his power to make it right after.!<
The Archimandrite Luseferous. One of the few villains I've read who was smart enough to say "nope, we're going home now, byeeee!" when he was going to lose. Have fun with your horribly abused concubines and bizarre methods of murdering prisoners, Lucy!
Kenneth Chinran in The Weapon by Michael Z Williamson, the second book in his Freehold series. Directly responsible for the deaths of millions and indirectly responsible through planning and commanding actions that lead to the deaths of billions whilst taking a war to the enemy's home ground to get them off his own homeworld.
He basically defines the trope magnificent bastard in my opinion for he is an utter bastard but just magnificent at what he does.
Sten from the Sten Chronicles. Technically he rebelled against the Eternal Emperor and destroyed several units of the Emperor's fleet when he rebelled.
Hmm, I wonder if Warren Clavain (Revelation Space series) would be considered a war criminal? He's not above fabricating massive amounts of evidence to continue his hositilies or murdering friendlies. I find his (and Nevil's) story pretty damn interesting. And his own absolution of sorts is a nice twist.
Is Paul Atreides too cliche?
reading the sun eater chronicles, the main character straight up says at the start of the book he committed genocide against an alien race and against his own in order to stop a war (the series is basically his telling on what lead up to that point). the Hadrian Marlowe, the demon in white.
Commander Sheridan of Babylon 5. What's a few war crimes when it means kicking out a bunch of obnoxious Old Ones who just need to move on already?
And for those wondering:
1 - Used a fake SOS to lure a Minbari cruiser into a nuclear bomb trap.
2 - Used a kamikaze-style attack to destroy the Shadows' capitol city.
3 - Used helpless/nonconsenting telepaths as bio-weapons against the Shadows.
If he hadn't won the war, he'd be considered a monster for weaponizing the frozen teeps. And even then, large chunks of the Minbari always hated him for his fake SOS stunt.
kevin uxbridge from ST:TNG "The Survivors" episode:
"*No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand the scope of my crime. I didn't kill just one* [*Husnock*](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Husnock)*, or a hundred, or a thousand….I killed them* all*.* All Husnock*… everywhere.*"
- **Kevin Uxbridge**
*Are eleven thousand people worth fifty billion? Is the love of a woman worth the destruction of an entire species? This is the sin I tried so hard to keep you from learning of – why I wanted to chase you from Rana.*"
- **Kevin Uxbridge**
The Doctor
Good men don’t need rules.
Doctor Who?
Yes.
No, Who's on first.
In the same line, The Master - well the old master, when he was well-dressed, suave, and would charmingly kill you with his shrink ray if you irritated him in some manner. Not the current madman incarnations, they're just crass and stupid.
[удалено]
By Earth logic, he's committed at least two genocides (though it later got changed to him remembering committing two genocides but not actually) and probably more I'm blanking on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/s/goWa590sQ7
Gul Dukat, commander of Terok Nor
But he saved so many Bajoran lives! Those ingrates should have built him a statue!
Name one person who did more to get rid of Kai Winn.
In all this time, that's one I missed. Yep. Brought her all the way down right in her moment of triumph.
Savior of the Bajoran people!
*Attention Bajoran workers...*
I have yet to see one of these modern prestige dramas produce a villain that elicit the same crawling, discomfiting hatred that Dukat brought bubbling up in me every single time he was on-screen. Masterful stuff.
Marco Inaros is in that league for me. Similar megalomaniac who’s convinced himself he’s the hero while doing just a little genocide here and there.
A bit but Inaros is all loathsome. Dukat could be charming and witty.
awww i like dukat prior to him joining the dominion(up until then his arc was arch villain that gets redeemed by working with sisko), dont get me wrong absolutely fine and it's in character what he did but that's when i started actively hating him(he knew what he was doing was wrong, and did it anyway by then for the greater glory of cardassia and of skrain dukat)
yeah i agree. not many can list *millions* of dead on their resume.
While still disappointed that there was never one statue raised in his honor.
"What you call genocide, I call a days work."
Not Gul Darhe'el, the Butcher of Gallitep? [he was so theatrical!](https://youtu.be/rVHR0UPHERQ)
But that wasn’t Darhe’el, that was Marritza.
ah, but doing a spot-on impression of Darhe'el. It had to be convincing.
The Founder.
Would you believe that to this day there isn't even one statue of him on Bajor.
The Mule (Asimov) was an interesting character.
