Stupid Evil

"No Muttley, we can't win fairly. We are villains, ergo we have to cheat!"

– Dick Dastardly, recognizing his role in Wacky Races while being unable to avoid playing it. Naturally, the finish line is right behind him.

"If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you'll be treated as a mad dog; taken out back and slaughtered for pig feed."

– Roose Bolton to his son Ramsay in Game of Thrones.

Nevermind what I said just do what I said.

Yes, Lawful Stupid has its Evil counterpart. A general trait of Stupid Evil is doing evil things for the sake of being evil (e.g. pettiness, self gratification, etc.), rather than because they are (morality aside) easy or viable paths towards wealth, power, revenge, or whatever the villain's goal is. This is especially true when a non-evil (or even less evil) way of doing things would work better.

A villain who is truly insane can get away with this sort of thing since what compels them to act in an evil manner is the fact that they have some screws loose, and likewise comedic villains can get away with it because their evil is just a plot device to cause funny things to happen. However, "serious" nemeses and long-term, high-threat villains are usually expected to have a goal and some capacity for rational planning; a villain who takes time out of a busy day to kick a puppy or eat a kitten just to establish evil credibility will probably be treated with derision by players. By the same token, a villain who presents an otherwise seemingly insurmountable threat being undone by a massive fatal flaw - such as pride or hubris - can make for quite a compelling yarn.

Compare to Chaotic Stupid. They're not quite the same, but there's often a lot of overlap due the tendency of bad players and writers to mistake "chaotic" with "act like as big of an obnoxious asshole as physically possible".

Examples of Stupid Evil

A Song of Ice and Fire

The amount of retarded villains in this series is truly staggering. And yet despite all of the stupid evil committed by them, they were able to secure victories in the beginning, even if only because the good guys are either more Lawful Stupid or Stupid Good. Ultimately however most of the Lannisters and their allies including the Boltons and Freys met their ends in spite of their ruthlessness.

Of course, A Song of Ice and Fire is known for its frequent grey morality, and most Stupid Evil characters have something of an explanation. Even then, you'd be inclined to wonder how far ahead some of them were really thinking, especially in the adaptations - though it's arguably intentional, possibly to demonstrate how a lack of pragmatism fucks people over in the long-term, especially in a realm so rapidly driven by ever-changing politics and schemes (or possibly because of bad writing, who knows).

The Lannisters

Lannister-brand parenting and ruling revolves around nepotism, an iron fist and enough money to solve any problem thrown at them. While they enjoy significant successes at first, they also gave birth to some of the most short sighted sociopaths, who rely on their fortune, both material and immaterial, to try and win the Game of Thrones, and all ultimately lose in the end due to both fortunes running short. Examples of the Lannisters' worst offenders:

• Joffrey Baratheon is overall far too impulsive and sadistic for his own good, which is an already disastrous pairing of personality traits to combine with the fact that he's 12 or 13 years old in the books. On the note of not-even-really-excuses, there's also possible mental instability resulting from the fact that he's inbred and his mother is Cersei (more on her in a moment).
  • He sends an assassin armed with a Valyrian Blade (one of only a few hundred such weapons in all of Westeros, and an unusual weapon for a common hitman when a common dirk would have sufficed) to kill Bran Stark, and when that fails, it causes the Starks to suspect the Lannisters. He also kills Eddard Stark to make an example of him, therefore sparking an unnecessary and very costly civil war that went against what his family had planned. Despite that, they still came out on top since they are still standing while the Starks are scattered, due mainly to Tywin and Tyrion being tactical geniuses and strategic masterminds.
  • He also chooses to ignore his duties and the welfare of his people in favor of satiating his sadistic behavior, even abusing his people when they're seeking his help. He regularly abuses Sansa in particular, and threatens to have her killed despite the fact it will reduce her value as a political hostage and (in their eyes) could cause the Starks to kill their political hostage, Jaime Lannister.
  • He shows no regard for the peasants and working class under his charge in the capital city. This is already a bad idea, but especially when there's an impending siege and tensions are already high. This leads to a riot that causes several deaths when he orders a mass execution after one member of the crowd threw a dung ball at him.
  • Even his family isn't safe from his viciousness, occasionally to the point of team-killing fuckery: he has one of his Kingsguard try to murder his uncle Tyrion in the middle of the Battle of Blackwater instead of just simply poisoning him (as Tyrion pointed out). He even calls Tywin a coward. Out loud. In front of other people. To his face. Luckily for Joffrey they were related, or he would have been struck down. And as what turns out to be a final hurrah at his wedding, he insults his in-laws and his bride at their wedding reception and subjects Tyrion to petty tortures in front of everyone.

