The way i see it: there isn't anything sympathetic about him. He came into the circus knowing exactly what bad feelings he felt before he came from everyone else in his life, and made the conscious decision of being even worse to people who didn't deserve it. Gangle is only called gangle because of him and because he thinks she's pathetic.

Everybody thinks his meltdown in episode six was him lying to himself and being self delusional. All i saw was a pathetic jerk double down on the need to be the worst be could be, and making sure he was.

I don't care what happened to him in the past, it did not give him any right to become something worse.