Shady Dames, Murky Misters and the Morally Grey

Our newest addition to the TropeTrove™

Shady Dames and Murky Misters! In most tales, such characters are antagonists, but what happens when we're allowed to view their actions beyond the black and white perspective of hero/villain? What if a seemingly dastardly deed had a component of derring-do? Or more to the point, a person you'd never want to meet in a dark alley turned out to be, on the page, a kinda sorta bent protagonist?

Welcome to Morally Grey fiction, where motives are ambiguous, intentions are ambivalent, and every flaw has a corresponding virtue! Morally Grey characters exist in many genres of fiction, but today, we'll be covering three: Fantasy, Thrillers, and Romance.

Let's start with Fantasy…

The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling feature many courageous heroes and sinister villains, but for most of his time in the series, Severus Snape falls somewhere in-between. A Potions Professor at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Snape loved Harry's mother but despised his father, and famously doesn't treat Harry very well, at least at first - but is he a villain? Well, he is a scholar of the Dark Arts, which doesn't represent him well, but as the Potter series goes on, a good side to him is revealed (you'll have to read the books to discover how).

Kaz Brekker, of the Six of Crows series by Leigh Bardugo, is another example of a Morally Grey character. He's a thief and master planner for his criminal gang, but is nonetheless extremely loyal to said gang, and does what he can to exact justice in the crooked world he inhabits.

Rounding out the Fantasy greys is Jaime Lannister of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin and Geralt of Rivia of The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski. Both Jaime and Geralt are epic swordsmen with dark pasts who transform into somewhat righteous characters as their stories progress.

Next up, Thrillers…

Though the word "Noir" is the French word for "Black," all noirish novels are breeding grounds for morally grey characters, especially Neo Noir, which is a modern spin on the gritty, hard-boiled novels of original noir writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, and Jim Thompson. Whereas the noir of these four writers was born out of the darkness and cynicism of post-World War II America, Neo Noir is informed by all the horrors that have transpired since.

Bridging the gap between the two eras is The L.A. Quartet series of books by James Ellroy, which fuses the hard edge of the WWII generation with the derangement and perversity of the generations after. Even the "heroes" of these novels are not above mauling or blackmailing their adversaries to get at the truth. For them, life is a long, crooked grey road.

Many readers were introduced to Neo Noir when Swedish author Stieg Larsson kicked off the new Millennium with the Millennium series of novels, starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Lisbeth Salander, the tattooed girl in question, is a genius computer hacker who believes in justice with a bright splash of revenge. She's not bad, but she's not exactly good, either, so you'd do well to avoid the darker side of her greyness.

Henning Mankell is another Swedish, Neo Noir author. His Kurt Wallander series took things to an even bleaker level than Larsson.

And finally, Romance…

As you might imagine, these titles don't exactly fall in the wholesome romantic category, so be warned. Morally Grey tends to be spicy!

Case in point, the Fifty Shades series. I mean, come on, one of the lead characters is named Christian GREY, so we're required by law to include it! Christian's struggle is between cruelty and compassion, chaos and order, but is he able to overcome his demons?

The genre of Dark Fantasy is a good one for morally grey romances, and Kathyryn Ann Kingsley is a popular place to start, especially her novel The Contortionist. The Ruthless Villains series by Marion Blackwood doesn't pull any punches, and The Crimson Moth duology by Kristen Ciccarelli adds a potent element of adventure to the magically amoral mix.

But no investigation of morally grey flirtations can be complete without including the Bronte sisters, and in particular, Charlotte Bronte's magnum opus Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte's classic Wuthering Heights. Jane and Rochester, Catherine and Heathcliff—these are baseline characters in grey love affairs. Read their novels to learn the periodic table of greyness for all the books that followed!

Read more by Terry Fleming