• Cersei Lannister, while not as dumb as her son Joffrey (low a bar as that is), is egotistic and paranoid as fuck; if she, for any reason, thinks you might threaten her or her children, even for something as minor as telling her her latest idea is a bad one, you're in trouble. At best, she will view you as an enemy and will be a passive-aggressive bitch to you, and at worst she'll have you brutally tortured to death, even if you're one of House Lannister's allies to whom good relations are vital. On top of all that she's a contender for Worst Mother in Westeros, and her cruelty drove away even her incestuous lover, Jaime Lannister (which happened much earlier into the books than in the TV show).
  • She invited Gregor Clegane (see below) to King's Landing at the same time Oberyn Martell is visiting, despite the fact that Gregor is the reason there's bad blood between House Lannister and House Martell, and the Martells know it.
  • After Joffrey died, she went out of her way to rig the trial for his death against Tyrion, despite the circumstances already being against him - this made him more determined than ever to survive and tips off Oberyn that Tyrion is innocent of the crime. This led to the duel between Oberyn and Gregor that ruined the Lannister/Martell alliance and cost the Lannisters their pet beast.
  • She also responded to a satirical puppet show about House Lannister being evil tyrants by having anyone who saw it either sharply fined (up to half of all their money if they're rich) or mutilated (an eye cut out if they're too poor to pay), and then ordering the puppeteers executed. She didn't even mind the play at first - she only took offence because the ending had the Lannisters getting their comeuppance at the hands of a Targaryen. Then, instead of the headsman, she did something worse and handed the puppeteers over to her resident mad scientist for deadly experiments at his request. Ironically, events following this would vindicate the puppeteers for their play (more on that below).
  • Cersei encouraged the worst aspects of her kids; in the case of Joffrey, this is like attempting to put out a forest fire with napalm. Her atrocious parenting, combined with conceiving Joffrey with her brother Jamie AND Robert's own negligence, is the reason Joffrey's such a repulsive asshole. She ignores the numerous acts of cruelty and stupidity of her eldest son, and treats any criticism of him as a personal attack on her.
  • She was an overbearing mother to Tommen - her actually half-decent person of a second son - to the point of trying to make him more like Joffrey, and when that inevitably failed, she inadvertently made him a gullible yes-man of a momma's boy in trying to stop him disagreeing with her. This in turn left them vulnerable to the ambitions of Margaery Tyrell, who tries to drive a wedge between them and threatens her plans to rule as queen regent until Tommen was of age.
  • She killed a high septon because he was a cat's paw Tyrion put into power to keep the faith in House Lannister's pocket, being a decent but easily manipulated man, because Cersei's paranoia meant she feared that Tyrion was out to get her and that guy was in on it. This leads to a more competent and devout high septon getting into power with ambitions of his own. She then let him raise his own army, creating another player to threaten House Lannister's precarious position and one unbeholden to politics, which leads to her arrest - though he was smart in the books and played Cersei like a fiddle. In context, Cersei's undoing is a good thing - especially for everyone not allied with House Lannister.
  • In the TV show, as revenge for the High Sparrow imprisoning her and Margaery taking her place as Queen (which is partly her fault in the first place), she makes the perfectly rational decision to blow them all to fuck using magical napalm while they were at church for a trial. The end result was: Pissing off nearly every person in the Seven Kingdoms who followed the Faith; driving Tommen (who was friends with the High Sparrow and loved Margaery dearly) to commit suicide via jumping out a window; and pushing a pissed Olenna Tyrell to withdraw all the house's support from King's Landing and declare for the resurgent House Targaryen alongside Dorne, and stirring the Sparrows outside of King's Landing into a fervor at the Septon's martyrdom. Cersei and House Lannister now literally have no major allies left in Westeros sans the Freys, who aren't at all reliable and were destroyed by Arya and the Boltons when their treachery outstripped the benefits. Unfortunately, she was still one step ahead and easily took out Houses Tyrell and Dorne despite their efforts, by using the Iron Bank to buy herself a mercenary force and recruiting Euron at the cost of losing Casterly Rock to her rivals (though this was helped by some internal team-killing from Oberyn's widow, you'd swear it's a bloody epidemic in that show).
  • Also in the TV show, when Daenerys and her supports come to parlay with Cersei's forces for help against the White Walkers and their zombie armies - bringing a captured zombie to Cersei's court as proof and cutting it up with all the pieces still attacking - Cersei did the stupidest possible thing and refused to support them, deciding she'd rather "let the dead eat them all". She ignored the fact that this would leave her on the receiving end of a curb-stomp battle from either the aforementioned Walkers (who would be bolstered by the dead from Daenerys' forces) or Daenerys' forces AND everyone still living in King's Landing who's had enough of her tyranny. This ultimately comes back to bite her when she kills Missandei and pushes Daenerys over the edge from Lawful Neutral to Stupid Evil as she gives no quarter to anyone in King's Landing and commands the Dorathki, Unsullied and her dragon to rape, pillage and burn down King's Landing and leave no survivors - Cersei and her brother Jamie were crushed to death by the falling rubble. Of course, as will soon be made clear, Danerys was already a draconian (hue) powder keg of Stupid Evil herself, but for now we move to...

