I think an underappreciated part of the game is just how much time these people spend together. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a month, with no electronic distractions and almost no breaks. When people say that someone should "Just get over it" and reward the game play, I don't think they are considering how personal some of this can get even though it is a short amount of time. Additionally, I think that most jury members have it in their head that there is a duty to uphold at least some minimum standard of behavior (what that is obviously depends on the person). You can lie and betray people but there is a line that you can't cross, or rather, there is a line that you can't cross too many times. These are the reasons that Russell can't win playing the way that he does. He asks the jury at the end to respect his gameplay but they don't actually respect it, because most of the jury members think in their heads "I could have gotten there too if I'd been willing to take the shortcuts that Russell took". With all that said, Russell has been a great character, a great addition to Survivor lore.
As for final tribal council. I'd have voted for Parvati, I think she had a slightly harder overall journey but you have to respect the fact that Sandra was always on the bottom rung of her alliance and constantly clashed with the most powerful player in the game, but was never in serious danger of being voted out after the merge.
