@Cathxrsis
Yeah, part of it is the POV, but there’s definitely a line drawn somewhere. Most of the time, the “black-bellied” person has some sort of baseline that is “those who are nice to me, I will be nice to them in return”. Their morality isn’t based on justice, but they still keep “loyalty/be nice to clique” mentality. Otherwise they’re just bastard and will definitely get criticisms from a lot of the readers.
There’s some exceptions, but usually those exceptions are not in this type of settings. Those are set up to be anti-hero’s in the first place where hero’s aren’t expected to be good. Whereas here, we are told that these heroines are from the hero trope, not the antihero trope.
The “heroines” in these type of villainess series often crosses that line though.