She's a very good example of a character who's an antagonist rather than a villain - the problem isn't that's she's evil, it's the opposition between what she wants and what our characters want - and I really like this, and it it makes her a very fascinating and complex character.
She's a social injustice apologist (and, given the social injustice in question, a rape apologist by it). She uses her power to get what she wants at the expense of hurting people. There's no question that these are severely negative things.
And also, the way her apologism works is exactly one of the ways it works in real life, and you can see this, in fact one of the ways that apologism in people who have been harmed by the injustice in question works, and it's amazingly well done.
And you can see why she does what she does given the position she has, and it works - Rizu says she does amazing things, and we see these things.
People admire her, and you can see why, it makes perfect sense.
It's this question the book brings up in me - if she and our four didn't have these opposing goals, if they had some goal that was the same, would she be regarded as 'on our side', despite all her flaws still remaining exactly what they are? And I think she would, and that's fascinating to me.
She's a powerful female antagonist who doesn't get depicted as a femme fatale, and that's way too rare.
She brings up the issue that got brought up in Protector of the Small - is what it means to be a good ruler different from what it means to be a good person? And how can this tension be resolved?
And she's apparently modeled on Catherine the Great, which brings up the real-life version of this exact issue (and also offers a Russia connection, which generally draw me).
And she's brilliant and self-command-centered and knows how to use power, which are traits that generally appeal to me a lot in characters.
