Lara Parker definitely considered Angelique to be the victim (My God - one can't get through reading
Angelique's Descent without being hammered over the head with that notion over and over again!!), though one would be hard pressed to say that Angelique was ever the true heroine of any of the storiylines she appeared in. Well, except perhaps in Ang's and Parker's own minds.
But with Catherine, Parker really and truly got to play the heroine of the storyline.
And as for Bramwell possibly being one-note, I wouldn't say that. Yes, he can certainly be angry and self-absorbed, and he's both of those things much of the time - but there's also the side to him that he displays whenever he's around Melanie. He does see Melanie as a fellow outcast in the Collins family, but there's more to it than that because he also feels deeply sympathetic toward Melanie because of the way she gets treated by her "brothers". And whereas he tends to strike out at the other members of the family, his empathy for Melanie's plight brings out in him a need to support and comfort her. Though of course,[spoiler]there's much more to their relationship than meets the eye - and neither of them are even aware of it at this point -and to get into that now would be very premature.[/spoiler]