#personally there is the romantic in me that wants to think Gortash would choose Durge

[myheartismadeofstars]

Durgetash nation:

Do you think Gortash would turn against a Redeemed!Durge?

Do you think Durge could pull off "I can fix him"?

Or do you think Gortash would reject the person (man as I tend to go with default Durge) his lover, almost his spouse, has become?

And do you think Durge would ever be okay knowing the man he loved turned his back on him, the moment he was in total control of his mind and body?

[edelgarfield]

gods i haven't seen this parallel drawn before but it is something that drives me insane

everyone knows gortash was sold to raphael by his parents and one can only imagine the awful things he went through. and like i don't think it's too far of a stretch to think that abuse plays a heavy role in what led him to bane, how do you avoid being owned and used for other people's gain? by being the one with all the power and bringing them under your heel.

which is the exact same logic that drives astarion towards ascension. hells, the rite is a contract with mephistopheles, raphael's DAD.

imo gortash is a glimpse of exactly what lies in ascended astarion's future. he's the most powerful man in baldur's gate but he's completely alone. he's sold out and alienated every single person that ever cared about him, his power is the very thing that keeps him from ever being able to trust anyone else, all his allies are transactional and based on mutual gain, and one slip up means a knife in his back. durge, seemingly the one person he genuinely cared about, was taken from him because of the power they held. their affection for him put a target on both of their backs. he had all the power he could ever want and it did nothing to save the person he cared about most.

by the time you meet him, he is far far far too gone imo. i'm not even sure whether he cares about how isolated he is, or if he sees it for the weakness it is. if there was ever a time to convince him to choose another path, it is long gone, now he's too entrenched in his own schemes, that even if he WANTED to change (unlikely), it would spell his death.

if you don't ally with him, his isolation is the very thing that kills him; he believes he has no need of flesh and blood allies bc he has an army of tin soldiers to keep him safe. but once you take out the steel watch he's practically defenseless. he's the most powerful man in Baldur's gate, but you can literally just stroll up to his office and kill him on his own turf and no one comes to his aid. if you do ally with him, it's his ambition that puts the final nail in his coffin, his means to dominate the world turns on him and spells his doom.

and this is exactly what we begin to see happen with ascended astarion. his obsession with power and need for control makes him turn a genuine partnership based on love & mutual respect into one based on control. from party banter, we see pretty much all the companions immediately turn on him. these are people who genuinely cared for him & fought for his freedom, but after watching him ascend they wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire. and he doesn't even care! he's so entrenched in his own misanthropic worldview that he only sees the power he's gained & not everything it cost him. the cost of ascension isnt just 7000 souls, it's 7000 souls and the love of every single person who could have ever cared for him.

if astarion ascends how long until he bites off more than he can handle? how long until his enemies realize the best way to get to him is through you? how long until all his allies turn on him? (if you choose to control the absolute, the answer is somewhere between a few days and a few weeks). all the power in the world can't protect you from your own hubris and astarion has it in spades.

whether you view durgetash & durgestarion platonically or romantically I see it as two opposing narratives held together with Durge as the lynchpin. durgetash is abt being doomed by that narrative, two people who genuinely cared for each other but were the wrong people at the wrong time to save either of them. had they met earlier, if one of them had been slightly less entrenched in their roles, perhaps they could have been saved, they could have lived and had something real.

& durgestarion is the opposite, had they met any earlier, they would have brought each other to ruin. two doomed people, once beyond saving, meeting at the perfect time and finding the strength in each other to break their chains, to choose a path for themselves. where before durge failed to save gortash (& every person they ever cared for) they can save astarion now (& all their other companions).

& the real tragedy is by the very constraints of the narrative, you cannot save them both. if durgetash hasn't been the people they were, Astarion would never have his chance at freedom, he would've been consumed in cazador's ritual with no one to mourn him. but in order to orchestrate the events that allow astarion his chance at freedom, gortash is long past the point of no return. it takes MULTIPLE extremely unlikely events and literal divine intervention to free Durge from Bhaal's clutches. The chance of the same happening for Gortash is infinitesimally small.

it's abt the cruelty and chaos of the world, how fate, destiny, and chance intersect to either bind us or set us free. it's abt second chances, walking through the ruins of your past mistakes & choosing to build something from the rubble, it's abt how love & loss are two sides of the same coin, how sometimes the only choice available is to love, & that love won't save you, but it's there and it leaves its mark.

thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

[archduke-enver-gortash]

as much as i am a durgetash liker i also wouldnt be too happy with durgetash being canonical, so many people have interpreted their durge’s relationship with gortash in many different ways thats not JUST romantical. it can be so many various of dynamics. thats what i like about how vague the past relationship with durge and gortash is, the creativity of what people’s durge’s lore is.

exactly anon!! while i may not personally write durgetash, what i see from the sidelines are so many varied interpretations among the people who do write it, and so i firmly believe that a portion of people who genuinely want this to happen would be as disappointed as people like me because what larian ends up doing may not be not be like what they envisioned for their durge & gortash ship. like the ambiguity and room for different interpretations draws many people in who don’t even consciously realise this. i choose to interpret it as machine vs the wild antithesis archnemesis convoluted bullshit, while others go in the opposite direction and see it as a more ship-like dynamic, and at this point in time, both of those interpretations are valid ones to have, and that absolutely shouldn’t change imho. i think it would be a most-popular-fanon pandering mess if it does happen, which it shouldn’t in the first place.