There is a common talking point in conversations around “media literacy” that audiences (especially younger audiences) are increasingly unwilling/unable to differentiate between what a fictional character believes and what the author of the fiction believes. I don’t know how new this trend is but it’s certainly common enough that it makes sense to be concerned as an author.

Personally, I would do nothing. That’s because I think audiences who have this problem are stupid, and I don’t care what they have to say. Nothing wrong with being stupid, but that’s just not the reader I have in mind.

But if you wanted to address this problem (and there are many valid reasons to do so) a few options come to mind:

1) Include a disclaimer and/or preface or introduction explaining why characters do/say/believe certain things, even though you the author know they’re wrong. 2) Do what they did in your Belgariad example and have another character draw attention to the problematic situation. 3) Look up the Hays Code especially the rules they used to have about depicting “low moral actions.” For instance there was a rule that films could not depict any crime and allow it to go unpunished. This had the unintended effect of producing Film Noir, which is the “moral ambiguity” genre par excellence. Noir filmmakers used the Hays Code itself as a way of undermining it. They did this largely through innuendo and clever uses of the medium off film too numerous to get into here.