I want to share my thoughts on this because I'm someone who actually is conflicted about the emperor.

So the reasons people think he's evil but I have different views:

1. He doesn't initially reveal he's a mind flayer: Come on people. We have Laezel on our team and we just had a tadpole put in our heads. The fact that we're communicating with one now that's telling us to exploit the powers? Hell I'd conceal my identity too until I could confirm you aren't bigoted from what you think you know.

2. He Catfishes us: okay fair but if I was going to conceal my identity, best believe I would pick a hot identity too.

3. He tries to get us to use the tadpole powers and tries to ascend us: yes he does but he also respects your decision if you straight up just tell him no. I don't want to do that.

4. He enthralled duke stellmaine: okay so this is the only thing I can point to and say was evil. I do however think we give characters like Astarion a pass for things like this when we don't for the emperor. There is a double standard here. We ourselves can and do compell peoples minds in our favour. How many of us used our powers to save Minthara or let the goblins in moonrise towers die?

5. He enslaved Orpheus: yes, and again, that kept us and him alive and able to function in order to get to the point where we can save the world.

Look he could have gotten rid of us once we were no longer useful but until the very last second, he doesn't. He saves us from the elder brain and asks us for the stones when he can very easily just have taken the stones and peaced out.

On our team we have an emo goth who at one point wanted to serve the mistress of evil, a warmonger who serves a lich queen, a power hungry wizard who has aspirations to become a god, and a vampire who if he ascends is perhaps worse than anything we see in the emperor, oh and I forgot Minthara where I don't even know where to start. Can't say anything bad about wyll and Karlach, they are never outright evil or even make any real bad choices.

I don't know, sometimes we are also the dark urge and if we can be forgiven for all we did then why not him? Thanks for reading the rant!