I mean, it's one thing to be upset when you're told that you can't marry the girl you love, okay, but -- he had this expression of animal rage, literally comparable to Arietta's fierce expression in the Ion Gaiden, when his advisor told him he couldn't marry her. I would not have been surprised if Peony had physically assaulted the poor bastard. And when he learned she was marrying someone else, he was literally physically violent, wild-eyed and teeth bared with his outrage, and he fled the castle without a second glance.

It really does seem to me like he was only a hop, skip, and a jump away from launching a revolution against his reigning council in the name of his girlfriend. He was crazy. He looked like he was equally as ready to play tyrannical ruler as he was to give up his throne. It was like obsessed!Sora only without the excuse of being brainwashed.

But I'm not especially fazed regarding my characterization of him. It seems to me like there is a clear change in personality from that shallow prince to the Emperor he became. Peony of the canon era would never try to sacrifice his throne because of a girl, in the same way that the shallow prince would never have claimed responsibility for atrocities committed by the previous regime -- the way Peony does when they have to face the music about Hod. The nobility did come... it was just later. First he had to be a shallow spoiled brat. XD