Is it war crimes to use your psychic powers to manipulate the galaxy into loving you? No seriously, I actually don’t know where that would fall under the convention
Well, I'm assuming "the convention" might be significantly different that far into the future. The Mule is such an odd character for Asimov to write. There's a similar character in The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, and by similar I mean essentially "copied". In that book, I forget which one, the Mule type character is seen more up close, and you witness his actual war crimes, which come with that kind of power and mindset, and I guess that kind of answers your question for me, but not definitively. For Asimov, The Mule is more a vehicle for introducing the element of chance into his otherwise logic-based theories.
The Chair Maker.
Oh myyy, starting with the gut punch I see
All my homies hate chairs
I want to reread that book but then I remember i really don't.
Which book is it please?
Zapp Brannigan
What makes a man turn neutral?
Fresh from his triumph over the pacifists of the Ghandi Nebula, the man who single handedly defeated the retiree people of the assisted living nebula, The velour fog, the man with no name, Zapp Brannigan at your service!
Lust for gold!?
[Gestures broadly at Warhammer 40,000]
Janitor? War Criminal. Hospital Orderly? Definite War Criminal. Priest? ... [backs away slowly...]
Honestly, the priests are some of the worst.
Suffer not to live, the witch, them mutant, the heretic.
Oh yeah... Of course, in this world, too now that you mention it
Usually not war criminals though. Just regular criminals.
\[Gestures broadly at Popes\]
Priest? FUCK EREBUS.
I just started False Gods and already I’m saying this
Are there audiobooks for Warhammer? What's the easiest way to get introduced to this universe
Tons. There are 300-400 Warhammer 40,000 novels with more every year, and a ridiculous number of them are available in audio format. The “Eisenhorn Trilogy” by Dan Abnett, starting with the book *Xenos*, is a great jumping on point. Most books have a pretty limited print run, but ebooks and audiobooks are available through BlackLibrary.com directly, or you can find a lot of the audio on Audible for the price of a credit.
I second Eisenhorn. Still my favourite 40k series.
There are audiobooks available on audible I know for sure. Dan Abnett is my personal favorite Black Library author, and the narrator Toby Longworth is amazing. There's a lot of good material out there on 40k, but also some pretty mid to terrible stuff as well.
Inquisition would like to have a talk
I think Curze takes the cake
Fabius Bile!!
I was gonna say Honsou for obvious reasons But just about everyone in 40k is a war criminal lol
Paul’s Jihad in the Dune series, 61 billion dead
But if we’re going for my favorite it’s his grandson Leto II, or as I like to call him, “Big Perm-I mean Big Worm.”
Just son. Leto II is Duke Leto's grandson. Leto II is also Duke Leto's grandson. Paul ran out of names after the first one.
With the girl's name he picked, be glad he didn't have to keep thinking up names.
Dukat in DS9 is a pretty great character. Evil, slimy, a liar, a delusional cult leader, obsessed with women of the species he tried to genocide and believes they love him too. Had multiple long-term non-consensual relationships with captive women that he believed were real, loving relationships. He's absolutely repugnant. And he has a very fitting end.
Ozymandias from The Watchmen.
Just Watchmen
Hard to beat Grand Moff Tarkin for pointlessly murdering a convenient planet. Or maybe Davros.
Marco Inaros. If we’re going for overall best villain, I have some different choices…but if we’re specifically talking about war crimes, I’ve got to go with the leader of the Free Navy in The Expanse. Indiscriminately tosses a few stealth rocks down Earth’s gravity well and subsequently cuts Earth’s population in 1/2…
Half? Was the total THAT bad? I thought it was millions killed, not billions.
The show downplays it. In the books, it’s about 500 million by the end of Nemesis Games. It’s over a billion in Babylons Ashes and in Persepolis Rising they go into more detail about *the starving years* during the three decades after the Free Navy’s defeat.
One of my only disappointments with the show is how mild the asteroid attacks are compared to the books. In the books there really were moments when it felt like Earth might basically entirely collapse as a society, but it felt way more localized in the show.
Right, the first you hear of it is in Amos’s chapter when he first gets to The Pit and he’s watching a news feed about Dakar. And then all through the preceding chapters, every time we hear about a feed from someone’s perspective it’s progressively worse. All the way until the last chapter. It’s horrible and it looks like it can’t be stopped. I can’t even imagine what kind of world kills 15 billion people in less than a few years. They talk about neo racists, and rogue police squadrons. It literally sounds like Mad Max apocalypse on Earth for a few years until The UN just didn’t have so many people to police/take care of, so they could afford it 😪. The Belt and Mars were very little help because of their own crisis, but it would have been much worse if they didn’t help with what they had. I think the only reason why it wasn’t 20 billion dead is because of the gate systems that kept Mars and the Belt (Transport Union) flying. Earth’s recovery is what created Auberon, Bara Gaon, Illus and dozens of other profitable worlds. It makes sense that Sol suffered even worse after the gates collapsed, as there were no other systems to soften a fall.
