Wednesday Weekly: A Villain that I wish could be redeemed…

Wednesday Blogging Challenge is a weekly challenge in which the participants write on prompts provided by Long and Short Reviews.

The prompt for this week is ‘a villain that I wish could be redeemed and why’.

source: https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Edmund_(King_Lear)

The character I have chosen in Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear. The illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester and the younger brother of Edgar, one of the heroes of the play, Edmund had my sympathies from the time he utters his famous speech, revealing the anguish he feels to have been born a ‘bastard’:

Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?

His actions thereof: plotting against his father and brother, hatching plots with Goneril and Regan and pitting them against each other while playing with their affections, and ordering the deaths of Lear and Cordelia are truly ignoble. Yet somehow when he says as he lays dying that:

Yet Edmund was beloved

it brings out the pathos of his situation. Had he been treated with love rather than an embarrassment, a shameful secret or as a target of coarse jokes, perhaps his destiny would not have been the same. And when treated not unkindly by his brother Edgar, we do see him trying to save Cordelia and Lear. But it is too late…

Wish he had received that token of acknowledgement from his brother earlier then perhaps his life could have been better served or perhaps if his order might had reached faster and saved the life of Cordelia then he could have died with at least that amount of grace. In fact, I do want to see somebody write a play about the two brothers, their insecurities, hatred, but finally the bonding.

Do you feel the same way about him?

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I came to know of this interesting weekly writing prompt from Lydia Schoch @ Lydia Schoch.com

If you want to participate, here’s the list of prompts.