This is a major part of what makes Tbosas both fascinating and infuriating. It seems entirely in-character that Coriolanus Snow spends a hell of a lot of time overthinking his every choice, prior to the book we know this is a guy who ends up canonically staying in power by repeatedly poisoning his political rivals, ruling over an authoritarian regime that keeps people in line not just through force, but in consistently controlling the narrative.
What was a surprise was how well-developed, even in a third-person-limited rather than full first-person POV that need for control comes across, and how rapidly it oscillates between young Coriolanus doing things that are genuinely brave and borderline heroic for the wrong reasons and doing things that form key pillars of his villain origin story while convincing himself they can't be that bad.
He rescues Sejanus from the arena and nearly dies in the process, which is probably the closest any kid from the Capitol will ever get to knowing what it's like to be a tribute, but he convinces himself all along he doesn't even like Sejanus that much and only wants to endear himself to the Plinths on the off chance they'll help him out financially. When he goes to meet Lucy Gray at the station, brings her food, and goes way above what's expected from a mentor, he doesn't even entertain the possibility that he might love her, or even just fancy her a little, until she kisses him, and even then those feelings are so repressed it's pretty tragic to watch.
And yet he's so quick to assume no-one in the Capitol will bother to listen to the jabberjay recording he intentionally made with the purpose of betraying his friend, to mask his own guilt. The first time he kills someone (in self-defence) he has what we'd consider a pretty normal reaction in line with what some of the other tributes go through, then, the second time he's immediately like 'oh well, this was self-defence too' (it defo wasn't).
I suppose part of Suzanne Collins brilliance as a writer is establishing the importance of luck and timing within the context of the story in shaping how a character succeeds or fails. The winning tributes aren't always the strongest, or the bravest, or the smartest, often forces beyond their control conspire to create what can look like pure dumb luck, and those in the Capitol aren't as shielded as they'd like to think from the same fate.
The great tragedy of Tbosas isn't that Coriolanus Snow was born to be a dictator, it's that when you give an eighteen-year-old a bunch of trauma, and a few problematic, but not automatically 'evil' qualities (in this case narcissism, unchecked ambition, and a general need for order and control) then allow the narrative to consistently punish him for trying to do the right thing while rewarding him for doing the wrong thing, he's going to believe, pretty quickly that's how the world works.
He leaves the Capitol for District 12 because he broke the rules and overstepped his mark as a mentor to save Lucy Gray's life (however good she might be with real snakes, I genuinely believe Dr Gaul's technicolour horrorshow would have killed her if he hadn't intervened) then returns because he betrayed his friend, got at least two people killed, and decided that love is a weakness. Not only that, he finds on his return that his family's financial woes are over and he's able to poison the one guy who tried to stop him without anyone catching on.
It reminds me a lot of The Talented Mr Ripley tbh, especially the whole 'the father of a friend who's dead because of me is now my benefactor' angle, which is a specific enough ending that it's weird it happened twice
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