Dune

[Catspaw]

Well, it's funny, because while I don't think this particular aspect of Paul's decision making is supposed to necessarily be one of the 'red flags' (though I'm not saying it's wrong for you to feel that way, it's just not one of the points I think the author intended to be an overly glaring issue), it did get you to the correct feeling that something is off here and being unsure how to feel about Paul.

The was the part that I lost any remaining respect/'this guy might be a decent person' for the main character, which maybe just makes him a more complicated/flawed character as part of his journey.

Paul is the protagonist of this story, not the hero. We're so used to those being the same thing.

Dune was written to be a warning against blindly following charismatic religious or political leaders. We aren't supposed to be rooting for Paul, entirely. In some of the things he's trying to do, yes, but not in everything.

So many people saw the book as a 'happy ending good guy overcame all those obstacles to achieve his goals' story, because that's what we expect, that he wrote the second one to explicitly say no that's the wrong message.

I was getting a sense in the first one too that this would be a character with some flaws (which is fine), and I definitely see what you mean about a protagonist and hero not being the same thing. Bookworm, I find your commentary regarding the warning against blindly following to be very interesting! (Other than me here on the ToO, of course.) That's an interesting reason to write a sequel - because people liked your character too much. People are complicated and life has difficult choices, so it's a good story to have some aspects of that in fiction too, and this story has that on a big scale.