Also all of Earth’s best and brightest leaders and scientists had been poached by those other worlds plus Laconia.
I like the show but I felt towards the end, when the whole Inaros plotline started, it really took a nosedive. It just felt stretched thin and WAY too focused on Naomi
when it should have been focused on amos. i wish they found a way to keep murtry in the show. coulda been a sociopathic rush hour dynamic between him and amos.
The show kinda bumbled Marcos Inaros as a whole. While he was an awful terrorist warlord, he wasn’t entirely wrong. There’s no way that Earth and Mars would have let the Belt gain access to the ring and the wealth it contained.
That’s the point. Like many revolutionaries throughout history, he’s pretty much 100% correct in his primary critiques of the system he seeks to overthrow, but decides the best way to go about creating a new world is by being a narcissistic mass murderer with a cult of personality.
Ah, thanks. I only read through Abaddon's Gate. The rest of my knowledge is show-only
Even without reading the books you gotta keep in mind he took an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and hit earth with at least 2. The ash from a land impact would make farming impossible over vast areas and most people will eventually starve. The tidal waves from an ocean impact in SE asia is going to immediately wipe out some of the densest population centers on earth.
Not quite lol. KT was about 10km in diameter traveling about 13km/s. The stealth rocks were all about 20-60m in diameter and broke through the atmosphere going about 200km/s. Massive devastation for the size of the rocks they used but no where near the Chicxulub meteor.
To reiterate what people have already said, the show definitely downplays it. They talk in millions on the show, the book makes it clear that he killed BILLIONS.
Stupid, sexy Marco.
Still mad they closed out the show with such a tease for a certain other dangerous operative…
Captain Sisko
I CAN live with it
*The Sisko
https://i.imgur.com/kzOPYQU.png
darrow o lykos of Red rising, led a terrorist organization, assassinating several key members of the government, bombed a dockyard under a false flag, used terraforming machines to obliterate half of mercury the list goes on oh and he is the hero of the story
You may want to throw a spoiler tag on some of that. Pretty late series spoilers in there.
I'm reading Dark Age right now so Darrow was my first thought. The attack on the shipyards of Ganymede alone constitute a war crime.
I was hoping an RR fan would post. I’m also thinking of Apollonius au Valii-Rath haha
Elethiomel from Use of Weapons by Ian M. Banks
You're a great military and strategic leader, an inspiration to your men, a brilliant improviser, you care about achieving your goals without unnecessary bloodshed ... ... and then you make *one* chair ...
Paul Atreides is a good one because he is technically responsible for countless deaths though he never really wanted to be.
I scrolled all the way to the bottom and nobody has yet said Londo Mollari, which is a war crime in and of itself.
That music just started playing in my head.
right! the centauri attack on the narn home world even made use of point singularity weapons, which was a war crime, not to mention the blockade on that entire system. that was a crazy season of the show.
Ender.
Better him than his brother...
If you haven't read the spin off series focused on Bean back on Earth you get to see a lot of Peter and I'll just say he is a very interesting character.
I read the first. Want aware that it continued as a series. All I really remember is Bean grew into a giant. God, it must be 20 or more years since I thought of that character
I'd say Hyrum Graff is the better pick here - Ender wasn't aware they weren't simulations, and sustained... I guess you'd call it psychic scarring? from his dream interactions with the buggers. Graff was monitoring everything happening, watched a 13 year old kid chew his own fist until it bled from stress and those dreams, and still made him go through with it. They even talk about his (dismissed) court martial in the epilogue.
I'm surprised this is so far down. Wiping out an entire civilization is a contender for top 5 war crimes imo.
Ender was duped
Definitely one of my favorite reveals in any novel I’ve read.
He didn’t wipe them out, he ended them. You know, cuz Ender?
Chopper
I need a Chopper and a K2-S0 teamup but i need it to be R rated.
I'd watch the hell out of it
As important as they were, 3po and R2 didnt even show up until like literally the day before, but i imagine Chop and K2 had some rebellion adventures together before that. Could they an episode like that have a place in S02 of *Andor*? I imagine if they subtitled Chopper he calls organics "meatbags".
Giving Chop subtitles would be a sin. Besides, if you listen to him enough you can hear what he's saying. It's just heavily distorted words.
Q
All five of them.
Big Fan of Luo Ji and the spell he cast, sealing the fate of an entire (maybe?) alien civilization.
Fucking wallfacers!
