YMMV / L.E. Modesitt Jr.

• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The villain in The Spellsong War is supposed to come across as whiny and entitled when he complains that Anna is laying waste to his cities because he only tried to have her assassinated and steal some land from her. But there is in fact such a concept as "proportional response," so even in the midst of Realpolitik you're not supposed to burn entire cities to the ground just to teach someone you're not to be trifled with. The villain's claim that he's the one who will suffer most for Anna's failure to understand how things work (at a time when thousands of his subjects are about to burn right alongside him) does make him a bit of a self-obsessed douche, but he isn't wrong that Anna is waging an unjust war.