Watched the 300 films recently, had a blast with the first one, second one not so much, and found this guy in particular to be a reprehensible scumbag. Seeing as to how he's been agreed to qualify for the trope, I figured I'd tackle him. Let's get right to it.
What's the Work?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure a lot of people know about 300 by know. It's a film that takes place in ancient Greece, focusing on the area of Sparta, explaining the origins of Leonidas, how he was taken from his mother as a boy and subjected to harsh training in becoming a warrior before much later down the line becoming the king of Sparta, ruling over it with his lovely queen Gorgo and his son. One day, a messenger from Persia approaches their kingdom with skulls to present to the people. His ruler that he serves is Xerxes, a tyrannical conqueror who has been conquering kingdoms, slaying their kings and massacring and enslaving their people, now having set eyes on Sparta as the next kingdom to conquer. The messenger passes on this message while at first proclaiming that he's there for "water and earth." For disrespecting his queen, bringing the skulls of conquered kings, and threatening his people with slavery and death, Leonidas kicks him to his death in a pit before fighting off the other men and killing them too.
To protect his people, Leonidas gathers himself an army of 300 Spartan soldiers and embarks to fight Xerxes and his armies, along the way meeting another army that would join theirs, while Queen Gorgo looks after the kingdom. Along the way, Leonidas and his men discover a decimated village having been utterly burnt to the ground. As Leonidas has his men search for survivors, a boy covered in ashes comes walking towards them explaining what happened as he dies in Leonidas' arms. The men look up ahead to see a Tree of the Dead figure made from the corpses of the villagers, motivating them to fight the Persians further and put Xerxes and his army's immortality to the test. Eventually, they find the Persians and begin their lengthy fight against them while back at the kingdom, Gorgo tries to get help for Leonidas and his men to no avail, unaware currently that councilman Theron and the Ephors have sold out Sparta to Xerxes and his men and are trying to make sure that they are able to conquer it in exchange for countless riches and oracles.
Who is Theron? What has he done?
Theron would serve as the secondary antagonist of the film. He is the sleazy councilman of Sparta serving King Leonidas and Queen Gorgo. He first appears bringing the Persian Messenger to them, with Gorgo commenting that he's finally needed for once. Theron simply proclaims that he was just entertaining their guest to which Leonidas states he's sure. As they walk and talk, Theron watches as the Persian Messenger explains that Xerxes conquers and controls everything he rests his eyes upon and that they are to surrender to him under threat of death to the men and slavery of all the women and children. As Leonidas turns down the terms, Theron tries to interrupt and proclaim that they must be diplomatic but Leonidas states that Sparta has its reputation to consider. After the messenger warns Leonidas to choose his next words carefully, for disrespecting his queen, bringing the skulls of conquered kings to his kingdom, and threatening his people with slavery and death, Leonidas kicks him to his death and his the men with him be slain.
In secret, Theron, along with the Ephors, had made a deal with one of Xerxes' men where they are to sell out Sparta and ensure that it's fresh for Xerxes to conquer on a silver platter by means of decimating it and making all the women and children slaves in exchange for countless riches in the form of countless Persian coins and fresh "oracles" (aka women for them to molest) for the Ephors daily from every corner of the empire. The next day, as Leonidas prepares his men to march for battle, Theron arrives with several other councilmen, telling him that the Ephors have spoken and declared that there is to be no march. Leonidas, however, declares that he and the men are simply taking a stroll with them merely being his bodyguards and that his army will stay in Sparta. Theron inquires Leonidas as to where he will go to which he declares that they will move north to the north gates. Theron and the councilmen inquire as to what they can do with Leonidas responding that Sparta will need sons before bidding his wife and son farewell and marching off with his men.
Back at Sparta, as Leonidas and his men are doing battle, Theron is doing what he can to ensure the counsel does not send any help for them whatsoever while sowing doubt and fear into Sparta as one of Gorgo's allies mentions to her. The man tells her that Theron and the counsel can vote to send Leonidas help as long as Gorgo shows them favor to which she asks if a meeting between them can be arranged so she can try to reason with them. He is later seen talking to Gorgo at a well after she was done talking to her advisor about her meeting with the counsel in 2 days, having caught her boy running about and "returning" him to her, subtly making a threat to her by telling her she should keep a better eye on him if he was to become king one day as it would be a shame if anything were to happen to him or his mother. Later at night, Theron meets up with her and begins conversing with her. She explains to him that she needs his help to convince the counsel to send help to the army of their king. Theron states he can see the two of them standing together, him as politician and her as warrior and their voices standing together as one, though he questions why he would want to do that to which Gorgo proclaims that it shows he cares for a king who fights for the very water he drinks.
