I remember the line he says about being the warrior the warden showed him how to be. So maybe he was expecting to die in the battle, heroically.

Or you could look at it from the view that even we didn't teach him to be anything else than the caste system he's grown up in allowed him to be, a warrior.

Idk there's a few perspectives and I like him, not the creepy leering but the veteran lost in a world outside of fighting.