Luzula

1066 and All That memorably summarised the two sides in the Civil War (not the same as the Jacobites and Hanoverians of a century later, of course, but certainly their ideological ancestors) as 'Wrong but Wromantic' and 'Right but Repulsive' respectively, which seems to be about the size of it—both sides' politics are pretty awful, but it's certainly easier to support the romantic underdogs. That is interesting about the Jacobites making more of a point of acting honourably and mercifully in order to be seen as legitimate and civilised, however—and potentially pretty relevant to FotH, given the way Keith's expectations of how a 'barbarian' Highlander should act are upended by Ewen's actual behaviour.

So yeah, I agree that the Jacobites are more sympathetic, but that neither side is at all progressive by modern standards. Actually, the book I'm reading at the moment has just suggested that the lack of a significant radical movement amongst the lower orders of society in eighteenth-century Britain was what allowed the elites to get away with fighting amongst themselves so much, which they wouldn't have been able to do if they were also threatened from below—I thought that was an interesting point.