To be fair it's not always worthwhile to invest this amount of time and energy into trying to understand the characters: sometimes their actions are solely motivated by the author's desire to maneuver them into the cool climactic setpiece, and truly make no emotional sense! Or you just can't like the character no matter how much the author is trying to make you do an empathy. (There's bit in Middlemarch where George Eliot is like "But what about Casaubon?" and there's a whole chapter trying to make you sympathize with Casaubon and I spent the whole chapter metaphorically pouting with folded arms, refusing to engage. What about Casaubon indeed!)