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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38244
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

As long as you find your character sympathetic, I think you are fine.

However, here are some basic advice to advice build a sympathetic character:

- Make him suffer. We don't like to see someone in pain and thus, even if the character is a bad guy, we weel feel sorry for is suffering.
- To continue with the previous point, the more evilish the character, the more he must suffer. The pain he feel must be too much compared to his sins. The reader must think "I don't like him, but I won't wish that on **anyone**".
- You might want to give him a moral guidance, he will seem more human. 
- And final point, it's better if the reader understand the action of the character. Even if there reason for acting are "wrong".

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I will finish by an example:

In the beginning of "Game Of Thrones", I **hated** Cersei and Jaime Lannister. Know, I love them both. Even though they wanted and almost succeed in killing Brandon Stark, a child. And even thought Cersei blow up an entire church with every one inside. But I understood there action and they both did suffer.

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**Edit in response to commentary :**

For me, a character can do awful and terrible actions and still be sympathetic. The only limit is in the author abillity to make the reader understand why this horrible monster is not so horrible after all.

In fact, I do love to take Disney vilan and "transforme" them to make them more likeable ("they have this terrible past and this is why they act like that". Or, "the hero is the actual vilan and the 'vilan' just act in self-defence").

To me, the only limit is "political". I would never **allow** myself to fell sympathy for Hitler. If I read something that might put me there, I will stop reading. But I will do that because I disagree with the message being send, not because of the character action.

As long as your message doesn't hurt your audiance, there is no such thing as an "no return line". If the message is all right with me, I will have no problem building/reading a likeable Hitler-like character. He will still be a monster, but one you feel sorry for.

**Note** : I'm not sure you can send a right message with a likeable Hitler-like character, but that's not the question.

**To summarize** : what ever action your character do, it will always be possible to make him sympathetic (which doesn't mean you should, but that's an other issue).

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**Edit 2:**

Now that I think of it, my real issue with trying to make Hitler sympathetic is the fact that I'm convince he did not suffer enought (I don't say I wish he had suffer more, just that, if he had, i might have feel more sympathy for him). And, if you have to make thinks up to convince me otherwise, it will juste feel wrong.

However, I once heard of a man sentence to death who suffer a great deal during several hours because they were unable to kill him properly. I don't know what this man did (probably killed people), but I did feel sympathy for him. In my opinion, he did not deserve to suffer like that.

**Edit 3:**

Let's take a practical example (I'm not going to actually write it because I'm not that good with english):

Imagine hell exist and Hitler is in it. Now, imagine that the devil (or Hitler himself) is explinning to you how Hitler is torture and how he will be torture for the rest of eternity. Now, imagine that you have every detail. That you know his nails get ripped off before he is skinned alived but cannot die nor pass out. All of this is awfully painfull and he have to re-live it day after day (he is magically cured every night). To make the matter worse, after being cured, he have to wait for an undetermined amount of time before the torture start again. He is there, dreading for it to start but wishing it would so that he could be "rid of it" for the day. We can also imagine that, the longuer he wait without beging torture, the more painfull it will be.

Now, I think that if you have this kind of description in a well written still, in some point, you will feel compassion for the man. Whatever this person have done, you will just wish that they won't being torture anymore. You will finally fell sympathetic for Hitler (dead Hitler, but still Hitler).

Original score: 2