#ENVY DEMON POSSESSED ILLARIO YES!!!!

[winterfromtevinter]

I think. I’m getting the hint. That some of you would like if I wrote Illario.

[oswhys]

Yes yes yes!! I also got the vibe that she was in love with him, or at least enamored.

Thank you for fleshing this out even more, there’s just… so MUCH here, and not here, that it’s a lot to cover.

The idea of Illario having a sinking horrific moment of clarity after he gets what he thought he wanted is so so good.

I mostly get the impression that he didn’t know Lucanis was alive, and his reaction to finding out the truth is a mix of emotions. Anger, probably finding out that he was lied to about the death and for not being told by his grandmother that she had suspicions. Anxiety, how is this going to affect things for him. Panic, he has to clean up after himself - cover his tracks. He gets rid of Caterina maybe as a way to keep Lucanis from becoming First Talon but also maybe to keep them from talking to each other. He can’t kill her, just like he couldn’t be the one to kill Lucanis. Deep down he cares about them, or in Caterinas case he cares about how they see him. He’s been playing second fiddle his whole life and he thought getting rid of Lucanis would finally make Catarina pay attention to him, give him what he thinks he deserves. For a full year he was wondering why she hadn't changed, why she still wasn’t giving him the praise and respect he thought he earned. Then he finds out it’s because she knew the whole time her beloved favorite grandson was alive.

Though there’s an argument to be made for him knowing or at least later being clued into Lucanis’s possession early. If he and Zara really are that close he probably went to see her right after dropping the player off at the boat. Probably got her and the venatori to help with faking Caterinas death. I… honestly don’t know for sure if Lucanis’ possession is common knowledge among the crows pre Zara fight. No one from the crows mentions it until that point and afterward? I think? But Illario probably knew or found out earlier.

There’s just something about the idea of Zara cultivating an envy demon within him that tickles my brain. It fits so well, and I also kinda forgot the one line Rook can have during the corpse interrogation where you can say something about how Illario did all of this out of jealousy. There’s just SOMETHING here. If Illario got manipulated into unintentionally becoming an abomination or if he fully agreed, thinking it’d give him an edge or whatever, there’s just something about it.

Could be Zara working on cultivating a demon in him as a pet project hoping to sprout Envy and bind it once it hatches, or wanting to see if she can replicate the merging of non mages with spurts and demons again. Or it could be Zara later wanting to have a way of keeping Illario in check or for herself or just to give him a gift, a source of power to put him well above other assassins. If he can control it. Or really, if she can.

So, when I played Lucanis’s questline for the first time, I genuinely thought that Illario was going to turn out to also be possessed. I like to try to come up with theories if there's some kind of mystery involved. Obviously, Illario is suspicious from the get-go but if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt you can, after all, grief really does make people act strangely, but not usually immediately after the death. But when he shows up after the defeat of Zara and kills her just as she says “Amatus” upon seeing him there's no doubt he was in cahoots with her. But then something interesting happens, he uses blood magic, some enchanted pin. He still keeps up the act of innocence though. We get further confirmation during the questioning of Zara’s corpse that the two were extremely close, at least from her perspective. But then we get a strange little tidbit from the memories of Lucanis later in his quest line when you're with spite. Lucanis has a memory or maybe it's some warped memory of Zara talking about the cultivation of an Envy demon. 

Zara’s project was to cultivate and bind different types of demons more easily through new techniques. Zara was talented enough to be able to put a demon inside of a non-mage subject, something that shouldn't be possible in the first place, or at least unheard of. She also wanted to cultivate certain types of demons, ones that are more rare and possibly harder to bind. We see the results of most of her test subjects, either walking corpses or bound demons. Let's say she agrees to take Lucanis to be a test subject, thinking the whole thing would just kill him and the terms of her deal with Illario would be met. Let's say shes surprised Lucanis is even able to merge with spite, let alone survive well afterward. Now let's say this gets her thinking, can she replicate this? Can she put demons and spirits into non-mages? Was this a freak accident?

I know I’m speculating a lot here but hang with me. Now I don't know if her scheme is to take advantage of Illarios jealousy and use it to create an envy demon, something rare and hard to bind, but it would naturally be attracted to that much envy in a person. Or maybe it's presented as an opportunity later down the line, that Illario could become an abomination and gain as much power as one, being able to tap into magic even if not in full control would still give him an edge. I don't know, I just think there was a bit more to the story that we don't know about, aside from what we’ve seen in some of the concept art. Which shows something akin to Illario being manipulated by either Zara or some kind of desire demon or??? Just someone in a pool of blood, with horns? But pieces of these ideas got left behind in the game. Fragments of something larger and it drives me up the wall. 

There's an obvious romantic connection between Illario and Zara that is never elaborated upon in conversation, It is a deeply interesting tidbit of information and nothing is done with it. Then there's Zara’s line in Lucanis’ memories of her saying that the conditions of cultivating an envy demon must be perfect (the line that sent me through this spiral). And then there is Lucanis’ log book. His 5th one if you don't save Treviso shares a reading list of books and he writes some notes with his thoughts about each. He says that Spite “trusts nothing to do with envy demons” which to be fair to spite, is reasonable they're… creepy, and envy as an emotion is a huge liar sometimes. 

There's just something there. Obviously, the story got cut up and changed with time but there was a time when I started to think that the reason Illario is so suspicious is that he's a red herring, or he's a patsy, or not in control of himself or being manipulated or SOMETHING. But no he's just… kinda stupid. He locked up his grandmother and kept her alive? IS HE STUPID?

Anyway, I just like the idea of some grander conspiracy or grander narrative and that maybe Illario wasn't all to blame for everything or that he was, and he was actually even more villainous. Being controlled by his own jealousy to the point of madness blah blah blah you see why I’m thinking about this so much now yeah?