All of the Princesses from the Blind Devotion branches just hurts me in a very specific way.
Cause. Think about it. Imagine being all alone in a cabin, chained up onto a wall. You’re scared and there is a voice in your head telling you that you deserve everything that has happened to you. And all of a sudden, a being has come down here. They were kind and gentle with you. They had attempted to save you from your chains. It all ends in tragedy. You don’t want to lose the only person that has ever been nice to you. And so you cling onto them, hoping to please them just so they wouldn’t leave you behind.
In Damsel, specifically in the unravelled Damsel route, you became a cardboard cutout of who you once were. You were so eager to please the other that the other had stopped seeing you as a full person entirely.
In Burned Grey, despite the fact that the other has killed you, and of course you are angry about that. But you still cling on to the kindness they had once showed you. You refuse to believe that someone who was once so kind to you would suddenly kill you without a second thought. And so you believe that it must be the cabin, right? All the cabin has done to you was to hurt you. To make you believe that you deserved all of this. And so you held onto that hope that the actions you had done has to be the cabin’s fault.
In HEA, you want to please the other so much that you had decided to give up your own desires just to make them happy. After all, they were kind to you. You don’t want to lose them. And at the end, despite having a voice in your ear being replaced by a voice that loves you, who adores you and cherish you, it’s all meaningless. You are still in your prison. You still like them, you think. Even though that feeling is long and distant. A coldness washes over you. You feel nothing. Until, that meaningless nothing has come to a stop, and you turned to the kind stranger and asked: “Do you still care about me?” Perhaps a part of you still had some hope. Perhaps you still wasn’t ready to let them go.
And then, you danced with them, underneath the stars you had longed for. This will be your final goodbye. You are ready.