Hey Guys,

I've been doing some research on a story I am working on. The basic premise is that the villain of the world wins but he ends up finding running an entire society is far more complicated than he imagined.

So I have been thinking about how the various villains I know of would approach such a situation. For most of them, they would bend the world in order to indulge their vices and corruption.

However, when I think of Voldemort, I genuinely can't imagine him indulging in any kind of destructive habits. Does he enjoy sex? Good food and drink ? Socializing? Researching? Training?

If Voldemort won the war and created his perfect pureblood society and established a functioning government.

What would his day-to-day activities look like, in your opinions?

From what we know of the character, what would he do with his immortality, with no enemies to best and no societies to conquer?

What would he realistically spend his time doing?


This question also extends to other fictional worlds.

What would an immortal villain do after he conquers everything there is to conquer?

 

I don't think Voldemort wants to create a "perfect pureblood society", never mind establish a functioning government. His motivations seem to be bitterness and hatred against people who know how to live in peace, and I feel he'd start fighting against his own supporters the moment he has defeated his enemies. He would continue destroying everything around him until nothing remained, and then probably kill himself.

 

I probably agree with arkkitehti.

There's no reason to think that Voldemort would make plans for his retirement any more than most ordinary folks do. I doubt he'd ever even consider 'what next' after the end game.

My personal observations of highly driven people who are forced into that state are that they spend about a year to 18 months drifting around diving into projects or travel they didn't get around to whilst employed, a further two to five years flailing about trying to find anything at all to fill their time, and then they dive back into a day job, be it consulting, house restorations, angel investing or whatever.

For Voldemort I reckon it'd be similar. A year of smugness that he'd won, touring his territories and messing about with whatever laws he wants whilst basking in the adulation of his followers. A year or two after that delving into some fields of magic whilst personally intervening in increasingly trivial bits of the legal, education or legislative system to stay entertained, then within 5 years being bored enough to be passively, if not actively promoting a bit of rebellion so that he's got an excuse to suppress one.

 

Τhere is certainly an argument to be made that Voldemort would continue marginalising and demonising increasingly smaller groups of people until very few or none remained other than him, such that he always has a foe, but the one thing I disagree on is that he would kill himself in the end. That's the one thing his character is built on; fear of death.

The scared core of Tom Riddle would continue removing any threat, real, imagined or potential, to his existence until none remained or until he got himself destroyed by accident or outside design.

 

You know in Deathly Hallows when Pius Thicknesse is the Minister of Magic and Snape is Headmaster and everything has the outward veneer of being on the up and up? I think this is how Voldemort would rule his won world. He'd have his own people in every position of power, but everyone would know You-Know-Who as the real power behind everything. I think he'd replace/eliminate any threat or obstacle to his power, because I don't think anyone would be happy with Voldemort ruling things forever so there would be a continual rise and fall of minor opposition groups.

He would probably dabble in magic fields and push things as far as he could, but I think Voldemort and Dumbledore were already pretty close to the cap of what one can do with magic without inventing some new stuff. Realizing that statistically there must be other forms of life out there Voldemort sets to conquering the next frontier – space. Voldemort can fly so he takes off. It takes years but Lord Voldemort is patient, Lord Voldemort is immortal. After eons, Lord Voldemort discovers that there is nothing out there and has an existential crisis. He returns to Earth to discover it gone. Our sun has long since exploded and the earth consumed by it flames. Voldemort could reinvent the time-turner and simply return, but he's not interested in this. There is still one death to defeat – the heat death of the universe.

 

Such a mugglewank, just use the Universal Cooling Charm; it's a fifth-year spell.
I happen to think that Voldemort is more interested in magical research than anything else, except possibly immortality. He most likely intends to indefinitely research more ways of keeping himself alive. The rest of the world simply doesn't matter to him. He's kind of like a basement dweller who only goes outside to check if he's got bills or taxes. If it's not something that will impact his continued eastern cartoon porn watching in the basement, he really doesn't care.

 

This isn't canon, but in the discarded draft of the opening chapter for Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid visits the Muggle Prime Minister(who is called Fudge), in it he warns him what happens should Voldemort win, telling him that once he's in power nobody will be safe, even in other countries, though that he'll likely keep muggles around as slaves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RowlingWritings/comments/8z1jp7/the_redeyed_dwarf/

Honestly, taking power worldwide and enslaving muggles seems close enough to fit canon Voldemort well enough. Though obviously muggles aren't particularly useful as slaves for wizards, I'd still think it wouldn't be beyond Voldemort to just do it for the sake of feeling superior.

 

My issue with this interpretation is that Voldemort could have easily achieved immortality if he had just stayed in a basement.

