Dark And Interesting Female Manhwa Characters, Ranked

Highlights

• Dark and morally gray characters in manhwa offer intricate plots and character development beyond traditional protagonists.
• Female protagonists like Leonia and Artezia showcase cunning, manipulation, and dark actions for their goals in the manhwa world.
• Characters like Sayeon and Rena display twisted personalities, enjoying manipulation and inflicting harm on others in their stories.

Dark and morally gray characters are popular for many reasons. They offer a journey separate from a traditional protagonist, which often includes more intrigue and mystery, leading to more complex plots and character development. These characters also tend to have an edgier aesthetic that many people enjoy and emulate through art and cosplay.

In manhwa, dark heroes are quite common, often in the form of a young man seeking revenge using any means possible, and the brutality showcased in these stories can be alarming to some readers. Though they may not be as openly violent as their male counterparts, there are quite a few female protagonists who prefer the darker path to get what they want.

9 Leonia Boleoti

The Male Lead’s Little Lion Daughter

Having a child on this list may seem odd, but Leonia is actually a young woman reincarnated into the body of a little girl. Because she has an adult mind, the experiences she went through when she was first isekai’d created more resentment than fear. Leonia’s maliciousness is very obvious from the moment the story starts, as she asks the duke to execute her abusers in the most painful and cruel way possible.

Being in a child’s body, however, does seem to have an effect on her personality. She still displays childlike behaviors and traits, so her dark side doesn’t come out too often. Leonia isn’t really an anti-hero. She’s just an innocent person whose trauma has made her more willing to inflict harm on others as she sees fit.

8 Artezia Rosen

The Villainess Lives Again

When it comes to dark female characters, the most common kind are schemers and manipulators. Artezia “Tia” Rosen is a member of the royal family, and in order to put her brother on the throne, she assassinated, manipulated, bribed, and threatened many people, resulting in deaths and people’s suffering.

Her cunning was so impressive that she was betrayed by her brother, and then saved by revolutionaries in order to overthrow the monarchy. Even in a new timeline, she uses her tricks to bring down those who betrayed her, and her evil actions make her question if she’s allowed to be a mother.

7 Medea Solon

Your Throne

Medea is the heiress to the Solon duchy, and from her birth, she has been trained to be the best with the goal of greater political power. She wields her nobility like a sword, strictly punishing those who do wrong and humiliating those who try to challenge her. However, for all her austerity, she is quite compassionate and noble.

In her story, she gains a harsh reputation for being strict and trying to gain more power no matter the cost, but Medea doesn’t carelessly harm innocent people or cause duress to the public. She even befriends her would-be rival Psyche, going so far as to save her later in the story.

6 Sayeon Lee

Hand Jumper

In Sayeon Lee’s world, there are certain people called aberrants born with an abundant amount of energy that manifests into superhuman abilities, and she hates them. They often commit crimes and harm people for no reason. The problem is that Sayeon is an aberrant herself, and her entire family is mixed up in the aberrant underworld. Because of that, her personality ends up getting twisted.

While the story is still just beginning, it’s very clear Sayeon is becoming less concerned with how she does things. She asks her teammate to mutilate another trainee. She uses her powers to test people and use them as experiment subjects. Though she may not realize it, she’s enjoying the act of manipulating those around her.

5 Rena Rubel

Regina Rena: The Unforgiven

Most dark and evil characters aren’t usually born that way. It’s through some drastic event or long-term abuse that their personalities become twisted and vengeful. For Rena Rubel, it happened when she was twelve. Her father sacrificed her for power, and she was pushed into a literal hell called the Grave, a place ruled by the undead, for six years. She became a merciless warrior.

Rena became incredibly powerful and resilient, capable of destroying droves of undead and consuming poison with no side effects; her power rivaled even the king’s. Her dealings with demons had made her into a violent and cold-hearted killer, but she still retained some of her kindness and compassion.

4 Larcy

I Will Fall With The Emperor

Despite being the eldest child in the royal family, Larcy was tricked into participating in a war against the empire and ultimately betrayed by her family. This leads to her execution, but she somehow returns to the past before the war. To get revenge on her family, Larcy marries the emperor in her sister’s stead with plans to invade her home country.

Larcy has vast magic power, a characteristic that attracted the emperor in her previous life, and she unleashes it whenever she wants. From maids to nobles, she solves her problems directly with fire and flame, going so far as to burn the emperor’s other mistresses.

3 Estelle

The Lady’s Dark Secret

Estelle was the saintess who held a massive amount of divine energy. Her benevolence and charity gained her support from many people. The exception was the nobility, who shunned and hurt her. Due to their greed, Estelle was sacrificed to the Devil in exchange for wealth and power, and she faced 600 years of torment in the underworld.

After those 600 years, Estelle decides to become a devil herself, signing a pact and returning to the surface where she’d ruin the kingdom that had forsaken her. She uses her magic to possess people, hypnotize them, and torture and kill them.

2 Rita/Verta

Depths of Malice

In most fantasy manhwa, the protagonists are desperate to survive. The way they do that varies depending on the character, but for the most part, it’s in a way that doesn’t harm others unless it’s required. Rita is not one of those protagonists, and to avoid death by consumption, she has a fortune-teller swap her body with the young noble, Verta Alberhart.

With a new and healthy body, Rita begins taking revenge on all the people who wronged her and her mother by orchestrating events that would incriminate her enemies. She intends to hurt and kill anyone who gets in her way.

1 Karen Heyer

The Crimson Lady

When someone is transported into the world of a novel, it’s assumed that completing the original story would let them leave, especially if they hadn’t died in their original world. For Karen Heyer, that was not the case. She has gone through many lives trying to escape, but in each timeline, she dies at a young age. After experiencing death so many times, she finally gave up.

Karen’s mind became twisted and nihilistic. Nothing mattered to her anymore because her life would reset anyway, so she began killing for no reason, enjoying the thrill of inflicting her pain on others. By doing this, she hopes to achieve an alternate ending to her story and finally escape.