Well intended Hero, or Villain?

I am running into trouble when it comes to the defining plot of a character wherein his actions are sufficiently complicated to define morally that I am not certain if he will be deemed "Good", or "Bad". Seeing how others perceive him is a plot element of conflict in the overarching story, I find myself at a problem.

In other words, for this story I am making, I don't know if I am writing a good, or bad guy, and this is important because I need someone to consider him good, to ally with him, and others to consider him bad, and fight against him.

The setting involves a war, conflict not much different from an Elves Versus Dwarves with conquerors versus nature. This character resorts to a plan to force peace between them, as he belongs to one of the two sides. However, this method involves not only murder, lies and desecration of corpses, but also gaining the wrath of both sides, at the cost of a forced, long lasting peace.

I can describe the equivalent of what he is doing to tying a bomb to them. "Listen. If you keep killing each other, you both die. I did this. Now stop fighting." But of course, magical shenanigans are more involved than actual TNT.

So. Again. Two warring factions. Undying hatred. Shoving a Mutually Assured Destruction bomb in their mouths. Methods are not as extreme as genocide, but does involve murder of not-so-innocents. I do not think he is extreme enough to be just as easily described as Well-Intentioned Extremist, but I am not sure if the magnitude of what he does warrants the title.

As well as the problems of murder, he stings at the mutual pride of the warring factions to warrant their desire to stop the actions. As in, "This guy is trying to render us helpless against our enemy. He must be stopped!", and he was going to get a group of people helping him with the logic of "This war has taken everything from you. Join me and it wont take more from others" sort of thing.

Is there something more I should do to warrant his hatred from the factions? is there something I should do less? I am titilatting between the "he is not doing enough" or "he is doing too little" to spur action both for, and against him. Is this a Hero? or a Villain?

I hope this makes any sense...and that it is on the proper forum, for that...

He doesn't need to be "Good", he just needs be a lighter grey than the people he's fighting ( at least, to some people ) which will entirely depend on the perspective of the person in question.

For instance, the people who seem him as a lighter grey might be ex-soldiers ( possibly injured ) or widows or the like who just want the fighting to stop; they don't care about the battle anymore and they're willing to die for some peace. While those who see him as a darker grey would conflate him with the faction they've been fighting against this whole time; as a guy who just wants to destroy their society and culture.

You don't necessarily need to make his hatred overly warranted, all I think you need to do is play up the differing perspectives of freedom fighter and terrorist and make sure those on either side have a reason to seem in the way they do. ( You might even want to have a neutral party who sees his actions as pointless, not because it won't make peace, but because, in the words of Doctor Manhattan, "Nothing ever ends". )

Mmm. The narrative was not in the point of view of him, but of those who are fighting him. Through the travel this "villain" does good and bad things, but I do need him to do some bad things in order to spark up the conflict. I need him "dark grey" enough for people on both sides to want him dead, or stopped.

I do also have the possibility of one of the methods he uses to involve having to kill one of the bigger goods (sort of biger goods) for magical blood reagent thing McGuffin. But I think that would just set him straight into the Villain territory, wouldn't it? But, I mean. It's killing an informed big good (Think a High Priest, or archon that does nothing but be a powerful symbol) and using its like, eyes to fuel the ritual.

I am confused over if this qualifies as "evil enough to warrant hunting"

I think you're looking at him from the wrong angle; people won't hunt him because he's "evil enough", they'll hunt him because he's "threatening enough". For example, having the tools and desire to murder this bigger good - he's ready willing and able to kill this big figure and that's a threat, morality is too personal to be important in such a large-scale perspective.

And then, if both sides realise he's working on someone that destroy their side ( and presume him to be working for the other side ), then he'll have to carve his way through both their troops. But it will be because he's a threat, not because he's "evil" ( really, only religious caricatures would hunt someone solely because of their morals ).

Regarding him going straight into Villain territory; it depends on the perspective, from the bigger good's groups perspective, yeah, he'd become a straight up villain. But you could still justify it with Well-Intentioned Extremist or point out how, letting this bigger good live would ultimately do more harm than good ( i.e. via the war still going on ) making this bigger good not so good.

Is it important that he appear to be a hero? ( Because I presume that those who follow him would ascribe to his ends-justifies-the-means reasoning ) Because what if he's not, but the only guy who'll "do what needs to be done"? And that's why those people follow him; he's the only one with the stomach for it.

It is not particularly important for him to be a hero. I guess that is more of an audience reaction thing than anything, and I do not purport to be able to manipulate Audience into thinking what I want of my work.

I simply seek for it to be realistic that he can garner enough support to have enough people to gruellingly try and pull the plot on, and enough hatred from both factions that they will try to stop him, or at least think ill of him.

I think of war as a cheap plot that makes it easy to pull people into a work due to being given a side to choose, identify with, and root for. I just want to poke fun at how a resolution seems to be unwanted, even if professed.

I'm personally a big fan of moral ambiguity (or rather, I'm a fan of stories that deal with psychology and character unencumbered by a linear morality spectrum) so I'd urge you to embrace it. As dudemanthingface says, it should be easy to plausibly explain people being both for and against him in-universe; on one side the people whose desires for peace outweigh their fear and dislike of his methods, on the other side the people who are threatened by his actions or fond of his victims. When it comes to audience reactions, I think it would be most interesting to just present the actions as they are and let your readers form their own opinions.

Well. One of the factions falls rather squarely into the proudWarriorRace guy, so their inherent hatred for peace, much less "losing" the opportunity to war as they desire is one of the themes I like to think about I am dealing.

The others are a bit harder to engage in the "stopping him" bit, which are more or less my conflict. I mean, besides going against their authorities and acting underhanded from them, there are few reasons why they would NOT want the peace. Pride plays along there but "pride" is something i generally have problem understanding or portraying.

Also yes, audience reaction is something that cannot be controlled, hah. At worst, things might go horribly right!