Helen, Covenant's first action set the tone for his (unenduringly imho) long and drawn out process of redemption. The last 50 pages of the final book finally turns into a page-turner and Covenant pays the hero's price and (within the law of the world Donaldson evoked) redeemed himself for all his sins. There may be many reasons why the Covenant series is subpar, but the anti-hero issue is not one of them imho.
Is it not C.S. Lewis who argues that every vice is a twisted virtue? If you accept his argument, the king who lechers and what-not in his harem may be worse than Boromir and Feanor and your character who does Really Stupid Things, but it would seem that you (perhaps rightly) rate certain sins as greater than others or balanced by more/greater virtue, which is fine. But that's different from saying that an anti-hero's vices are just plain vices.
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