I have to wonder if the killing-Orphan thing is because they figured, better them than the next poor set of dupes, and they'd figure out something to save the people of Cocoon later? That's basically the only explanation I can come up with. (The killing-Vanille thing I think is meant to be a side-effect of the torture/turning into Ragnarok, but I might be confused. I was only about 75% paying attention on my replay of the final boss battle.)

Most recent tidbit on XIII-2 is that you might be able to import stuff from your XIII save, in which case I am super glad I farmed all the fucking achievements.

I don't get the hate-on for Vanille, either. Even though usually she's the character I want to strangle (see also: Rikku etc.) I really liked her! And the multiple badass ladies in this game did not hurt my impressions of it one tiny bit.

The female protagonist had a love-interest in VI (Celes, and to a lesser extent Terra, had a love-interest in-game although it wasn't super explicit.) I sort of count Yuna as the real protagonist of FFX, but I can see the argument for why fucknut McGee Tidus is.