I think the original Dark One was being controlled by whomever had the knife so he seems less responsible then Rumpel who seems to be in control of his deals and is doing evil things just for his own reasoning and is in control. We didn’t see the original Dark One kill anyone except himself. I think that Desperate Souls is terribly written, but i don’t think that it seemed like that was the first time Rumpel killed someone. He too easily decided to kill the dark one and catch the castle on fire and he didn’t seem to hesitate when it came to it.
And i don’t know what is going on in the Ogre Wars. It may have been that they were going to be overrun and they really needed the soldiers. It may be that the something shady was happening by them taking the kids. And i don’t really get why they would take the 14 year old child and not instead take her parents, but that is one of the badly written issues, so maybe something shady was going on there. I just think that we live in a different time where sending a child to a war seems unthinkable, but children were sent off to do dangerous things all the time in the past. It is another thing that we don’t really have enough information. I think what we know is that Rumpel was generally considered a coward by most of the people and we know that Bae was willing to go to war and that it was Rumpel that wanted to run. And i am not saying that war is good, but i could see a time when it is fight or wait and get overrun and it may have been to that point. We don’t know.