#daughter of viren and lissa

[wheretwofacesmeet]

[a-very-sparkly-nerd]

all hyperfixating on rayllum rn so you don't think about how viren violated lissa and corvus's imprisonment and aaravos's daughter got murdered and claudia's gonna resurrect her dad a third time say aye

[wingzoffeather]

In general, I don't interpret Viren's letter as explaining WHAT happened with the past & his dark magic usage. He's NOT writing "So this a step-by-step rundown of how I got here."

(And S5 already confirmed that Claudia, and probs Soren too, already have at least a vague idea of what prompted Lissa to leave them & K'ppar to suddenly disappear. "If it wasn't for dad's dark magic you wouldn't be alive" - Claudia to Soren when he was captured in their camp. And it's implied that Soren feels some guilt about this, too.)

No, I interpret the letter as Viren trying to explain to Soren the emotional WHY & HOW of his villainous descent. (paraphrase) "I thought I was doing it out of love for you. But, when my personal life started spiraling, then I started blaming you. You didn't deserve it & I regret it."

This is still a kind of self-serving validation exercise. The overall message he's trying to communicate is: "I need you to understand me, understand why I hurt you, even if I didn't mean to. Before I am possibly executed."

And Viren realizes that his letter only serves HIS desire to reconcile and make peace and the info in his letter would probably be yet another emotional burden for Soren to carry; so he does the selfless thing & burns it.

Sometimes the selfless & right thing to do, is to just let someone continue to hate you, after you've hurt them. Especially if it's a coping mechanism, when they're vulnerable. It would definitely be a LOT to ask if Soren, to start a forgiving & reconciliation process with how raw he clearly still is.

"Truth is everything. But before you give it to another, ask yourself: are you giving them clarity, light, and purpose? Or are you shifting a burden to someone who needs all their strength?" - Astrid, season 6

And, this kind of sacrifice is actually in-line with Viren's core principle: A parent makes sacrifices for their children, never the other way around.

Viren sacrifices his freedom for Claudia, his daughter, to finally set a good example; he no longer has faith in the "power" of dark magic as a "creative solution". He'd been it's most steadfast student & he hopes, seeing him leave it behind, Claudia will also give up on dark magic. It only leads to pain & failure, and he wants her to live HER life, freely.

He sacrifices his life for Katolis' people. So they may live through Sol Regem's attack. This is his atonement for his political betrayal.

But, Viren sacrifices his one effective bid for forgiveness & reconciliation, for Soren. This is his atonement for causing him so much anguish, confusion, & self-doubt. While he very much no longer wants to be his son's villain, he recognizes that attempting reconciliation, right here & now, is not what's best for Soren's emotional well-being. So he accepts it, & willingly lets himself die, as Soren's villain.

[madou-dilou]

Harrow and Viren : analysis

Viren, since he resurrected in season 4, is constantly paralleled with Harrow.

"It's been a long time. Our kingdom is prospering. There is peace. My boys, they are growing up. Perhaps it's wiser to stay focused on these blessings."

"My whole life, I have been chasing after things I did not have. Now that I'm here and may have only thirty days left, do I really want to spent those days ... chasing ? Maybe I should stop and appreciate what I do have. A whole month, enjoying every moment with my daughter. Maybe it's time for me to accept that I am who I am. And when I reach the end, I'll be at peace. And it will just be the time to let me go."

Both reevaluate their lives, questioning the crimes they left in their wake. They feel like they have escaped justice. Their loved ones do their best, encourage them to continue living, of course, but they have come to the conclusion that if their life has left such a trail of blood, prolonging it will only spread more.

That at this point, the only right thing they could do for the world was leaving it.

For said loved ones, this attitude makes no sense and feels straight-up ungrateful. ("You are acting stubborn and ungrateful!"/"Please, dad, don't. Don't do this. Don't leave. It's a mistake. You can't. I saved you! You me your life! You have to stay...")

Especially since Harrow and Viren are both incapable of explaining themselves clearly. Viren straight-up tells Harrow he doesnt understand where he is coming from, and Harrow only answers "I know you don't. Leave me." Viren, meanwhile, talks about "a path of truth of freedom" that he needs to face.

In short, to quote Kaamelott's queen Guinevere "You slit your wrists in a bath I had myself prepared just for you."