• Arguably Tywin Lannister: while known for his image of being a deviously competent politician and general, his actions don't hold up to the hype under further scrutiny. His neurotic obsession with not having his house's reputation damaged leads him to condone and engage in acts of excessive cruelty and brutality that have long term negative consequences, with his patriarchal narcissism ultimately resulting in his death at the hands of his dwarf son.
  • Spurned Tyrion out of spite for his unintentional role in his wife's death - she died in childbirth. He did this for Tyrion's entire life, including annulling Tyrion's marriage to a peasant girl by having her gang-raped while forcing Tyrion to watch and later join in - this act horrified even Tyrion's sword-for-hire Bronn, who said in Tyrion's shoes he'd have killed Tywin for that, father or not (note Bronn is an amoral mercenary who outright said he'd kill a baby for the right price). All this leaves the only one of his children who was both competent and legally available to inherit Casterly Rock with a burning hatred for Tywin.
  • Sent Gregor Clegane after Elia Martell and her kids, planning for the children's death but hoping to use Elia as leverage against the Dornish; however, she dies as a result, with House Martell despising House Lannister, and likely setting in motion a possible (though ultimately ineffectual) poisoning with Widow's Blood by Oberyn Martell. (It stops up the bowels until the victim dies of sepsis, which may have been why he was on the shitter when Tyrion killed him).
  • Ordered Clegane and the Brave Companions/Bloody Mummers mercenary company to run wild in the Riverlands, causing a major agricultural zone for the continent to drop in productivity during the onset of a winter that could last years. Those affected by the rampages of Gregor and the Bloody Mummers also started to join the Sparrows religious movement, which from a story perspective creates more opponents of House Lannister that have deep personal grievances with them (such as a peasant innkeeper, whose son the Mummers murdered and whose daughter Gregor raped).
  • Orchestrated the Red Wedding, shredding House Lannister's political image and credibility throughout Westeros - nobody wants to negotiate with someone who doesn't follow the same rules of war as them, like say, honoring a right to hospitality that the entire continent respects.
  • In particular, he berated Tyrion for whoremongering while using prostitutes himself. This is worth noting not merely for the expected hypocrisy, but for the fact that Tywin likely took issue with his severe lack of discretion more than anything else (what son of a Lannister, much less his own son, should be so well-known as a skirt-chaser?), and also goes back to what he did to his first wife and Shae. This last hurrah is what got him killed, as he mouthed off at Tyrion when the latter had a loaded crossbow pointed at him while he was stuck on the toilet and had learnt of his ultimate betrayal.

