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Bibilical Allegory within Dragon Prince

I've seen a few in this show, mainly concerning Aaravos.

Let's go back to the beginning of the chronological stories in both the bible and the show.

The story of Adam and Eve:

God created the the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. Of course, to God a day could be a different length of time. On the planet of earth, he created a garden called Eden, where every living creature lived in harmony and splendor. To govern this garden much like God governs the universe, he created Man from dust and named him Adam. Adam grew lonely seeing that every creature in the garden had it's mate and he ws alone. Hearing Adam's internal prayers of partnership, God took a part of Adam and made him a wife. Adam and Eve were able to enjoy the luxeries of the garden on the condition that they do not break the one rule, to take in the knowledge of good and evil for humanity. The serpent was a petty animal, and disliked the favoritism God gave the humans, and so tricked Eve into taking in the knowledge. This caused God to be furious for the defiance displayed, and so Eve was punished, her and all her descendants will die, and it will feel like death if she ever brings life into the world. She was also cast from the garden.

Some other details the story holds is that Adam immedetely sinned after Eve was found Guilty, and the Serpent suffered due to his involvement as well.

Some stories say that Adam had a first wife who left him, or that Satan or this first wife became the snake. Of course the version I heard fits more with this allegory.

The allegory is a little switched up, instead of Husband and Wife, it's Father and Daughter.

The Story of Elarion (much like Eden):

The stars (the startouch) created the world, and within this world grew a great city named Elarion. In this city Elves, humans, and animals all lived in harmony. Of course, humans were created weaker than elves and animals. A startouch came to live amongst these creatures around Elarion, and in his loneliness made a daughter named Leola. There was a wyrm (latin for serpent), a dragon who despised humanity, thinking them nothing but pests. Amongst the Cosmic order there was one rule that could not be broken, human cannot take in the knowledge of magic. Leola in her innocence, chose to help humanity, not knowing of the rule or it's consequences of breaking it. The Wyrm told the stars of Leola's sin, and they thus decided she is to pay the ultimate price for breaking the rule, she was to be put to death. Elarion fell after her destruction.

The Adam figure (Aaravos), chose to sin after his daughter's mistake, corrupting Humanity further; and after the wyrm's involvement, he suffered greatly. This, much like biting the apple, doomed humanity.

The difference here is that in this story Adam turned into Satan. Let's not forget the scene where Aaravos offered Callum the apple which would have corrupted or killed him, thus signifying him as the serpent/Satan.

Now for the next part of the allegory: Callum as the messiah.

Going back to the apple scene, there is a part in the bible where Christ is tempted during this 40 day fast by Satan three times. Aaravos does tempt Callum in this rocky plain, but he is saved. Also seeing as there were three tests of Christ, Callum ended up doing Dark magic three times before it stuck with him. Unlike Christ who resisted Satan fully, Callum doesn't let this stain upon his soul corrupt him, and it is never enough to fully do so. Satan doesn't win, Aaravos doesn't get Callum's soul.

Then there is the final confrontation: Jesus ends up dying to save everyone from the cruel fate of God. Saving them all from Hell.

Callum decides that he will sacrifice himself in order to save everyone from the satanic figure, and yet Callum like Christ doesn't end up fully perishing.

It also helps that Callum is becoming an archmage, which is something akin to the works of God, in this case it's nature's magic being channeled through him.

Those are the two Allegories I found, the tradegy of the beginning, and our saviour in the end.

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Yes, Callum Did Choose the Greater Good Over Rayla

Since the end of 7x09, there’s been a lot of contention that, despite being built up for four seasons, Callum is never forced to choose between his loves ones and the greater good, and that this is a question that’s been punted to a hypothetical Arc 3.

However, I don't think that's quite right - in fact, the evidence strongly indicates that Callum did make this difficult choice. In heroic journeys, the ultimate test isn't "would you kill your loved one?" but rather "would you sacrifice what you want most?" And in this sense, Callum was willing to sacrifice his future with Rayla - the thing he explicitly stated he wanted most, representing the culmination of his character arc from an insecure step-prince to a true hero willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

The Sacrifice Was Real

Callum's plan to sacrifice himself to trap Aaravos was unequivocally a choice that prioritized the greater good over his relationship with Rayla. Consider these key moments:

1. When Rayla begs him not to go through with his plan (which required his death), he responds directly:

2. Aaravos himself acknowledges the nature of this choice when he says:

3. Runaan describes Callum as having a "good heart" who:

The narrative frames this as Callum choosing the collective wellbeing of the world over his personal desires and relationship with Rayla. This isn't diminished by the fact that his plan would also save Rayla alongside everyone else.