Two kings caught in blood feuds, pushed by the devils on their shoulders to prolong an existence they no longer want, even at the cost of two being supposed to be sacrifices: a soldier, who signed for that (unlike the High Mage, side-eye Harrow), and this homunculus.

Both thus renounce dark magic by, as Harrow says, "calling it what it is" for the first time; and no longer “a creative solution to solve this” as Viren used to say.

And just as Harrow wrote a letter to his son Callum to free him from the wrongs of the previous generation, Viren attempts to do the same.

To Callum, Harrow tried to explain that the past, which we must nevertheless seek to understand, should not define the future; that his death must close the cycle of revenge that he initiated with the assassination of the Titan and for which he takes full responsibility; and that his sons must ensure a new era of peace. As he prepares to face death, he also makes sure his last conversation with Ezran is completely mundane, so the boy does not grow up thinking he abandonned him.

However, Harrow did not think to officially appoint a regent (Viren, Amaya or Opeli), which forces poor Ezran to assume a horrible role for which, at eight years old, he is obviously absolutely not prepared.

Which obviously puts the kingdom in a dangerous situation.

In his letter to Soren, Viren is very literal. He wants Soren to judge him, but for him to have all the necessary elements to do so; he wants Soren to understands why he made all these mistakes. Viren tells Soren that all the suffering he felt was never his fault, but his own.

It was Viren and Viren alone who chose to become a monster by violating Kppar then Lissa, thus causing her departure, then making Soren pay for it throughout his childhood.

The letter was intended to free Soren of all guilt. Because, when you get given the cold shoulder by your father throughout your whole childhood, you believe it has to be your fault. All divorce children think it's their fault.

The problem is, reading the truth might as well make Soren feel worse. Because this letter confirms that it was to save him that Viren destroyed the family, even if it was a choice that Viren made. According to Puzzle House, Soren remembers that he was sick, that his grandfather disappeared, that his father saved him, and that his mother left, but he could never connect the dots between all these events.

This letter means that the simple fact that Soren was alive was indeed the first crack that eventually caused the whole house to collapse.

Viren therefore chose to burn the letter, hoping to spare his son such a burden.

Both Viren's and Harrow's deaths have something of a suicide to them, and not just in the letters they leave behind.

Remember my post comparing their actions to the quote from the Kaamelott show ? "What is someone who suffers and spills his blood on the floor so that everyone is guilty? All suicides are Christ. All bathtubs are the Grail."

In short, I was trying to explain how their masochism made others suffer.

Harrow claims to consider himself a servant, and he certainly means it. He is humble, is aware monarchy is an unfair system and has a great sense of honor, not hesitating to defy certain traditions - by sharing his official portrait with Viren - and to put his own life at stake. But when, for example, he finds nothing better to do than deprive his people of food simply to honor a promise, his claims sound particularly hollow. He is out-of-touch enough not to know the state his kingdom is in, so he will certainly not have to see his own family starve. But he set out to restore some justice to the world, however stupid this justice is. He seems to consider that by sacrificing the kingdom, he is sacrificing himself. And during his heroic death, that by sacrificing himself, he will save the kingdom instead of plunging it into chaos.

Viren, most probably partly because of his social origins that he keeps getting reminded of (and a fun childhood too, the guy insults himself in front of the mirror until he breaks down crying and constantly devalues his son) is haunted by an inferiority complex. To be useless. He has a morbid need for gratitude. Hoping to matter, to serve a purpose, he spent years self-destructing through dark magic, constantly putting himself in danger, ruining his health, wiping behind the king's decisions, or letting Aaravos exploit his body in increasingly abject ways. In short, to see himself only as a means to an end.

This feeling of ungratefulness is not unfounded: not only is the king actually incompetent enough not to have the slightest idea of ​​the state of his kingdom's resources, but in addition, where any swordsman would display with pride the scars of his craft, Viren is forced to hide his swollen face - it is even part of the reason why his wife left him.

The problem is that his own self-sacrificing tendancies made him think he had the right to exploit others: his wife, Sarai, Harrow, the princes, Soren, and a few thousand others, and I'm probably forgetting some.

That since sacrificing others was difficult for him, it made him the hero.

Viren probably suffers from a huge martyr syndrome: being able to exist only through the gratitude of others, he begins to take charge of all their problems, even unsollicited, and even if it means creating others in the process. It doesnt make him evil. It's an unconcious strategy to simply survive.

