I'm sure a lot has been said on the topic of motherhood in the fma franchise as a whole, and one of my favourite examples of it being fma03's take on sloth being a character confined by it and violently rejects said role. But the topic of motherhood wrt Dante's character also keeps me up at night NGL...
I keep thinking about the implications of her backstory being a devoted mother/wife who desired to resurrect her son from the dead having to devote herself towards saving her husband no matter how many lives they ended up sacrificing at the cost an entire civilization being erased. I keep thinking about her as an immortal figure whose existence is built on the murder and bodily violation of young women, whose fractured picture of her ideal family has made her into this bitter and spiteful individual that parallels the homunculi in many ways, as boogeymen of the past haunting the narrative. I keep thinking about how she was as a young woman, that her once undying devotion towards her husband who ended up abandoning her now fills her with resentment and rage with the memory of it persisting and only growing stronger centuries after.
She's a character who, in her choice to be this immortal being whose immortal existence is built on top of genocide, chooses to position herself in the role of this benevolent mother, to the homonculi, to rose, and the world at large, believing herself to be its sole protector and guardian, and this sole figure who is alone deserving of all its power and the use of the stone to keep the world from doing anything "foolish". She sees others and, especially those dehumanized and marginalized by the state as subhuman and her responsibility to control over almost as if she sees herself as this religious figure or maternal figure, proclaiming herself to be some sort of a "shepherd of sins". There is so many motifs that pertain to the idea of motherhood when it comes to her relationship with the homonculi, izumi, rose, and etc. it makes me sick and i dont know where I'm going with this post.
So much to parallel Dante wrt cycles and her desire to bring her dead son back to life being inhereted and repeated through izumi...