YMMV / Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire

• Complete Monster: Thorgrim is the leader of a Viking clan that plunders villages and enslaves people. Upon finding Mehgan stranded on their land, they try to enslave her, but Thorgrim decides to ally with her when he discovers her fire powers. Some time later, Thorgrim and his clan go to Brittania to help Mehgan seize the throne from her brother Edric, and Thorgrim leads his men to attack and slaughter many fishermen on arrival. At night, Thorgrim and his men sneak into Edric's camp, where they murder several soldiers and help Mehgan steal Drago's Heartfire. Once she becomes Queen, Mehgan chooses to have Edric exiled rather than killed like Thorgrim advised, but Thorgrim secretly sends some men to capture and enslave him anyway. Afterwards, Thorgrim tries to have Mehgan murdered in her sleep and steals the Heartfire to have all the power for himself. Now free to do as he pleases, Thorgrim sends his men to raid the surrounding villages, burning the houses, slaughtering the men and capturing the women. When Edric and Mehgan come to challenge him, Thorgrim has Mehgan mortally wounded by arrows before hitting Edric In the Back with an axe.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The film tries to serve Edric a big piece of humble pie throughout, portraying him as equally at fault for he and Meghan's estrangement and all of the consequences from such. The problem is that Edric's primary flaw, his attention-seeking and vanity, doesn't really hurt many people. His Super-Strength antics as Sheriff are only towards violent bandits, and his kingship shows him giving even his poorer subjects food. When the Vikings invade, his going to the frontline to fight is treated as just another ego-trip, but he did attempt to solve the problem with minimal bloodshed and surrendered when it was clear his men would be destroyed if he didn't. Even his refusal of Meghan's initial demand for the crown, despite being presented as him refusing to share, is perfectly logical since Meghan led an attack force on her own citizens (something that the first film condemned as the act of a tyrant), something which would naturally lead one to suspect she doesn't have the best intentions in mind for the populace.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The reason we're supposed to find Mehgan sympathetic, despite her being a somewhat terrible person, is because she's been the victim of sexism her whole life, except that she hasn't. Unlike her brother Edric, she was born more obviously part-dragon^note She has scales on her face, and hard-to-control fire powers, but his scales and Super-Strength are easier to hide. At one point, she claims that people would've reacted differently if their situations were reversed. However, her actions disprove that: she publicly reveals him as part-dragon after overthrowing him to rub salt in the wound, and what do you know, one of his former allies betrays him, proving their genders had nothing to do with how people treated them.
  • Furthermore, as Edric points out during their fight, Mehgan willfully led a group of violent Vikings with an Obviously Evil leader to attack her own home country, killing dozens if not hundreds of innocent people in her bid for power. It's a bit hard to see her as a misled hero when she allowed such a vicious event to happen.