the way Fiyero has operated his ENTIRE life as an act because he fears nobody will like the real him, so he pretends to be nothing more than a smoking hot, flexible, rule-breaking play-boy so people will "like him." and he finally finds someone who likes him for HIM and not his looks or status or ability to move all sexy-like. and he tries so hard to be friends with her. but before anything can really develop, that girl disappears. and so he does the only thing he KNOWS will help her and subjects himself to who knows what kinda stuff under the Wizard, he leads along a girl he doesn't actually love and is eventually forced into a marriage because of it, but it works out because, hey, at least he made sure nobody killed the girl he REALLY loves. and everything is going well. until he saves her AGAIN and then he's presumably tortured and strung up, and she casts a spell. yay he's alive.
except now he doesn't have his looks. because he doesn't have his looks, he doesn't have his status, popularity, and probably can't go back to his family. he can't even move the way he used to, so he's reduced to lumbering around the road and relying on a teenage girl. he cant even physically PROTECT the girl he loves. and he's worried sick as people start hunting her, but what can he possibly do? well, he uses what little smarts he has and saves the girl through faking her death, but he's so deeply convinced she won't love him again. because, unlike the girl who has always been hated for her appearance, he's only been loved for it and so now he has crippling self doubt because WHAT IF SHE SECRETLY ONLY WANTED HIS APPEARANCE TOO? and so he spends the entire journey before saving her for the third time thinking that she'll leave him once she sees the 'monster' he's been reduced to, because everyone else would.
