Dominar Rygel XVI

Deposed monarch of Hyneria, Rygel is a small, hovering exile with a grand title and no kingdom left to rule it over. He schemes, wheedles, and steals whatever isn't nailed down, always angling for advantage over the humans and aliens he's stuck traveling with aboard Moya. He insists on his own importance even when nobody else buys it.

Puppetry lets Rygel be pure, unapologetic id — greedy, cowardly, funny — without the show ever needing to soften him into someone likable by conventional means. Jonathan Hardy's voice work gives him a wounded, imperious dignity underneath the comic grasping, so the joke of his self-regard never quite erases the real loss it's covering for.