Creative Development Q&A and Kerrigan's Fate

Question: Raynor's attitude in StarCraft II was surprising, considering where we left off in Brood War. After Kerrigan backstabbed him and killed Fenix, Raynor gave up on her and was hell-bent on getting rid of her. He explicitly promised he would kill her. What led him to change his mind, killing Tychus so he could save her?
Answer: I answered most of this question previously, but I want to follow up with this one for two reasons, which I'll take in reverse order.
About Tychus: By the time Jim and Tychus are in the cave with Kerrigan, I think Jim is all-in. He's made his choice. There's no going back, and no shrinking from what has to be done.
The bigger reason I wanted to address this issue was your good point that Jim's attitudes and actions at the beginning of Wings are surprising. I want to have a discussion with the community about this, and hear your thoughts. At the start of Wings of Liberty, it had been four years since Brood War, and Jim had been through a lot. He'd had time to reflect on the past—perhaps too much time. Additionally, the Queen of Blades was in seclusion for most of that time, so she was not continually stoking his hatred. If Jim felt the same exact emotions at that point, if his thoughts had not evolved at all, that would be very strange. It would be as if the intervening four years hadn't happened, and he was just a two dimensional automaton sitting in purgatory, waiting for the story to resume. So Jim slipped into an alcoholic haze, and focused on the things he'd lost—including the red-headed ghost, Sarah Kerrigan.
That's the reasoning for Jim's surprising actions. Now, the counterargument would be, players didn't go through those four years with Jim. They didn't experience that—so they experienced a disconnect. Jim went from one attitude straight into another. This is a completely valid argument.
So I'd ask the community—what do you think? Should Jim have been in the same spot emotionally that he'd been in four years earlier? Or was the evolution a good idea, but poorly executed? Or was it a good idea and it worked fine for most of us? Or should it have been a whole different idea?

Question: Why did Jim Raynor turn his back on everything that happened in the original StarCraft and Brood War, in that instead of killing Kerrigan (he watched her do some BAD stuff), he fell in love with her?
Answer: The first thing to consider is how Jim perceived Kerrigan. Certainly Horner, Tychus, and the Hyperion crew all viewed her as an evil being who should pay for her crimes. They didn't see a distinction between Kerrigan and the Queen of Blades, and for a long time Jim probably didn't either. But the moment Valerian uttered those words about saving Sarah, a door opened in Jim's mind. Could there truly be the "old" Sarah — cold-eyed assassin, but not a mass murderer — somewhere inside the ruthless alien queen? Was it possible? Jim didn’t know the answer to that for sure. He'd seen the Queen of Blades deceive everyone before, and he wouldn’t put all his trust in Valerian's judgment. So for Jim, it came down to his gut, as it always does. Jim had a choice: hold on to his hatred for Mengsk and the Queen of Blades, or grasp the hope that perhaps he could fix this. And his gut told him to take that chance.
Jim has lost so much in his life — more than most people — and that made the idea of redeeming Kerrigan all the more powerful in his mind. He'd lost family, friends, worlds, ideals...and he thought he'd lost Kerrigan, too. Then he learned there was hope of redeeming her. This was the first time he'd had a chance to regain something he'd thought lost, his only opportunity to make things better rather than stop them from getting worse.