I was thinkin’ bout them elves again and I thought of something. Everyone compares Zevran and Astarion in a lot of ways, which makes sense. They’re both flirtatious rogues who have something deeper beneath the surface. But the thing I find so interesting is what drives them.
Astarion is the way he is primarily out of fear
Zevran is the way he is primarily out of guilt
Astarion has been hurt hundreds of thousands of times. Gale even says he doesn’t understand how Astarion could experience heartbreak so often. Astarion has hurt people, but only out of the fear of Cazador’s wrath. You can see in his cutscene with Sebastian that he actually really cared for him. Astarion had a life as a normal person before Cazador, despite how little he remembers it.
Zev however was the one doing the hurting. He says himself he was even more unbearably arrogant before he met the Warden. You don’t get the impression that he cared for any of his many targets. He was trained from childhood not to care for anyone…except for Rinna, and we know how that went. Zevran didn’t have a life before the Crows, before the whorehouse.
When Astarion flirts with the player initially, it’s clear that he’s not really there. He’s on autopilot; he floats off to try and numb the pain of doing Cazador’s bidding again, even when he doesn’t mean to. Astarion does not necessarily enjoy flirting the way Zevran does. Not to say he doesn’t enjoy it at all, but everything regarding love for him is tied back to Cazador. And his greatest fear is being tied back to Cazador again (and breaking a nail according to the dryad). Romancing Astarion is giving him a chance to, in his words, try living again. Living for himself and his own choices. And his first choice of his own is you.
When Zevran gets spared by the Warden, he considers them almost like a mission, as he owes them a debt, and a crow never fails his mission. Zevran deflects everyone from getting too close with flirting and crass humour (especially Morrigan and Wynne, who he knows are clever enough to ask the questions he doesn’t want to answer). He makes himself as one note as possible, to make people believe that there is nothing beneath the surface…until the Warden. But that concerns him. It angers him. Because the last person he had actually been sincere with…ended up being his only regret. Romancing Zevran gives him a chance to let go of his guilt over being so dismissive and heartless to Rinna. Wynne even tells him that he could save a life in turn for one taken, which in a way he kind of does with the Warden. The Warden is his chance to make things right and become a better person for the one he loves. He will, to borrow from Astarion, become so much more than what was made of him, and free himself of the guilt of Rinna and Taliesen.
I think guilt and fear play into both their stories of course, but I think it’s also kind of an interesting thing to think about. There’s so many other similarities I could yap on about these two for forever honestly lol