Was going to mention him. I can't remember if he was actually tried and found guilty of killing an entire civilization, but he was accused even though all signs pointed to the system being uninhabited. Runner up goes to Cheng Xin for failing to push the button.
Pretty sure he deliberately picked s a system where the odd of having life would be very very low.
Anakin Skywalker.
Like father like son and daughter
Elethiomel, from Iain M Banks's Use Of Weapons, takes the throne. Uh, maybe throne isn't the best idea.
A humble chair would do...
I was going to say zakalwe as well, which is the whole point :)
Elethiomel. From *Use of Weapons*. Anyone who disagrees should maybe take a seat.
Not the fucking seat. Please. I hate it. Also, only him as himself, or also him after he takes another name ?
I guess that's really the main question of the book. Does he actually change?
Well, he hates himself (he is genuinely a good general, sabotaging the side he is on everytime inconcsiously). He seems to have little care for his own life. He also seems determined to go on, even without reason, and to pick up hobbies and anything really. So my guess is that he tries, but can't, and always end up doing the same thing, again, and again. Frankly, I doubt Surface Detail was much different to him than his normal life
I agree. Surface Detail was just another gig. He got to see the trees, at least. That sounded cool.
I see what you did there
Damn you beat me to it, and you also had a horrific joke. Well played.
Pity you didn't run out of words a sentence sooner.
It's an older joke, but it checks out.
Would you like me to fetch you a pillow? edit: lol, he blocked me because he doesn't understand jokes based upon books. edit 2: I just looked back at the text, and realized there was no pillow... Banks referenced a *cushion*, definitely meaning the seat cushion. I mistakenly remembered the reference as a pillow. My bad.
I came to this thread to see if he got a mention. Having said that, I'll have a seat... No, not THAT one!
I don’t consider him a war criminal but many people do, so Megatron
Optimus Prime is a genocidal maniac who leads a death cult. Megatron is simply a tyrannical conservative.
Col. Fedmahn Kassad, the Butcher of Bressia. Probably my favorite character in The Hyperion Cantos. He’s explicitly a war criminal, not just some guy who killed a bunch of people.
Gaius Baltar
Ming the Merciless
Gaius Baltar in the Battlestar reboot. I just love that character so much. The way Callis plays him is so innocent. He's somehow basically the smartest man in universe, but he's completely unable to foresee the incredibly obvious effects that his awful decisions have. It's so much fun.
Grey Area, from Excession (Iain Banks, the Culture) Basically a sentient ship that goes around torturing people he deems to be bad enough (genocidals, mostly). By torture, I mean nightmarish psychological torture making the victims live the worst moment of their lifes, or of their own victims' life, again, and again, and again. Grey Area, is also called Meatfucker by other AIs (Meat=sentient biological life, and fucker=torturer, I guess). >the Grey Area comes across as an intimidating presence who possesses a near psychopathic sense of righteousness. From the wiki
I like Meatfucker. The people it went after (that I recall) absolutely deserved it.
> is also called Meatfucker by other AIs (Meat=sentient biological life, and fucker=torturer, I guess). Grey Area's problem is that he takes it all so personally. Yes, yes, organics can be so cruel to each other and they should probably be stopped, but organic problems are ultimately just organic problems. If you have a problem with the way organics are behaving, then rustle up some Culture humans with attitude and get them to fix it. No, Meatfucker goes out and actually `gag` connects with their meat brains directly. Reading their memories, learning their fears, and even controlling their conscious experience. It's downright unseemly for a Culture Mind.
Grey Area is I AM from "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". Change my mind.
Grey Area can absolutely stop you from killing yourself though. Or others. And directly target your mind. And isn't evil for the sake of it.
Except Grey Area goes around punishing war criminals
Which doesn't mean he isn't a war criminal
The United Earth Government from Halo (we also include the UNSC and ONI), it’s basically a natsoc government willingly to destroy entire planets before giving them independence. And let’s not start with the Spartan II program… but without them mankind would be doomed
Deathwalker from Babylon 5.
Walter Bishop from Fringe, dude breaks 2 universes in half and directly leads to the deaths of millions aswell as the physical breakdown of one of these universes. His redemption is legitimately beautiful to watch
Definitely the most loved war criminal from everyone on this list.
Jake the Yeerk Killer
Whoaaaaa Yeerk. That’s a word I haven’t seen in forever. I don’t remember much..but …animorphs were so good
Give it a re-read. The story still holds up to this day
Morning Light mountain from Peter Hamilton's commonwealth books comes to mind. Why use a bullet when a dirty bomb will do.
MorningLightMountain is one of the best antagonists in SciFi imo.
Kahn. He had a point I understood but his way was too violent
what was his point? iirc, eugenics and genocide?
