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“gale is disabled with chronic pain” i say into the mic. the crowd boos and jeers.

“no she’s right” a voice calls from the back. i look up. it’s gale dekarios himself.

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Gale As a Man of Faith

One thing I think gets lost a little bit in discussions of Gale is the fact that he is as Wyll put it “a man of faith.”

It isn’t that we don’t know that. It’s just that his faith seems to be so tied up with his ex-lover that we forget Mystra is also his goddess and that worship of her pre-dates her manifestation to him.

Often his faith is discounted as the indoctrination that allowed her to prey upon him. There is absolutely an element of truth to that, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. Gale’s arc is as much about his questioning his faith and coming to terms with it, as it is about his lack of self-worth. More under the cut.

Gale says he has been in touch with the Weave for as long as he can remember, which, if he was born during the Spellplague, means he was in touch with an unstable Weave. He would not have been in touch with Mystra at all because she was “mostly” dead at the time.

If Gale was old enough to understand what was going on with wizards at the time, he probably learned that they expected Mystra to return at some point because she always had before. Gale might also have had that belief.

That’s faith of a different sort. A belief in a goddess that may or may not return. She doesn’t exist at the moment, but she may exist someday. Gale just has to have faith. That’s a profound sort of faith and different from what most people in Toril believe because their gods are alive.

Gale’s faith was also probably wrapped up in his faith in the Weave and his ability to use it. There would have been no presence in it until, hey presto, one day Mystra is there.

Gale’s faith in the Weave now becomes wrapped up with faith in Mystra. For him at this point, every incantation becomes a prayer, every spell a psalm. He is devoted. Then she reveals herself to him and that, of course, makes his faith stronger.

Gale is often cast as power hungry and hubristic because he wants to give the Orb to Mystra hoping she will lift her Ban for him. He is, according to this line of thought, partially lying to himself if he says he did it out of love or to prove his worth. If we look at it through the lens of faith, we get a different interpretation.

Faith in a higher power often has an element of transaction. Follow these rules and you receive a place in heaven and potentially blessings in this life. Make an offering to them and they may look favorably on you. If bad things start happening, it’s because you angered your deity, your offering wasn’t good enough or simply because you are not worthy.

When Gale says he wanted to prove himself worthy, I believe him. It’s a natural thing when it comes to faith. Sure, he shares her bed sometimes, but she is his goddess, and he has faith that if he proves himself worthy, she will bless him.  Is he ambitious, sure. Does he want to be a god at that time? I don’t think so. I think he wants to be the next Elminster, otherwise why call himself Gale of Waterdeep? An impressive title to go along with that ambition. All he has to do is prove himself worthy, the way Elminster has.

But, he messes up. He doesn't do his homework. If he had, he would have known what he was dealing with and never tried to bring it to Mystra.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Mystra doesn’t tell him how he messed up. She doesn’t tell him anything about the Karsus Weave. She doesn’t give him a second chance.

She can remove the Orb; she does so in one of the endings. It could be a learning experience for our young, still inexperienced, ambitious wizard. Instead, she lets him rot in his tower. Punishment? Maybe. Gale certainly thinks so and he thinks he deserves it. He has faith that she is doing the right thing.

Why? Because he angered her. She is completely justified in turning away from him. He proved unworthy. His faith prevents him from even questioning her.

One thing to note is that while Shadowheart spends a lot of the journey trying to figure out who she is without Shar, Gale is already there. The difference is that while Shadowheart turned her back on Shar, Mystra turned her back on Gale.

So who is Gale without Mystra? Is he even a wizard anymore? He has to believe in her. He has to have faith that she will forgive him.

So, he doesn’t get angry that she left him. He calls himself the villain. He still worships her. She is still the source of all creation to him. She is the incarnation of his beloved Weave, and she can do nothing wrong.

Until she tells him to kill himself. At first, he is on board because she is his goddess, and he has faith that she is right. As a man of faith her forgiveness is important to him – not just because she holds the keys to a nice afterlife but because he wronged his goddess.  

In the real world, the faithful often ask for their deity’s forgiveness for transgressions. Gale is no different. As he points out, if he does what Mystra wants, “wrongs will be righted.” He’s talking about his own transgression. He blames himself and needs her forgiveness.

