just finished the True Moon archon quest. and i have some Thoughts about dottore. more specifically, about what ive seen others say about him recently.
i dont know if theres just some world quests i havent done, but aside from a throwaway line by dottore himself about once considering columbina as a sister, im not sure what would make anyone think that "if things had been a little different, he could have been a better person".
because i don’t think that he could have been, not unless the change was drastic.
everything he did - he chose to do that. he chose this. he chose all of this of his own volition, using his own free will. every atrocity he caused was something he actively chose to do. dottore doomed himself from the start.
maybe if the world was different, so that he could never pull off something of this scale. maybe if someone was stubborn and bullheaded enough to beat some sense of morals into him, or drag him kicking and screaming into caring about others. but that's not what happened.
taking into consideration the Sumeru event quest with Thoth in it, where we got some insight what Zandik was like in his younger years, before he was exiled from the akademiya - considering what we learned about Zandik there. historically, from the time that he was still a scholar in the akademiya, maybe even from a time before that - first and foremost, dottore has always only ever cared about himself.
i'm not saying he never had a shred of care or affection in his heart for another being. but if he ever did care for anyone else, it was never enough to overpower his own selfish desires and the cruelty of his curiosity.
he's the type of character that would have needed a strong, persistent force to change, to become a better person, and that force never existed for him. because frankly, it's not anyone else's responsibility to make him change.
and dottore never wanted to change. he doesn't want to be a better person. if he ever did want to be good, to be a better person, it was a very long time ago.
dottore was always going to be this way. he chose this path a long, long time ago.
no one could have saved him. he didn't want to be "saved".
