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I wrote an answer to a similar question a while ago: https://writing.codidact.com/questions/34255#answer-34261

Like in that answer, to be honest, I think you're spending too much time thinking about your character's alignment. I'm going to quote myself:

> Whether your character is chaotic neutral or lawful good or whatever doesn't matter for crafting a good story. RPG alignments aren't really about good and evil, but are more like a knock-off personality test that works well for a specific type of setting. In the end, as in real life, characters' moralities are defined by what they do. If an ostensibly chaotic evil character ends up stopping a cultic ritual to summon a powerful demon, isn't that a heroic action? And if an ostensibly lawful good character throws people who were looting to survive desperate times in jail, isn't that discompassionate? To be clear, I'm not saying not to give [your character] an alignment - it can still be helpful for understanding her personality. Just don't be married to it.

> Instead of worrying a great deal about your character's alignment, you would be wise to focus on your story's theme. A good story is more than just a series of interesting events that happen to somebody. This is why you'll hear about ideas like The Hero's Journey, the 3-act structure, and the flow of rising action into a climax mentioned so often and treated as though they apply to every story. It's because they do.

> And at the heart of all of those ideas is a story's theme. When a story begins, the MC is naive, immature, or broken in some way that's important to the world. Then, when the inciting incident occurs, they're forced to deal with that piece of their world very directly. The question is, will they be able to learn how to deal with this new reality? If they do, then they're a hero, regardless of what form that takes. If they can't, they've either become a villain or a tragic hero.

Your question is about an antagonist instead of a protagonist, but everything I wrote previously is still very relevant. Like your protagonist, your antagonist will be defined as a villain by how they relate to your theme, and understanding what makes a strong protagonist is a prerequisite for understanding what makes a strong antagonist. There are some very important differences, though, and if you understand them, I think you'll be surprised by how genuinely altruistic, well-meaning, and even _right about the situation_ your antagonist can be!

The key idea that defines an antagonist's role in a story is that they:

 1.Actively make it more difficult for the protagonist to achieve their goal, and they do so in a way that:
 2. Forces the protagonist to engage with the aspects of the theme that they find the most challenging.

If you look at all of the famous great antagonists, you'll see that not only are they making life hell for our heros, they're doing so in a way that speaks to the story's meaning.

 - In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron clearly opposes all of our heros. He's trying to take over the world! But the way he does so highlights the story's two primary themes: His nakedly overt evil emphasizes the story's deliberate Biblical references, and his vast magic and power contrasts sharply with the humble Shire from whence the hobbits start their adventure.
 - In _To Kill a Mockingbird_, our main characters are the two children of a lawyer with a heart of gold. When the story begins, the kids think all is right with the world, but then their father gets caught up in the case of Bob Ewell, a man defined by racism and cruelty. Bob's daughter makes unprovoked sexual advances on a black man, and so Bob vilely beats her and then claims the man raped his daughter. When the black man is arrested, the lawyer defends him in court. But through bald lies and appealing to the jury's own racism, Bob wins the trail - but the lawyer's skillful arguments cost Bob his own reputation as well. So in retaliation, Bob tries to kill the main characters. When the children witness the perversion of justice in the trial and then are nearly murdered, they lose the innocence they started the story with, but living through the experiences makes it easy for them to see through the racism so many of the adults around them have embraced. Bob was the instigator of all the nastiness the children were exposed to.

Both of these antagonists are certainly evil. But that's not what's required of an antagonist. Again, they just need to oppose the main character in a way that relates to the theme. Here's are a couple examples of antagonists who were at least trying to act in good faith:

 - In the movie [Stand and Deliver](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094027/), a high school math teacher teaches a class of underprivileged, minority race students AP Calculus. No one except the teacher believes they can succeed. But they take the AP test and all pass!- until the College Board finds what it believes to be evidence of cheating. The students all used the same unconventional techniques (which the math teacher taught them) and made similar errors on the same questions. So the College Board invalidates the tests and requires the students to take it again with only one day to prepare. The College Board is unarguably the antagonist. Were its graders motivated by implicit racism against the students, or were their concerns valid? It's very much a grey area. But it is dramatically more understandably and sympathetic that Bob Ewell's naked and willful bigotry. And even though the College Board's decisions are justifiable, they threaten everything the teacher and his class have been working for the entire film.
 - In the movie [Blindside](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0878804/), Michael Oher is a homeless high school student who is adopted by a well-to-do middle class family. His rough upbringing means that he really has no strengths to draw on academically, but he has a knack for football. His new parents are genuinely caring people who do everything they can to help him find his happiness and success in life, and by the end of the film, he's been accepted to a prestigious college to play on their football team. That is, until the NCAA suspects that the parents have been deliberately influencing Michael to sign onto the team they want him to join, which would go against the NCAA's rules and cause him to lose his scholarship. This not only threatens Michael's success, but also makes him second-guess everything his parents had done for him. When he confronts his mom about it, everything is on the line - his scholarship, his future, their relationship. The NCAA is the antagonist, and there's definitely an argument to be made that the rules they were applying were discompassionate to the situation in the film. But it's an organization following it's well-intentioned procedures, not an evil cabal going out of its way to ruin lives. It's just very unfortunate - and thematic - that these procedures touched a raw nerve for this family.

Get us to root for your protagonist. Prove to us that they have to succeed for the world to be OK. Then, make your antagonist get in your hero's way, and make the way she does so touch on your story's most painful nerves. We can understand why she does the things she does. We can even agree with her that it's the right decision given where she's at. But as with the College Board and the NCAA, we will hate her guts for threatening the hero.