Voldemort's thing is that he actively sees threats everywhere, and aggressively tries to destroy those threats, see attacking Harry as a baby. My take that Voldemort would eventually kill himself comes from the same idea; after taking out everyone else, he would eventually see his own body as a weakness/threat and find ways to destroy that, in the process destroying himself.

 

No, he would have eventually died of old age. The horcruxes required him to kill people to make them, and he also wanted the hallows, and when he perceived Harry as a threat, he went to eliminate Harry. Once he 'won and took over', though, I don't believe he would see anything else as a threat.

 

I think either he'd go the route of persecuting increasingly small/specific segments of the population until he was either overthrown, died of old age, or society crumbled under him; or after he solidified his power, he'd look outwards and try to expand his hold into other nations (similar to what happens in Prince of the Dark Kingdom).

 

Massive propaganda campaigns.

It's well known that Voldemort's greatest weapon is his very effective image marketing: in late 1970 he had already made himself into a household name, but by 1997 the Dark Lord further enhanced his reputation by making that household name too terrifying to utter. Now that's brand recognition, baby.

His sleek marketing style can be seen from the distinctive skull masks, stylish tattoos and black robes of the Death Eaters, turning evil into the hot look this century.

And while his national reputation was to be feared, closer to his side he flawlessly executed the textbook image of an all-powerful leader to his target market: the rich.

So, what are Voldemort's next steps now that he's successfully conquered Britain? For now we can only speculate, but media experts agree: we're in for some spectacular marketing campaigns.

So what might Voldemort's media campaign look like?

1. Control of all media outlets. Why, we here at the Daily Prophet are pleased to finally announce our change of leadership!
2. Consolidation of all-powerful reputation. Did you know that the only person that the late Chief Warlock, Albus Dumbledore, feared was Our Lord himself?
3. Controlling the elite. Big round of applause to our lord for establishing the Potioneering and Advancement Foundation for higher learning.
4. Repressing dissent - check out our article on 'Top ten ways to adapt to removing the Taboo'd words from YOUR vocabulary!'
5. Establishment of the Immortal God King - boy, isn't it incredible to be living through this period of history?

 

I don't think that Voldemort would be a particularly good ruler. He would probably spend most of his reign putting down revolts and picking fights with his followers for percieved slights and failures until they turned against him.

 

First step is to consolidate his power. To Voldemort, that means his personal power - Voldemort does not like relying on others, and his first instinct is always to hold as much power as he can rather than sharing or distributing it to followers. I don't think Voldemort will truly be satisfied until such time as he is a Dark Lord in reality, not just in name - a Sauron-like entity. So he keeps pushing the boundaries of magic, using the full resources of the Ministry of Magic, to achieve greater and greater transformations of his self.

Second step is to remove all plausible threats or challenges in the form of rival wizards. That means taking over the global magical community, and in particular all the magical schools so that he can monitor them and eliminate rivals before they get too strong. It also means essentially disarming all martial organisations which are not under his direct control.

The third step is to do something about Muggles. I don't think Voldemort wants to break the Statute of Secrecy - he is not Grindelwald - but at the same time I think he will not be happy with how many Muggles there are in the world and how they continue to expand, encroaching on more and more land and developing more advanced technology. His goal will be to dramatically reduce Muggle numbers and regress their technology. To this end he uses the world's collective magical resources to stage a long series of natural disasters - all from behind the veil of wizarding secrecy - which steadily kill off large numbers of Muggles and destabalise their societies, all while the wizarding community remains hidden and feeding the Muggle world with Muggle-worthy excuses like "climate change".

And here we arrive at Voldemort's end-state: he is a godlike being with complete control over wizarding society and has brought Muggles to an easily managable low. Finally content, he keeps society frozen in this stage for eternity, with no progress or real change ever really occurring (which presents a possible threat to his power).

 

And from there you end up with something not far off the original Mistborn setting.

 

In the long run I could see Voldemort becoming a Lord Ruler type figure, if not quite as powerful. Replace the skaa with muggles, nobles with purebloods, and half nobles with muggleborns and halfbloods. They're even sort of similar character wise.

I guess that's what Sanderson was going for tho.

 

Probably a sliding scale from Prince of the Dark a Kingdom to Echoes in the Fog.

 

As cool as PotDK voldemort is i cant really see that being reality. As i see it he is mainly driven by hatred and that wouldkeep himfrom ever really evolving into a leader people would be forced to recognize

 

Yeah, I think the only thing from PotDK that could feasibly come through into a canon Voldemort who won is the expansionist mind set.

The political savvy, public image stuff, nope, that's not happening with canon Voldemort.

If I were taking his character towards an international expansion I'd have him spend some time securing his power base at home - very crudely by killing anyone he considers a threat to his power. Then he'd leave the ministry in the hands of someone either loyal to him or imperiused to be loyal to him, take his death eaters and bugger off to the continent (or wherever he sets his eyes on, as distance is less of a factor).