I do feel bad for Aiden. And it's interesting, but while the first time around I hated him, because it's very easy to hate the man who rapes, and lies, and betrays his wife, I find out that this time I just feel sorry for him. I really do.

Of course raping your wife and hurting her and lying to her and preparing her downfall aren't the right things to do. Of course this is all wrong, and this makes me really disgusted. Because a man who can do this without even blinking is a monster, nothing less. A man who does those things and still continues to walk proudly in the world, as if he had done nothing, is a monster, not a human, not in any scale.

But the thing about Aiden is that he does feel regret, and he does that for a reason. It doesn't make any of these actions legitimate, it doesn't make any of them right or okay to do, but it does turn him from a monster into a human being.

Because it's very easy to tell that in the beginning, before Bruce started whispering to him that if he quits he can become the Prime Minister, he was a decent and honest man. You can tell that he knew how to play politics, he knew how to "unleash the bitch", to use the words he'd said to Freya, but he was also an honest man and a loving father, husband and son. Just look at the facts: look at how hurt and shocked he was when Bruce and Freya betrayed him, each in his turn; look at how he really tries to help the people of the neighbourhood, or town, or whatever that was; look at how much he cares for Freya (getting good people around her in the beginning so she wouldn't get hurt). He really is a good man.

And more than that, even when he does wrong things, even when he hurts the very people he should be protecting, he feels remorse. Look at his attitude the morning after he rapes Freya. Look at how he's trying so hard to help Freya and be there for him in the end of that same episode (episode 2). Look at how he's hurting, and even crying, as the realization of what he did to Freya, their marriage and his father sinks into him. 

But theres more to that than just that. Because Aiden didn't just act because he was jealous of Freya. He didn't just act because he was mad. He acted because he felt betrayed. Because he'd expected that his wife, the one woman who swore to love and support him, no matter what, wouldn't betray him. He expected her to support him, to say that "yes".

And she didn't. And after his best friend betrayed him, the fact that she betrayed him just because of the power of being a minister... it's the worst thing that could happen to him, or so he feels, because he's losing the one person he thought he still had.

And then he decides to forget, to move on, more or less. He decides to make it up to her. He realizes that he's been doing wrong. And then he finds out that she spent the whole evening at Bruce's, and not just that, also lied to him about that.

I can't imagine how much that really hurt him.

So yeah, none of this makes the things he did right. None of this makes him look any better because even though all these things are true, that is still not an excuse to do something like that to someone you love. But it does make him human.

And to that I can relate.

And you know what? I think in the end of the day, losing his wife and father, he got what he deserved.