>>54582443XY's story and villain are pretty confused and conflicted. Lysandre is pretty clearly intended to have somewhat sympathetic motives, but his view of the game's world is at pretty heavy odds with the idyllic world actually presented by the game - the only selfishness or unhappiness we ever see comes from Lysandre's own goons.
The execution is also pretty laughable - it's supposed to be a """""twist"""""" that the character who keeps talking about cleansing the world of human filth turns out to be the bad guy, and it reaches the point of being comedic. It's also incredibly uncanny that all of the other characters in the game just don't react or respond negatively to any of his numerous monologues. After you beat him, Serena even says there were very fine people on both sides.
The Parfum Palace sidequest earlier in the game is the only part of the game that even slightly reinforces Lysandre's motives or worldview (greedy layabouts bad), but this theme is dropped immediately after the sidequest ends and then is never mentioned again. It's made even more confused by the fact that Lysandre is the proud descendant of the people who built the Parfum Palace in the first place - is he campaigning against himself??
DP had many similar issues with its plot and had a similarly confused, misanthropic villain, so Cyrus and Lysandre are pretty similar in that regard. DP's plot and villain were heavily rewritten and made much more coherent with Platinum, though, while Lysandre was never given a second chance
