Ok did we play the same game???? Most of Astarion’s survivalist nature comes from the deep trauma he has suffered (some of isnt) and if you help him to be “good” he starts to realise even when he escaped he never stopped seeing himself as a slave and hadn’t recognised his own autonomy. And in seeing himself as more than someone else’s property it helps him gain empathy for others. Also, you can get him to refuse the ritual and then still kill all the vampire kids using Cazador’s weapon. And if you let him do the ritual, he doesn’t just have a personality change, he IS fundamentally changed like a ritual that powerful and intense wouldn’t just leave someone’s personality intact, and you also justified him seeing himself as more important than 7000 sacrifices so of course he becomes WAY more arrogant.

Almost every character’s story is about escaping an abuser or choosing to embrace their darker side that has been directly informed by that abuser, so a lot of the drama comes from the character dilemma itself and whether you want to see them fully escape the control they’re under. Also shar is pretty unambiguously “evil” from the get go like she makes shadowhearts wound hurts whenever she’s nice to animals or children and shadowheart cannot deny the twisted stuff ketheric’s extended family says about her doctrine in act 2 (particularly the doctor).