It's easy to explain Michael's transition from family outsider at Connie's wedding, to hand-kissed Don Corleone at the end of the movie, to circumstances: Vito's incapacitation, Fredo's incompetence, Sonny's assassination, making him the default Don. But, do you think Michael actually wanted to be the Don?
Hamilton opined that the sources of war lay in the natural ambitions and avarice of all human beings.
The same could be said of Michael: whatever actions he took as necessary to protect his father eventually fed his ambition and avarice.
