I think one of my main issues with the Dragon Prince's portrayal of human/Xadian relations is that it heavily relies on our assumption that both groups are on equal footing and insists that we give the Xadians a lot of grace.
In a lot of media with a similar conflict, magical/supernatural beings are often posited as the minority, oppressed or otherwise disenfranchised group in comparison to regular humans. The Last Elf series by succesful Italian author and vicious homophobe Silvana de Mari comes to mind as one example. TDP seems to rely on this convention in order to make us feel like the Magical Creature/Human divide is more balanced than it actually is within the show.
Because like. Humans aren't allowed to do magic. And when they do find a way to do magic they are segregated to a part of the world in a manner that seems to reference the Trail of Tears (which like??? You can't reference the trail of tears for this type of story wtf man) and cut off from resources that could save and improve their lives. The Xadians have every advantage in the Human/Magic divide here.
This is not made better by the fact that the show shies away from even showing us why Dark Magic is bad. Like yes, it does use pieces of living creatures, but this is a weak argument when most of your characters still eat meats and wear furs.
Mind you, there are moments where the show almost (almost!) makes us understand why dark magic is bad. The reference to the idea that the Human half of the world was once just as magical as Xadia, but humans exploited it for dark magic is a great example of this. But very little is done with this idea and it is such a throwaway comment that the gravity of it is so hard to feel. Another is when the Magma Titan was killed by Harrow, Viren and Co. to harvest its heart. (however I also fear that this moral conundrum is more baby's first trolley problem rather than a discussion of whether Dark Magic is truly ethical or not.). I believe that what we are supposed to find bad in Dark Magic is along the lines of 'percieving other living beings, especially sentient ones as a bunch of materials to be harvested and used will likely lead you to normalising doing horrible things to others'.
However, this moral quandry does not sit nicely with the fact that Xadians access the privelege of magic, while humans have to accept their inferiority. Because evening the playing field/accesing priveleges basic to most Xadians requires humans to partake in the 'evil and forbidden' practice of dark magic. (Callum remaining an outlier for now. Whether or not more human mages are a possibility will likely change my stance on this)
It's kind of like if there was a group of people in this world who could naturally generate electricity and didn't share and the reat of us were forced to rely on fossil fuels. Except the people who get free unlimited energy got upset at us for using fossil fuels and banished us to like. Ohio.
This is truly one of the most frustrating aspects of the show to me. People comment on the plot holes and stuff all the time, but this is all pretty minor imo compared to how the whole political situation is presented. As you said, fantasy creatures are usually the oppressed ones, so there could've been a really interesting subversion of tropes had they turned this on its head. But it's more than just the missed opportunity for subversion, it's what they put in there and then I guess.... shied away from addressing fully. And it just leaves such a huge feeling of injustice.
The power-imbalance and the oppression that it caused is almost never brought up and when it is, it's usually by the villains like Claudia and Aaravos who then proceed to get shrugged off because "welp they're evil so why should we listen to them?" classic debate and switch.
Racism against elves from humans is treated with a lot more severity then racism against humans from elves in several instances. Rayla for example has several scenes where she's allowed to be basically racist as she wants toward humans with little to no pushback while Callum gets struck down verbally for even maybe saying anything remotely insensitive toward any elven group. Lujanne straight up says "You're only human" as a response to Callum not understanding her magic explanation, and while she does apologize later for doubting Callum can do magic, she never apologizes for her downright racist comments. Though you can maybe read between the lines and say that apology is bundled in with that, which sure, I won't fight you for that, that can be a reasonable assumption. But given that Callum has now had to directly apologize for what humans did to elves twice in the show, I would like something more explicit from the Xadian side. And then dark magic... I agree with everything you're saying here. The demonization of dark magic is just... crazy. Honestly, if they can't find a way to make dark magic evil, I would've ran with that and leaned in on it. Maybe it's a lesson that Xadia has to learn that the thing they condemned humans for doing because it was strange to them, wasn't that strange after all if it was used properly. Hell, Rayla almost comes to this realization in one of her reflections stories where she almost kills a dark mage, but the realization that all he was carrying was coral to heal sick children makes her hesitate long enough for him to get away. This could've been explored more in the show but we never see any impact this had on Rayla on screen. I also dislike that in their commitment to make dark magic evil they portray all of the cases of humans using it as evil and greedy, even when it could be understandable. You brought up the west being drained of magic which is a scene that frustrates me for several reasons. One, is of course, I probably wouldn't have done it that way because I'm mainly against the demonization of dark magic BUT they still could have made this work.
This happened AFTER humans were exiled to the west, during the mage wars, which arose because of a fight for resources and what not after they were exiled. This makes sense, because obviously a trail of tears is going to destabilize a population, what happens next? Wars and destruction. But they didn't highlight any of that, they just framed it as greedy humans being greedy when it could've been really interesting if it was framed as the unfortunate truth of what happens when you do this to a population of people. But even IF they are committed to the dark magic bad bit. Fine, but they can at the very least treat it with more empathy. Every time we see dark magic used in the show (except for when Callum uses it but even he gets berated it for it) it's portrayed as completely evil and it's being used by ugly villains who deserve no sympathy for doing so. All of their problems are simplified to "well, they do dark magic, and if they could just stop doing dark magic their whole world would be better and everything would be happy." But it really isn't that simple. Dark magic is the reason so many humans are alive right now that wouldn't have been. It got them out of several situations that XADIA put them in. You can't just tell an oppressed population to give up the one thing that's helping them survive, just like that. It makes Xadia seem incredibly out of touch with what is happening and, to be frank, they probably are. I've dropped a few fics that I've read in my time because I personally disagree with the "Pro-Xadia" stance that the show and thus some of these fics followed. But even some of the ones I dropped were able to handle dark magic and the whole situation with more empathy than the show did. Anyway, sorry for the long winded rant lol. I initially just wanted to make a short statement of agreement but I got carried away lmao.
totally agree on everything here.
Additionally: I have this huge pet peeve that they all make it sound like almost all of their usage of magic is somehow justified. They use their magic for bad purposes too. Case in point: Blood Moon Huntress, Finnegrin, Sol Regem… I can go on.
But, like you said, when a human does dark magic for good purposes like healing someone or etc they immediately get labeled as evil. Claudia was portrayed as *turning evil* when she saved Soren from being paralyzed. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the gore in it and I still think most of us support her in that decision but the *portrayal* of that didn’t give that feeling. It showed that she was getting desperate, which is good, but it focused a bit too much on *her turning evil* than how the things happened to her just kept cornering her.
Also somehow every single conversation goes to “Balance of the world” and how “humans have no connection to any primal so they should stay out of magic”.
If the Startouch council is *so worried* about the so-called balance, why aren’t they stopping Aaravos from killing the archdragons and distrupting the shit out of Xadia? Everything is just about “humans should not do magic in whatever shape of form” and even Callum doesn’t feel so “accepted” by everyone to be honest.
