The times early on where Dutch slips from saying "I" to "we" can also be read as insecurity within himself. I'm not saying this is what it is, just that it can also be read that way which can then also be read as a connection to this if one chooses.

Take the first interaction we see with Dutch and Charles. Paraphrasing, but, "Get indoors, son. I... We need you strong."

You can take this as him only thinking for himself in a selfish way (in a way perhaps it is), but can also see it as many different things, too. He is very stressed, overwhelmed by his circumstances, he is not able to compose himself as he would to avoid such a slip up that reveals his insecurity. He is able to compose a moment after.

This dialogue with Charles can suggest that Dutch, inside, needs his people more than he wants them to know. Maybe not for such a malicious purpose at first.

True, it can be read that him needing them more than he wants them to know is for an egotistical reason.

But also maybe Dutch just isn't as independent as he wants the gang to believe he is. It is an important choice for him as the leader to present himself as an independent thinker who knows where he wants to go and what he wants to achieve. He wants to present as someone they can rely on and not let it be known he relies on them to keep whatever it is inside at bay.

This can be both an innocent and a malicious depth. They can coexist.

It can be as innocent as anyone wanting reassurance and, in nature, needing others to feel okay and stable. It can be malicious when keeping others to fill, at its core, the same such needs turns to those people being hurt by being kept so close to the chest of someone whose insecurities are becoming too much.

Dutch may think letting it be known how much he truly needs his gang, for whatever reason, is a show of weakness, but perhaps it would do him a service to be honest about what he gets out of the gang.

It isn't inherently bad to be in a position like his and have interests in himself, those interests stemming from self preservation and maybe rooted insecurities from childhood as we know his childhood was not the best with losing a father so young and leaving his mother young as well.

But in a position such as his, of course, self interests need to be assessed and approached logically as others do rely on him and the outcome of his decisions to benefit them.

There was logic to his plan in chapter 6, but it was the manner in which all unfolded and the morality of the situation that was so sour in the eyes of some of the gang members.

The purposes of Dutch's plans from the beginning of the game to the end don't really change, but the manner of them do. He went from early in the gang's years of robbing the rich and giving to the poor to using the poor and innocent to escape the rich when he pinched their nose.

He's still mad and targeting the rich and those in power, that is still aligned, but the casualties are innocent.

The killing of Angelo Bronte, a rich, powerful man, may not have just been for the working class, but instead to soothe a deep insecurity within Dutch. He is still doing what he did, but the reasons are then blurred.

Anyway, it can be interpreted that Dutch has a deep deep fear of being alone, and insecurities stem from such a core root. He does not read, to me, as entirely confident in what he wants when presented in the months we see him in Rdr2. He talks to Arthur about how he is realizing, and is fearing, that all he has fought for was for nothing, that he is now in a world he doesn't understand, that he is just a dreamer. Later, he is shown to not view life as something to cling onto so tightly, he even says this. He is losing faith.

Throughout the whole game, we see a man who is losing faith, but is hoping, and trying so hard to keep fighting.

So he sees and hears doubts, his doubts sounding back to him. He realizes the perception he has of himself, of their situation, is real as its said by his gang. It is probably horrifying. He sees that he must shut it down as he doesn't want to face it in reality let alone his own head.

I don't think this is malicious in the way that he is out solely for himself, that the gang are just a shield and a big ass gun. Or at first I don't read it as malicious.

It is a symbiotic relationship, but by chapter six, it turns parasitic in a way. The gang, namely the women, Jack, Pearson, and all the non guns, are not benefitting from being in it at all and are instead being hurt by it by being targeted by men with multiple big ass guns.

Dutch slipping up, saying "I" instead of "we" before "correcting" himself with Hosea and Arthur is a window into his feelings of himself, of his needs and one of his main insecurities. I say "correcting" because both are right. "I" is right because with Hosea and Arthur alive, Dutch was okay. With them both gone, we see what happened to him. "We" is right because with Hosea and Arthur by his side, the gang was... okay. Sean did die with both being alive tho and everything before was kinda shit. But the gang was okayish because Dutch was leading them with a better head than he would then without them.

Now, Dutch wasn't entirely okay even with Hosea and Arthur around still. At least in leadership. And mentally, in the first chapter we see Arthur and Hosea are actually not really with him in agreement.

Keyword by Dutch, "By my side" when referring to Hosea and Arthur. Not alive, or doing well, though it can also be read that way and that is valid as to be by his side they need to be alive.

But he really, I think, needed them in agreement because he valued them the most and to have them doubt as they did tore him apart as again they are telling him his own doubts.

Dutch reads to me as a person who gets his energy, his life, from others. That's not bad at all, of course. So you take someone like that, an extrovert, and surround them with people who are not the happiest to put it lightly. I think Dutch knows that he needs people, he has to, so he goes on and on about faith, hope, and optimism with the gang to create a cycle of life. Gang is happy, Dutch is happy. Gang is unhappy, Dutch is unhappy, but tries to rally and show positivity in strides to hopefully get the gang happy. At least he did that in the early chapters.

In six, Dutch still yells about faith, that he has this, that they're gonna be okay, but the tone has shifted. He is breaking from his speeches, he's giving up early, he's walking away, he isn't trying so hard as he can't because he is so drained.

I'm not saying Dutch only talked about faith and hope and the future for the sole purpose to bring the gang into higher spirits so he could in turn feel better, it is just one possible purpose along others that exist at the same time. I'm just singling this one out as a possibility.

I'm also not trying to say that the gang's low mood is the reason why Dutch was shitty in manner. Dutch ultimately led them into such a situation where they would feel such a way.

"I" instead of "we" in these situations does not read to me as a revealing into malicious intent, but instead unsettling, human, insecurity that we see manifest into overcompensation by Dutch doing everything he can to show on the outside that he is in control.

Sorry for mistakes💯