Ghaul seemed very intent on getting the Traveler to choose him as a guardian, but the moment of his motivation shift to when we encounter him in the original campaign climax seems disjointed. In the lead up to this moment in the exchanges between Ghaul and the Speaker, we get that backstory of Ghaul's rejected and sacrifice filled past with being chosen by his teacher. We later are told that the Consul was this teacher as he executes the Speaker. In this moment of feeling perhaps rejected again, he rejects his old teacher, while then... doing exactly what his old teacher wanted him to do and take the light. That part is the confusing bit. Maybe as far as character design the Consul would not have had been as good of a final boss for the campaign, but in my mind it would have been a twist (that made sense) if the Consul killed Ghaul in his moment of conflict and he decided to take the light for himself to exact his nonspecific revenge on the universe and his apparent worship of death (bone necklace hints to). If I had to write that ending its what I would have liked to explore and heck maybe even have the Traveler bring back Ghaul afterwards and then send him on his way to "find himself" as someone that was no longer emperor and to contemplate the actions he took under the counsel of his "teacher" that was using him, setting Ghaul up for some other story in the future. I found Ghaul to be a very sympathetic character while he was genuinely probing the Speaker for the right way of being selected by the Traveler. His rejection yet compliance with his old teacher removed that sense of sympathy, while a sort of infighting within the Cabal would have set the stage for why the rag tag forces lead by the vanguard and player would be successful, when the initial defense opening the campaign was not. I am loving this lore and backstory overall. Looking forward to diving into the DLC and Forsaken.