yeah that's exactly my perspective on lysandre as well which is why i think that his narrative in xy aged like milk
the plot glazes him a LOT like there's a lot of jokes about professor sycamore being completely oblivious to lysandre being evil but none of the characters are allowed to outright say that he's wrong everyone describes him as misguided or overly intense or someone who made some points that they can't fully refute even when it's wildly out of character for them to do so which shows the intention the writers had for him to be seen as very complex
(and it's also why people who just want to hate on xy without actually engaging with it on a serious level at all think lysandre's the best thing since sliced bread it's less that he's a really good character and more that the story tells you that he's a really good character)
the thing is that at the end of the day the moral dilemma he presents basically consists of do poor people deserve to live
which is like not a moral dilemma if you're even a slightly decent person but also We're All Adults Here We're Well Aware Of The State Of The World a new dumbass rich person shows up every week thinking they figured out the mysteries of the universe and have the answer for world hunger and misery and it's always just trampling on poor people because they don't see anyone below their social status as an actual person
we all know someone like lysandre whose ideology consists of hate under a veneer of intellectualism and selflessness, people who act like they're enlightened about the needs of the world and preach about the importance of being austere and self-sacrificial when in reality they just want everything for themselves, and who at the same time are constantly coddled and told that they're eccentric, passionate visionaries as a way to excuse their bad behavior and end up thinking that they're so above everyone else that they can fix all of the world's problems as if it's just a game to them and not something that affects many other people
if i were to hit him with the Amano Beam and write him according to my vision i wouldn't play him as a misunderstood fallen hero who was genuinely trying to improve the world and got lost along the way, i would play him as someone who's out of touch with reality and wants to give himself an ego boost by playing hero and toying with millions of lives because he fundamentally doesn't see common people as people, and who got this far without being reprimanded enough or facing consequences for his actions because he's a billionaire, a ceo, a tech genius, a rich heir, descended from royalty, a prodigy etc etc etc and because of that people keep giving him tons of chances over and over because they tend to assume he has some higher vision that they can't perceive instead of being selfish, corrupted and most importantly wrong
something very the emperor's new clothes coded where the truth is right there but because people are so caught up by social conventions they go along with it because they don't want to be the one to say out loud that maybe this guy's just a shithead