The Cost to Rayla Is Significant

Some argue that because Rayla's life wasn't directly at stake, Callum didn't truly choose between her and the greater good. This misunderstands the nature of his sacrifice. By choosing to die, Callum imposed significant costs on Rayla:

He deprived her of a future with him

He caused her immense emotional pain and grief

He made this decision unilaterally, without giving her a chance to help find an alternative solution

He disregarded her explicit wishes when she begged him not to go through with it

The emotional harm Callum knowingly caused Rayla by choosing to die represents a genuine sacrifice of their relationship for the greater good.

The Confrontation with Dark Callum

The internal struggle between Callum and his dark self highlights this moral choice:

Dark!Callum: Even if you have to sacrifice your sense of right and wrong.

Callum: I can’t. Don’t you get it? Rayla loves me. She believes in me. This version of myself

But, Callum rejects this, deciding against the idea of compromising his values, believing there must be another way:

"There is a way out of this, with good people, doing courageous things."

But when circumstances change dramatically-with the Ocean archmage's death eliminating his original plan -Callum faces a more desperate reality. It is only then, when no other options remain, that he makes the difficult decision to use dark magic and sacrifice himself. This evolution isn't a contradiction of his earlier stance but a tragic acceptance that sometimes protection of the many requires personal sacrifice. Even in this darkest moment, Callum ensures his use of dark magic comes with the ultimate price: his own death, preventing Aaravos from exploiting his corruption.

And the fact that Callum arrives at this moment in this way is significant: for the entire series, Callum believed that dark magic was wrong primarily on moral grounds. But at the end of Arc 2, Callum has now realized that the price of dark magic isn't just moral, it's existential. He understands that the stakes extend far beyond his personal principles to the survival of everyone and everything.

This deeper comprehension of the true nature of dark magic transforms his sacrifice from a mere moral choice into an essential act of protection for the world. His willingness to give up his future with Rayla stems from this profound awareness that the threat is far greater than he initially believed, making his choice to prioritize the greater good both necessary and meaningful in a way it couldn't have been earlier in his journey.

Character Growth, Not a Contradiction

Some point to earlier moments where Callum used dark magic to save Rayla as evidence that he prioritizes her over everything else. However, this ignores:

1. Character development - Callum has grown significantly over seven seasons

2. Context differences - Earlier scenarios didn't present a direct "Rayla/relationship vs. world" choice

3. Scale of sacrifice - His final choice required giving up his life and future with Rayla

The Nature of Heroic Sacrifice

The hero's journey often culminates in a moment where the protagonist must sacrifice what they want most for the greater good. For Callum, what he wanted most was a life with Rayla:

Callum: I think I could do this. All of it. [...] Be with you. Yup, I could do this. Pretty nice life.

By being willing to die to save the world, Callum sacrificed this future. Whether Rayla's physical safety was directly at stake is irrelevant to the moral weight of this choice.

Conclusion

Season 7 completes Callum's heroic journey by having him choose to make the ultimate sacrifice: choosing the greater good even at the cost of his future with Rayla and her emotional wellbeing. This doesn't diminish his love for her; rather, it elevates it to a higher form of love that encompasses care for all life and the world itself.

The narrative framing, dialogue, and character reactions all support this interpretation. Callum didn't just decide to sacrifice aspects of his relationship with Rayla - he sacrificed the relationship itself by choosing to die despite her pleas. This is the very definition of choosing the greater good over personal desire, and it represents the pinnacle of Callum's character development.

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Precious child 🥺🤲

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The tiny Percy saga continues

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Sometimes it hits just how tonally different The Dragon Prince is from virtually every other kids show on TV and I lose my mind. I'd argue something like Infinity Train gets closest with its emphasis on psychological horror and morality, or even Transformers: Prime (if you know, you know) with its severe focus on war (aka one of the more lowkey episodes is a main character having a suicide bomb forcibly strapped to their chest). Steven Universe Future and Jurassic World: Camp Cretaeceous/Chaos Theory are also probably honourable mentions.

All of these shows have mature content in them, which isn't different from more popular shows like Owl House, She-Ra, or even ATLA, but often times in aforementioned three that content is presented in lighter ways and/or interrupted by bathos (this is true for She-Ra in particular). Most of TOH's heaviness is reserved for S2 Hunter or S3 Luz; ATLA has some episodes that particularly emotionally heavy (The Southern Raiders, Zuko Alone, the Southern Air Temple) or are quite hitting in exploring themes of colonization (Imprisoned, City of Walls and Secrets, Northern Air Temple), but a good deal, I'd say even the majority, are also pretty fun shenanigans, too. To be clear as well, a lighter tone is not a Problem never mind a negative (ATLA has a very strong thematic point to its own about the sanctity of children and childhood amid the horrors of how imperialism strips it away), but it is a tonal difference.

