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Arthur Morgan (1863-1899) is the main protagonist of the 2018 action-adventure game Red Dead Redemption II and the overarching protagonist of Red Dead Redemption.

He was the lead enforcer of the Van der Linde gang who begins to have doubts about his loyalty to the gang's leader, Dutch van der Linde.

He is voiced by Roger Clark.

His Evil Rankings[]

What Makes Him Heinous?[]

• As his career of an outlaw, he has no problem committing crimes, and killing and robbing innocent people, rival gangs, law enforcers, etc.
• Even if you are playing him with High Honor, his kill count of rival gangs, Pinkertons and law enforcement, and the Army can easily reach into the thousands.
• His aiding the gang acts as a catalyst for their carnage, such helping Sadie Adler; who is responsible for quite a bit of collateral damage; helping Dutch, which causes the deaths of countless; and pointedly, breaking Micah out of Strawberry.
• He goes out with the gang to rob a train from Leviticus Cornwall and killed several train guards with Lenny. After that, he along with the others took 3 train guards hostage and determined to the player’s choice, can have the option to kill them. Not only that, but this act also caused Leviticus Cornwall to call the Pinkerton Detective Agency which leads to deaths of Mac, Lenny and Hosea later on in the game.
• When Jimmy Brooks was hanging off a cliff, Arthur can have the choices to kill him by waiting for Jimmy to lose his grip or by stepping on his fingers and watching Jimmy fall to his death.
• During a brawl in Valentine, he beats a man named Tommy so badly that he is left with permanent brain damage. It's very likely he would've killed Tommy too had Thomas Downes not pulled Arthur off of him.
• After he becomes drunk with Lenny, he almost drowns a guy who was annoying them in a horse trough.
• On Strauss’ orders, he confronts Thomas Downes, who has tuberculosis, and beats him to a pulp, causing his death later on. And while Arthur collects the debt from Edith, Thomas’s wife, he also subtly threatens Archie, Thomas’ son, for looking at him the wrong way.
  • This act ruins their lives in the process. Edith and Archie are forced sell their home and move to Saint Denis where Edith works as a prostitute. Archie, for his part, works as a miner where his colleagues bully him, especially the foreman. While the damage can be mitigated in the optional two-part quest “Do not seek absolution” where Arthur helps them get out of their horrible situation and gives them money to start anew, it doesn’t change the fact that Arthur’s actions caused this in the first place.
• He breaks Micah Bell out of prison, leading him to shoot half of the town, Strawberry.
  • In doing this, he is also directly responsible for all of the violence Micah later commits, up to and including betraying the gang and killing a little girl.
• Robs a train with Sean, John and Charles, beating any passenger that refuses to surrender their money.
• He robs a stagecoach with Uncle, Bill, and Charles while also killing many guards to secure it.
• He robs a bank with Karen, Lenny, and Bill while killing many law enforcement officers as well.
• He robs a stagecoach with Micah and kills many O’Driscolls on the way.
• Under Catherine Braithwaite’s orders, he and Sean set the Grays’ crops on fire, which unintentionally causes Sean’s death later on.
• He, Javier, Strauss, and Trelawny make a plan to rob a cruise ship and killed many guards after they were exposed.
• He robs a bank with Dutch and Lenny with the information that Bronte gave them. Though it was revealed that it was a set up.
• He kills dozens of Bronte's men so Dutch could kill Angelo Bronte in revenge for the set up.
• He robs the biggest bank of Saint Denis and killed several Pinkertons in the process. This act had led both Hosea and Lenny to get killed by the Pinkertons.
• He and Sadie start a jailbreak and took one of the prison guards hostage. While it was to free John, Arthur and Sadie still kill dozens of guards, who were just doing their jobs incarcerating admittedly-dangerous outlaws, during their escape.
• He and Bill rob a stagecoach of dynamite on Micah’s orders.
• For a train heist, Arthur and John blow up a bridge for a train to fall over. After the heist, he killed several train guards and even some of their horses with a machine gun.
• His fatalistic refusal to just call it quits with associating with Dutch - despite numerous evidence that he doesn't care about him anymore, if he ever did - led to the Wapiti tribe being exploited by Dutch and Eagle Flies' death, led to his own death, and instilled a desire for revenge in Sadie and John that led to the latter's death in the first game.

