A Question
I just recently figured out that writing a novel is as much about writing a good antagonist as it is about writing a good protagonist. Only took me 24 years to get to that point, yikes.
Anyway, say my antagonist is a really sympathetic character. People who read him love him. He almost overshadows my protag he is so cool (almost, but doesn't). Protag and antag have opposite goals, so they're not both protags.
Here's where things get complicated: I'm not killing the antagonist at the end of this book. The protagonist ends up totally annihilating everything the antagonist holds holy, and rightly so, but the book leaves the antag alive and drifting in the end. This somehow doesn't cut it for me, especially since the antag had worthy goals. (He was trying to free his people. Granted, he blew up a planet and started a brutal civil war to do it, but in the end, he was trying to save his species.) All the other POV characters are receiving some sort of closure. It seems wrong to leave the antagonist without the same treatment. He had worthy goals, even if he went about attaining them the wrong way, and damn it, he was a hell of a fun guy to read.
So my question is this: Does the antagonist need to have closure at the end of the book if he's going to be a recurring character in the series? (He reappears in Book 4, though as a protag, not an antag.) Especially if he had worthy goals? I feel like the readers will feel pissed off when they find out what happens to him in the end (protagonist destroys his race for good).
A note: I'm not worried about protag/antag identity conflicts. I know it sounds bad here, but a reader can totally understand why both my protagonist and antagonist do what they do, and it is clear who the bad guy is. I'm looking more for advice on how to deal with closure for an antagonist that everybody likes, and if it's even necessary.
Any ideas on this would be awesome. Thanks
-Sara King