Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
Okay, not a bad definition. Doom still qualifies. As do the Batman villains you mention I will add.
If we go by Batman the Animated Series, Dent's problem was that he had mental illness issues before the accident and he repressed and hid it because he felt his career was important/valuable and that he can't appear looking weak because it would compromise his electability. If we go by The Long Halloween and The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent's belief in law and supporting it is compromised because he supports a vigilante to clean up crime, and is again so caught up in his work that he ignores important things in his personal life (like in TLH, his own wife Gilda's issues, or in TDK, his resentment towards Gordon and the fact that at least once he tried to torture a gangster until Batman stopped him).
So I don't think it's a case that Harvey was entirely guiltless or blameless for his downfall. He had some agency in his actions. It's tragic because you understand why Harvey makes those choices he does, and that he's fighting for something good and positive.
Well even there, Victor Fries's issues at least stem in part from his inability to let go. Nora was the love of his life and we imagine that she was the most important person in his life and yet when she gets a disease that would kill her, the fact is Victor doesn't have a cure and all he can do is delay her death by cryostasis. Is it understandable, would we given the chance and our belief in our intelligence not go far in our love for others? Sure. But at the same time, there's a kind of denial of death, a belief in one's intelligence that they can conquer and defeat death, which admittedly many scientists and researchers working in medicine do need to have since it motivates the creation of new diseases, but at the same time you have to accept that some thing is beyond your control. And in the case of Victor, you see an inability for him to accept humanity outside Nora which is obvious in stories which show what happens when Nora Fries is cured but Victor is still Mr. Freeze either because of his accident or because he can't grow or change or accept humanity.
Your idea of tragedy is that of victimhood. I am not debating or arguing that here, but even in that conception, both Harvey and Victor Fries did have and exercise agency that led to their fate. In the case of one, a conviction that their public service will compensate and make up for their personal flaws, and in the case of another, an inability to truly let go and accept that they can't save everyone.
A poor Romani child persecuted by an evil monarchy, whose parents were sacrificed and damned for their attempts to resist that oppression, doesn't meet that criteria? Doom's descent into darkness is triggered by circumstances beyond his control, and I don't think a person trying to save his mother's soul deserves his fate of being scarred for life and deported from America. Doom isn't a victim of oppression and persecution? One who ultimately becomes an oppressor and persecutor himself, which can happen.
He was a happy child, raised by loving parents in a supportive community who was friendly and helpful to his fellow Romani. I don't see how you can argue that Victor wasn't born a good person unless you think poor people and Romani (neither of whom are Victor and Harvey Dent I might add) are inherently evil.
Reed Richards and Victor were never friends. Doom disliked Reed instinctively on meeting him at university. Class obviously being a factor, he's poor brilliant and struggling and then he meets someone who was pampered and middle-class and as smart as he, so there's the resentment that someone got this knowledge without having to suffer or undergo oppression. Which happens all the time.
I have to say, I don't think you have read Doctor Doom stories, or enough Doctor Doom stories to qualify having an opinion. It sounds like you skimmed wikipedia articles or based it on seeing some cartoon adaptations of him.