I agree with you, and I like Ascended Astarion much better, independent and behaving as he wants. He kind of "charges with his energy", I can feel it, and I get my own portion of good mood. Perhaps that's how empathy works - when your favorite character is unhappy, vulnerable and doomed, it's just physically impossible to get any pleasure from the game. And vice versa, when you can not "suffer for him", and have fun and enjoy with him, the game begins to really capture. The evil character can actually be genuinely happy, and since I've always "played on the side of good" in other games before, it was a real new experience. Basically, it doesn't matter so much what Astarion's "evil" ending says, the game itself has the feeling that everything is going to be okay now.
