It's interesting (to me, anyway) to note that the word "villain" originally just meant "peasant". It acquired its current meaning because the medieval upper class had a really low opinion of peasants. There's a quote I can't find right now about hating and fearing those who you exploit...
But I did save these quotes from one of my favorite history books -
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. These are from Chapter 7:
"The general term for peasant was villein or
villain, which had acquired a pejorative tone, though harmlessly derived from the Latin
villa. Neither exactly slave nor entirely free, the villein belonged to the estate of his lord, under obligation to pay rent or work services for use of the land, and in turn to enjoy the right of protection and justice.
[...]
A deep grievance of the peasant was the contempt in which he was held by the other classes. Aside from the rare note of compassion, most tales and ballads depict him as aggressive, insolent, greedy, sullen, suspicious, tricky, unshaved, unwashed, ugly, stupid and credulous or sometimes shrewd and witty, incessantly discontented, usually cuckolded. In satiric tales it was said the villein's soul would find no place in Paradise or anywhere else because the demons refused to carry it owing to the foul smell. In the
chansons de geste he is scorned as inept in combat and poorly armed, mocked for his manners, his morals, even his misery. [...] The knights saw him as a person of ignoble instincts who could have no understanding of 'honor' and was therefore capable of every kind of deceit and incapable of trust."
