Leadership in The Walking Dead: Comparing the Governor, Negan and Rick

The Governor and violence: a “good guy” gone mad?

Many elements suggest that the Governor may have started out as a “good guy”. Yet, he definitely has a sadistic streak, which he seems unable to control. Many elements show that he is a very sick man who lacks empathy: he collects people’s zombified heads, pretends to rape Maggie, has a secret torture chamber… He clearly gets a kick out of hurting or killing people. His sadism is not a “happy” one: he struggles to rein in his violence, and is increasingly unable to do so.

His violent acts are sometimes calculated, cold-blooded murders with a political motive. The murder of the soldiers, the planned murder of Michonne, and the plan to massacre everyone at the prison are examples of this. He orders these murders to protect his community from a perceived threat. This violence is not public: as much as possible, he keeps these actions hidden from the citizens of Woodbury. The only exception to the rule is his use of the fighting pits, as a modern-day Roman circus, but this violence is staged, confined to a very specific context of “entertainment”, and fake: the walkers have no teeth.

The first acts of violence that the Governor commits in front of his citizens happen after the attack by Rick’s group on Woodbury. He shoots a Woodbury citizen in the head in front of a crowd of appalled onlookers, a sign that he is losing his self-control. He turns his fake violence into real violence when he puts Merle and Daryl in the fighting pit. From then on, the Governor gradually lets his inner monster get the better of him, until he ends up mowing down his own people with a machine gun out of blind rage after failing to take the prison.

After his exile, he temporarily seems to have found peace with his new family, but as soon as issues of leadership arise, his violent self comes back. As he kills Martinez, the Governor keeps saying “I don’t wanna!”, but it is clear that he has lost the battle against his own murderous instincts. He almost immediately goes back to his old tactics of using fear to manipulate people into helping him to satiate his thirst for violence and power.