Ok, so I know he's awful and we hate him, but does anyone else ever think about how heartbreaking Corvus Crow’s story is.
Imagine that you’re a kid, and your brother is cursed. He’s going to die on his birthday as a young child. And sure some bad stuff happens around him sometimes, but really nothing that awful, so you think, maybe the curse isn’t real. Maybe he's gonna live. Because you know your brother, and you know your mother, and there’s no way she’s just going to let him die. But then he does. And now you see things a little differently. But you move on. You get married, you start a family. And then your daughter is born cursed. And this time you know better, but you still look at her, and you just see your little baby, and she can’t really be cursed can she? And then your wife dies. Because yes this little baby is cursed, and now not only have you lost your wife, your daughter is as good as dead too. So you ignore her, you don't get attached, and a while later you remarry, and your new wife has all these visions of you as a picture perfect family, and she thinks if she can just fix your daughter, make her more palatable or whatever you can all be that. But that was never the problem, the problem is she’s dead, or as good as, and no one can fix that. She wants to have kids but you're scared, what will happen to them? What if they’re cursed too? What if your daughter’s curse kills them like it did your first wife. Too much could go wrong. You want to wait until after the curse is gone. It’s gotten easier to forget that the curse is your child now. You just have to wait it out. But your wife still wants to have this perfect blended family, so when she gets pregnant a year before your daughter is set to die you think fine. It’s just one year, what’s the worst that can happen. And then things change. Eventide comes early and suddenly it’s your daughter’s last day, last meal, soon her last breath. Your wife still wants everyone to be a family, so she chooses this ill-timed moment to announce her pregnancy, and now your daughter thinks she's being replaced, as if there was ever something to be replaced in the first place. And then she’s gone. Three hours early, and you’re relieved, because it’s finally over, and you can forget this whole thing. But your mother won't let you. She keeps talking about her, she puts her massive portrait right smack in the middle of the hall of dead crows. So you forbid everyone from talking about her, demand she be forgotten, not knowing that you are enacting your dead daughters worst fear, and not caring either.
But the thing is she’s not dead. Never was, your mother saved her like she did your brother, and if only you hadn’t been so sure you’d lose her, you might have never lost her.