(I'm also wondering how McTabby got brought into this. Where did I mention her or suggest that she was soft-pedalling anything?)

With that out of the way...

Tom finds out what his ancestry is pretty early on. He meets Morfin, even, when he's still a teen. He sees the pit that his family comes from. He sees it, he scorns it, and he moves on. And then he becomes it.

So the good guys can overcome their pasts, but the bad guys can't? Is that what makes someone a bad guy, then, is following familial traditions? (At this point, I'm seriously playing Devil's Advocate. I think you made a fantastic point.)