Best King's Quest Villain

[Damar]

So, the topic is pretty straight forward.  Who is the best villain/antagonist in King's Quest?  This can include anyone, from Manannan, to Lolotte, to the Boogeyman, to the Lord of the Dead, to the stupid little klepto dwarf who always hit you on the mountain stairs.  Anyone who stirred up problems or got you killed is fair game.  Who was the best at being evil, who got under your skin, who is your favorite?  There are just so many antagonists to choose from.

[kindofdoon]

The innkeeper from KQV! (only kidding)

Mordack of KQV was pretty awesome/evil. His evil lair - classic villain material.

[KatieHal]

Hmm.... Mannanan, Alhazred, and Lolotte. They were all just so truly evil! Mannanan, if I were to play KQ3 again today, I'd still get nervous any time he showed up! Lolotte too always made me nervous, and she was just so seriously evil and manipulative. And, like Alhazred, I have to respect a villain who can really play the long-term game and/or the long con.

Hagatha, in the regular KQ2, was just so...not present, and the KQ1 villains felt very incidental to the game itself. Mordack and Malicia were really over the top type villains, or so they felt to me. Which can be fun, but didn't make them my favorites.

[wilco64256]

Boogeyman.

[tessspoon]

Definitely Manannan for me.

[TheReturnofDMD]

Lucreto.

[snabbott]

I think I'd have to go with Manannan, too. For one thing, he's always popping up and killing you when you're not expecting it. Also, he comes back to haunt you in KQV.

[Haids1987]

Alhazred!  He arranged for the princess to be kidnapped, killed the monarchs, locked said princess in her room "for nearly six months," broke apart a kingdom, and almost outwitted a Daventry royal.  Definitely the baddest of 'em all.

[kindofdoon]

Yeah, but...he's just a man.

[Haids1987]

If you look at it that way, Batman was "just a man" too.  He had no superpower, just the sweet hookups.

But he didn't have a genie.

[kindofdoon]

Yeah, but Batman is SO cool! Alhazred's just a really mean guy.

[Fierce Deity]

The innkeeper from KQV! (only kidding)

Mordack of KQV was pretty awesome/evil. His evil lair - classic villain material.

I have to agree. Mordack is pretty evil. As far as villains go, he's the best.

[Baggins]

Well Alhazred's abilities are unclear. He may have some of his own magical abilities outside of the genie. He did enchant the magical door with spell words.

But as we have seen there are different kinds of magic in the KQ universe. I mean Alexander is just a man, but he is able to do magic himself. But for him to do magic it requires him to have a magic book on hand, with spell ingredients, and he has to recite spells. In some cases he requires a magic wand. He can't simply conjure up magic fireballs and magice missles on whim.

Even for Graham who is just a man, he required a magic wand to do Iconomancy magic.

So Alhazred at the wedding was caught off guard, he didn't have access to any of his magical implements (if he has any), only his genie at his side. Thus his need to run, and attempt to reach the tower. Has anyone ever wondered what was in the room in the tower? Maybe that's where he kept his laboratory and spell implements?

Mordack and Manannan were certainly more poweful with their ability to teleport on whim, and the fact that they didn't really need their wands to cast powerful spells. But that doesn't mean Alhazred was entirely without magic of his own (he may just require spell components on hand to cast spells).

[Damar]

Unfortunately there's no way to know the extent of Alhazred's true powers.  Everything magical he did could have been chalked up to the genie.  It kind of makes you wonder, if that's the case, what his standing in the Black Cloaks really was.  He was powerful enough to be a member, but did they even like him or want him around if all his power came from a genie?  I'd kind of envision a new money/old money kind of thing going on where the other wizards probably looked down on him, but couldn't do anything because, thanks to his genie, he was as powerful as them.

But anyway, my favorite villain has to be Lolotte.  Manannan's a close second with his serial killing of teenage slave labor and Mordack had the villainous aesthetic going with his H.R. Gieger castle, but Lolotte wins.  You don't get to meet her or see any proof of how evil she is in the introduction.  Everything you know about her you learn first hand (outside of Genesta telling you that she's an evil fairy who snatched the talisman.  Though even that shows how bad she is.  No evil plan, no stealth.  She saw the talisman, she wanted it, so she physically assaulted Genesta and ran off with it!  Talk about guts!)  And when you finally do meet her, the game takes its time and you actually have to further her evil schemes just to get close to her.  And her demands just show her for the selfish, greedy, despicable person she is.  She wants to enslave a unicorn so she can break it and ride it.  She wants a hen that lays golden eggs because being as powerful as she is just isn't enough.  She wants more!  And the hen was originally Genesta's so she's just dominating her enemy again, kicking her while she's down!  And then she wants Pandora's Box so she can have all the evil of the world at her fingertips.  And she tries to marry you off to the fairy she kidnapped, twisted, and raised as her son because it amused her!  Lolotte doesn't even try to kill you!  Her evil is in it for the long haul.  You just can't top that.  Plus she's killed by love.  How bad are you, how evil, when you get killed by pure love?  Lolotte is just one example after another of greed, lust for power, a desire to dominate, and sadistic pleasure from the suffering of others.  And it's all experienced first hand in the game!

[Baggins]

Well if you take King's Quest Companion into account he was the writer of the Necromnomicon one of the dark magic books in the world of Daventry. He was also a "minion of Mordack", thus placing him less than Mordack. Like the game its suggested he was probably the one who enchanted the magic door (as opposed to the genie). He is also said to wear stars and crescent patterns of a magician on his clothing (suggesting he was a "magician of some sort"). Still doesn't really help you understand how much power he actually had.