Since he is competent, no-nonesense, pragmatic and literally magical, he ends up making himself absolutely indispensable. No one but him could save two kingdoms from famine. Even more so, Sarai, Harrow's wife, sacrificed herself to save him because he was a mage. This survivor's guilt may have made this problem worse.

His mentality, which he summed up as "get a grip" to a traumatized Terry, also likely played a role in the deterioration of his relationship with Harrow. After Sarai's death, Viren probably felt that he ought to be the immovable and unshakable pillar on which Harrow should be able to rely. That if he ever showed the slightest doubt, the slightest weakness, Harrow, and with him, the kingdom, would collapse. Whereas if Viren had been less constipated, Harrow would undoubtedly have felt less lonely, and would have been less likely to take his own life as he did.

Viren is the brain of the heart. He provides a safeguard to Harrow, whose sense of justice blinds him. Harrow has, after all, indeed chosen the Blindfold in his dream, to push him to imagine a system aimed at protecting everyone equally. An ideal, unrealistic and inconsiderate. Viren is the Scales, in my opinion: he compares the costs of his actions to the positive consequences that will result from them. He is a result-oriented person, measuring his self-worth by his productivity.

Now, it's time for me to talk about the Drama Triangle, theorized by psychiatrist Stephen Karpman in his article Fairy Tales and script drama analysis.

Karpmann first applies this schema to fairy tales: for example, the Piper of Hamelin saves the villagers, victims of the rats who persecute them; but instead of thanking him, the villagers throw stones at him and banish him without paying their dues; which pushes the Piper to take revenge, becoming a persecutor, by making all the children of the village disappear.

But this Triangle, as Karpman explains, is also an unconscious psychological game, a relational pattern between victim, persecutor and savior that cannot be applied to an emergency situation. It is not necessary for all three instances of the triangle to be present, but it is often enough for one person to play the game for the others to get involved. Stephen Karpman adds that the more roles are reversed in a single scene, the more intense it is in emotion and conflict.

The victim is isolated, passive and unable to make decisions to resolve their problems. The persecutor belittles them, minimizes their suffering and mocks them in the hope of making them react. The savior defends them, feels obliged to solve the victim's problems for him even unsollicited, which is very gratifying for them but maintains the victim in a state of dependence.

None of these roles are positive because they create unbalanced relationships.

The problem, you can see it coming, is that over the years, Harrow has become completely dependent on Viren to put his grand ideas into practice, and therefore on the "necessary" crimes that Viren lined up like pearls on a necklace. It's not just dirty, it's also infantilising. Viren constantly acts as a savior, which places Harrow in a victim role, unaccustomed to questioning Viren's decisions even when he is wrong.

Harrow couldn't take it anymore.

He became so fed up with his own dependence on Viren that he concluded the only way to get rid of him was to die.

Harrow could have hidden with the princes, or fired his entire guard and faced the consequences of his actions alone, but he just seized the opportunity to sell his skin dearly and die a hero.

I would even go so far as to say that for Harrow, his own death served three purposes:

Reunite with Sarai without whom his life no longer has meaning

Finally receive his rightful punishment and put an end to his own feelings of guilt

Make Viren finally feel guilty about something, even if it was his suicide. He wants him to see his blood spilled on the floor.

In short, to finally regain control by placing Viren in the role of victim, while becoming the persecutor.

"I have tolerated your arrogance for to long. But if this is my last day as king, I will make sure you will know your place."

Viren, throughout seasons 1 and 2, paying for Harrow's mistakes as he always did, tried to position himself as the savior of the human kingdoms, that were then facing a crisis situation: as a result, he is rejected at every turn, completely isolated, sentenced to death for treason and completely unable to resolve his problems. In short, a victim.

And who is it that "saves" him ?

Aaravos, by presenting himself as Viren's "servant", flatters his ego and points out persecutors to blame. However, Viren is not a fool: he is aware of being manipulated. He knows that Aaravos is deliberately withholding a lot of information from him. But he throws himself into it of his own free will. He's more stressed than everyone else as well as grieving, he back to the wall and isn't thinking like the rest of the world: as far as he is concerned, he has only made a series of unavoidable decisions, which had doors and doors shutting in his face over and over, plunging him further and further into sheer darkness.

