Hello, this isn't on your list of theories, but I'm curious to see if you have a theory on this: what do you think Aaravos' relationship to humanity is? And do you think its tied to what happened 300 years ago? And do you think he was ever "good" at any point in his past? Though, I'm sure it's more complicated than the simplicity of of the black and white thinking of good and evil. I'm curious about your thoughts.
This is actually something we know a fair bit about when it comes to Aaravos. And it’s quite a unique relationship, especially seeing as he is said to be the ONLY Startouch Elf any human has ever seen.
Where our information starts is long into the past, back in the era of the First Elves. We don’t know much about this, other than that it was ~5000 years ago, and the First Elves were Startouch Elves, and humans were around in this time, struggling to survive. As a First Elf Aaravos was likely also around in this time.
Secondly is still a long time ago in the timeline, but closer to current events than it is to the era of the First Elves (it seems possibly ~2000 years ago). Aaravos came to the aid of the people of the human city called “Elarion”, we know this from a poem that was in Arabic briefly shown in the show, there were also some other interesting similar literary bits and pieces about Aaravos we know about. Elarion was in Xadia, it’s the same place we see the first Dark Mage defending from Sol Regem in the S3E1 intro. We can see its ruins on the map. This is quite significant as it is implied this may have been one of, if not the only, major human settlement prior to the discovery of dark magic, and Aaravos may have had a major role in establishing it as such.
We believe the next major interaction between Aaravos and the humans comes around the time of Ziard (the first dark mage). Aaravos is said to have given a gift to humanity, and even has the title “Giver of Gifts”, this could be referring to dark magic (though I doubt it would be so simple), but something that is pretty cerrtain would be Ziard’s staff, which is later owned by Viren. Why? Because Ziard says the staff is a gift, and when Sol Regem asks who from, Ziard states “one of the Great Ones”. What do we know about the Great Ones? Well not much, but most significant is that Aaravos is the last of them. Given his title of “Giver of Gifts” as well, it’s pretty safe to assume Aaravos is the source of the staff, particularly since its focus seems to be dark magic and Aaravos is likely the only elf to have ever touched dark magic.
Shortly (relatively speaking) after this Xadia was divided, at which Aaravos was present, if he were involved, the elves likely did not know that Aaravos had a hand in this.
Now we get to the point at which we’re a little more uncertain, so I’m going to describe a few more things we know about Aaravos around this time and in the years following. At some point in this time Aaravos befriended a human, who gave him an apple which he liked the taste of. Additionally, again referring back to the map of Xadia, there is a “name of someone close to Aaravos on this map”, possible options (though we don’t know of all these individuals) could be: Tenebris, Skall, Kalik, and “the Castout”. Tenebris would be the name of Luna Tenebris, so we can ignore that for the purposes of this discussion, leaving the other three. Skall comes from the location “Skall’s Hook” in Northern Duren, we do not know anything about this location, or even that it’s definitely named after somebody, other than that it’s in icy tundra. Kalik comes from Mt. Kalik, you may recall this is the highest point in Katolis and the mountain climbed by Claudia and Soren in S1, as well as the place where a mage captured the storm to make the sky primal stone that was owned by Viren / Claudia / Callum, this option has potential as the mountain may be named after that mage, and it sounds feasible as an individual’s name, but it’s not guaranteed. The final option is “The Castout” from the name of the sea in Xadia “The Sea of The Castout”, notably Elarion lies on the coast of this sea.
I want to take a moment to talk about the apple, as there’s an interesting theory around it and a small detail in the first episode of S1. The theory posits that Aaravos was close to the Orphan Queen, who is thought to have lived ~300 years ago, and she gave Aaravos the apple. What is significant about this is that in that episode there’s a small mention about a tree that Claudia almost walks into being 300 years old, and that it is an apple tree that originated when the Orphan Queen & Aaravos met.
From here onwards speculating with as few details as we have becomes pretty meaningless I feel. But it’s evident Aaravos was manipulating Viren in S2 & S3 only to achieve his own goals of conquering Xadia.
As for what I think on Aaravos’ specific relationship to humanity and how it may have changed...? Well, chronologically, I certainly think back in the era of Elarion Aaravos may have actually felt sympathetic to humanity, certainly unicorns (the only other major star primal connected creature we know of) did, and I would think it would be really interesting if the main reason Elarion was the only major human settlement in that time was BECAUSE of Aaravos’ assistance at the time. But things have definitely changed since then, with Aaravos being willing to delve into dark magic, and becoming manipulative only to achieve his own goals. I have to wonder if the human he became close to that gave him the apple was hurt and killed as a consequence of the actions of Xadia and Aaravos has harboured resentment towards them ever since.
I know this post wasn’t exactly what you were looking for, but I hope laying out the lore in this way has helped let you in on some key pieces of information we have about Aaravos, as, as I stated at the beginning of this post, we know a surprising amount of the history here and I think there are probably a lot of takes that could be taken from this. So maybe you’ll have your own unique ideas now.
