What if we want to write a treatise on the human condition that still has a somewhat happy ending? Would it be acceptable to write a morally gray villain in that context? I agree that the trope is overdone nowadays (especially in the context of fairytale “retellings”), but my issue with it is more that a lot of the resolutions of these stories involve people who have done bad things being let off the hook because bad things happened to them. I think that redemption arcs can still work, but the writers have to take time and show the work with them.
A 'happy ending' is when the protagonist gets what they want or they grow in someway. So, yes, you can still have a happy ending with a morally gray villain. But if the villain is morally gray you probably haven't written a fairy tale. You're writing a more complex story and that's harder than a fairy story where the villains are representations of evil and vices rather than fleshed out characters.
What if we want to write a treatise on the human condition that still has a somewhat happy ending? Would it be acceptable to write a morally gray villain in that context? I agree that the trope is overdone nowadays (especially in the context of fairytale “retellings”), but my issue with it is more that a lot of the resolutions of these stories involve people who have done bad things being let off the hook because bad things happened to them. I think that redemption arcs can still work, but the writers have to take time and show the work with them.
A 'happy ending' is when the protagonist gets what they want or they grow in someway. So, yes, you can still have a happy ending with a morally gray villain. But if the villain is morally gray you probably haven't written a fairy tale. You're writing a more complex story and that's harder than a fairy story where the villains are representations of evil and vices rather than fleshed out characters.