• Gregor Clegane is a serial killer with severe anger control issues, having gone through three wives who died under suspicious circumstances. At his keep, there's a high turnover rate among the servants, and even animals avoid his chambers. Before this, he maimed his brother Sandor and would've killed him if three other people didn't intervene, and he's heavily implied to have murdered his sister and father, despite the father doting on him even when his evil started to become apparent.
  • The circumstances surrounding him and his brother are as such: Gregor once caught his brother playing with one of Gregor's discarded toy soldiers when they were children. He took the logical next step of holding his brother's face over the fire, permanently disfiguring that half of his face and mentally scarring him, and from that point he's arguably stagnated into a phase of prolonged "adult childhood" as a result of a developmental disorder, based on this and his other actions.
  • Before the story starts, it's an open secret that he raped and murdered Rheagar's wife Elia Martell, even though he hadn't been ordered to do so. He also killed a baby, and though he'd been ordered to do so, the fact remains that he had no qualms about the deed and went so far as smashing its head against a wall. This bites him and the Lannisters in the ass BIG TIME later on, though he deserved it.
  • After losing a jousting match, Gregor decapitates his own horse, then tries to kill his opponent, Loras Tyrell, and his own brother when the latter intervenes. Had Gregor succeeded, it's likely the Lannisters would've kissed any hope of an alliance with the Tyrells goodbye.
  • The men who Gregor recruits as his hand-picked warriors aren't chosen for their intelligence or resourcefulness, and not even loyalty; they serve Gregor out of fear and desire of plunder, and prize their fighting skills and sadism, essentially raping and torturing random peasants to death for the lulz. This includes the prisoners from the taking of Harrenhal, many of whom were nobility and could have been used as leverage in the war.
  • Arguably when, before killing Oberyn, Gregor shouts a confession to his crime of murdering and raping Elia in front of all of the nobles in King's Landing. This would've put House Martell and House Lannister at open war... if the Martells hadn't been already secretly plotting to destroy them, though this does push their schedule forward.
  • For all that, there is at least some "justification" as to why this guy is kept around by House Lannister. He's a brutal warrior in every sense of the word who projects an aura of fear, and for all his butchery, raping, rage, and blunt cruelty, he's never threatened House Lannister directly and is (for want of a better word) content to be their pet beast.
  • The logical conclusion of this and the damage from fighting Oberyn makes it painfully literal: he is now kept permanently addled by powerful cocktails of painkillers and other drugs, likely on purpose, to keep him useful as a warrior, albeit an effective husk of one. It is mentioned that milk of the poppy (opium in all but name) has basically no effect on him any more due to consuming it so much.

