Two protagonists where one is dark - a mistake?
I'm currently writing a tale with two protagonists. One of them is a dark protagonist - that is, technically evil. The other protagonist is not evil. I'm wondering if this will cause the reader to gravitate toward the good protagonist.
I have a way of dealing with dark protagonists. The trick is to make sure they realize their darkness, and want to be better. That gives the reader something to hope for. While this works adequately when the dark protagonist is alone, I'm wondering if it will be outshone by a normal good protagonist.
With two protagonists, will the reader gravitate towards a 'good' one, and away from the evil-but-trying-to-be-better one? In other words: can the reader like both protagonists equally? This is important because both protagonists are PoV characters. I don't want the reader wanting to get back to one character while he's reading the other (eg Eragon vs. Roran in Eldest). The reason for this question is that while the dark protagonist is trying to be better, he's still evil at the core. He's still a bad guy.
Do note that my two protagonists are on the same side. One is not the antagonist to the other.
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This is typically done in Anime quite frequently. Usually anime has a whole slew of main characters that each have their own tropes... and usually 1 of them are dark/were dark/converted/converting. I don't see it being off putting. It's more so the trick of making the audience empathetic to their plight.
Are they running away from their past to realize that everything they knew was a lie? Is their actions of "evil" (dark arts and being evil are in my opinion 2 separate things though they are usually taken as the same EX: See professor Snape from Harry Potter) due to their past and they do it out of fear/hate for the other?
Often in anime, you will see a child of an evil lord who ran away from their dimension and hide on Earth. This person would typically be viewed as technically dark/evil and do things in their way because they don't know any other way. Then you have the other Main protagonist enter the scene and show them the truth and the light of the world and slowly this person converts/builds the bonds they were searching for and act in open rebellion against their parent's ways and usually give some cliche speech about friends and that not everyone is trying to hurt them.
So Yes, it is very possible to have a protagonist be dark, live a dark current/past life and have them be liked by the audience. It is just a matter of how you portray them.
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Evil is cool. Virtue is dorky.
The pure hero really only exists in hagiographies and tracts -- works that hold up somebody's idea of political or moral virtue for admiration. Works of these kind exist to draw lines between good and evil, not to examine the human condition.
And consider the basic shape of story. The climax of a conventional story is essentially moral, a choice of values. Is the hero willing to pay the price to achieve their goal? For the pure hero, the answer is obviously yes, and we all know it is going to be yes, so unless our sole interest in the story is to have our political or moral opinions validated, it is a boring story: nothing is actually at stake.
The hero who chooses the sacrifice must be at least venal enough for their choosing it to be in doubt. But, and this is key, the more sinful the hero is, the more profound and moving the moment becomes in which they make the sacrificial choice.
Equally moving, by the way, is the saintly hero who stumbles at the moment of crisis, as Frodo does at the top of Mount Doom. Frodo had been so good, so self sacrificing, so tolerant (even of Gollum), that if he were to stride up to the edge of the volcano, whip the ring off his finger and toss it into the flames, it would be a bit of a let down. But the saint stumbles. In the great moment of crisis, he chooses selfishly.
It is both an ancient trope and human truth that the outwardly virtuous man may have feet of clay, while the outward rogue may have a heart of gold and a spine of steel. The rogue, in a sense, sees through all the mannered pieties of the self-consciously virtuous and rejects them (not without selfishness or culpability, to be sure) but when the stakes are raised, their deeper moral nature is engaged and they prove to have more real courage than the paper saint.
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I think the question is a bit opinion based; and it depends on how evil the evil guy is. Is he just shoplifting once in a while, or getting into bar fights and breaking a finger or nose for the fun of it, or is he still in the business of kidnapping children and selling their transplantable organs? (but trying to quit.)
An Anti-Hero can be likable and even enjoyed MORE than a relentlessly good protagonist: But you have to ensure that the reader sees that, on balance, the good they do is far outweighing any evil they do and that trend should seem permanent and reliable.
For an old example, see Dirty Harry; a more modern version is perhaps Dexter.
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