Theron admits this is true, but also states that he's only about politics whereas Leonidas is an idealist. Gorgo calls him out for sending out their men to slaughter for his own gain to which Theron rebukes it by stating that her husband has taken 300 of their finest to slaughter and as such broke their laws and left without the counsel's consent, defending himself as a realist. Theron simply insults her by telling her she's as foolish as Leonidas if she thinks men don't have a price in this world and reminds her of the Spartan code that all men are not created equal. Gorgo slaps him in response to this, amusing Theron as he comments on how he admires her passion. Theron then proceeds to tell her that she herself cannot walk into the counsel chamber and sway the minds of men as he himself owns that chamber as if he built it with his own hands. He then proceeds to put her throat in a stanglehold with his hand, threatening her with death at that moment and denying Leonidas and his men any help and threatening to have him sent to jail or worse if he returns without his help. Theron reminds her that her husband fights for his land and his love and asks her for what she has to offer in return for his word to have support be sent to Leonidas and his men up north.
No more satisfying comeuppance than your victim killing you slowly and throwing your own words back in your face while all you can do is gasp in shock
Then, in his scummiest move yet, Theron coerces her into giving herself up to him for her husband and army's sake and as she reluctantly surrenders herself to him, Theron proceeds to violently rape her, sadistically taunting her with this vile quote: "This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this. I am not your king." Later on, in the counsel chamber, however, as Gorgo gives her speech to try to convince the councilmen to send help, to add further salt to the wound, Theron attempts to frame her as an adulterer with him and her advisor for "offering herself" to him to further sabotage her efforts to send help, insulting her by calling her a "whore-queen." Gorgo tries to attack Theron but is initially held back by other councilmen. As Theron mocks her by sarcastically calling it "queen-like behavior", he tries to have her taken out of the chamber before Gorgo, having had enough of Theron's trickeries, grabs a sword and rightfully impales the bastard with her sword, throwing the words the scumbag told her before right back in his face, "This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this. I am not your queen" before letting the bastard fall and die from the stab, giving him the commeuppance the scumfuck deserves. In the aftermath, all the Persian coins Theron carried with him given by Xerxes' men fall out of his bag right in front of the whole counsel to see, ousting and exposing him as a traitor to Sparta as they all yell in anger at his treachery.
Mitigating Factors
None. Whereas Xerxes is close to the trope but is kept off by care for his father that the sequel gives him and Artemisia has an incredibly fucked up backstory along with several other redeeming qualities, Theron here has none. He bears no loyalty to his king and is selling out the kingdom he is a counselor of to be viciously conquered by an utterly brutal and ruthless conqueror for the sake of achieving vast amount of riches, so it's self-explanatory as to why there's no loyalty to his kingdom either.
Heinous Standard
The movies do have a pretty high heinous standard and are quite dark in general. The beginning of the film shows that Spartans regularly dispose of whichever infants they deem too small or fragile to their deaths with a whole pile of their skulls being shown onscreen and they're framed as the "good guys." Xerxes himself sets the heinous standard of the films, having led brutal conquests across other kingdoms and keeping the skulls of kings as trophies and for a scare factor, has utterly decimated a village to the ground that sees a young boy covered in ashes and barely living long enough to tell Leonidas and his men of what happened before dying and made a horrific "Tree of the Dead" figure out of the corpses of the villagers, and his ultimate endgame is to conquer Greece via burning Sparta to the ground, slaughtering all the men, and making the women and children into slaves, with the slavery of what we've seen showing the men being whipped by his soldiers and other slaves being shown to be mutilated like a woman with two missing arms, and being a horrible boss who regularly executes any of his men for failure. Artemisia too contributes to the heinous standard by encouraging Xerxes to begin his conquest to begin with and thereby kickstarting the events of the films along with regularly executing her own men for failure and trying to massacre Themistocles and his fleet. Darius leads an attempted conquest on Greece, but the focus of his plans show him simply trying to annihilate the armies opposing him and thereby, he fails the standard of the films compared to the aforementioned two and also has care for Artemisia and his son Xerxes.
That being said, I think Theron manages to skirt by. He's selling out his own people in Sparta to be conquered by Xerxes and is doing what he can to make sure that Xerxes succeeds in conquering them for the sake of all the riches that he will gain for his part, knowing fully well that the end result will see their men slaughtered and all the women and children enslaved. He's doing what he can to ensure that Leonidas and all 300 of his men get no help in fighting Xerxes and perish at his armies' hands and goes so far as to rape Queen Gorgo and later try to frame her as an adulterer in front of the other councilmen to further sabotage her efforts at trying to get Leonidas and his men help. Now granted, he's sort of hands off in Xerxes' intended conquest of Sparta since it's Xerxes and his men who will be directly doing all the conquering, slaughtering, and enslaving and Xerxes has more to his rapsheet than that as established above, but for Theron's significantly lower resources in which he's a counselor in comparison to a vast and wealthy king with huge armies of thousands at his command, I think the role he plays in his endgame of handing over his kingdom to Xerxes on a silver platter to conquer all of Sparta is enough for him to make the cut. Add in him being a vile scumfuck rapist who tries to frame his victim as an adulterer later and I think he stands out just fine.
Verdict
I'd say we have about a keeper.