I completely agree with you. The lion king leads us to believe that the lions just pass off dominance in the same way as a human monarchy (Mufasa to Simba). However, we need to look more deeply into things and use logical reasons without emotion for why everything is the way it was. To start off, Simba was most likely going to get removed from his position no matter what. This is a really important argument as Simba spent years trying to forget and push away his past. He didn't use it to become a better leader, he was definitely unprepared to take over. Next, Hyenas are SCAVENGERS so it makes no sense to banish them when realistically, they survived on very little food. Therefore, the drought which was blamed on them had to be caused by an outside source. Now if you take a look at the scar's state, you can see that there was always some favouritism between him and Mufasa. It was strength over intelligence when in reality, intelligence is mandatory in order to be a great leader. Scar was indeed manipulative, however, he only cares about what's on his schedule so he uses manipulation based on his opinion in order to reach his goals. In my opinion, a good leader will do whatever it takes to achieve what they think is best for them, even if it takes lives. In addition, Scar wasn't any worse than Mufasa. Mufasa was extremely oppressive and caused way too many deaths. On the other hand, Scar actually did save lives(hyenas) and the movie decided to disregard it. His motives were to decrease the number of animals to allow both species to survive. Yes, animals would die off naturally(both lion and hyenas), but there would be a good balance. If scar truly desired the throne and power over everything, why would he allow himself to suffer for so long and stay in a situation where he would starve?