Until he has "nothing left to lose". Until the man who he has chained to a wall is freer than him. Until the knife eventually becomes the border between two worlds, separating him from the only source of light, pale, artificial, unforgiving, coming from "worse than death": Aaravos.

Yeah, it's clearly suicide-coded.

Viren (believing he was doing the right thing) got the worst out of Harrow, just as Aaravos (wanting to cause chaos for fun) got the worst out of Viren.

And just like Harrow, the only way Viren had to get rid of the devil on his shoulder was to die.

And as for Viren's third death in the sixth season, heroic if ever there was one (on the very balcony where he looked at his wrist in season 2), it is also no coincidence that he repeats Harrow's last words to him, told to humiliate him : "I am a servant."

This term carries an ambivalence: the nobility of abnegation and the humiliation of submission.

Although Harrow saw himself as a servant of the kingdom and promoted equality in his reforms and symbols, he eventually grew tired of it. He does sacrifice his own life to end the cycle of revenge, but since he does not take the trouble to prepare for his succession, even if only by ensuring that the princes are safe, the result is a total disaster. He also devotes the last minutes of his existence to being completely unjustified cruelty towards Viren. His death was a way for him to finally regain control.

Viren, hurt that Harrow lowered him to the ground by mistaking his self-sacrifice for arrogance and once again leaving him to pay the price for his decisions, has made this term the justification for his crimes... confusing, in his good intentions, “serving the people” for “using the people”.

Viren was completely willing to sacrifice himself to save Harrow in Season 1, but Harrow, determined to regain control, didn't even listen to him; and Viren immediately recanted when Harrow refused to recognize him as an equal. Although it could not have been more sincere, the sacrifice of his own life was then rejected by the plot because it was done without humility.

(or maybe Harrow immediately understood what Viren was going to do and scolded him to dissuade him)

Viren was then reduced to his greatest weakness : his existential need for gratitude.

And more than ever, he was the only one with common sense in the room, on top of being belittled for his absence of royal blood. He still thinks he knows better than everyone else, just as he always actually did. Anyone who crosses his vision ought to be killed. No matter how much he has to harm others and himself (burning his own eyes, committing high treason and sentencing himself to death, giving in body and soul to "worse than death", letting Aaravos manipulate his body in absolutely gross ways, risking being burned at the stake) in the process. Aaravos sees straight through, exploits this, because it's what dark magic is: it's dehumanising yourself as well as others; seeing no longer people but components and obstacles. Viren harms himself to be seen as a hero, not a servant. He needs gratitude, admiration. To be seen as above. A servant is beneath, only ever doing what he is told.

But today, Viren, haunted by the vision of Harrow's blood on the floor, chooses to sacrifice himself, thus saving the population of Katolis in the face of dragon fire, to sacrifice himself alone and no one else, reviled, hated, and misunderstood. The official portrait of him and Harrow, symbolizing his noble deeds and the good they were able to do together, burned in the castle fire.

He dies not in court clothes but in rags, not as an official hero showered with praise, but as a traitor. Soren will never know what he did for him as a child, Viren doesn't want his death to haunt him.

Even though he dies as the Lord Protector of the Realm Ezran could not be, in the eyes of history, Viren will remain the traitor. The Evil Chancellor, Jafar, Richard III, Iago, Scar.

No one will see his blood as he spills it on the floor of Harrow's room.

Servants of the realm indeed.

[bat-snake]

Thinking about how in the end, Viren and Aaravos basically knew nothing about each other's histories, and how knowing would have thrown an absolute massive wrench into both of their ambitions.

Unless, of course, Aaravos were to just take advantage of Viren's shame over what happened with Lissa - in addition to knowing he would completely absorb Leola's story.

"And that's how I lost my wife to save my dying son." ".....That's rough, buddy. Let me tell you about my daughter. After I've implied yours is an asset."

[stuck-in-jelly]

Cant stop thinking about how Viren destroyed his entire family.

How he refused to listen to Kpp'ar and attacked him, how he broke Lissa’s heart when he couldn’t see the error of his ways, how he fed into Harrow’s anger during his time of grief, how he used Soren for his own personal gain, how he stopped treating his daughter as his child and more of a assest

How he whittled down everyone he had to nothing

[sarasade]

Claudia, Viren & The Very Real Parent-Child Dynamics of The Dragon Prince

Sometimes I wonder if I come across like I try to defend Claudia too much. That's not my intent at all. I just think she deserves more and better critique.

