2025 Silmaril Awards Nominations: Most Nefarious Villain

Welcome to the 10th Annual Silmaril Awards!

Sep 01, 2025

ALL ABOUT THE SILMARIL AWARDS:

The Silmaril Awards are all about celebrating fantasy fiction. But whereas most awards go to authors or books, these awards go to the characters themselves! Sound like fun? Read on.

Started in 2016, these awards are a four week online celebration of all that’s best in fantasy literature. There are ten awards given every year. The characters who receive them have to be from books generally considered to be in the fantasy genre. And a given character cannot receive an award more than once. These are lifetime awards.

Also, as Tolkien is, for us, the gold standard of fantasy, his characters are not eligible to be nominated. That’s because they’ll be the ones presenting the awards in this cross-dimensional online ceremony.

Nominations are submitted on the websites of each of the presenters for that year. Anyone can submit a nomination and you can second (and third and fourth, etc.) any number of nominations besides your own.

After the nomination period (lasting one week) ends, the five characters receiving the most nominations will make it onto the ballot and you’ll have one week to vote. After the votes are tallied, the winners will be announced, one per day, over the final two weeks of the awards.

The awards the winners will receive are silmarils, the otherworldly gems featured in Tolkien’s book, The Silmarillion. Though there were a limited number of these gems in his world, in ours we have found a great many more!

Excited yet? Awesome. But before you start throwing your lists of nominees and seconds in the comments, sit tight for the rules, the previous years’ winners, and — before any of that — a very special announcement.

An Announcement Regarding the Narnians

Let’s get one thing straight: we at the Silmaril Awards love The Chronicles of Narnia. We know you love them too; every year, Narnians are enthusiastically nominated and seconded in every category. Narnian characters have won at least one Silmaril per year for the last seven years, and they have been recognized in every category of the Awards, including the retired ones.

It’s no surprise that these characters get so much love. The Chronicles of Narnia is a cornerstone of fantasy, as foundational as Tolkien’s work for many of us. For this reason, the Silmaril Awards Council has decided to bestow upon the Narnian characters Lifetime Silmarils in all applicable categories. This is a great honor for them, and all are very excited.

Importantly, this means that Narnian characters, like characters from Tolkien’s works, are no longer eligible for nominations. They will continue to be present around the Awards, either helping out or representing the past years in which they’ve won. But, again, they’ve earned their Silmarils, been recognized time and again, and are now handing off the spotlight to other worthy characters.

Puzzle Contest

Anyone is eligible to enter this contest by visiting the contest page at silmarilawards.com submitting the form.

THE FORM

Each host of the Silmaril Awards will post a line from one of Tolkien's poems on their nomination page. Gather all of them together and enter it when you submit your entry to receive NINE extra entries for a chance to win.

The line for this site is:

Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,

NOTE: By entering you will be added to the Silmaril Awards mailing list and may receive news about the awards or the authors participating as hosts in the future. You may unsubscribe at any time.

The contest will run from September 1-5. Winners will be contacted via email after September 8th.

Voting Contest

While anyone can vote for their favorite fantasy characters, every one who also signs up to our email newsletter while voting will be entered into the contest. Voting will run from September 8-12. Once it opens, you may cast your vote at: https://www.silmarilawards.com/vote/

2nd runners-up will be contacted via email after September 15th. However, two people will be selected to be entered into the grand prize contest. Then on September 26th, the hosts will meet online for a Lord of the Rings trivia contest, with half of the hosts competing for one entrant and half for the other. Whoever's team wins will walk away with the grand prize and the other entrant will receive the runner-up prize.

Here are the amazing prizes you'll have a chance to win in the two contests:

Stained glass dragon sun catcher

Painted gold "One Ring" bowl

A Mines of Moria journal

A 12×18 inch poster of the Fellowship of the Ring

Four paperbacks by authors H.L. Burke, DJ Edwardson, J.L. Mbewe, and Jenelle Leanne Schmidt

Three ebooks by those same authors

A Lord of the Rings scarf with a map of Middle-earth imprinted on it

A Leaf of Lorien pin

A 3D printed Tree of Gondor bookmark

A Gandalf Quote sticker

Door of Moria sticker

We hope you'll join us for these awards and the contest and that it will be a celebration worthy of Bilbo's hundred and eleventieth birthday party. May the best hobbit win!

DEMZ THE RULES (Deez the rules?):

Rules of the Silmaril Awards

1. You cannot nominate characters from Tolkien’s works. The creators of these awards saw that Tolkien’s characters are the gold standard by which we measure these categories, and they’re the official presenters of the awards. In other words: they’re doubly ineligible.

2. These awards are for fantasy characters only; no science fiction characters are eligible. That said, we will consider characters from some sciencey books if there’s enough magic-y/fantastical stuff that it can be deemed science fantasy of some stripe. The primary example is characters from Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, which we’ve decided does involve enough magic that it’s basically science fantasy.

3. When you nominate your character, please mention which book they are from. Much as we all wish we had infinite reading time, most of us are mere mortals who can only devote so much time to devouring the entire contents of any library we can access. (And those of us who aren’t mere mortals are still pretty busy.)

4. You may nominate as many characters as you wish and “second” as many characters as you want. But please, do not second your own nominations. The top five MOST seconded characters will go on to the final voting round. (Also, as a request . . . please don’t say “I second all characters from [insert book/series here].” That puts it on the hosts to make sure they don’t miss any characters from that media — sometimes a challenge when have dozens or even upwards of a hundred characters to sort through — and it creates a bit of awkwardness and uncertainty if another character from that book or series is nominated after your. Take the extra minute or two to write out the character names; it’ll be much appreciated.)

5. If you are an author, please refrain from nominating your own characters. You are welcome to encourage your fans to nominate them, however, and you are more than welcome to nominate others’ characters.

6. Characters who have won in a particular category in a previous year are ineligible to be nominated for the same award again. The Silmarils are Lifetime Awards. For a list of the previous winners in each category, please check out our Hall of Fame. Note: as of 2023, characters from The Chronicles of Narnia have been recognized with Lifetime Silmarils by the Silmaril Awards Council and therefore cannot be nominated again.

7. Please remember that these are Fantasy BOOK Awards. Therefore, a movie character is only eligible for nomination if they were in a book first!

8. Most importantly, have fun! We are celebrating our favorite characters and being a little silly in the process. And even if your personal favorite character doesn’t win or doesn’t reach voting, someone else’s did . . . and there’s always next year.

Past Years’ Winners:

2024 Bonifer Squoon from The Wingfeater Saga
2023 Prince Humperdinck from The Princess Bride
2022 Lady of the Green Kirtle from The Chronicles of Narnia
2021 Dolores Umbridge from The Harry Potter Series
2020 Voldemort from The Harry Potter Series
2019 Death in Life from Tales of the Goldstone Wood
2018 Queen Levana from The Lunar Chronicles
2017 Shift from The Chronicles of Narnia
2016 The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia

And now . . . nominations are open!

How to Nominate:

Go down to the comments of this post and comment your nominations.

It's that simple.

Need a leeeetle more? Okay, so you have to pick the villain from a fantasy book you think is the most evil (or most enjoyably devious?), then write their name (and please, the book/series they are from because I am NOT going to research it). If you see a nomination you agree with, comment to "second" it (Remember, only the five most seconded nominations will move on to the voting round!)

Also, stop asking if you can have my wine. I told you that was reserved!

NOMINATIONS CLOSE AT MIDNIGHT SEPTEMBER 6TH! So don't delay and check back regularly to second nominations you love.

Voting goes from September 9th through 13th!

So go forth and be VILLAINOUS!