Althea might not have studied literature at a fancy college, but she was skilled enough to know how to craft a compelling villain. No character was ever completely good or evil, but rather they were made up of a number of traits. Those traits plus the choices they made defined what role they played in the story. A hero could be stubborn and use that to defend his homeland. A villain could be stubborn and because of that refuse to see that his views were immoral. Only few traits were inherently bad. Cowardice had to be one of them.
