You know who I mean. Pirates, vikings, highwaymen, vampires, rakes, thieves, spies, assassins, ruthless billionaires, gang members — men who will take whatever they want, careless of who is hurt in the process.
Whatever the story, the trope has the bad boy discovering his inner humanity because he has fallen in love. I’m not convinced. It’s not that I don’t believe in the possibility of redemption: people can change, they do it all the time. They can even be motivated to change because a new relationship causes them to examine their fundamental assumptions. But I wouldn’t count on the love of a good woman redeeming a bad man.
In most of the stories I’ve read with this as a plot line, they’re not even redeemed! They treat their woman well, but go on behaving just as badly to everyone else. Not my idea of good marriage material.
In my coming plots, I have a number of bad boys to redeem. They’re going to have to struggle through the redemption process themselves, maybe motivated by the wish to please one particular woman, but also motivated by a recognition that previous behaviour hasn’t brought them happiness, has hurt other people, and needs to stop if they’re to become the kind of person they want to be.
What do you think? Have you read any good ‘bad boy makes good’ stories.
I’ve written about aspects of this before. See:
Rakes, rapists, and alpha-jerks
Hi Jude- You bring up an interesting question. Is a bad boy actually redeemed if he’s only capable of being kind and loving to the woman he loves? I’d agree with you, at the core he hasn’t changed. But I’m really interested to see how you handle this idea in your coming books. And I love all the books of yours that I’ve read such as “The Realm of Silence.”
Thank you, Rose. Aldridge isn’t such a problem. He is arrogant and a player, but fundamentally prefers to be kind rather than not. He just has to develop that a bit more. But Nathan Bexley was a nasty little snit in Farewell to Kindness, and I mean to redeem him. He is heading for some real learning experiences first, though.
I agree with the approach taken by Elizabeth Johns, whose rapist from the first book in her Loring Abbot series needed time to come face-to-face with who he was, to decide he didn’t like it, and to change to become the hero in Book 3. Her villainness in Book 1 was the heroine in Book 2, another rather startling choice, but she made it work. I love true redemption stories.
Jude- I love your descriptions of them. It makes me want to read more. It sounds like Nathan’s a guttersnipe in spite of his heritage.
A brat with a deep sense of entitlement.
I like bad boys, and even boys who believe they are badder than they are by objective measures. But change and redemption should NOT be easy and not because they want to get in someone’s bed. There may be an element of that, but their behavior is recognized as wrong by them, outside a heroine’s attention, They have to work and changing and sometimes will backslide and screw up.
Some aren’t bad boys working toward their hero’s journey, but but plain old bad men. Boys haven’t finished growing up so they can still become good men.
I really like reading and writing bad boys and lost boys who meant well but flub spectacularly. Looking over my longer finished pieces, I have four major leads who are bad boys, four lost and two who’ve OD’d on their guilt and cringe a lot mentally. I’ve got several projects in the pipeline, but one looks like another charming bad boy. But he’s the big bad, sliding into a Svengali position to manipulate and stage manage my lead. He wants to please her so he can become the power behind the pliable puppet on the throne. Her goals are happening faster, but she’s losing control of her own dreams and will spend a while in a bad place with lots of gas lighting and patronizing. I’m revising because I did not like my original ending and it’s turning darker as I’m too nice to my leads.
That sounds fascinating, Marie. As I said, I have several bad boys who need to grow up… But it could go either way with a couple of them. And, of course, a number of my heroes think they are much badder than they are. Not Richport, though. Richport really is bad.