Yeah, I'm not really sure what to make of this need to humanize Zenos either, and it falls back to my original issue in that it's perfectly fine to have a villain who is, in essence, just evil (or raised in a way that males him just evil). That's fine. It's fine that he has all of this back story and has all of the "reasons." But it doesn't make him any less boring of a character or any less of a character that ran out of things to do and be a long time ago. He could have 15 full novels of backstory but he would still be a boring, dead-end of a character that only actively exists to grate against any sort of player choice or player definition of their own WoL.

And as for him being redeemable or not? I mean, given all that he's done and, maybe more importantly, why he's done it, I don't see any reason why he should be redeemed. It doesn't really matter that back in his closet somewhere there's a sad story.