Beyond Selidor

I agree with you, although I do think it's worth pointing out problematic characterisation or narrative choices, talking about issues of representation, and, if possible, supporting creators whose books/films/TV shows/whatever are better on that score.

we think of art as this free, liberating medium when really at one time you had to make sure nothing could be interpreted as treason against the King.

That is very true, although in medieval Ireland, poets could threaten to compose a satire about rulers with whom they were dissatisfied, and the threat of this was apparently so grave that the rulers tended to pay the poets in order to prevent the satires being composed. (The idea was that the satire would shame the ruler.) It's not clear how much this reflects historical realities - it may just be a sort of literary trope, but it does seem to point to a certain ambiguity in terms of power relations between artists and rulers in medieval Ireland at least.