Regulus Black: naive or evil

[m_warren17]

No: HPFGUIDX 72751

With the revelations about the Black family in OOP, I was wondering 
about the character of Sirius's brother, Regulus, mentioned briefly 
by Sirius when he and Harry were looking at the Black family tree. 


"...Sirius smiled bitterly and ran his fingers through his long, 
unkempt hair. 'Because I hated the whole lot of them: my parents, 
with their pure-blood mania, convinced that to be a Black made you 
practically royal... my idiot brother, soft enough to believe 
them...that's him.' 

 Sirius jabbed a finger at the very bottom of the tree, at the 
name 'Regulus Black'. A date of death (some fifteen years previously) 
followed by the date of birth.

'He was younger than me,' said Sirius, 'and a much better son, as I 
was constantly reminded.'"


>From the little information that we hear about him, I had the 
impression that Regulus was somewhat naive and easily led, but 
certainly not evil on the same scale that Voldemort or Lucius Malfoy 
are. From Sirius's choice of words, his "idiot brother" who was "soft 
enough" to believe his parents, it can be speculated that Regulus was 
not a strong personality but a follower who probably had a limited 
amount of intelligence and therefore was more malleable and receptive 
to the ideas and beliefs of his parents than his brother and 
therefore was considered the favourite son. 

What struck me was that Sirius seemed to be almost dismissive of 
Regulus when he was speaking about him. He sounded contemptous but I 
had the feeling that the animosity that he harboured towards his 
Regulus was not on the same level that he displayed towards his 
parents and Voldemort's other supporters. Also, the fact that he 
tried to back out of being Death Eater once he found out what was 
involved (and was killed as a result) seems to indicate that he had 
an aversion to killing (unlike the more hard-core Voldemort 
supporters). What are people's opinions on this?