I didn't view Thordan as bad. His intentions were good, but he was taking the authoritarian route to 'save' the world. The Garleans' weren't much different, many of them had the belief that to stop the threat of primals everything had to be under their rule.

Hard disagree about Yotsuyu. Her backstory may have been unfortunate, but she turned into a twisted individual who derived pleasure from torturing innocents. Don't get me wrong, I liked having a strictly 'bad' antagonist for once (other than Zenos I guess), but she had no redeeming qualities until she lost her memory.

Fordola I frankly never understood. She was willing to lose everything to gain something I didn't think was worth it and would've been a hollow victory had she ever achieved it.

I usually love sympathetic antagonists, but thanks to ShB & EW I'm over it. I've no interest in continually being presented with conflicts where the opposition loses everything and the WoL/Scions don't even break a fingernail. It actually is starting to feel emotionally manipulative because the writers won't touch the protagonists, so the only way to get tears is to make the antagonists likeable and then take everything from them. Maybe Yotsuyu is one of the writers. ;P