Yeah, I know...another Mo Yung F'uk topic. The thematic usage of this character fascinates me at the moment...
Perhaps the least popular of Jin Yong's protagonists was Chan Ga Lok of BOOK & SWORD: GRATITUDE & REVENGE. I barely know anything about the character or this story, but I gather from some of the remarks I read here that his unpopularity is due largely to his mistreatment of a woman who loved him for patriotic purposes...and that for his "sacrifice" of this woman, he still failed to achieve his goal of restoring the Ming Dynasty?
That sounds like Mo Yung F'uk to me. Mo Yung F'uk also spurned the love of a woman (Wong Yu Yin) in his pursuit of reviving a dead kingdom, and like Chan Ga Lok, Mo Yung F'uk failed in his goal.
As B&S: G&R was one of Jin Yong's first works and DGSD one of his last, I wonder if the Mo Yung F'uk character was, in some way, Jin Yong's own parody of Chan Ga Lok.