He often mocks her attempts to be gentle, kind, or ladylike, believing it doesn't suit her, and encourages her scheming ways, even as he despises them.
Rhett witnesses Scarlett's young confession to Ashley at the plantation barbecue and is immediately attracted to her boldness in breaking social conventions and her beauty.
However, partway on the dangerous journey, his convoluted convictions lead him to give her a kiss and a gun before he abandons her on the road in order to enlist in the doomed American Civil war.
An impoverished and desperate Scarlett seeks him out to request a loan of $300 (equivalent to $5844 in 2023) to save Tara, and after leading her in circles to see how much she'd be willing to debase herself for the funds, including her offering to be his mistress (to which he replies she wouldn't be worth that much) reveals he was never going to lend her the money, lacking sufficient liquid assets.
Rhett is upset, since he actually was going to lend her the money once out of prison, and later praises her scheming and ability to steal her newest husband from under her sister's nose.
During this time, Rhett admires that Scarlett makes ventures as a businesswoman, running and expanding Frank's businesses, but deplores her hard-nosed and miserly tactics, which earn her few fans, and does not understand her all-consuming need to hoard money.
Her unladylike and brutal business behavior causes Scarlett to be attacked in shanty town, and when her husband, Frank, dies during a retaliatory Ku Klux Klan raid, Rhett saves Ashley Wilkes and several others by alibiing them to the Yankee captain, a man with whom he has played cards on several occasions.
She does not believe or trust that he loves her, and often uses her idealized infatuation with the gentlemanly Ashley Wilkes to comfort herself from the worldly, and frequently flippant, Rhett.
Rhett views her money-grubbiness as tacky, loathes the position Ashley continues to play in her heart, and is unable to sway her hardened affections with his sardonic teasing.
After being disowned by his family (mainly by his father), he became a professional gambler, and at one point was involved in the California Gold Rush, where he ended up getting a scar on his stomach in a knife fight.
When Bonnie is born Rhett showers her with the attention that Scarlett will no longer allow him to give to her and is a devoted, even doting and overindulgent, father.
Rhett also decides to join in the Confederate Army but only after its defeat at Atlanta, and when the "cause", as it were, was clearly understood by a man of his perception to be truly lost.
In the sequel Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley, the Butler parents are called Steven and Eleanor, the younger brother is Ross.
In the authorized prequel and sequel Rhett Butler's People his parents are called Langston and Elizabeth, his brother is Julian.
[1] Warner Bros. offered a package of Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland for the lead roles in return for the distribution rights.
But the arrangement to release through MGM meant delaying the start of production until Selznick International completed its eight-picture contract with United Artists.
At the time, he was wary of potentially disappointing a public who had formed a clear impression of the character that he might not necessarily convey in his performance.
Michael Sragow of Entertainment Weekly compared Butler to James Bond, arguing that both characters share an analytical sense, are good at seducing "ambivalent" women, and are "masters of maneuvering behind enemy lines".