What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]

• As an on & off character, he has lots of heroic traits and actions.
• He is overall tragic, due to a difficult childhood and experiences with abusive father figures that affected his ability to form healthy relationships and cope with stress as an adult. That, coupled with the fact that his girlfriend Eliza and son Isaac were murdered during a robbery, gave him PTSD and had showed remorse for not doing anything to prevent their deaths.
  • During his life as an adult, he goes through a lot of traumatic events that happen throughout the story. He witnessed Davey, Mac, Jenny, Sean, Hosea, Lenny, Susan, and Molly die in front of his own eyes, contracts TB and knows that he is going to die, and that his father figure, Dutch, and two of his friends, Bill and Javier, betrayed him despite everything he’s done for them.
• He is shown to have care and affability towards people. He has a good relationship with the Van der Linde gang and was saddened by their deaths. He helps Susan rescue Tilly after she was kidnaped by the Foreman brothers, he gives Trelawny his blessing to leave the gang peacefully and he repeatedly protects the gang from their enemies.
  • He's shown to have a good relationship with the Marston family and acts as a surrogate uncle for Jack. While he did resent John's irresponsibility towards his family, this was later subverted when John takes responsibility for his family and the two come to view each other as brothers. He can also have some Pet-The-Dog moments with Abigail and little Jack, and can be generally affable to people such as the Wapiti Indians and random strangers.
• He was genuinely loyal to Dutch and the Van Der Linde gang, serving them for over 20 years. Even when defeat becomes more prevalent and members start to die frequently, Arthur still stands beside the gang. Arthur's loyalty only waivers, and rightfully so, when Dutch reveals his true colors by instigating the war between the Wapiti Natives and the US Army.
• He is shown to have standards against racism, sexism, betrayal, irresponsibility, exploitation and corruption. He disapproves of Micah’s violent, narcissistic and racist behavior and he was genuinely angry towards him for his manipulative behavior towards Dutch and that he sold the gang out to the Pinkertons. He is disgusted having to be Strauss' loan shark and hates preying on the desperate and the poor. Later on, he resents how far the gang has strayed from their honorable ways of only stealing from the rich and corrupt, and giving that money to the poor. A far cry from their current selfish ways of robbing everyone in sight.
• Regardless of his honor, he helps John and his family escape the gang so they can live better lives.
• His death is played for sympathy. After fighting Micah, when Dutch interferes, Arthur tells him that he gave him all he had and that he succeeded in what he tried to do in the end. After that, he succumbs to his injuries and illness and die from tuberculosis laying on the ground and watching the sunrise before his last breath. Alternatively, he is mercilessly executed by Micah either shooting him in the head or stabbing him in the back, while sad music plays as well. If Arthur dies with High Honor while regardless if the former helps John or leave him for the money, a sun will rise while the sad music is played.
• Most of his acts and honour is determined to the player’s choice, so whilst it's possible to play Arthur - at the worst - as though a Near Pure Evil protagonist, it's also their choice if Arthur becomes a better person.

Trivia[]

• At maximal High Honour, players can play Arthur as though a Near Pure Good protagonist, in that whilst he still partakes in the outlaw's lifestyle and aids in their violent lives, otherwise has no other corrupting qualities and always does the honourable thing.
  • Arthur, however, is Inconsistently Admirable in canon.
• At maximal Low Honour, Arthur can be played as a Near Pure Evil character, as he cares for his friends due to helping them, but can otherwise have no redeeming qualities whatsoever in killing countless innocents on optionally brutal ways, as well as being apathetic to the gangs' members deaths; notably indifferently monologuing in the aftermath of Sean's death and noting there is no confederate gold, in contrast to his honourable play through in which he notes that Sean was like an "annoying little brother" to him.
  • Arthur, however, is Inconsistently Heinous in canon, regardless of the moral scale, owing to his severe preventions; regardless of how heinous the player makes him.

External Links[]

• Arthur Morgan on the Villains Wiki
• Arthur Morgan on the Heroes Wiki
• Arthur Morgan on the Red Dead Wiki
• Arthur Morgan on the Inconsistently Admirable Wiki

Navigation[]

Inconsistently Heinous

Grand Theft Auto Claude Speed | Toni Cipriani | 8-Ball | Carl Johnson | Trevor Philips Bully Edgar Munsen Red Dead Arthur Morgan | Dutch van der Linde See Also Grand Theft Auto Inconsistently Heinous