If you completely tune out the back story, he was just a sweetie. The ending, John's death was pretty good and fit the narrative perfectly. It was a final Redemption, he knew they only way to save his wife and son was to die. You do have a strange thing for calling questionable-at-best characters, likable. Forget who the last one was but I am sure you could find some redeeming qualities in Gannon. He was just misunderstood by Link and Zelda. His desire to to conquer Hyrule was simply to put in place a system of Government that gave Hyrule free heath care and cookies.