Agree, I think RA did want Thorin to be a character people could empathize with, but the entire narrative would have to be changed. I’m confused by your stance, is the character good, or because most of the fandom still sees him defined by gold, there’s no salvaging it?

Here’s the thing.

I have a hard time believing that Thorin himself, of his own volition, actually did anything wrong. He was cursed – by hereditary severe mental illness, a dragon, or both (I lean towards both). Smaug was the causative agent of the war and Smaug fucked with Thorin’s head, much more explicitly in the movie. I see Thorin as an inherently good person who was thrust into horrific circumstances, not a raging, gold-sick Dwarf who split his time between greedily counting his money and playing the berserker.