The Butler of the Kou family

The Butler of the Kou family is an antagonist of the 1986 adaptation series of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. He is an exclusive character for the series, to give the arc a villain.

Biography
The Butler of the Kou family is, like his name suggests, an unnamed trusted butler of the Kou family, an aristocratic family near India, where Xuanzang's party arrived to. In secret, the butler is a member of a gang of robbers who attack, kill and kidnap people, as well as robbing their stuff.

When he and his gangs rob of Mr. Kou's money, Mr. Kou go out and tried to stop them, only for the traitorous butler to kill him after the old man discovered his real face. To avoid punishment, he framed Xuanzang's party about the murder and convinced the Kou family that the monks are the robbers. This led to Xuanzang, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing getting wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, beaten. However, Sun Wukong managed to clear their name.

Later on, when Wukong revives Mr. Kou, the butler quickly fleed to avoid punishment once again. When Mr. Kou's son told him to be back, unknown that he's a robber, the butler even tried to kill him in secret, though Wukong managed to stop him. When Mr. Kou exposes him to be the murderer in front of everyone, he begs for forgiving only to be punished and imprisoned anyway. It's implied that he would be imprisoned, and possibly receive the same punishment that was originally falsely given to Xuanzang's party, perhaps even worse as he is the one who framed them in the first place.

Personality
Though at first seems to be polite and friendly, the butler is actually a murderous psychopath under his charismatic facade. While most of the Journey to the West villains are demons, whose culture requires kidnapping and eating humans (not to mention many demons were later redeemed, mostly if they're steeds or servants of the deities), the butler himself is just a normal human, fully capable of human moral agency, yet he committed heinous acts out of sadism and greed, even betrayed Mr. Kou, who had never abuse him (and even treated him very well for years), incriminated the good monks (who he apparently knew that they're carrying a great mission to receive the sutras) that never did anything to him, and manipulate the entire Kou family into believing him, just so he wouldn't have to suffer any punishment. In the last minutes, he begs Mr. Kou to forgive him, but that's clearly a fake apology to save his own skin rather than any actual remorse.

Trivia

 * The butler's character is entirely exclusive for the 1986 series. In the original novel, there's no mention that the Kou family even have a butler. It's possible that this was meant to give the arc a defined villain that would receive the punishment that Xuanzang's party were originally wrongfully received.