Scans_Daily

I'm not very familiar with canon - there's a lot of it, after all - but is it possible to argue that Bruce has changed over the years to become less forgiving and more rigid? Good qualities - high standards, discipline - are starting to become bad qualities. He's getting older and so is Alfred - even Batman has to have some complicated feelings about his own death and that of his oldest family member, friend, and ally, who is the one person who WILL NOT LEAVE HIM. I don't know if it's true that his authority is challenged more often by various Gotham-based capes, but if so perhaps being challenged makes him unwilling to admit he's wrong about anything. Hence how he treats Stephanie, perhaps - he's in charge, he doesn't have to explain himself, and he doesn't have to take her skills into consideration when what he wants is to be in control.

To a certain extent, this is a Watsonian attempt to explain major differences in characterization, but is it feasible? Esp with the right Bruce-POV fanfic, probably a series of vignettes spanning several incarnations of Robin ...