Topic on User talk:DocColress
He was always FAR from altruistic, in fact always thinking all about himself, but he was under the delusion it was all for a higher cause and that he was in the right. He did terrible things and he's a nasty, selfish, power hungry sociopath, and if he were the sole true Big Bad, he might easily qualify. The trouble, I think, is that Ganondorf's involvement kind of alters my perception. Not only is there now a bigger villain that a lot of Zant's actions can be traced to (his choices or not, he would not have been able to pull any of it off without the power Ganon bestowed upon him), but it adds a particularly nasty crime to Ganon's rep sheet - making Zant his pawn. I'm reminded of the pilot episode of the show Elementary, which featured a crazed serial killer who committed terrible murders of women who matched a specific profile. It turned out he killed the victim of the episode because the victim's husband, a perfectly sane doctor who wanted to inherit her life insurance money, had got his wife to make herself over to match the killer's profile and then sent the killer, who was his own patient he was supposed to be treating, after her. The situation was summed with the exchange of the doctor telling Sherlock Holmes "You're insane" for accusing him of this, and Sherlock replying "No, HE was insane, and you took advantage of that." Similarly, Zant was insane, entitled, power-hungry and cruel to start with, and Ganon took advantage of that to make him a pawn in his plan.
The "taking you with me out of spite" was pretty much my interpretation. I didn't mean that Zant had any real moral standards against Ganondorf, but that he could see that he wasn't the god he'd made him believe he was and in fact used him, which would be a blow to Zant' ego. Point is that he had part in taking out the bigger villain, though after all he did, it's not much atonement for anything.
At this point I'm unsure where Zant lies. He's either a Complete Monster, a 99% Monster, or a Subverted Trope altogether.