The Point I guess

Personally, I really connect with Claudia's brand of messy, unflattering and even pathetic rage and grief much more than the dignified and mature ways Callum and Ezran handle things (More on that later). Maybe this sounds unflattering but Claudia being also kind of an asshole really speaks to me. Like that's the kind of teenage girl I'm the most familiar with and we don't have enough media that has nuanced takes on this sort of troubled character. Exploring negative or even anti-social traits and impulses in fiction, especially in women, is kind of undervalued in my opinion. Those are part of humanity and therefore part of us and this impulse to completely reject them doesn't benefit anyone really.

Finally, some wholesome father-daughter relationship rep in media!

My way to view fantasy media is about how it can artistically portray something true to real life. That's why I'm the most invested in this kind of reading of the text. Fantasy media is often dismissed as mere escapism even by the fantasy fans themselves (*side eyes the dude bro Witcher fandom*) which ignores the emotional depths it can reach by approaching difficult subject matter more metaphorically.

Inject Viren & Claudia's Father-Daughter Dynamic Straight into My Veins

There is something viscerally real about Claudia and Viren's relationship. I've seen this kind of father-daughter dynamic play out in real life many times where the child gives and gives and gives yet the parent takes it all for granted until it's too late and the parent-child relationship is just a mangled corpse of its former self, way too damaged to ever be truly repaired.

Like if you've had a difficult relationship with your parents it can feel similar to how s4-5 Claudia struggles to keep Viren alive while Viren hesitates. The child is the one who tries to fix things in the relationship while the parent is in denial or completely oblivious. Viren doesn't really try to connect with Claudia further in s4-5. It almost seems like he's completely emotionally unprepared to have that conversation and oh boy if you know any boomer parents that's pretty damn realistic. He just sort of gives up and acts completely passive because he's so out of touch with his emotions.

There is also this aspect of your parent aging and then one day you realise that you, the child, are the one who has more power in the relationship. It's a universal experience. These are just some of the ways I can see Viren and Claudia's relationship in seasons 4 and 5 metaphorically portray real life parent-child dynamics. There is a lot of emotional truth to how TDP approaches these relationships even when the story itself is an over the top fantasy romp.

How much Viren relies on Claudia is revealed little by little: She got the unicorn horn for the spell that killed Avizandum, she got the dragon horn that helped them cross the lava to Xadia in s3. It's set up really subtly how there is almost this parentification of Claudia like she's the one who took her mother's place as the emotional center and caregiver of the family after Viren and Lissa divorced. It's a lot of pressure to put one a child to say the least. This extends to Soren and how he is treated as the scapegoat of the family when Claudia is the Golden Child. This sort of treatment of Claudia and Soren by Viren is probably the most common analysis of their family dynamic as far as I can tell.

You ever heard of the thing called "eldest daughter syndrome"?

Eventually Claudia's most admirable and positive traits get corrupted (insert here an analysis of the corruptive nature of the dark magic as a plot device). It's like this perversion of feminine nurturing instinct society values and enforces in girls. Claudia's love is not domesticated but something that's so all consuming it destroys everything in its way. In s 4 she insists Viren has to live. She does everything in her power to keep her family together even against the wishes of her loved ones; first it was healing Soren in and then it was bringing Viren back to life in s3. Claudia has fully internalised her role as the caregiver to the point of self-imposed victimhood.

All The Characters Have a Part to Play

Since TDP is meant for an all-age audience (And later for teens and up since they hiked up the age rating) all the younger characters Callum, Ezran, Rayla, Claudia and Soren collectively represent the kind of different and difficult feelings parental abandonment and neglect can cause. A real person most likely feels all of these emotions at some point of their life but in fiction they need to be spread out among different characters or the story wouldn't work as, well, a story.