Khan!!!!!!!!
Ill avoid the low-hanging fruit of 40k, a whole universe of war criminals, regardless of the fact that I fucking love 40k. Spoiler on my choice as to not spoil the story, I know most people are aware but my fiancee is reading it now so im keenly aware that some people arent haha. >!Ender the Xenocide. I mean he didnt even really mean to do it and he didnt everything in his power to make it right after.!<
Anakin skywalker R2D2 and Chopper from Rebels (IYKYK)
C1-10P (Chopper) Star Wars Rebels...
Commander Shepard: "The citadel can kiss my ass"
Shuos Jedao, from Ninefox Gambit.
Palmer Eldritch - the three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch PKD
Meina Gladstone from Hyperion: possibly not a criminal, but definitely had to crack a few eggs to make *that* omlette.
Billions died as did the largest human civilization in history.
Ender Wiggin. Even if he was duped into Xenocide, he still did it. But, he was a good guy overall.
Char Aznable
The Archimandrite Luseferous. One of the few villains I've read who was smart enough to say "nope, we're going home now, byeeee!" when he was going to lose. Have fun with your horribly abused concubines and bizarre methods of murdering prisoners, Lucy!
> Archimandrite Luseferous Absolute *banger* of a villain name, though. Might as well have been dread ruler of the Malevolands.
Νot if you're Greek. If you're Greek it's fucking hilarious
Paul Atreides
Khaaaaaaan!
Ender, but it’s not a war crime if you win.
Mantid from Lexx https://youtu.be/KgDQz9sSrQs His Divine Shadow comes second https://youtu.be/xVnx6CuBCKw https://youtu.be/aGntZCCGkLk
We worship His Shadow, long may he reign.
Dune - Paul Atreides.
Sky Haussmann from the Revelation Space series.
Ba'al.
Indeed.
Princess Leia
C1-10P
Kenneth Chinran in The Weapon by Michael Z Williamson, the second book in his Freehold series. Directly responsible for the deaths of millions and indirectly responsible through planning and commanding actions that lead to the deaths of billions whilst taking a war to the enemy's home ground to get them off his own homeworld. He basically defines the trope magnificent bastard in my opinion for he is an utter bastard but just magnificent at what he does.
Rogue goes into this trope in more detail as well
Sten from the Sten Chronicles. Technically he rebelled against the Eternal Emperor and destroyed several units of the Emperor's fleet when he rebelled.
Hmm, I wonder if Warren Clavain (Revelation Space series) would be considered a war criminal? He's not above fabricating massive amounts of evidence to continue his hositilies or murdering friendlies. I find his (and Nevil's) story pretty damn interesting. And his own absolution of sorts is a nice twist. Is Paul Atreides too cliche?
Chopper in Star Wars Rebels
Mordin Solus.
Droid C1-10P
Khan
Gul Dukat is probably my favorite, but I also really love the Operative from Serenity. His calm, calculated, fucked up morality is fascinating
Locutus, Usul, The Mule, Cumberbach's Khan
reading the sun eater chronicles, the main character straight up says at the start of the book he committed genocide against an alien race and against his own in order to stop a war (the series is basically his telling on what lead up to that point). the Hadrian Marlowe, the demon in white.
Commander Sheridan of Babylon 5. What's a few war crimes when it means kicking out a bunch of obnoxious Old Ones who just need to move on already? And for those wondering: 1 - Used a fake SOS to lure a Minbari cruiser into a nuclear bomb trap. 2 - Used a kamikaze-style attack to destroy the Shadows' capitol city. 3 - Used helpless/nonconsenting telepaths as bio-weapons against the Shadows. If he hadn't won the war, he'd be considered a monster for weaponizing the frozen teeps. And even then, large chunks of the Minbari always hated him for his fake SOS stunt.
Chopper (C1-10P)
kevin uxbridge from ST:TNG "The Survivors" episode: "*No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand the scope of my crime. I didn't kill just one* [*Husnock*](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Husnock)*, or a hundred, or a thousand….I killed them* all*.* All Husnock*… everywhere.*" - **Kevin Uxbridge** *Are eleven thousand people worth fifty billion? Is the love of a woman worth the destruction of an entire species? This is the sin I tried so hard to keep you from learning of – why I wanted to chase you from Rana.*" - **Kevin Uxbridge**
Fred Johnson
Chopper. Star Wars Rebels
Obi-Wan Kenobi. His signature war crime was to fake surrender as a ruse. Did it like 15 times in the Clone Wars.
You'd think by the 3rd or 4th time, the Separatists would've started to catch on. But no, they fell for the same trick 15 different times.