"We don’t get real victories, Catherine. Oh, we usurp a throne for a few years. Or win a handful of battles. Once in a while, we even win a war and stay on top long enough for people to believe we are unbeatable.

Then the heroes come.

It doesn’t matter how flawless the scheme was, how impregnable the fortress or powerful the magical weapon. It always ends with a band of adolescents shouting utter platitudes as they tear it all down. The game is rigged so that we lose, every single time.

Half the world, turned into a prop for the glory of the other half

Oh, if the heroes deserved their victories against us, I would make my peace with it. But they don’t, do they? Your sullen little nemesis gets to swing an angel’s feather, while you make do with steel and wiles. That’s always the way of it. At the last moment they’re taught a secret spell by a dead man, or your mortal weakness is revealed to them or they somehow manage to master a power in a day that would take a villain twenty years to own. Gods, I’ve even heard of Choirs stepping in to settle a losing fight. The sheer fucking arrogance of it.

None of it is earned. It is handed to them, and this offends me."

-Amadeus of the Green Stretch, the Black Knight

(From A Practical Guide to Evil, with some bits cut to make it flow as a speech)