"she was a mage girl committing warcrimes, he was an elf boy vibing in the woods, can I make it anymore obvious"

I'd gladly read some more critical takes on Claudia's character. There is something very interesting there about Claudia and Terry's relationship for example. Terry is clearly very enamored with Claudia whom he perceives as someone very vulnerable and in need of help. Terry isn't wrong exactly but it does get problematic when he goes to great lengths to protect Claudia to the detriment of his own wellbeing. While TDP itself doesn't draw attention to it there are also the racial and gendered elements, both implicit and explicit, because of Claudia's fantasy racism and because of Terry being a non-white trans boy character as well. Claudia is the most powerful dark mage in Xadia when Terry is just a normal guy. Given the context of the show there is a power imbalance there.

tHÖ END

Why I'm laying this all out is that I think the Internet would be a better place if people didn't try to constantly find an objective "right" way to view a piece of media but instead were somewhat transparent about what they personally got out of it. I think this Viravos meta is the most popular thing I've written so far and I tried to explain my approach in detail because I don't want people to go "look this person says Viravos is canon!". Jokes are fine of course but taking it too objectively ignores the fact that analysing subtext is valuable on its own.

Idk how to end this. Here, have this meme.

[raayllum]

got tagged in the wip game by a few people w/ the challenge to tag someone for all your wips! however i have over 50+ wips / just oneshots planned (not including multipchap) so i'm just gonna share like my top 10 and then call it a day!

oneshots:

a different man / mirror traps: Lissa comes back to Katolis for her daughter’s wedding and meets her husband’s ghost. Or the "Lissa meets Callum" fic, probably a sorta sequel to this fic

providence: post-s5 divergent. A spell gone wrong traps Callum inside the mirror with Aaravos. 

the goal of living is to grow: After a love contained only to chaos and summers, Rayla and Callum experience the other seasons side by side. post-s6, planned to be like 20k, Rayla/Callum

just stand still: In Katolis, you come of age at sixteen; Ezran just misses his dad.

mama's boys: Sarai's sons grow up without her. Ezran&Callum

blinded: Miyana, and the Sunfire royal family. Miyana/Karim

nine days: It takes nine days for Harrow and Viren to reach the Storm Spire. Set pre-series and 3x06. Viren/Harrow

i asked you to be human: AU where Kasef makes different choices in s3, and lives.

being this young is art: Servants talk. Callum/Rayla dealing with court gossip

great responsiblity: Modern AU. Ezran is bitten by a radioactive spider when he’s fourteen years old. Trio & Ezran centric

why is it a monster: Ezran finds the mirror first. Canon divergent

multi-chap

virtues and vices: Slowly but surely, Soren and Opeli find their way. Soren/Opeli, 9 chapters

i did one thing right: Supporters of Viren’s ‘royal’ line were not so easily deterred, and now a twenty-year old Ezran has a choice to make: to either allow civil war, or to marry the old friend turned enemy threatening to topple his throne (the shadowy elf whispering in her ear notwithstanding). ? chapters, divergent post-s3, aged up Claudia/Ezran slowburn

sequel to "if time is money" (about 20ish chapters) scheduled for more focus post-s6 (Rayla and Tiadrin centric with a heavy serving of Runaan and Ethari)

[kradogsrats]

TBH I think the reason I'm so obsessed with Lissa and the reason I write her the way I do is because like... this series is, like a lot of media, obsessed with the absence of mothers. Part of that is the usual media issue of "put a bunch of middle-aged dudes in a writing room and they will write something obsessed with fatherhood, specifically," but like... I think literally the only present mother in the series is Zubeia, and having said that, I would absolutely not be shocked if she has to sacrifice herself for Zym and the rest in one of the remaining seasons.

Because of the five other mothers in the show (Sarai, Lissa, Tiadrin, Neha, and Annika), fucking four of them are dead (or in Tiadrin's case, technically not dead but there's no way she expects to ever see Rayla again when she and Lain confront Viren) due to heroic self-sacrifice. Three of them are queens, and die ostensibly to save a decent-size segment of their people. Tiadrin is an elite warrior chosen for duty, who swears an oath and (functionally up until S4) dies honoring it.

Lissa's... just a woman, as far as we know. She's just a woman whose marriage falls apart. And that means she gets cast a lot as selfish, compared to the selflessness of all the martyr mothers.

Lissa plays music. Lissa wears perfume. Do we think Sarai has a signature scent, or is that reserved for lady-ladies who aren't warrior-martyrs? She argues with her husband, she tends to her sick son. There's a very different femininity being implied here, and it's... interesting... that it's in the character everyone thinks is a selfish monster. The woman with no higher calling than her family and children, who leaves them behind, anyway.

