I've read all the notes and what I meant was that she stuck by what she believed and was living alone without any support. She may be a miserable person but not a criminal in any way. She was not involved in anything illegal from the info that was given. She was not going to shoot them unless it was a life threatening risk for her. She clearly told them that she has called the police and she did not want to shoot them but would do if they meant to harm her, She didn't know who these kids were and for all she knew they would kill her.
I feel like there's a bit of a double standard here. Going by the metrics in your paragraph there: Sam, Sully and Rafe all stick by what they believe and have lived alone without any support. All of the men in the game, except Rafe, only fight/shoot/kill when they are being threatened (this has been the case in every Uncharted game). If this old woman, Evelyn, was in Nate's shoes in any gunfight in the game, regardless of her ostensible 'by the law' attitude (which is never confirmed) she would have fought, too. That's the point. She is an elderly mirror of what Nate
could become. But she pushes Elena (her husband Ken) away rather than becoming closer.
None of what you said negates the fact that she pushed away her family who now hugely resent her and are estranged. She is exactly the same as Nate, except that Nate comes to the mature conclusion that he should talk to Elena about it, and they get closer. The old lady never did that. She removed herself from her husband and family, to keep having adventures and treasure hunting, to the point that they cut off all ties.
Imagine if the game ended with Nate ignoring Elena and going on more adventures, to the point that she divorced him. Nate would be a prick, a 'bad guy', right? That's exactly,
exactly what this old woman did. But you're not here justifying Nate's choices as 'his conviction' etc.
Nadine is a mercenary and she did what mercenaries do when put in a situation that Nate and crew created. She and Rafe would have simply won the bid in the auction and would have gone their way. Would she have bothered attacking Nate and co. if they didn't start a confrontation with her and partner? For all the damage Nate and Sam did to her and her group she did not choose to kill them both in cold blood in the end when she very well could have. Instead she chose to leave them to their fate and leave. What impact would the game have had if she was left as a pure villain who also died in the end? Why choose to let her suddenly change her mind and not kill Nate/Sam when she had a very good chance to even though earlier she was very much ready to do so?
Nate is a treasure hunter and did what any human being would do when put in a situation that Nadine and Rafe created.
Leaving Nate, Rafe and Sam to die was exactly the same as killing them in cold blood. She left them for dead. She just didn't waste her bullets and wanted to save herself first.
You're not wrong that Nate and Sam 'started' the whole thing at the auction, but... What does that have to do with anything? None of them are 'good guys'. None of them are 'bad guys'. They just all have their own agenda. That goes for everyone, including Elena who starts coming around to the treasure hunting again by the end, despite the dangers they've experienced.
I think you're justifying the elegance of the 'all males are problematic' argument with increasingly convoluted logic. The whole point of characters in
any fiction is that they are flawed. Because human beings are flawed. Every single character in Uncharted 4 is flawed in some way. You're just trying to differentiate based on 'law', based on predetermined distinctions of what men or women should be (your phrase 'strong independant woman' gave that away) and based on reductive readings of various situations in the game.
Wasn't that letter from her own son? I thought the story was that the son was living with the father and she was too caught up in her work to visit her family, even when the father fell ill and died.
You are correct. Evelyn was married to Ken and the note in that room was from their son..
I may have misread it. I was on hour 8 of straight playing and it was 1am on a work night when I read it, haha.
Regardless, she basically pushed everyone away.