well, pillars of creation (PoC) was the first book i read when it was first publish... i had no idea it was a series but the two pages i read, from the middle, caught my interest and i left the library with the book...
for almost the entire book i truely believed that Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor were the bad people...
the end was shocking to me -- my god, Richard was the good guy...
so... when i began reading the series starting with Wizard's First Rule, i've always watched Richard carefully. many times he came across as an individual who also wanted to rule the world his way...