So that's really what NCNE is a "fuck you" to, I guess... to have one fucking woman who wears full skirts and aprons, and isn't a swordplay master, and sings songs and bakes bread and does laundry and tends a garden and cares for babies, and who still has just as much intellectual and emotional depth, as well as strength and conviction, as Sarai or Tiadrin. Who has her own feelings about the selfishness of things like Neha and Annika both riding off to certain death when they have an infant daughter.

And I'm sure what we'll eventually get is either "Lissa is a heartless femme fatale who coldly walked away when things got hard" or "Lissa is a rugged warrior who /mumble mumble something about how she actually left for some higher cause," because that is apparently the dichotomy we're working with.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Black Sheep: a Claudia headcanon

This sad Claudia headcanon is tangentially based on one of my favorite horrible details from The Song of Achilles: that in trying to make "a better Achilles" out of Pyrrhus, Thetis makes him Horribly Worse instead, creating the monster she hated most in the world.

Neat!

Okay so: If Soren was sickly as a toddler, before Claudia was even born, then maybe Viren thought he could use dark magic to ensure that Claudia was "healthier." Standard protective parent vibes ftw!

If he did that, he wouldn't need to worry over her health the way he'd worried over Soren's, or make any more drastic spellcasting that upset his wife, or face any deep-seated fears of being weak and unfit (genetically speaking).

further headcanon: since all the dark mages we've seen (except for Viren with his glamour) have black-and-white hair, maybe Viren used dark magic on Claudia before she was even born, and it turned her hair black. I used to look at the magefam kids and think that Lissa had black hair that Claudia had inherited, but in this headcanon, Lissa's hair is very light and it makes Claudia's black hair stand out even more in the family, as a dark magic effect.

Every time Lissa looked at her daughter, she'd see the black sheep that Viren created while he was trying to create the perfect daughter instead.

Wouldn't your favorite child be the one you'd deliberately created?

[martwy-basen]

about soren and claudia's mother

we don't know anything about her, do we? except that her name is lissa and she's from del bar. i don't know if we're ever going to see her on the screen, but i have the coolest idea on how they could 'solve' her.

like, if viren and claudia are both mages and they have a,,,,, pretty good relationship (they surely love and care for each other) and i just NEED someone like that for soren. so, do i think lissa is a bad mother for claudia and only loves her son? no. she's a much better parent than viren and she loves her children equally. but, well, if claudia can be daddy's little daughter, then soren can be momma's little boy, right?? lissa never wanted her daughter to feel like she was loved less by her mom (she wasn't! she isn't! lissa misses her daughter just as much as she misses her son. let's not forget she's the one who told claudia, that she should stay with viren, bc she and soren should always be together.) but once claudia started to learn how to be a mage, she also started to spend more time with her viren. like father like daughter, right?

so we obviously need the like mother, like son.

and one day, soren, callum, rayla, ezran and zym — are they on their journey?? are they in katolis, waiting for troops to help them in battle?? are they in del bar, for some reason?? doesn't matter — what (or who) matters is the woman standing in front of them. she's tall — really tall — and super buff. like, the buffiest woman any of them have ever seen. (like, do u guys know hollyberry cookie from crk because. that's kinda how i imagined lissa). she's holding a weapon — a heavy weapon, one of these that takes years of practice to actually fight properly with, not to mention skills. her armor is heavy and makes her look even bigger than she already is. and her face,,,, suspiciously resembles some quirky, dark-haired mage they all know,,,

'MOM!!' soren screams happily, his arms already around the woman (well, not entirely. have i mentioned how buffy she is). the woman drops the weapon and lifts soren up in a hug (she used to lift him on one hand and his sister on the other all the time! oh, how happy she is she can still do this!). she already got tears in her eyes, the emotional softie she is.

callum, rayla, ezran and zym are just staring. (they got really scared at first, okay?)

'THAT'S YOUR MOM?!' callum finally manages to say, pure shock on his face. damn, soren is really proud his mom still has that effect on others.

[behind-xemnas]

Headcanon that Lissa, Viren’s Exwife and mother of Soren and Claudia is royalty.

There are only few things we know about Lissa. She was married to Viren. She is Soren’s and Claudia’s mother. She left Viren because he used a morally questionable dark magic spell to save Soren’s life. She originates from Del Bar. She moved back to her family after the divorce.

