VOX POP VS CULTURED MALES

Recently, I wrote a poll about who would be the best ruler of Westeros and distributed it among my Facebook acquaintances. All of the Baratheons were featured on the list.
I was one of the few (currently six) who voted for Renly. While Stannis never lost the first place, reaching up to 61 votes.
Definitely, the youngest of the Baratheons may have been popular in-universe, but the real world shows the true story. Most people favour Iago over Cassio, despite the latter being more popular in-universe, for the same reason that they prefer Stannis to Renly.
In these days, chivalry is out. WORSE THAN THAT, cultured gentlemen are often cast as villains (gay or het) in most celebrated films. Like Stuart Dunmire (Sir Not Appearing in the Book) in Mrs. Doubtfire, for example:

Dashy Stuart Dunmire (Pierce Brosnan!) walks in.  It’s obvious they’ve already had a thing for each other.  He is handsome, courteous, rich, and sexy but not interested in sex for its own sake, or for unhealthy reasons.  He is genuinely interested in her work and her personality,  and is cultured.  Stu is so sorry, he’d always hoped she’d find happiness.  How nice, Miranda is happy he remembered her and cared so much.  They go over designs together and plan to talk again soon.
 Lesson #4: nice cultured moral guys- how men are supposed to act- are the annoying antagonists.
 Stuart Dunmire, “pretty boy” or “lover boy” or whatever it is...
We don’t see or hear from Stu since he chokes.  Is he out of the picture?  Has he been “emasculated” by choking and doesn’t want to come back? (or does the film not want him back since he’s no longer “masculine”?)  An even worse possibility is that he isn’t seen anymore because he isn’t necessary anymore, that it doesn't matter either way whether he’s in her life or not. As an object of happiness for Miranda, maybe he doesn’t fit into the story anymore…
Stuart Dunmire is everything a woman can dream of.  He’s handsome, dashing, protective but not overbearing, not interested in sex for sex’s sake, and has good manners.  Did we mention he’s rich?  He loves the kids, is interested in Miranda’s personality and life, and is an object of her happiness and liberation.  He is portrayed as the kind but annoying new boyfriend, who has everything a girl can ever want…but isn’t right for her, since he makes her happy.

Or the Dandy Highwayman, that nerdy librarian and eighteenth-century otaku featured in "Stand and Deliver" (Scooby Doo Mystery Inc., Episode 46), who adopts a dashing and cultured alter ego, and abducts only female victims in the woods at night, to make up for the lack of success in love (heterosexual, indeed!) that his true self suffers from... incidentally becoming the villain of the week.

Making villains cultured and antiheroes losers. That's another tenet of anti-intellectualism (which I suspect to be a conspiracy to undermine the power of the intelligentsia).

Here's my law for reading the learned and/or dashing male appearing in media (except "chick" media, the exception).
 If cultured male characters are straight, they're the bad guys. 
If they're gay, they're good guys, yet in supporting roles.
 If they're asexual, they're good guys, yet in supporting roles (the notorious "learned equals celibate" stereotype). 
If they're bisexual... there's no such thing as bisexuality in the mainstream media!

In fact, I wrote The Ringstetten Saga (and many of my other works) to showcase the cultured male as heroic for being cultured (aside from 007, I can't think of any other straight cultured male lead not created by me!). Gerhard von Ringstetten and his male descendants as proof that a dashing and learned young officer (raised, originally, to be a courtier) may become a lieutenant, a landowner, someone successful yet not drunk on success...