#I'm a great advocate of Dain's strength to resist despite having ALL the odd against him

[reginrokkr]

𝐂𝐗𝐈𝐋. Given Dain's high standing in the military of Khaenri'ah, I am still debating whether he knew or not about its dark side (which is huge and lasted for millennia if we take as a solid point of timeframe when Phanes threw the sapphire nails to mend the land from the Apocalypse, one of which landed in Dragonspine and the author of one of the stone tablets already talked about a nation without gods being built somewhere) and in case he didn't and by then he was already destined for greatness —be it by being tied to Irminsul already or something else, thus already gauging a greater picture outside Khaenri'ah, but of the world—, if he was forced to make a decision to not do everything in his power to do something for Khaenri'ah or do something else to think about the future and not so much about the shorter term (if the darkness that spread from Khaenri'ah to the rest of the world were to be left unchecked, the whole world could've gone to poop easily) and come empty-handed because what could he possibly do against the gods?

Whatever the case is, what I want to address is that chances are that in the heat of the moment, he did hate the gods when Khaenri'ah's fall happened but not even that would blind him to see things from perspective (I will touch on this a tad later). Assuming that he came to witness that even Khaenri'ahns themselves could summon the rifthounds, not so much that perhaps it was the only choice the gods had to keep all that consuming darkness at bay from the potential danger of spreading to the rest of the world (as it ended up happening anyway) because sooner or later, that would've spilled on the rest of Khaenri'ah's civilization and would be cause of serious danger to the citizens— but because people who had nothing to do with the festering obsessions for thousands of years were also brought into the equation, full blooded Khaenri'ahns or not. And what's worse: not only the gods had to destroy their home but they had to cast that bloody curse that, regardless of the purity of people's blood, was horrible in many ways.

However, and as I say, not even this blinds him to the greater scheme of the world at large if we come to think that, assuming that the first nation of Teyvat he resurfaced on was Sumeru, in helping Zurvan alongside the one-armed sage to purify that area and dispel the Sign of Apaosha he cooperated indirectly with no less than three goddesses: Rhukkadevata, Egeria and Nabu Malikata. Considering how early on after leaving Khaenri'ah that was and his still very fresh inner turmoil, there is a great strength in pulling himself together to do something like that and rise as a hero in that area, even if it was so those who continued to come to the surface would have somewhere safe where to stay or so no other innocent people would have to suffer some major consequences— let alone brought by the same people he pledged loyalty to.

In view of this and coming to a more present time where he must have an even bigger view of the great picture than he must've had in the beginning of the Cataclysm, I will say that Dain doesn't hate gods or at least, he doesn't hate them in general and is capable of directing that hatred to the actual puppeteers in a play where the Archons are the marionettes. Of course, that doesn't mean he won't be critical of them as we've seen with Venti, Zhongli and Ei so far, with Zhongli the most out of the three— but just as he criticizes them he also stays on his lane when he doesn't have anything bad to say about some of them such as Nahida and Focalors.