Of the few things we know I always was curious about the fact that one of the things we learned is, that she isn’t from Katolis. Because it seemes to be not really important. It seems to add not much to the narrative. Except it might actually be important?

We don’t know what Lissa looks like, but there are many people, myself included, thinking she might look similar to Soren (or to be more precice, that he takes after his mother). Claudia and Viren both have dark hair, while Soren is blond. People thought he might just dye his hair, but it’s confirmed in the short story “Rise Again” that his hair was already blond when he was a child (and I doubt Viren and/or Lissa would let a child around the age of 10 bleach his hair).

So, with that thought in mind: Soren takes after his mother Lissa, has blond hair, blue eyes, and her mother is from Del Bar. I had to think about the only other person we know from Del Bar. King Florian. And well...

Not gonna say they have almost the same hair and eye colour as well as similar facial structures when it comes to cheek bones, but... Of course they are not identical, Soren also has a lot of things he got from Viren, like the eyebrows, but I still think it’s interesting. He could very well be Lissa’s brother for example, which would make him Soren’s and Claudia’s uncle.

One would now wonder, why would Lissa leave Del Bar if she was it’s princess. According to Tales of Xadia, the next in line is not necessarily determined by blood, but by a Gladiatorial Moot. People interested in the throne will engange in combat. Which means, being the Kings brother, or the daughter of the former King (who knows), does not necessarily make her have the responsibilties of a princess, so she would be free to just leave if she so desires. But what is also interesting, that she returned to her family in Del Bar after the devorce. Which means she was there when King Florian was assassinated by Viren’s dust moonshadow elves, which makes me wonder how she feels about Xadia and Elves and what her role could be if she is to appear in future seasons (if she will even appear, which I desperatly hope, because I’d love to know more about her relationship to Viren, Claudia and Soren)

[madou-dilou]

I really hope we get to see Callum go unhinged and war crimes and murder WITHOUT Aaravos's influence because he talks big about darkness but...

"Messed up inside and I mess up everything I touch". Callum, you have done literally nothing wrong ever, you don't deserve the emo Byronic hero lexical field. But do you know who's EARNED the right to say that?

saves his dying son. But has to kill his mentor for it. His beloved wife is horrified, she leaves him, breaking their family.

ends up shifting the blame on the very baby boy he sacrificed everything to save. He became a monster to save Soren and monsters don't make good parents even when they try.

But had he not saved Soren, he would have hated Lissa for preventing him to do so, and the family would have been broken regardless

inadvertently has Claudia taking charge of his and Soren's emotional well-being since he's too much of a workaholic to do so himself

wants to save two realms from starvation. He does. But not only he fails to rescue the two queens of Duren, his friend dies in his arms rescuing him.

His only friend ends up blaming him for everything that ever went wrong before committing suicide. Viren tries to die for him instead but is rejected

He orders his son to kill the princes, Harrow's sons

He orders Claudia to choose to save the dragon egg over Soren if she is forced to choose. Which is understandable, after all Soren chose to be a soldier, and Viren has proven he was ready to do the same

He destroys Lux Aurea simply by walking in

Soren leaves him

He dies a horrifying death. Claudia, his sweet, treasured daughter, goes through unfathomable sufferings to bring him back, to the point that he realises the only good he can do for Claudia, for Soren, for the world, is to leave it. The world is better off without him and he finally knows it

He tries to apologise to Soren but realises it will only harm Soren even further

He commits suicide.

Meanwhile, what has Callum ever done wrong ?

Crushing already dead slugs.

Come on.

[acronymking4tdp]

Chapter 7: Separate Ways

Newest update to my fic, “Closing Gaps”, a modern AU of The Dragon Prince

26 June 1001

(Our story has now moved beyond the time frame of chapter 1.)

The dispersal of the Spellman family was as notable for what was missing as it was for the relationships on display. There was no comfort in the space between Viren and Lissa, the emptiness drawing off the warmth one would normally expect among family members preparing to spend weeks apart. Viren was stiff and awkwardly formal with his daughter, and had nothing more than a nod and a few mumbled words for his son.  Lissa was distracted but gave what attention she could to each of her children in turn.                                      (Closing Gaps is continued in AO3...and might link to the story, in which case many thanks to Daftnerd for explaining how to add the link!)