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I like this idea.Here I go again.
Since for some reason "morally gray world with evil but totally misunderstood characters!!" series are still popular, I've been thinking of writing a world set in a dull, very evil, ABSOLUTELY GRIMSHART fantasy world. The catch is that the protagonist of this world, a grotesque king who would be better off being refered to as a warlord or emperor instead, decides to have a change of heart after his many years of horrid actions and warmongering results in the death of his own son. Old, and realizing that his kingdom is rapidly stagnating, he goes "rogue" by fleeing his throne and pretending to be a bum in the streets of the many towns he has acquired during his lordship. The first life he tries to actively improve being that of the second most important character, a little girl that had lost her family and house due to the many war campaigns started by the king. As words of his good deeds spread further and further, even outside his kingdom's walls, his rival, a nobleman that wanted to steal his throne, decides to pursue him and copy his good acts and one-up him, but he's clearly not doing it out of the kindness of his heart but instead to prove that he is superior without realizing that he is improving the livelihood of people. As he continues his journey, the king has chance encounters with one of his former assassins, who had been doing good deeds after he had stopped working for the king, but before the king himself decided to become a so-called hero. With each encounter, the assassin pesters him by asking him questions related to bad people doing good deeds. Should a person loathed by thousands redeem themselves by performing good deeds in public? Would trying to be friendly and caring towards his victims truly change their perspective of him, or make their already existing negative perspective worsen? Would improving their lives make them forgive him, or would it instead remind them of what he had taken away from them? Is he truly repenting by securing the future of his victim's descendants?
The king himself would get a bittersweet ending. While he may have done good deeds, it would never excuse him of his past sins, and so the local citizenry and his disgruntled military later captured and publicly executed him. The king would die smiling at least, as he saw the faces of the numerous people he had befriended and helped in the crowd watching his fate be sealed. The little girl and the other people he helped would try to rewrite history books to include the multiple good deeds he had performed at the end of his life, and how he was still the reason why his kingdom was not just standing, but now even thriving in modern times, making the way modern citizens views him be a mixed bag.