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