As he moves along, he begins to see that his faith was misplaced (this is similar to Shadowheart’s arc but it’s a lot more subtle). His goddess, who is supposed to protect him, the one he tried to do everything for, will only forgive him if he dies. What kind of god does that? Well, most of the gods on Toril will, but as a man of faith, those are other gods, not his, she would never ask that of him. But she did.

He will tell a romanced Tav that there is no love lost between him and Mystra because she would have seen him dead. He is questioning the faith he had in her, but he isn’t ready to renounce her the way Shadowheart does Shar (if that happens).

By the time we get to Baldur’s Gate he is seriously questioning his faith; to the point that he wants to become a god himself. He believes he wouldn’t toy with mortals the way Mystra toyed with him. He will become a god who answers prayers and helps the good and punishes the bad. This is Gale trying to take back his power, the same way all the Origin characters do. Is it the right way? No, because Gale becomes what he hates.  

And a Gale who apologizes to Mystra? Does that mean he has faith in her again? I would say not. He sees her for what she is. His faith has become tempered by reality.

But Gale is a man that needs something to believe in. What does he believe in? The Weave. Now that he can separate Mystra from the Weave in his own mind, he can apologize for basically not doing his homework and unleashing something destructive on the world.

His apology is to the world and to the Weave that he almost destroyed not to Mystra. He agrees to give her the Crown because he knows firsthand that mortals playing with Karsus’ toys is a bad thing and not likely to end well.

I think by this point Gale has figured out who he is without Mystra. He is still a wizard. He can still command the Weave. Maybe he isn’t a Chosen anymore but he is fine with that. He has found faith in himself.

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saw fireball knuckle tats and went ham on gale

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🎶Happy trails to youuu🎶

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baby gale doodle request in twitter

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Thanks Gale

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"When we met, our lives were rather different, and being here this evening… well, it reminds me how much has changed."

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// 𝘎𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱 //

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Hmmmm. This seems really interesting, but I think there are some points that are flattened/making a few leaps that are out of line with some things that are made kinda clear in the game.

Note: I’m not in line with the “Mystra groomed Gale from childhood” perspective that seems common in the gale-admiring segment of fandom in the way that it’s most popularly expressed because 1) people are usually implying that she was actively and directly engaging with him (vs indirectly) in a way that reflects a limited understanding of grooming and 2) that active and direct engagement doesn’t actually line up timeline-wise.

That being noted: there is no “normal relationship” here to speak of. Mystra is a god. And even more specifically, she is a god that is the source of power for wizards. Gale is both a wizard and has a natural affinity for the Weave, noted since childhood. That is a very clear, unambiguous set up to love/idolize/respect/worship/etc something before you even start actively/directly engaging with whatever it is (Mystra is the “it” in this scenario—because she is the Weave). And that doesn’t even get into the whole “her becoming his tutor and then muse and THEN lover” thing.

Simply put: there is no iteration of their relationship that is normal. This is not union of two equals or near equals. She is a god. He is a worshipper who has been trusted with a part of her power because Mystra has no choice but to do that, actually, so sayeth Ao. So yes there is trust, but far more than that, there is control. Which brings me to the next thing.

Now with the whole “toxic waste, etc.” metaphor: This is where the bulk of my disagreement comes from. I don’t necessarily believe Gale is blameless (he has an ego and ambition worthy of godhood, lmao), and I don’t necessarily believe he is owed forgiveness or that he should strive for it either (because these beliefs ultimately leave the tyranny of divinity intact and unchallenged). What I do believe unambiguously is that he should’ve had the opportunity to make up for his mistake (which he was deprived of until the moment it was most convenient for Mystra, because she’s a god and thats what they do, and even still he was deprived of an explanation until he disobeyed).

Mystra could’ve told him it was the Karsite Weave in his chest and she didn’t. And Gale didn’t know. That is very clear when they meet again and she tells him what it was (i.e., the truth).

Gale can say that he should’ve known, because of who he was and what he did with his time, but he didn’t. Because he wasn’t hunting for the Karsite Weave. He was looking for a lost piece of the Weave to return it to Mystra because he wanted to be ascended and earn her love (they are equivalent in this scenario because loving Mystra is loving his power). He wasn’t discouraged from doing it because he didn’t know, it wasn’t made known, and neither before nor after did Mystra tell him to not do it. So the whole “he was asked to not do that and did it and then needed to see how toxic it was” makes literally no sense here. He wasn’t asked to not do that. Obviously, he has the knowledge that the Karsite Weave is harmful. That is not anywhere near the same as “he was asked to not do that and did it anyway.”

