Okay this seems like an odd but obvious question, yes he's a bad guy or is he? Hang with us and imagine this is you...
You like a girl, or a guy, but the girl, or guy, likes your brother, or sister. They never acknowledge you no matter how much you try to impress them, you saw them first but no your sibling is getting all their attention. That would be hard! Then they marry your sibling, crusher!!!
You castle in the air starts crumbling and suddenly you can't think of anything good. You're desperate so you do something desperate....
Okay so maybe, you wouldn't do something desperate, but Garten did. So the reason he turned and did all of that was to get Sween to notice him, so is it her fault that everything happened? Could she have stopped it?
If she had know would she done something?
Did she know?
So many questions, but the real one is, Is Garten as Bad as we think? Or was he just drive by a broken heart and jealousy?
And is Sween as good as we think?
Would to hear you guys thoughts...
Huh, didn’t see this before.
I think the answer to the initial question is that yes, Garten is the bad guy-tragically so, perhaps, but still the bad guy. Is it sad that the woman he loved didn’t love him back? Yes. Is it even sadder that she picked one of his brothers over him? Yes. Does that mean he was even remotely justified in doing what he did?
The fact of the matter is, lots of relationships don’t work out. Plenty of people experience feelings that are unrequited (meaning the person they gave feelings for doesn’t feel the same way). It‘s rough, and I’m sure it’s not easy for anyone to go through. However, I think the vast majority of people who go through it don’t react by committing GRAND TREASON.
Because Sween rejected him, Garten decided to sell his people out to creatures of apparently pure evil who kill and eat rabbits and are particularly fond of eating children. Because Helmer and the King’s Arm tried to stop him, he had Helmer’s bucks slaughtered and chained him to a tree where he could either stand and watch the horror or cut off his own arm so as to attempt a hopeless intervention. Because Sween chose one of his brothers, he had his thugs ambush the other brother and tie him up where he would watch the action and be powerless to intervene. And then he tried, if his words to Heather are any indication, to dress it up like he was doing the best thing for rabbitkind, when really he was just a frustrated and bitter rabbit.
I think The Archer’s Cup gave us a bit of insight into this sort of relationship. Both Garten and Grare were in love, and both were rejected. Unfortunately, both seem, in different ways, not to have respected or comprehended that the does they cared for had rights and desires of their own. In Grare’s case, he refused to accept Elisabeth’s choice and beca determined to possess her. In Garten’s case, his reaction to Sween’s choice was to make her-and every other rabbit-suffer for it.