Highlights

• Dark and morally gray characters in manhwa offer intricate plots and character development beyond traditional protagonists.
• Female protagonists like Leonia and Artezia display cunning, manipulation, and dark actions to achieve their goals in the manhwa world.
• Characters like Sayeon and Rena display twisted personalities, enjoying manipulation and inflicting harm on others in their stories.

Dark, morally gray characters are popular for a variety of reasons. They offer a journey separate from a traditional protagonist, often involving more intrigue and mystery, leading to more complex plots and character development. These characters also tend to have an edgier aesthetic that many people enjoy and imitate through art and cosplay.

In manhwa, dark heroes are quite common, often in the form of a young man seeking revenge using any means possible, and the brutality shown in these stories may be alarming to some readers. While they may not be as overtly violent as their male counterparts, there are some female protagonists who prefer the darker path to get what they want.

9 Leonia Boleotis

The Male Protagonist's Lion Cub

Having a child on this list may seem strange, but Leonia is actually a young woman reincarnated into the body of a girl. Because she has an adult mind, the experiences she went through when she first went to isekai created more resentment than fear. Leonia's evil is very evident from the beginning of the story, when she asks the Duke to execute her attackers in the most painful and cruel way possible.

Being in a child's body, however, seems to affect her personality. She still exhibits childish behaviors and characteristics, so her dark side doesn't come out very often. Leonia isn't really an anti-hero. She's just an innocent person whose trauma has made her more willing to inflict harm on others as she sees fit.

8 Artesia Rosen

The villain lives again

When it comes to dark female characters, the most common type is the scheming and manipulative one. Artezia “Auntie” Rosen is a member of the royal family and, in order to put her brother on the throne, she murdered, manipulated, bribed and threatened many people, resulting in death and human suffering.

Her cunning was so impressive that she was betrayed by her brother and then saved by revolutionaries to overthrow the monarchy. Even in a new timeline, she uses her tricks to take down those who betrayed her, and her evil actions make her question whether she is allowed to be a mother.

7 Medea Solon

Your throne

Medea is the heiress to the duchy of Solon, and from birth she has been trained to be the best in order to gain greater political power. She wields her nobility like a sword, severely punishing those who do wrong and humiliating those who try to defy her. However, despite all her austerity, she is quite compassionate and noble.

In her story, she gains a harsh reputation for being strict and trying to gain more power at any cost, but Medea does not carelessly harm innocent people or cause public coercion. She even befriends her supposed rival, Psyche, going so far as to save her later in the story.

6 Sayeon Lee

Hand Jumper

In Sayeon Lee's world, there are certain people called aberrants who are born with an abundant amount of energy that manifests itself in superhuman abilities, and she hates them. They often commit crimes and harm people for no reason. The problem is that Sayeon is also an aberrant and her entire family is involved in the aberrant underworld. Because of this, her personality ends up becoming distorted.

Although the story is still just beginning, it is very clear that Sayeon is becoming less and less concerned with how she does things. She asks her teammate to mutilate another intern. She uses her powers to test people and use them as test subjects. Although she may not realize it, she is enjoying the act of manipulating the people around her.

5 Clean Rubles

Regina Rena: The Unforgiven

Most dark and evil characters aren’t usually born that way. It’s through some drastic event or long-term abuse that their personalities become twisted and vengeful. For Rena Rubel, this happened when she was twelve years old. Her father sacrificed her for power, and she was thrust into a literal hell called the Tomb, a place ruled by the undead, for six years. She became a ruthless warrior.

Rena became incredibly powerful and resilient, able to destroy multitudes of undead and consume poison without side effects; her power rivaled even that of the king. Her dealings with demons made her a violent and cold-hearted killer, but she still retained some of her kindness and compassion.

4 Larcy

I will fall with the emperor

Despite being the eldest son of the royal family, Larcy was tricked into participating in a war against the empire and was eventually betrayed by his family. This leads to his execution, but he somehow returns to the past before the war. To get revenge on his family, Larcy marries the emperor in place of his sister with plans to invade his home country.

Larcy possesses vast magical power, a trait that attracted the emperor in her previous life, and she unleashes it whenever she wishes. From maids to nobles, she solves their problems directly with fire and flames, going so far as to burn the emperor's other lovers.

3 Estelle

The Lady's Dark Secret

Estelle was a saint who possessed an enormous amount of divine energy. Her benevolence and charity won her the support of many people. The exception was the nobility, who shunned and harmed her. Due to her greed, Estelle was sacrificed to the Devil in exchange for wealth and power, and faced 600 years of torment in the underworld.

After 600 years, Estelle decides to become a demon, signing a pact and returning to the surface where she would ruin the kingdom that abandoned her. She uses her magic to possess people, hypnotize them, torture them and kill them.

2 Rita/Verta

Depths of Malice

In most fantasy manhwa, the protagonists are desperate to survive. How they do this varies depending on the character, but most of the time, it is in a way that does not harm others unless necessary. Rita is not one of these protagonists, and in order to avoid dying from tuberculosis, she has a fortune teller switch bodies with the young noblewoman Verta Alberhart.

With a new and healthy body, Rita begins to take revenge on all the people who wronged her and her mother, orchestrating events that would incriminate her enemies. She intends to hurt and kill anyone who gets in her way.

1 Karen Heyer

The Crimson Lady

When someone is transported to the world of a novel, it is assumed that completing the original story would let them leave, especially if they did not die in their original world. For Karen Heyer, this was not the case. She has gone through many lifetimes trying to escape, but in each timeline, she dies at a young age. After experiencing death so many times, she finally gives up.

Karen's mind became twisted and nihilistic. Nothing else mattered to her because her life would be reset anyway, so she began killing for no reason, enjoying the thrill of inflicting her pain on others. By doing so, she hopes to achieve an alternate ending to her story and finally escape.