Post History

We often use the word "sympathise" to mean agree with or approve of. But that is not what it means (or not what it should mean) when we are talking about the reader sympathizing with a character in fiction. 

In this context, sympathy means, to feel as they feel. The root of the word is from the Greek, sun- ‘with’ + pathos ‘feeling’. To feel with. It is not about approving the feeling. It is not about recommending the feeling. It is about having the feeling. 

And we all have feelings that could lead us to do bad things. We all have feeling that result from our having done bad things. We can very easily, therefore, sympathize with  villains, because their feelings are our feelings. 

Your story, of course, will depend very much on whether we do actually sympathize with the villain, whether we do recognize the feelings they have, whether we detect in ourselves the same feelings in responses to the same events, whether or not we act on them in the same way. 

On that score, the great difference between us and fictional people is that we are much less likely to act on our feelings, bad or good, than they are. They serve as our proxies, to act on our feelings for us without our having to risk or suffer the consequences of acting on them ourselves. But it is precisely for this reason what we need to sympathize with the protagonist and with the villain: not because we approve, but because their are our emotional proxies, and they cannot be effective in that role unless they feel as we feel, and we feel as they feel. Without sympathy, there is no story.