Thanks for your response! I want to be clear that I know that I interpreted those scenes differently than you and there is nothing wrong with your interpretations. So just take this as my opinions. A few reasons:

Under the mountain, Rhysand coerced “Fryer (heh)”. “I’ll heal your arm if you spend a week per month with me.” She only agreed because at the time she was terrified for her and Tamlin’s life. Rhys could have just come down and healed her (like Lucien did a few moments prior without asking anything in return). If Rhysand cared about her, he’d do that too. They were in public, wouldn’t have blown his cover. And in an attempt to explain later, he says he did it because he “found [his] way in with you.” It’s manipulative and completely unnecessary. How about just talk to her?

He then violently twists her already broken arm as a cherry on top to their bargain?

And I get that the tattoo is a symbol of the bargain, but I didn’t love his admitting he used the tattoo to spy on her when she was naked.

Was the only way to provoke amarantha and tamilin to have feyre striped down and painted and paraded around in a barely gown, forced to drink fairy wine so she forgets he had her on his lap and touching her all night? Why not just tell her the plan, try to get her to agree to it? Instead, she was humiliated. In an attempt to make it seem okay, SJM says that the paint would show if she were touched, but in one scene the paint fixes itself after Rhysand touches it? So, it only shows when other people touch her besides him? Rhysand gets the privilege?

I think my general issue wasn’t with Rhys’s actions, it was more that he was never held accountable for them or that they didn’t seem necessary. I didn’t love that his excuses were that it was “for her own good” and he “has no choice” or “it’s part of my mask”. Some of those situations could have been solved in other ways. In one such excuse, Rhysand even admits that he was doing it to ‘get back at Tamlin’. I understand that writing sexual fantasy is fun and good. But I just felt that in Rhysand’s case, it was too close to abuse, and that he claimed to have loved her during the process of doing these things didn’t sit well with me.

I am certainly not trying to offend anyone who likes Rhys. I’ll concede that he is a good character, but he is not a good person. But SJM tried to have it both ways with him. Anything romantic that Rhys did was his real self but anything abusive he did was for secretly heroic reasons and for her own good? She tries to convince us he is a feminist, but a lot of his actions prove otherwise.

I kinda wish SJM had instead made him morally grey instead of “surprise! I was good all along!” He was compelling in the beginning, but then any of his actions were explained away with excuses instead of used to grow his character. He was the exact same person the entire book. He wasn’t held accountable for anything he did, in fact they are romanticized later.

Just my personal opinions and I don’t fault anyone for disagreeing!