Why you can't be a genuine fan of a Sith character if you're anti-Jedi
Going to preface this by saying I'm not a true-blue Count Dooku stan, in that I don't live in obsession hell about him like my friends and mutuals do - but I do believe in their beliefs, and I support them all the same. So the fact that so many other self-proclaimed fans of his are virulently anti-individual Jedi characters and/or anti-the Jedi Order on the whole has been bothering me for a while, and I finally put my finger on why.
Because earnestly expressing anti-Jedi beliefs, and citing Dooku as evidence for their beliefs that the Jedi are arrogant, complacent, apathetic, corrupt, stagnant, etc., actually proves that they're not really fans of his character. Or, at least, whatever they're a fan of - whether it be the aesthetics of the Sith, the idea of him, what have you - it's not really him. Not his character. Because Dooku's character, as laid out in the films and the extended materials he appears in (canon and Legends), hinges on him being wrong. On doing the wrong thing, and talking himself into believing that it was right - or at the very least necessary.
It's consistent throughout the overall narrative that no Sith (or Sith-adjacent, i.e. Dark/Fallen Jedi, Dark Acolyte, Inquisitor, etc.) character can or should be taken at face value, and especially not about the Jedi. All of them lie, and lie frequently: to themselves, to each other, to the audience. All of them, consciously or unconsciously, delude themselves, because they need to in order to justify what they've done, what they've become.
Ventress needs to believe that one of the only people to ever be kind to her didn't die senselessly, that she can avenge his death. Reva needs to believe the same about the murder of her family. Quinlan tells himself one more crossed line, one more terrible thing in the service of a greater good, is worth it to uncover and stop the Jedi's enemies. Trilla blames her pain and projects her fury onto Jedi survivors because it's smaller, easier, than confronting the systemic evil of the Empire. Anakin, after being convinced to massacre his people and destroy his closest relationships, buys into the sunk-cost fallacy because he needs to tell himself it wasn't all for nothing. Palpatine, after being manipulated into murdering his parents and siblings, chooses to believe that he was born irrevocably tainted because it's less frightening than the idea of having lost control.
And Dooku actively cedes his agency and responsibility to point the finger back at others, or at fate and outside circumstances, for his own choices. It's one of his worst habits even as a Jedi, but it's at its most extreme and prominent as a Sith: how he bows over and over to Sidious' will, to theirs and his own larger plan, falls back on it all as an excuse for betraying the Jedi and the Republic on the whole, for betraying individual people like Ventress, even for ordering the murders of two of the people who loved and trusted him most (i.e Sifo-Dyas and Jenza) and stealing their works out from under their corpses.
But it's arguably exemplified best by how he could have taken responsibility and stopped Sidious as far back as TPM: he could have saved Qui-Gon. He could easily have warned him and the other Jedi about Sidious and Maul; granted, it would've exposed him too, and gotten in the way of his own plans for the Republic. But it very likely would've saved the life of his much-beloved former Padawan. Not only does he not do that, but when Qui-Gon dies as a result of his saying nothing, that is when he blames the Council, and the Jedi, for his loss. He refuses to confront the truth: that he could have prevented Qui-Gon's death, right then and there.
So by extension, he refuses to confront that he had a choice in bowing to the Sith and joining them, that none of the outside circumstances he leans upon (stagnation & corruption in the Senate, the Council not being omniscient/omnipresent & being forced into hard choices due to political pressure, imperfect & incomplete application of the Jedi's abilities & influence, etc.) forced the splintering of the Republic or the war that followed, and every other action spiraling out from there.
Moreover, a full decade after TPM, he also refuses to believe that Qui-Gon (deeply committed to his morals and to the Light) would've been justifiably horrified by what he'd done. Instead, he assuages his own guilt by reasoning that he would've understood and joined him instead - and projects it outward, lashes out, when Obi-Wan declares otherwise, and when he and the other Jedi refuse to bow in turn, when they fight tooth and nail throughout the war to hold on to who they are as Jedi despite pressure from all sides to do otherwise. Their acceptance of their own agency and responsibility, their commitment to their values, flies in the face of the narrative he has spun for himself, and that they are his political enemies becomes deeply, deeply personal. He can't be objective. He can't accept responsibility, they must bear it in his stead. So his projection of blame and vindictive cruelty towards them deepens, on and on, through the war - and all while the truth that he still longs for the Padawan he might have saved still hangs in the air between them.
But as much as he might still long for companionship, for family, for the loved ones he betrayed and left behind and/or that have since died, he has sunk himself too deep into the narrative. And so he continues to lie to himself that ceding to outside forces was necessary, that it will all be worth it in the end...until the truth that he has wasted his last years in service to someone who will betray him in turn finally comes to him, far too late, mere moments before his death.
If Count Dooku were right about the Jedi then, textually, canonically, he would not be Count Dooku. If he were right about conspiring with an aspiring authoritarian dictator and becoming his right hand man; murdering his sister and his childhood best friend; throwing the people he grew up with and who raised him into the proverbial meat grinder; cozying up to slave traders and greedy, corrupt corporations; inciting the CIS to violence and silencing anyone who wanted coexistence with his enemies and helping start a civil war that killed billions of people (and left room for multiple further genocides as/after the Empire took over) all just to further his own ends, then this would not be Star Wars. This would be a fundamentally different story, with fundamentally different themes, and a diametrically opposed message to what actually appears in the narrative.
Therefore, if you take what he says as a Sith about the Jedi at face value, you have missed the point of both the story and his character entirely. And if you don't understand his character, then you can't really be a fan of his - and the same must be true for any Sith, Darksider, or Sith-adjacent character by extension.
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