something i hadn't considered much before but is highlighted very explicitly in this interesting article "the character of hector in the iliad" by s. farron is that there is a real gulf between how the narrator/other characters talk about hector and hector's actual accomplishments and martial ability in the iliad. the article points out that although many characters refer to hector as this great, terrifying warrior who can only be fended off by achilles, the actual narrative demonstrates repeatedly that hector's real strengths lie in his deep, sympathetic relationships with his family and city, and that his prowess on the battlefield is not actually very impressive compared to other trojan leaders like sarpedon. hector shows remarkable bravery several times and is genuinely very invested in protecting his home, but he never defeats a single achaean king, gets scolded multiple times by his brothers and allies for holding back or being cowardly, and the one time he does kill someone important, patroclus, all of the glory he might've won from the act is negated by how much apollo and euphorbus have to cripple patroclus before hector can finish him off. hector is brilliant and strong when leading the trojans against the achaeans as a whole, and he kills many individual, nameless achaeans, but he is not equal in martial skill to any singular greek leader, despite how much the characters in the iliad hype him up.
farron argues essentially that hector - and everyone else - has extremely high expectations of him as the crown prince of troy, expectations which he never quite lives up to and which really serve to highlight that he defends his city out of necessity, because he values peace, family, and loyalty more than glory or notoriety. the moments where he does bluster about honor or scold other characters for cowardice clash with his actions, incidents where he balks with fear or avoids direct confrontation with the achaean kings or straight up flees from achilles. it makes him read as someone who is desperately trying to be the hero troy needs him to be, because he knows what will happen if he isn't, to the point of overextending himself beyond his own realistic capabilities. it really emphasizes the tragedy of his fate and how futile it all was in the end.
i mostly agree with farron's assessment, and i also want to elaborate that i think another character in the iliad also suffers this disconnect between how others describe him and how he actually, demonstrably behaves, and that is paris. many characters have nasty things to say about paris, most prominently hector himself, and they basically amount to three general charges: he's a coward, his only redeeming quality is his attractiveness, and he's impulsively self-serving. hector and diomedes both directly call him a coward for, respectively, being reluctant to fight (3.54-56) and being an archer (11.505-510), but quite literally the only times we see paris shying away from battle are when 1) he first gets nervous seeing menelaus coming out to answer his challenge, and 2) when he doesn't immediately return after aphrodite spirits him away. in both instances, he eventually gets over himself and returns to the battlefield, where he doesn't make any further attempts to avoid the war. he proves repeatedly that he's not just a pretty face: he's a skilled combatant, an effective leader, and a persuasive speaker, and it's rather telling that every time he makes a grand speech, he always either convinces the other person (13.1020) or they simply don't argue back (6.460). and while it is very true that he is impulsively self-serving re: helen and aphrodite, he also repeatedly avenges his dead friends, protects fellow trojans, and fights on the front lines even in episodes where hector himself is conspicuously absent. hector does acknowledge at one point, "no one of any sense would ever disparage your performance in a battle. you are a brave man" (6.712), and in my opinion it means something that he uses his dying breath to name paris as his avenger, clearly indicating that paris is a formidable opponent even though hector has been very frustrated with what he perceives as paris' glaring lack of patriotic courage.
which i really think is the core of it - it's not that paris lacks martial skill or willpower, it's that paris doesn't seem to feel the same crushing weight of expectation and obligation that hector does. he's not the crown prince, he doesn't embody the city's hopes in the same way and he isn't responsible for carrying the morale of the whole army on his back. he's also not insecure - he knows exactly what his own flaws & virtues are and he doesn't let anyone disparage him unjustly. he accepts criticism when it's warranted but also doesn't hesitate to deny it when it isn't:
"Hector, it is quite reasonable for you to scold me in this way... But do not blame me for the lovely gifts of golden Aphrodite. Glorious gifts that come from gods, that they themselves have given, must not be thrown away—although no human chooses them willingly." (3.75-85)
"Soon he found, towards the left side of the painful battle, Paris... coaxing his comrades to the fight. And Hector stood near and spoke to him with words of shame. 'Pathetic Paris! Womanizer! Cheat! ... Troy is totally destroyed from top to bottom! Now certainly your death is guaranteed!' And godlike Paris answered, 'You are wrong to blame me, Hector. Sometimes in the past perhaps I tended to hold back from war. But I was certainly not born a coward. Our mother gave me birth to be a hero, and since the time you roused our men to fight beside these ships, we have remained right here, engaged in constant conflict with the Greeks.'" (13.1013-1028)
meanwhile, hector is constantly torn between the person he is vs the person troy needs him to be, the domestic father and husband vs the man-slaughtering legend, and in the end he doesn't get to fully satisfy either role. achilles hunts him down and kills him like a dog. in a lot of ways, i think hector and paris both become symbolic figures in the eyes of the achaeans and the trojans (as well as in the eyes of a lot of readers of the iliad), in ways that contradict their actual personalities and behaviors. hector gets cast as a terrifying, powerful, indomitable warrior-prince when he really shines most in relation to his family and the gentle affection he holds for them; paris gets cast as a selfish coward who's responsible for bringing ruin to troy and then trying to dodge responsibility, when he actually spends most of the iliad wounding serious achaean players, lifting trojan spirits with his rhetorical skills, and very gracefully accepting the scorn that everyone heaps on him because he knows he fucked up and does not try to pretend otherwise.
anyway, it's mildly frustrating to me that both hector and paris get flattened into these uninteresting archetypes when what the text actually tells us about them is so much more nuanced and complicated
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