And it's not as though TDP doesn't have episodes where there are fun shenanigans (Callum and Rayla's initial exploration of Xadia in 3x02 is nothing but fluff, Soren and Corvus are a more gay comedic duo in 6x02) but the series more or less operates like "What if every episode was The Southern Raiders?" due to its consistent emphasis on grief and morality. They use words like kill and death and murder all the time.

From the pilot / opening episodes

and to when characters are having breakdowns because they murdered someone (and we're still supposed to like them) or have done horrible things, with the show's heaviness ramping up particularly from S4 onwards.

When loved ones die (and the show has a body count of 20+ named characters who have died, six seasons in, some even being children) the show depicts mourning in all its stages and ugly glory. The sadness, the anger, the revenge, the desperation, shifting blame and cognitive dissonances, thinking you had moved on only for that wound (which never fully healed) to be ripped wide open again.

Characters get tortured by being electrocuted or having their blood frozen in their veins or beaten up (5x08). There are successful assassination attempts (1x03, 3x02). People, even children younger than the main cast of characters, are put on trial with the death penalty (4x06, 6x09). Within the first three episodes, a character is running down stairs and tripping over dead bodies.

Sometimes three different characters in one episode will be having a breakdown or dealing with something absolutely devastating to their emotional state (2x08, 3x07, 6x01, 6x09, 7x01). The magic system is a trolley problem on steroids. Do you kill a monster to feed starving kingdoms, or to save yourself, or to save someone you love? What makes it a monster? What if the monster isn't a monster? What if you have to kill a child? What if it means killing your child? What if it means killing yourself?

There are two characters who canonically have cannibalized other people, one being a blood-drinker / vampire variant.

This doesn't mean the show isn't fun or funny. One character consistently thinks bathroom humour is funny (while being one of the most tragic characters in the entire show). The characters cheer each other up, take care of each other, are goofy, etc. The show is ultimately hopeful.

But the emotional weight afforded to the choices the characters are making, even good-intentioned ones with unforeseen disastrous consequences, the way show focuses on their emotional processing (or lack of) is very unique in the landscape of western animation, especially to this degree, I think. Never mind the increasing amounts of blood. Nor does this make the show inappropriate for children! Tiny me was morbid as fuck at 7 years old, I would've loved it, and I know many kids from ages 7-12 who do in my work as a tutor. But when people say "TDP isn't like most kids shows," I think what that means is sometimes lost in translation in conflating it with what people usually say aren't 'just kids shows,' when TDP... really, really isn't.

The show begins with assassins sent by a grieving mother to execute a father and his child in revenge for the father killing her partner and child, and it never lets you forget it.

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Reel James twitter thread for 7x01

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Silence

It's quiet when Vox Machina brings Percival back to Whitestone.

One by one, they pass through the portal Keyleth had opened; Grog cradles Percy like a parent would a sleeping child, making sure he's not jostled too much, even though he knows it doesn't matter anymore. Their friend, his friend is gone and the only thing the giant can do now is carry their group's gunslinger back to his home.

There are no people on the streets for now, a blessing and a curse all the same. They can grieve on their own before they arrive at Whitestone Castle, battered and charred and fallen yet still standing despite all odds, just like Percy should have. The castle's walls aren't the same white as they have been just a few days ago, their shade matches Percy's hair, covered in soot and smoke: grey, not white like he remembers. It shouldn't be this way, he has to ask someone to fix this. At least this... this can be fixed.

People are gathering at the top of the stairway, already suspecting the wrongness but not knowing yet the extent of it. Then Grog sees Cassandra sink to her knees and the little (for him) weight of Percival's body grows tenfold suddenly yet unsurprisingly in some way.

He walks up the stairs, with feet of made of lead and each step a mile long. But he will walks those stairs with his head up high, with spring to his step, because he's bringing his friend home for the last time and this is how his friend would have walked those steps.

Read the rest of the story here.

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In their hands.

So I’m just kind of manifesting since we didn’t get it this week and my heart hurts

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since i finally have a blog to talk about my fanfics (AH, why didn’t i do this sooner), i can talk about my future projects! for my alphabits collection, i’m so excited to write untampered because it’ll be a sophie-centric (ish?) one-shot. sophie used soulburn twice (S1E26, S2E40) and almost a third time (S2E48). the gamble was that you could lose your life, like Nimue did in S2E40, but in general, it burns up part of your life force. i wanted to write a sorta canon compliant team reaction to knowing that she’s been burning up her life force because i feel like it was glossed over compared to my expectations,,,or maybe i’m just too big of a sophie fan lmfao

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Headcanon #87

The battle between Janai and Kasef - and their respectful armies - will take place in Lux Aurea.

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Headcanon #86

If raised properly, homunculi can learn to reason and speak.