[KatieHal]

There's that too--I think that's a reason I like Mannanan, Lolotte, and Alhazred more than the others. They're much more present in the stories. Mordack you barely interact with, same with Hagatha or the KQ1 villains. Malicia you interact with, but...not as much, or as extensively. Despite her being around, you still hear a lot more about what she's done second-hand. I don't know, I could just never take her seriously.

Also, his writing the Necronomicon isn't strictly a KQ Companion reference--that, HP Lovecraft came up with.

[Baggins]

Of course, I never denied that it was an HP Lovecraft reference, his name is in fact a Lovecraft reference, to twisted wizard that Lovecraft invented.

Still If I had to pick my favorite villains, it would probably have to Abdul, he has some of the best lines of the villains in the series. He's a twisted back stabber. Not only does he murder, he covers up the action. He's a true weasel and master manipulator, he able to trick nearly everyone in the kingdom to do his bidding. They do it not because they like him, but because they honor the kingdom.

No other villain in the series held that kind of sway over the the lands they lived in. ...and who needs to show off one's powers, and put fear into them, if you can trick them into doing your bidding, under their own free will? This is Palpatine style Sith villainy.

Sure Lolotte was pure evil, but nearly everyone knew that, and avoided her. She was ruler of castle and a few goons, and not much else. Mordack? He ruled from his Evil Island, but what else? Manannan was technically the ruler of Llewdor, and he watched his people every day... But what did they do for him? He treated them more like play things or pets than actual subjects... Didn't seem to directly interfere with their lives much.

Malicia? She is a joke, sure she was once very powerful, but most of that was stripped from her, and she was banished to a remote part of the kingdom, slowly regaining her power... Her intent? Destroy everything to take revenge, and then take over? She held very little direct influence in the kingdom... Other than the fact she had replaced the Troll King, and thus given herself essentially free movement in the Vulcanix Underground... In the other lands, she was pretty much not welcome... Although she had regained influence in Ooga Booga by pretty much the fact that Boogeyman terrorized the area. But there really weren't that many inhabitants there.

[B'rrr]

Connor is the best villain *nods*

[Cat1]

Connor is the best villain *nods*

I'd have to go for Graham myself 

Seriously though, I think that Alhazred is the best, because he's the most intelligent.  A lot of the others had the advantage over Alhazred in posessing magical powers, but stupidly made rather crucial mistakes, or were fairly easy to defeat in the end.  E.g. in V most of the quest was about getting there - once you were there it wasn't that hard to defeat Mordack.  Alhazred was a worthy adversary.  Plus I love the accent 

As for my favourite, I agree with wilco64256 on the boogeyman - I just found him hilarious, and he has such a deliciously creepy song!  Manannan is probably the one that freaks me out the most.

[Allronix]

I'll have to hand it to AGD.  The Father wins it. He's Graham's evil counterpart. The Father has his "family" of Evil with its poisonous claws spreading all through the world, and Graham's Lawful/Neutral Good family has to answer that threat. AGD introduced him as an ancient and vague threat from Daventry's beginnings who has been running a thousand-year Xanatos Gambit to gain power - possibly destroy creation with it. Worse, Graham didn't pick the fight - Graham just happened to be standing between The Father and whatever nebulous goal the b*stard has. First, he infiltrates Graham's armies. then, he sets Graham up to head to Kolyma, and into a trap. Graham manages to dodge the trap, expose "Gervain," and duel him to defeat...only to have The Father emerge from his guise and throw the final strike in the form of a curse.

AGD then depicted him as using his network to try and break Graham and coming VERY close to doing it - orchestrating the destruction of Daventry via the three-headed dragon, arranging Alexander to be brutally enslaved, and leaving Rosella behind as a thread of hope...only to have the dragon demand her life.  Even though Alexander manages to escape, slay the dragon, and free Rosella, the curse is still in effect - and having been brought from despair to joy in the space of hours, he is felled by the curse and comes within a hair of death.  Though Rosella thwarts the second part of the curse, and the third part...doesn't quite work as the Father intended, the monster is not defeated and will not be defeated. He will likely outlive Graham and find another king that isn't as resourceful in order to try again...

Canonical?  Alhazred. At introduction, he comes across as an arrogant jerk with a lot to hide.  When we figure out that he was behind the islands' discord, he's already jumping up to "power-hungry slime bag."  When we find out what he did to Cassima's parents, he turns into "dangerously nasty power-hungry slime bag."  It gets worse when we see that he was in league with Mordak. When we realize that he plans to "dispose" of Cassima after the wedding night (read: rape her first)? Alhazred has crossed the line on so many levels and in so many ways. I don't even think we saw the full extent of what he was capable of or what else he may have been up to. If he turned out to be a low-level sorcerer or alchemist - that just makes him worse for the same reason Tarkin was a nastier piece of work than Vader. You cannot blame the Dark Arts for addling his mind; he's plenty evil as is.

Giving him a run for his money is Lolotte. Seriously, the b*tch has a torture chamber in her castle. There are at least two poor souls who met a slow, painful end there, too! There's her assault on Genesta, of course. But it's her cool, manipulative demeanor that makes her very creepy. She's in charge, and knows it. I keep trying to think of the kind of mind games she must have played on Edgar and cringe. She kidnapped him, warped his body, and tried to shape him into...who knows? All we know is that it didn't seem to work, because he turned out to be a decent guy.  And the fact that Edgar or her mooks didn't seem to grieve overmuch for her says plenty.