Finally: I don’t really engage in online fandom too much bc burnout, but I felt compelled to write this, to be totally honest, not because I found some of the thoughts interesting or flat, but because I found the notions of “if she was trying to groom him, how did she fail so bad, etc.” to be just a really odd and harmful sentiment generally with relation to grooming. The push and pull between divine power and human autonomy is like a classic conflict in art for a reason, yes, but also sometimes predation doesn’t work? Partially or entirely? And the mechanisms of control noted (control spells, for example) go against the idea of what Mystra is (the Weave, yeah, but also a “good” god). “If she was trying to control him, why couldnt she” is just… not a logic or rebuttal for anything? It’s art and, again, the push and pull between divine power and human autonomy has been a major focus for a while. But also the drive to make decisions and exercise autonomy isn’t so crushable.

So yeah. Just my two cents. All respect to OP tho, I just disagree.

My DM partner raised a point last night on the post-bg3 mythologising of Mystra that went so damn hard, I actually had to pause our call and scramble to frantically take notes. It admittedly takes a silly turn, and is an hour-long conversation crammed into a few paragraphs. But still. Regards from a dnd DM of decades: "If Mystra groomed Gale, then why was she so bad at it? How did she fuck that up so spectacularly?"

"The literal goddess of magic herself, in all her power, with infinite magical apparatuses at her disposal and access to every brand of control spell, is somehow incapable all the same of stopping puppet play-thing Gale from exercising his agency and fucking with the Karsite Weave, aka the one thing she happened to be expressly not on board with, whilst simultaneously having been supposedly actively manipulating and controlling him since childhood? That would actually make her the most pathetic predator of all time, to an outrageous degree. She trusted him, not the other way around, because THAT is what it means to be Chosen. Do I even need to go into the question of respect and boundaries of normal relationships? It is not like they fell out over his starting a snow globe collection that fucked with her decor, or some other harmless hobby. If you want an actual parallel, what he did was basically convert her house into a pool of toxic waste, after being asked to please not do that. He then jumped into the toxic waste, because clearly someone needs to determine how toxic it actually is, and so now, he's just paddling around in it, being told to cut it out but sticking his fingers in his ears because his intentions were good, actually. And oh no, now he's stuck his dick in the toxic waste, so of course she's not going to want to hit that any more. Is he owed forgiveness? Not by her, or certainly not yet, not when his whole deal is literally that he makes terrible decisions, and will in fact stick his dick into the next vat of toxic waste he comes across, too. That is not how regret and forgiveness works, not when there's a whole pattern of behaviour involved. Hell, he knows this, and owns up to his toxic waste swimming habits and how he should have maybe known better and needs a better, non-toxic hobby once his storyline gets going, that's literally why we talk about Gale's fall and folly, too, but even when his dick is starting to turn green and falling off that somehow still won't stop him."

Man, what can I even add to that? That we love to make monsters of women so that our men can be saints? That conflating a love of Gale with a hatred of Mystra is symptomatic of that, and strange besides when she is an anthropomorphised concept more than she is a person? That men should be allowed to just be fallible fuck-ups too, romantic hero or no? Because, okay, I will in fact happily say all that every day until I die (as if I don't already). Dammit, it's not even like I buy into Mystra's forgiveness being something Gale should strive for - there are many reasons why I do not favour his professor ending; it's not just his relationship with her, but rather with magic altogether, that's warped. Get him as far away from all that as possible! As far as this situation goes, I just also cannot get on board with him as an innocent victim of anything, other than his own impulses (and that's part of why I love him? Character flaws are good and interesting, actually?). But hey, the really cool part is that hating Mystra is still completely your prerogative - just like side-eyeing that attitude is mine, especially from a dnd perspective. The idea of Mystra evil, Gale blameless, is not just a stretch within the cosmology and their respective roles of that larger system, it really barely holds up to scrutiny full stop.

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The smile <33

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(trying to romance the hottest wizard i've ever seen) did it hurt. when you fell from mystra's grace

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Puppy eyes 🥺

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What if he was just a little guy? A little wizard?

What then?

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just realized i never posted this gale??

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The Party: *Quietly discussing the plan to jump this stray Mindflayer*

Gale "Camp Cook" Dekarios of Waterdeep: *Zoned out thinking about the potential of eldritch calamari for dinner tonight*