One of the most popular new television series this year was ABC’s Revenge, an over-the-top romantic soap opera set in the glittering world of the Hamptons. I confess to getting sucked in. The plot features a young girl (Emily) whose adored father is framed for a horrible crime and sent to prison, where he is murdered. Her subsequent years were spent in psychiatric wards as the villains try to neutralize her by convincing the world she is crazy. The story picks up as Emily, now a powerful young woman, returns to the Hamptons under an assumed identity to wreak havoc on the people who destroyed her father.
Revenge plots are intriguing because they combine our desire to see an underdog get an upper-hand over someone who did him or her wrong.
Readers have a sense of fair play and they want to see the good guy win….but the protagonist in a revenge plot is walking a very fine line as they risk becoming a bad guy themselves.
I played with the revenge fantasy in The Lady of Bolton Hill. Daniel’s quest for vengeance on a business rival was rife with unsavory aspects, and although I wanted the reader to sympathize with him, I definitely had him walking along that razor-thin edge where he risked falling over into the villain category himself. This gave me the opportunity to explore some of the ethical issues between vengeance and justice.
For me, there are a handful of things a good revenge story must have if it is going to work as a thrilling novel in which you can still root for the protagonist:
- The reason for revenge must be believable, profound, and have lasting consequences….otherwise the protagonist comes off as a petty, amoral jerk.
- The ethical angle must be addressed. I think this is where the ABC series Revenge stumbled a little. Emily unleashes a real reign of terror and doesn’t balk very much when innocent people get entangled in her web.
- The consequences of the revenge should be explored. Watching the villain get his comeuppance isn’t very satisfying if we don’t see the ripple effect it has on the hero.
While I don’t want a steady diet of revenge stories, a good one every now and then is a delightful, guilty pleasure.