Villainess Yuri Novels and Light Novels in English: 7 Picks With Adult Leads

The best villainess yuri reads in English are Heather Walter's Malice, where the Sleeping Beauty villain falls for the princess; Kasai Fujii's manga When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine; Hiyodori's Carrion Saints; and, for darker tastes, Edie Marr's Prisoner of the Witch Queen.

The villainess story as Japanese web fiction built it goes like this. A woman wakes up as the cruel, rich fiancée in an otome game or a romance novel, knows exactly when she's due to be exiled or beheaded, and spends the book trying to dodge the ending. The yuri version changes the escape route. Instead of winning back the prince, the villainess ends up with the heroine she was written to torment, or with some other woman the script never planned for. That's why it works so well as a sapphic setup: two women have been cast as enemies by a story that isn't theirs, and falling for each other is a way of tearing up the plot. It only lands if the villainess keeps some teeth. If she turns sweet by chapter two, she's just a heroine in a darker dress.

A warning before the list. Official English yuri villainess light novels with adult leads are rare. The best-known one is set at a school (more on that in the FAQ), and most of the rest is either manga or untranslated web fiction. So this list mixes manga, Western novels told from the villain's side, and two free serials of our own.

The villainess gets the heroine

When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine — Kasai Fujii (2022)

This is the otome premise boiled down to its joke. The crown prince publicly breaks off his engagement to Akuya, and she answers by stealing Sei, the commoner he dumped her for. The names are puns on the Japanese words for "villainess" and "heroine," which tells you how seriously it takes itself. It started as a web comic, Enterbrain collected it in 2022, and Yen Press put it out in English in 2024 across two short volumes. It's built from five- or six-page vignettes of the two living together, flirty rather than explicit. The Comics Beat reviewer's only real complaint was that it wasn't spicier.

I Became the Villainess Engaged to the Heroine — Yoon Seorin

I Became the Villainess Engaged to the Heroine is a NovelMyth original serial, free to read, three chapters so far. Tessa, 29, processes invoices for a freight company, and then she's standing in a garden holding a cup of scalding tea over the head of Saint Elodie, heroine of the romance-fantasy she reads on her lunch breaks. Tessa is now Lady Seraphine Vauclair, 24, engaged to the 25-year-old Saint by royal decree and booked for the executioner's block after the Lantern Ball. Her plan has numbered steps: no tea, find the poison, be relentlessly nice, let the Saint marry the prince. The trouble is that Elodie keeps saying "this time," as if she remembers how it went before. It's comedy with a slow burn. So far that means a bandaged wrist and one hand along a jaw.

Superwomen in Love! Honey Trap and Rapid Rabbit — sometime (2018)

Here "villainess" means supervillain. Honey Trap, an officer of the monster army Antinoid, has the masked heroine Rapid Rabbit beaten, sees her face, and falls for her on the spot. Her bosses throw her out, she collapses near Rapid Rabbit's apartment, and the two end up fighting Antinoid together. It's a grown-up cast: Hayate, the woman under the mask, works part-time as an actress in costume hero shows. It ran five volumes in Japan from 2018 and Seven Seas published it in English from 2021. Be warned: Okazu's reviewer felt it was more gags and costume designs than story. It's light and silly, and that's the point.

The villain tells it: fairy-tale villainesses

Malice — Heather Walter (2021)

Walter's Sleeping Beauty is narrated by Alyce, the Dark Grace, an outcast whose dark magic the kingdom of Briar fears. Princess Aurora is under a curse that kills her line's heirs at 21 unless true love's kiss saves them, and she's 20 when the story starts. Alyce starts to wonder whether the magic that made the curse could also break it. Del Rey published it in 2021. Autostraddle's reviewer loved the romance but found the opening chapters slow, with most of the action saved for the last third. The sequel, Misrule, finishes the duology.

The Crimson Crown — Heather Walter (2024)

Walter again, this time with Snow White's wicked queen before she was wicked. Ayleth is a witch with no magic of her own, hiding with her coven while the White King hunts their kind. After her older sister dies, Ayleth goes to the White Palace looking for a way to bring her back. There she runs into Jacquetta, the former lover who betrayed her. Publishers Weekly called it a slow-burning sapphic romance. It's long, over 500 pages in hardcover, and it's the first half of a duology. One reader review on a bookseller's site warned of a cliffhanger, so don't expect the romance to be settled by the last page.

The Princess and the Evil Queen — Lola Andrews (2019)

The adults-only option in this group. Snow White is married to her prince and at war with the Evil Queen, Harlow, her late father's widow and close to her in age. Harlow offers a truce. Snow spends a month at the queen's side, then chooses whether to stay or go home to her husband. It's a self-published erotic romance, and the Lesbrary's reviewer suggested knowing the fairy tale first, because the romance moves quickly once it starts.

Darker villainesses, and one in a corner office

Prisoner of the Witch Queen — Edie Marr (2024)

Years ago, Elsin the Witch Queen demanded that the narrator, a princess, be handed over on her twentieth birthday or the land would be cursed. Her mother refused and raised her to believe Elsin was pure evil. Then a sickness strikes the narrator's brother, the young king, and she delivers herself to the queen. It's a self-published dark romance with an age gap, kink and very graphic sex. Read the content tags before you start.

Carrion Saints — Hiyodori (2025)

The strangest pairing here. Crow is an immortal, winged saint who has spent her life protecting people from monsters. Magnolia is the worst monster of all, a sadistic villain sealed in the wilderness who looks like a severed head and can command anyone to obey her. Once she gets loose, she takes control of Crow, and the two set off across a post-apocalyptic world that is slowly fading out. It's a very slow burn between people who are actually good and actually evil, and Goodreads readers split on it: the prose and worldbuilding get praise, the pacing less so. Self-published in January 2025.

System, Stop Making Me Fall for the Villainess — Dana Whitlock

System, Stop Making Me Fall for the Villainess is a NovelMyth original serial, free to read, three chapters so far, and it swaps the ballroom for a corporate thriller. Ash Quinn, 25, slips on a wet laundromat floor and wakes up in a glass elevator holding four coffees. A bureaucratic System has placed her in a book she reviewed at two stars. She's now the nameless assistant to Director Celeste Arden, 30, the villainess. She has 90 days, and Celeste's affection has to stay at zero. Then Ash notices that the cold gesture the author kept calling contempt is really a migraine, and she brings Celeste a glass of water. The counter goes up. It's sarcastic and funny, but there's real dread underneath: by chapter three the System has started a 72-hour countdown and hinted at how it plans to leave Celeste alone.

FAQ

Why isn't I'm in Love with the Villainess on this list?

Inori's series, published in English by Seven Seas from 2020, is the best-known yuri villainess story, and it's genuinely good: an office worker reborn as an otome game's heroine pursues the villainess, Claire, instead of the game's male leads. But the romance begins while both are students at a royal academy, and this list sticks to adult leads.

Which of these are spicy?

Prisoner of the Witch Queen and The Princess and the Evil Queen are explicit, and the first is also dark. When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine is suggestive without being graphic. Malice, The Crimson Crown and Carrion Saints put the slow burn ahead of the sex, and our two serials haven't gone past a near-kiss yet.

Where should I start if I came from otome isekai manga?

Start with When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine. It's the closest to the genre's own jokes and it's only two volumes. If you want prose with the same reincarnated-villainess setup, try one of our serials. If you want the villainess as narrator, Malice is the one.