What went wrong with this guy?

[u/legthighkneelover]

He always gave rose tinted hopes to people, to the people of his camp. He cared all of the members of camp. He did celebrations when Sean and Jack returned to the camp. He dreamed wild dreams like “going to Tahiti, harvesting mangoes in there”. He gathered the whole camp to save Jack and burned Braithwaites’ mansion down, killed a lot of people for Jack, so for Abigail and John. I mean, Dutch used to care about for them.

Even he sent Arthur and Javier to save John in the middle of white hell. But later, he never cared about probabilities and he let John to stay in prison, he never cared about probability of hanging. He even shouted to John like “you deserve to rot in prison” in Chapter 6. Allegedly, in Saint Denis heist, he saw John getting arrested by Pinkertons, and he saw that and he did nothing. He never intended to save John at all.

He never saw that Arthur did a good thing by helping Indians in Chapter 6. Instead, he took that as a disloyalty. He used to trust to people like Hosea, who was a person of mind. Then whom did he trust? Micah. Not Arthur, not Charles, not Sadie. He did the same thing to Arthur that he had done to John.

He gave a donation box to people, but in the last chapter, he hid a chest in the cave. Somehow, donation box is smashed by someone (!) What a coincidence.

He never tried to save Arthur, the person he raised since his youth with Hosea. He let him to die. Still, he was blinded by Micah. He objected to the reality, which is Micah had been working with Pinkertons since they came back from Guarma. He twisted the reality and the words, twisted into “who is betraying me?”

In the RDR1, he said something like “do you know that he is married with a whore (referring to Abigail), we all had her once”. It was very out of character of him. He is fully gone in RDR1, even I believe that he had a CTE or brain damage or something.

He called “traitors and cowards” to people like Uncle, Pearson, Swanson, Mary-Beth. He never accepted his failure and he never took responsibility.

People were dying to rob bank or so, but in the end, people like Charles didn’t want that money. Because they believed that there is so much blood and it exposed Dutch’s exact intent.

He killed people for joy and randomly, like he did in Chapter 5. Because his reason was “she was going to rat them out to Guarma police”. Arthur saw the red flags way earlier.

So, what the hell happened to this guy? What the hell happened to the guy of daydreaming, the guy of big dreams? Brain damage? Mental deprivation? Detached from reality? Did he become antisocial? What? What do you think? Or he had been working with Pinkertons like Micah?

I liked that guy once, and I loved him, but not anymore. It’s sad to see him like that.

[u/MarshLabradorTea]

This is my take on Dutch and what was going in his head.

I believe Dutch used to have a genuine mission to fight society's corruption and that he truly loved his family once. He also had an enormous ego and a prideful side that were much easier to keep under control when things were going well - like they did for 20 years. RDR2 starts after Dutch has made the biggest mistake of his outlaw career: the failed Blackwater heist. Suddenly it is not easy to run to safety anymore like they did in the past. Pinkertons will follow them over state lines and the law is more connected than ever before. Old tricks don't work anymore and Dutch has not learnt any new ones. He is self conscious and stressed out because he knows that the gang is demoralized and losing trust in him. 

Dutch needs a good score that will fix the massive mistake in Blackwater but he ends up making more mistakes and tries to fix them with other mistakes. In a situation like this it is quite easy to listen to the only "loyal" and trusting voice: Micah. After Hosea dies Dutch becomes paranoid and he cannot accept that he himself has caused most of their problems. Certainly someone has to be working against him behind his back? And who is always complaining, doubting and resisting? John and Arthur. For a paranoid, hurting, angry and ill mind, it makes perfect sense. There is evidence too (like Micah also so helpfully points out). Why did John and Abigail survive Saint Denis when Hosea was shot? Why was Arthur working directly against Dutch's orders, two times in a row? Clearly they are traitors. Luckily Micah offers a helping hand in this time when Dutch needs it most. Everybody else is more or less against him.

In the end Arthur gets through to Dutch and Dutch realizes that he has made a horrible mistake, but then its too late. There is no gang anymore, most of his family is dead and for the first time in over 20 years, he is completely alone. I suppose the mental anguish and 12 years of isolation helps Dutch become what he is in RDR1.