Villains

Are villains really evil? Are they bad just because they do bad things?  If you think about it, without the villains doing said evil deeds, we often wouldn't have happy endings.  We wouldn't have the motive for change.
As I rewatch The Princess and the Frog I wander if the Voodoo Man was really as bad as he appears. Sure his motivations suck, he's collecting souls, BUT without him we wouldn't really have much of a story, would we? 
We'd have poor Tiana struggling to get her restaurant, Charlotte searching for her prince, and the Prince, well he'd still be a philandering bump on a log.  If the Voodoo man hadn't interfered in their lives, they would have all stayed the same.
The prince would still be a philandering, lazy bum and Tiana would still lack any semblance of fun in her work filled life. Charlotte would continue her romanticizing ways (which she seemingly does anyway) but she probably would have married the prince.
I can picture the scene now: the Prince and Charlotte marry. I don't really see a happily ever after right there. I see the prince spending all of her family money to dance and drink and cheat (he kind of starts out as that type). Charlotte would try to keep him content, and faithful by letting him spend her money. But money doesn't grow on trees. Eventually they would run out. Or eventually his philandering cheating ways would cause her to cut him off...  I could see a divorce in their future, near future.
Picture the money being gone: You are now left with two spoiled children who do not know how to work or do anything remotely constructive. The prince would turn to drinking and disappear into a world where he had it all. He'd gain weight, get mean. The whole she-bang.  Charlotte on the other hand, I feel would get stronger.  She would pull it together somehow, but in that miserable way, when bad things happen and you have to  prove yourself. You prove yourself or you fade into non-existence. You fade into a nonentity. But in proving herself, proving that she is strong and not an airhead, she will lose that charm. She will lose that beautiful innocense that is her spirit.  When life becomes hard we often become harder.
And then there's Tiana.  Without the shadow man, I fear that she'd be lost to her existence of perpetual work . She would always be reaching for that restaurant, for that unreacheable star, unheeding of her mother's words, because there is no one who can turn her eye. She will not let anyone show her the other side of life because she's perpetually reaching for her restaurant. 
The only person who could show her, the other half of her soul, will have married Charlotte. And Tiana will not fall under the spell of a married philanderer. 
Of course, she might.  If we're not in the world of Disney Tiana may just have an affair with the married prince.
But it won't end well.
These things never do.
So is the voodoo man really evil?  Certainly his motivations are. His personality even. But he is the only way we can hit the happy ending.  His actions push our protagonists together, bring them to see other worlds, to see one another. 

For me villains are always interesting. They are bad and good all in one. They have back stories. They are the heroes of their own stories. There is certainly a reason that they are the way they are.
And sometimes an ingeneous author sees the good in the bad and writes the back story. Sometimes they give us a new angle, a different way to see the original tale.  Think Wicked.  The Wicked Witch of the West... she's not actually evil. She has reasons for her actions. She's not evil. Nothing is quite as it seems.
I love stories like that, where the world is turned on its axis, where nothing is what we think it is.

So with villains, I challenge you to think outside of the box.  Are they evil, bad, misguided, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?  What brought these villains to this moment in their lives? This moment where distruction or the grab for power is happening.  How did they get here?  Why?
Is the story really as simple as it seems?

In real life it's often said that abusers were once abused themselves... Is it true for the villains of fiction?
I wonder.
I wonder who will tell their stories, twisted though they may be.  I wonder who will tell their stories, even if we already know of the unhappy endings...