This PE proposal is for the Alex Rider villain Dr. Hugo Grief.
What is Alex Rider?[]
Alex Rider is a series of YA novels about the eponymous character becoming a teenage spy for MI6, taking down a new bad guy every book from power-hungry dictators to mad scientists.
Who is Dr. Hugo Grief? What has he done?[]
Dr. Hugo Grief, born as Johannes de Leede, is the villain of the second Alex Rider book called Point Blanc. Grief is a biochemical engineer with a long history of xenophobia and racism in Apartheid-era South Africa. He was more or less raised to be a hateful racist who admires men like Hitler and Stalin. And like many villains from spy stories, Hugo Grief has megalomaniacal desires for world domination, but Grief's plan is a bit more unique than most others...
As Johannes de Leedes, he had aspirations of perfecting human cloning, and in preparation for when that technology came along, he chose sixteen unknown women and raped them. The offspring they produced were the clones he would later use for himself. After faking his death and taking the identity of Hugo Grief, he moved the sixteen vessels to an old asylum to store them. Then he had a brilliant idea for using his clones for his own purposes; several children from rich families were troubled and had behavioral issues. Grief decided to use these children, who would inherit great wealth and power in the future, as part of his plan, converting the asylum into a fully functioning academy for these children to attend. What the families wouldn't realize, and what the children wouldn't know until it was too late, is that Grief would imprison them after some time and use their physical likeness for his clones; that is to say, his crew transformed the now fully-grown clones (all of whom are completely obedient to their "father") to look exactly like these children, where he would send them back after some time to their families, ready to obey their "father's" will and their families none the wiser....
...except for Michael J. Roscoe, who knew that the changes in his son Paul were not natural. Suspicious of Grief's activites, Roscoe contacted the head of MI6, Alan Blunt, with his concerns. Overhearing this, Grief hired an assassin to kill Roscoe and tie up loose ends, but by the time of Roscoe's death, Blunt was already suspicious and sent Alex Rider in to investigate.
Under the alias "Alex Friend", Alex Rider attented Grief's academy while investigating his activies. Alex witnesses Dr. Grief kill his best scientist Baxter once the last clone, the one that would be used for Alex Rider, was perfected. Alex later found the other missing children imprisoned but is captured by Grief and his henchwoman/partner Ms. Stellenbosch. Grief then reveals his backstory, his twisted admiration for xenophobic dictators, his master plan for the kidnapped children...and his plans to use Alex as a 'live human subject' for his perfectly-obedient clones/children to dissect...without anesthetic.
Of course, since Alex is the hero, he escapes with quick thinking and special gadgets and leads MI6 back to Grief. On his way out, Grief kills several people while trying to escape, but ends up being killed when Alex rams a snowmobile into his helicopter, sending him to his fiery death.
Mitigating Factors[]
There really aren't any. He has no tragic backstory, and his exile from South Africa after Apartheid died down was due to his own racist and barbaric practices.
Heinous Standards[]
In case it wasn't already obvious from the above, Dr. Grief follows the ideologies of xenophobic dictators like Hitler. He fully and truly believes whites are a superior race and that he is entitled to rule the world. He raped several women to produce offspring for him, and rather than raise them like his own sons, he would later physically distort them to take the appearances of the wealthy children he kidnapped and imprisoned to influence major circles of power. He took great pleasure at the thought of his students dissecting Alex Rider while he was still awake for it. He coldly murdered the very scientist who had been altering his clones' appearances for all these years, as well as several of the MI6 agents who had come to apprehend him.
Compare this to some other villains such as Alexei Sarov who showed basic signs of human decency, such as love for his son and reluctantance in killing Alex Rider even after he foiled his plans (or killed himself out of grief that Alex would never want him for a father), or even Nikolai Drevin who showed some remorse over the idea of using his own son for his agenda. Grief did not see his children/clones as humans or as family, but as tools for him to use for this own twisted agenda.
Final Verdict[]
Dr. Grief is arguably among the most evil Alex Rider villains, certainly among those not connected to series antagonists SCORPIA, and I think he belongs in the Pure Evil list.