She responded to privilege and talent with arrogance and entitlement. She demanded absolute loyalty while being loyal only to herself. She used fear to control others. She tore people down emotionally and physically and enjoyed it. She manipulated with virtually every step she made. She saw people as objects and treated them accordingly. She had no empathy at all.

She is quite literally a textbook case of a narcissistic psychopath.

Did she face serious challenges? Was she manipulated? No question. But that isn’t why she was evil. She was evil because she chose darkness over light.

The writers are genius. They made an absolutely evil person into a victim, and a lot of people fall for it.

And let’s not kid ourselves - if she had been written as a man, nobody would empathize. Making her a woman was a wise choice.