That's a matter of opinion.
Certainly—I'm wearing my player hat here, not my dev hat
Mine is that RPing the hero, or the status quo maintainer, is boring and that players should strive towards more exciting things.
That makes the assumption that "doing bad stuff" and "shaking up the status quo" are synonymous. They aren't.
In fact, most of those "villainous" characters I mentioned in my previous post were, in fact, pretty much status quo maintainers in every (or nearly every) mechanical sense: it was only in RP that they were evil, depraved, etc.
Furthermore, it's perfectly possible to RP a character who fully has the realm's interests at heart, and has no interest in stooping to dirty, underhanded methods, but also shakes up the status quo significantly.
Punishing the 'villain,' from a character's practical standpoint, doesn't make much sense when the villainy only is of no personal detriment.
It does if the character—and the realm as a whole—has a standing RP and reputation as being upstanding and supporting Good and Right and whatnot.
Erasmus was in conflict with Solaria and some peasants, which isn't much reason for the common nobles of Terran to care. One could say that it was damaging relations with Solaria, but I don't buy that explanation in a medieval setting.
Erm...whether or not you buy it, it's completely the truth. Solaria, and Luria in general, were very unhappy with that incident, and if Terran had tolerated it, the shape of politics and alliances since then would have been quite different: it would have been nearly impossible to get Luria to agree to do anything better than tolerate the 'moot in general, and Terran in specific, and most likely, we would have been at war with them, probably leading to their collapse much sooner.
And whether or not
you would have enjoyed that outcome, it's pretty obvious that it's not something that is good for Terran.
Other instances of crazy or malicious characters gaining power are perfectly fine from a realism standpoint. Crazies are easy to manipulate and the malicious are probably sociopaths willing to lie, cheat and bribe their way to success. It actually makes more sense for them to gain power than for the goody-two-shoes, altruistic big brother types.
It may make more sense for them to seek power, but it doesn't mean it makes more sense to
hand it to them.
Like it or not, the vast majority of characters in BM are played as being relatively upstanding and of noble disposition. They dislike a bully (even if they are, themelves, bullies), they will support defense over first strike, and they generally oppose unnecessary cruelty.
Thus, someone who bullies, attacks without provocation, and wantonly slaughters the populace is likely to make a lot of enemies fast.
Again,
you may think that's fun—but in terms of what's best for the realm, it's really not.