• Ramsay Bolton is the son of Roose, a cunning general who manipulated and back-stabbed his way into rulership of the North; unlike Roose, Ramsey lacks any strategic foresight and critical thinking, and is totally fearless and reckless with his actions, which Roose correctly points out will be his downfall if they are not curbed. This ends up coming across as more of an informed attribute due to the TV show's writing, but the result is ultimately the same. Shame he didn't listen to his old man, huh?
  • He killed his half-brother, despite the fact that this also deprived his father of another heir, which in medieval-esque societies is important; the more offspring they have, the more like the noble family is to survive.
  • His savage exploits are known across Westeros, and he continuously pisses off the other Northern lords by hunting down their subjects for fun. This is part of the reason why half of the Northern Houses rebel against Bolton rule. He chooses to flay Ironborn captives alive, despite promising them clemency if they surrendered, along with turning Theon Greyjoy into his personal eunuch slave. This has ensured that the Ironborn will now fight to the death rather than sue for peace, and contemplate a full invasion of the North instead of merely raiding its settlements.
  • In the books, after marrying the fake-Arya Stark (who everyone else thinks is the real one) he tortures her, threatens her and tries to make her do certain things to his hunting dogs. This sets off the Northerners' Powder Keg of Justice, causing an uprising against the Boltons that will likely end with Ramsay's and Roose's heads on spikes.
  • He sent an assassin after Jon Snow. As Roose pointed out, Jon was the leader of a well-known and politically neutral organization, whose claim to the throne of House Stark was tenuous at best, and would've gone against his vows, a big deal in Westeros. Killing him would almost certainly create a martyr, or at least demonstrate to the other houses that House Bolton has no respect for neutrality.
  • The TV version actually murdered his father in the middle of the war, fed his step-mother and infant half-brother to his dogs, and he'd also raped Sansa Stark beforehand after manipulating an arranged marriage between them. Yet he somehow manages more (and often downright insane) successes than his book counterpart in spite of acting like little more than a rabid dog raised in nobility (the infamous "twenty good men" scene where trained killers' armor and expertise suddenly become useless against a half-naked Ramsay comes to mind).
  • Unfortunately (for him), his fortune doesn't last, as being a team-killing fucktard ultimately got his own army wiped out before he was beaten to near-death by Jon Snow, culminating in Sansa feeding him to his own dogs -- who were only hungry enough to turn on him because he'd starved them for a week beforehand in anticipation of feeding them the Starks.

• Slaver's Bay (aka Stupid Evil: The Civilization), a neo-Ghiscari settlement, is run by a bunch of decadent slave dealers who do nothing besides wax on about how great the 5 millennia dead old Ghiscari Empire was and leave their society in the Bronze Age... in a world one step removed from Medieval Stasis.
  • Of the four cities of Slaver's Bay, two of them, Meereen and Yunkai, believe that a bunch of slaves with spears and shields led by fops on horseback or in chariots wearing linen vests and helmets made to accommodate their stupid hairdos constitute a proper army. After Yunkai gets its ass kicked by Daenerys when she brings a half decent army to the field which doesn't run at the first excuse, they decide that it would be a good idea to raise new slave armies that are chained together and fight on stilts.
  • One of them, Astapor, trains Unsullied elite spear slaves who obey any order given to them without question, which they sell and use for defense. The Masters of Astapor agree to sell all the Unsullied they've got to Dany, who proceeds to have them sack their city and kill them.
  • Admittedly, the prospect of owning a dragon, especially after they’re thought to be extinct for centuries and being the equivalent of a self-replenishing WMD, is an awfully tempting one given how new Unsullied are made each year. Despite that, it’s still extremely stupid that they questioned neither the possibility of how they can control said dragon (leading to one Master burning to death seconds after grabbing the dragon’s chain) nor the sense in selling every Unsullied warrior-slave to the same person and leaving none to defend themselves. They also never considered that the Unsullied, though trained to be obedient, might resent the brutality involved in their training (which included castrating them at a young age, sending aspirants into the city tasked with killing babies in front of their mothers to prove they'll follow even the vilest orders, giving them a puppy to care for in their first year then making them strangle it to death as a test of loyalty - killing those who fail this test, and making them take new names each day on pain of death - demeaning names like "black rat", "blue toad" or "red flea" - so they can't develop a sense of individual identity), and would seize a chance for vengeance which Dany happily gave them.
  • For no particular tactical reason, the leadership of Meereen decided to taunt an oncoming army by having child slaves nailed to mileposts to die along the road - a decision which backfires on them rather spectacularly.

