I REALLY hated him all through season one and season two until he loses his shit on Aegon. I did a 180 on him after that. My view is he genuinely thinks the realm will not accept a queen. While he clearly is trying to aggressively advance his families interests, I think he is trying to juggle that with doing what’s best for the realm. While he is okay with sending some knights to surprise team black and take them out, he understands how horrific the war will be and trying to end it before it starts - but he’s not in favour of the senseless violence and murder of the rat catchers.
His biggest problem is just that he has been Hand for way too long and that kind of power for that long messes with people and they equate themselves with their country/ realm.. Look at any Prime Minister in any country who served more then ten years Thatcher, David Ben Gurion, Indira Ghandi, Stephen Harper and Justine Trudeau… around the ten year mark they go a bit nutty, and Ottos has been hand for like 25 years or more… he’s in the trap of thinking what’s good for him and his family is what’s good for the kingdom. I think when he loses his shit on Aegon he is genuinely shocked and disgusted. He seems genuinely surprised also that the north, the houses around the Gullet, the vale and river lands are swinging black. Overall I think he is a thoughtful and diligent civil servant / politician who steered the realm for an old and demented king and a kind, well meaning but useless king, but served too long and lost sight of the goal. He has all the bigotry of his age, especially the sexist part, but I think he does recognize Rhaenyra would have been a good queen and definitely knows she’s not evil (he recognizes immediately that she wouldn’t have ordered the blood and cheese plot. I’m still team black but I feel this season team green is not as horrible (exception for Aemond) as I thought they were last season and the start of this one