Controversial take (?): I don’t think Gwyn is evil. I think he loved the Age of Fire so much that he lost sight of himself trying to defend it. He had his Uncle Lloyd putting very unhealthy thoughts about propaganda and such into his head which lead to a lot of his more “evil” actions. But in the end, he sacrificed his own soul to save the people he wanted to save.
Why do people think Marika is evil? She seems to me to just be a Greater Will puppet.
Gwyn as a character >>> Marika imo.
Well, Marika broke the Elden Ring for starters.
The first story/reason for that you get is that she did it out of defiance for the Greater Will when Godwyn died. And there’s a lot of evidence.
But then through dialogue in Ranni’s quest and some of Maliketh’s item descriptions, there seems to be some pretty strong indications that Marika
herself actually orchestrated Godwyn’s killing. Gideon’s dialogue too “Queen Marika has high hopes for us — to struggle into eternity” and some of Melina “Marika sought to test the the Golden order through chaos” support that as well.
So then we have two narratives forming either
1) Marika became disillusioned with the greater will after Godwyn’s death and broke the ring.
Or
2) Marika has been secretly/maliciously acting
against the Greater Will for some time before breaking the ring.
To me it’s very reminiscent of Gwyn’s motivations being super weird/unclear in Ds1