Leigh Bardugo has truly created one of the best-written villains ever. Every time he appears on the page and opens his filthy mouth, I want to beat him up with a baseball bat.
The way he devalues the heroine and makes her feel small and worthless.
The way he cannot stand her being happy and confident without him.
The way he makes demeaning, offensive comments about her.
The way he ignores her misery and obviously thrives when she is weak and helpless.
The way he gets jealous and aggressive every time she looks at another man.
The way he tries to control her and speaks over her, not letting her make her own decisions.
The way he tries to blame her for his wrongdoings.
The way he leaves her alone in the state of obvious distress because he is too preoccupied with his bruised ego.
The way he resents her being more powerful and important than him and makes ugly scenes every time she doesn't pay him enough attention.
The way she feels guilty and ashamed and starts second-guessing herself when he is in a bad mood.
The way he guilt-trips her and manipulates her into feeling sorry for him.
The way he conditioned her to believe that her self-worth depends on him and her happiness is impossible without his presence.
The way he claims he only wants what's best for her, which makes his abuse even more insidious.
The way she never realizes what damage he's done and keeps doing to her because she believes she can trust him.
The way he gets everything he wants in the end: he is a rich, handsome, popular guy, and she is his nameless, quiet, unassuming, socially ostracized wife.
The way their relationship mimics a toxic, emotionally abusive relationship with eerie accuracy.
He is not evil in an appealing, sexy, fantasy-villain way. He doesn't need a big black cloak, shadow magic, or world-conquering ambitions. He is vile in the most mundane, suffocatingly mediocre sense of this world.
Naming him "Mal," which means "evil" in Latin, was a little bit on the nose, though.
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