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Interesting point! Could be true, could be false, we’ll only know when somebody explains Ziard’s staff piece by piece I guess XD

...considering Callum will eventually forge connection with every arcanum, I think he’ll only need to wear the Corona of Heavens to undo the spell

so like if quasar diamonds can undo the coin spell. and the relic staff can do the coin spell’s entrapment. then… the purple gem in the relic staff is an outright or corrupted quasar diamond, right?

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Headcanon #85

The Sun Forge can be purified. 

It’s not simple, as it requires a strong of heart individual capable of performing the purification ritual from the inside, not outside - basically risking dissolving in the darkness.

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Aaravos, Leola, and the Entire History of Human Magic

ALL RIGHT, BUCKLE THE FUCK UP:

So after my "Leola and Laurelion might be the same person" crazy, I was looking shit up to write a post about alternately Laurelion possibly being Aaravos, as in Laurelion was the immortal Aaravos, and Aaravos is the fallen Laurelion, because of this:

White as the star's heart it pierced, as in "Novablade is white, and the star's heart was also white."

Who... had the white heart of a star...

... and now... doesn't?

hmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

However, the problem with this is that Aaravos at least appears to go from powered/heart-ed version:

To de-powered, heart...less? version:

...when he's imprisoned. At least, according to the way Zubeia tells it.

Meanwhile, in Ripples, we see what is presumably Aaravos's actual "fall," as the "Fallen Star"—a literal descent from the heavens. This occurs long, long before the events of Aaravos's imprisonment, before dark magic, before Elarion.

I'll note that part of what I'm taking into account here is a note from the artbook on Aaravos's designs:

As a "fallen" Startouch elf, Aaravos can only access a fraction of his former power.

So it seems like the assumption to make would be that Aaravos lost his powers and status when he was cast from the heavens, which is also where I would assume Laurelion dies and Aaravos is "born" if the Laurelion/Aaravos as the same being dichotomy was in play. Then why is his heart not blackened until he's imprisoned?

One possibility is that his empowered appearance is an illusion he's maintaining—another manipulation, that's dropped when he's imprisoned.

Another possibility is this is all bullshit, and everything is as generally assumed before: when Aaravos was imprisoned, the majority of his power was somehow stripped.

Leaving that aside for a moment, let's take a look at the order of operations here, historically.

Humanity looks to the stars to save them, but the stars do not respond:

— Patience

At some point, humanity is granted some kind of blessing from the heavens, long before humans built cities and became powerful:

— Patience

ALSO at some point, humanity is granted the power of primal magic. By tradition this was from the unicorns, in particular Leola:

— Tales of Xadia

However, this magic is forbidden them:

— Ripples

Aaravos is cast from the heavens in a calamity that creates the Sea of the Castout—again, long before dark magic:

— Ripples

Further, in the retelling of this story, Aaravos notes that the stars apparently were satisfied with the results of casting him out. It scarred the land, and frightened the humans—and their claim on primal magic—into submission:

— Ripples

I'll add another note from the artbook here on Aaravos's design:

Some designs had a strong, authoritative vibe that suited other Startouch elves, but not our "fallen star."

Finally, let's look at this again:

Aaravos, obviously, on his knees and in despair. A feminine-appearing elf who is almost certainly another Startouch elf, by the horn shape and the design of the crown on her brow.

I've seen at least one person cast this as a rendition of Aaravos's punishment, in that she represents the other stars and gestures as if to say "behold how far our brother has fallen."

But y'all. Y'ALL. Please.

We have seen this gesture FAR too many times for it to be something else, at this point. This is mercy, and love, and the passing of a torch.

So, let me clean this up into what I think happened:

The stars are largely absent gods, indifferent to the fate of humans and interested in only their design/prophecy of the world.

Leola, another Startouch elf (or else we're gonna stretch the definition of "unicorn" pretty far), takes pity on humanity and grants them the secret of primal magic.

Leola is somehow punished for this transgression. If Laurelion is Leola, she is killed. (The Celestial elves, in this case, are the guardians of the stars' order and power in Xadia. They are the last line of defense against this sort of thing.)

Aaravos, who loved Leola, either speaks on her behalf or otherwise rebels against the order of the stars. Aaravos is cast out. If Laurelion is Aaravos, he is robbed of his heart and his power.

"Leola's Last Wish" is to continue to be a guide to humanity, through the darkness.

Aaravos, meanwhile, fucking loses his mind and decides to burn down everything. He will destroy everything the stars put in place in all of Xadia, and he will leverage humans to do it.

Aaravos begins to spin up dark magic, and when the time is right, gifts it to humanity as the inciting action of his plan to tear all of Xadia apart. More on that here.

Anyway, that's it! Mystery of Aaravos solved.

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Headcanon #84

Terry creates every single one prosthetic for Claudia, including flowers and beautiful stones in it. 

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Headcanon #83

An infected, but wandering librarian still remembers Kazi had to return a book in the Great Bookery before the fall of Lux Aurea. 

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Posting this here for everyone!!