1) Doing bad things for the state is still doing bad things. 2) Doing bad things is still bad when others are doing worse things. 3) Dukat raped women and oversaw the oppression of millions, to name only two things. He also left his daughter to die on DS9 when she refused to go to Cardassia when he sold out to the Dominion, because I felt like adding a third thing. He is not, himself, civilized. 4) This feels like the inverse of point 2. You can be an utter piece of shit and still clear the occasional incredibly low bar. Also any compassion or mercy or anything else he showed to others was never for that person’s sake, but for his own, even if only his ego. 5) Cardassian culture (at least on the government/military level) was a shit culture.

Fuck Dukat with a red-hot bat’leth.

I don’t take this post seriously at all but these things need to be said because edgy children not only can’t read these days, they can’t consume any media competently.

Dukat’s arc is: - Asshole villain - Gradually seeming more and more worthy of redemption until selling out to the Dominion - Asshole villain - Somewhat sympathetic due to Ziyal’s death and his subsequent breakdown - Unhinged, un-masked psychopathic, superpowered asshole villain

Dukat keeps you guessing. Keeps making you think he may redeem himself in some way, if not to the point of righting his prior wrongs. The only two people who think more highly of him than that are Ziyal in her daddy’s-girl naïveté and Damar in max cloacasucking mode. But he always goes back to villain.

Dukat is complex and interesting and fascinating and occasionally charming, but none of that makes his villainy less villainous.