• Daenerys Targaryen of the TV show's continuity takes her newly earned spot in this list with a single but major action, through the sheer power of bad writing. In the second-to-last episode, she subjects the entire citizenry to being turned into dragonfire kindling through a series of events that Cersei is somewhat at fault: she was already fixing to blow several gaskets because she was rejected by Jon Snow (who is her nephew and not as cest-willing as Jamie) and got one of her dragons killed (by completely forgetting about an entire fleet of ships), and then Cersei slams the final nail in the coffin of her rational thought by having her close friend Missandei killed. This last act is the impetus for Dany to torch 'em all and let the Seven sort it out, throwing away any and all goodwill she would have gained from King's Landing - virtually nobody held much love or loyalty for Cersei, and most of the common folk would have loved her had she not then decided to literally become her father.
  • Don't get us wrong, signs of a dark, sadistic side to Daenerys were always there with the signpost punishment and other early signs of a "pay evil unto evil" mentality that cast shadows of doubt onto her image as the Breaker of Chains. But with the way said signs were developed in the show (which is to say, almost not at all), it is beyond stupefying how she went from "Messiah, Breaker of Chains" to truly being her father's daughter in the grand span of two episodes. It's no wonder everyone save the Unsullied (who themselves were retconned enough that they might as well be unthinking automatons now, though Grey Worm had the excuse of being distraught over Missandei's death) and Dothraki (who actually enjoy random acts of slaughter like this) turned on her the moment they saw what she has become and got her assassinated.
  • Now for the poorly-handled signs and other bad writing. For one thing, in a televised interview the showrunners were asked why Daenerys didn't do anything about the Iron Fleet. In response, Beinoff nervously said she kind of forgot about them. That is almost but just barely not quite 'Dexter finale' levels of shit writing, wasted at the very end on such a spectacular crew and cast to boot. If GRRM intends to turn Dany evil and kill her off, he knows what NOT to do in ADOS - assuming TWOW, let alone ADOS, are ever finished).

Other general examples

• Strawman villains in poorly written fiction across the board.
• Villains in Saturday morning cartoons and similar fare (e.g. Wacky Races, Captain Planet).
• Grimdark as a whole often suffers from characters who make things crappy just for the sake of making things crappy.
• Edgelord characters by preteens/actual teens (or users with a similar enough mentality) on DeviantArt.
• The 'villains' of many fringe-conspiracy theories would be Stupid Evil if they existed as depicted, since their plans undermine their own power bases, have little to no tangible gain, or else draw attention by plastering their logo on everything. It's also weird that despite how cartoonishly evil they are thought of, they don't bother to kill anyone exposing the conspiracies while making it look like an accident. This is probably because there is some overlap with the strawman characters - they just have to be Evil™ enough to scare whoever you're selling your bridge to into action.

