Like I said, I’m hanging up my internet ‘war of attrition’ card. So bear that in mind should you decide to read the below, because I’m not trying to pick a fight.
an author's view of right and wrong implicitly colors any work
You have your philosophy on what authors should be doing – I have mine, and I strongly disagree with your assumption that a good author allows their views to colour the work. That’s the definition of contrivance. Stream-of-consciousness is ‘higher order thinking’: that’s when the author lets the subconscious write the story for them. Entirely possible depending on the talent. Otherwise you’re just getting an essay dressed up as fiction.
I quoted The Wire and The Sopronos before as perfect examples of unbiased narrative – or as near as it gets. They aren’t fantasy, but they are stories. Cyberpunk and The Witcher 2/3 are also good examples, if we’re to take games, since everyone, including the protagonists, are some shade of grey.
The stories you quote are not stories I would ‘rate’. The Lord of Rings is popular, but that doesn’t mean it’s good (again, my opinion). I read the books and saw the films: it’s too black and white, but then it’s also a children’s book, so it’s not a valid example, IMO, given that BG3 has a ‘mature’ rating, hence is pitched at adults not children. Couldn’t stand the Dragon Age games, never played ME.
I don’t agree about Shakespeare – Shylock? – and never saw any of the characters as black and white.
It's very rare that we're really supposed to wonder if the protagonist is morally in the wrong broadly
Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong – I’m saying I disagree strongly again. Almost all of the characters in The Wire and The Sopranos are morally ambiguous, and that’s what makes the writing challenging and interesting. No one in ‘real life’ is perfectly good or evil either, and a talented author will have observed this and will draw on this fact to produce what they call ‘complex characters’ (no black and white).
All of John Banville’s characters – and he’s a Man Booker winner – are morally ambiguous, shades of grey. You never know who to trust. And if we’re to return to pop culture, even GOT, from what I’ve seen of it, features roughly 90% morally ambiguous characters, with the biggest bores (John Snow) being the cliché heroic types.
