Did you know that almost all the phone game with "dating" components are aiming exclusively at straight guys. These dating sims type games tend to be more popular with guys as well. They made billions of dollars on that audience alone. In almost any game, the romance contents tend to be aiming at straight guys just based on the number of options and contents, so I would say it's the opposite. With that being said, the most popular romance is Gale followed by Shadowheart, based on their data. That should give you some indications because Gale's romance is pretty buggy and you could miss it if you don't get all of his approval scenes, and yet his romance is the most popular option based on actual statistic data. You can't judge the number of fans based on online presence. There are cases of passionate fans or "stans" who participate in these discussion more but when the polls or actual data are revealed, these characters fall behind in popularity.
That's exactly my point. Online presence does not equal true popularity. Larian's data outright states that. To my deeper point, I don't think how well received a character is or not equates to them being well or poorly written. If the narrative elements of the character are falling apart, then we'll talk. So far I like what we have for all the characters after seeing much of their scenes.