Other /tg/-relevant examples

• Humans in science and fantasy fiction often end up being Stupid Evil when the (usually incompetent) writer wants to make a statement about discrimination. According to these tales, humans are apparently overly-panicky and violent psychopaths itching for an excuse to murder the shit out of other species. For instance, in Avatar the human army is portrayed as a bunch of jingoist lunatics who want to slaughter the peaceful Na'vi for the resources they need, rather than trying to reap long-term benefits by making peaceful contact, in a clear exaggeration of tendencies that might have existed in the colonization era. The advent of Humanity Fuck Yeah is in part a reaction to this phenomenon.
• Some followers of Chaos, such as Firaeveus Carron, can prove to be this most of the time.
• Lolth actually enforces Stupid Evil in her worshipers: because of her, the Drow spend 3 quarters of their energy fighting each other instead of defending themselves, which is a really bad idea since they live in an underground city under constant threat of being raped by illithids and beholders. In fact, when things get really bad, she literally has to tell them to get their shit together for a short period of time.
• The Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy, whose rival clans always plan on backstabbing each other even if they're all fighting a mutual (and often far worse) enemy. A perfect plan for them involves getting their own enemies and allies to kill each other, until they are the only one left to face the next enemy - keep in mind that "they" doesn't just mean rival clans either; in an apocalyptic scenario, even their personal secretary is only barely less of an enemy than the hordes of the undead. As above, it takes the Horned Rat, their god, as well as the invention of instant communication via the Farsqueaker, to get their fuzzy little asses united...though in the Skaven's case, them being a species of Stupid Evil is entirely the (hilarious) point and their society is explained as surviving in spite of themselves due to a ridiculous breeding rate.
• The Joker. Once "merely" a criminal mastermind with a chaotic, unpredictable bent and joke-themed weapons (like a joy buzzer that gives a lethal electric shock and a squirting flower that sprays acid), he's devolved as time goes on into a murder-happy rabid dog who kills for the jollies and because he gets off on being punched in the face by Batman.
• Starscream from Transformers. He's too ambitious and egotistical to realize how good his position as Megatron's second-in-command is, and so spends much of his time trying to usurp his leader with predictable failure. He also tends to do things on the spur of the moment to satisfy his own ego, as demonstrated in Prime where he angrily takes credit for killing Arcee's best friend Cliffjumper while in handcuffs in front of Arcee, simply because he doesn't want Airachnid stealing the credit for things he did.
• The Sith in the Star Wars universe suffer from this greatly, and it's a major reason they keep losing to the Jedi and failed to keep any of their empires intact long-term. In fact, one could argue that they're a perfect case study on why Stupid Evil is a bad idea:
  • Firstly, whereas the Jedi code encourages understanding yet controlling your emotions (that way you take them into account, but they don't prevent you from doing what is necessary), the Sith code encourages embracing your emotions and indeed, many of the most powerful Sith like Darth Vader are incredibly emotionally damaged. Thus Sith tend to do things in the heat of the moment and often lack the patience needed to be truly effective. Darth Malak can't find Revan and the Ebon Hawk crew on a planet he has control of? Oh well better just level his own planet with Star Destroyers, costing himself thousands of workers and soldiers in his psychotic and desperate rush to off his old master.
  • Secondly, the Sith code is built on a hyper-Darwinist, "survival-of-the-fittest" structure. While this sounds decent enough on paper, in practice it meant that the Sith constantly backstabbed each other in idiotic power plays, often leading to Sith killing each other more often than they killed Jedi. Crossing with the "overly emotional" thing above, their lack of patience often led to them betraying each other way before it was beneficial to do so. Darth Bane was the first major Sith Lord to realize how stupid and unsustainable this lifestyle was, and did something about it for the benefit of the Order rather than themselves. His "rule of two" may have led to the Sith population being lower than ever before or after, but at least it kept the Sith order alive and prevented most of them from slaughtering each other in pathetic attempts to gobble up more power.
    • It should be noted that even the Sith themselves violate or weasel their way around the Rule of Two every now and then. Darth Maul was alive at the same time as Dooku & Palpatine (technically before Dooku defected after Qui-Gon's death but it still counts as Palps was already planning to replace him in Legends), and in the EU during Vader's time there were the Force-using "Hands of the Emperor" agents such as Mara Jade. They also have characters like Ventress who aren’t officially Sith Lords, yet are trained just like one. So while it decreases their numbers by a lot, they find ways around even when they actually obey said rule. This again is an aversion of idiocy, as a spare is a good a idea when only two people are allowed.
    • Also don't get the idea that Darth Bane's plan was sensible or not-backstabby. He wiped out almost all of the Sith in exchange for merely a small group of Jedi of the Jedi in an admittedly epic and arguably goddamn hilarious backstab, and part of the reason he did so wasn't because he was sure they'd fall into infighting - rather, Lord Kaan had most of them under his thumb thanks to psychic influence and strength - but because the Sith were acting in very un-Sithy ways, relying purely on strength of arms and unified armies rather than mastery of the Dark Side. Even when there was a very real chance the Sith could've won via these methods, he couldn't have that or slink off and make his rule of two on his own - he had to backstab everyone else first. Then, go figure, his sucessors ended up using those same pragmatic tactics until the Jedi declined enough to almost destroy them in one blow. To be fair, the survivors (read: the assholes who didn't help with the 300-year long galactic dark age after two and a half millennia of almost nonstop war) and their policies lead to the decline of the Jedi Order until they got Order 66'd.
  • Thirdly and finally, Sith who engage in too much evil and envelope themselves too deeply in the Dark Side often suffer from an inability to properly sense the Light Side. This alienation of the Light is what lead to the otherwise brilliant Palpatine's death. He alienated altruism and good so utterly that he was not only unable to sense Luke Skywalker's presence during a critical moment, but he was also unable to sense that his apprentice Darth Vader still had some morality in him. Thus he attempts to tortuously kill Luke, and is killed himself when he fails to sense Vader's own paternal feelings and the betrayal they influence.