Re-Reading the Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
I think Abenthy put it best at the start of the book the things that tend to cause Kvothe to make his most irritatingly stupid decisions. He’s clever, but he can be thoughtless. I can totally understand why people might find him to be an unlikable protagonist, given his prideful and often smug nature mixed with the aforementioned tragic flaw.
But I think that’s the key to it all: The King Killer Chronicle is a tragedy. We might not know how he got there, but we do know that everything ends with Kvothe in hiding from his many dangerous enemies, the chandrian still out there (if I recall correctly), while he sits, waiting in misery to die. Kvothe’s pride and thoughtlessness are his tragic flaws, the negative traits established from the beginning that don’t go away by the end, and naturally bring about the protagonist’s downfall.
Imagine if people didn’t like Romeo and Juliet as characters because of their overly hasty, mindless reactions to teen hormones to the point of getting married days after meeting each other and then killing themselves when they believed the other to have perished. Yes, they’re young and stupid, and they overreact strongly to things that they should have tried to accept and then move on from after a healthy amount of grieving. But that’s the whole point. The story wouldn’t be what it is without those flaws.
In the same way, yes it can be frustrating to see Kvothe, high as a kite from painkillers, fall for Ambrose’s petty trick and bring an open flame into the archives, not to mention give away one of his starting 3 Talents as a “Stack Fee.” It can be annoying to see him jump to conclusions and make an enemy of one of his only allies when he suspects his blood collateral is being used as a means for malfeasance. It can get on our nerves when, in his thoughtless pride, he fails to treat people (especially women) with proper respect and drives them away because of it. And I think it’s perfectly okay to not want to follow a protagonist whose actions make you angry, but I also think it’s crucial to recognize that that’s the whole point!
Kvothe is going to wreck his life because he’s a prideful dumbass sometimes, and it’s gonna be his own damn fault. If he were perhaps a little more humble, and if perhaps he might have treated situations with a little bit more tact, then his incredibly sharp wit and sharper mind would have carried him to success. But he wasn’t, and so he drove himself to ruin. So I like Kvothe. I think he’s a fantastically written protagonist, and even though I know he’s doomed to fail, I cheer for his every success. I’m rooting for him. I want him to succeed, and look forward to my heart being smashed when, in the end, he doesn’t.
