destin karn is my personal number one patricide guy. i’m gonna talk about it
1) his dad, marin karn, is probably like the worst guy in the shattered realms just as a person, not even touching on how he is as a father. he’s the general of a country that’s basically like Misogyny Land. he’s a mage who came up with the idea of enslaving other mages (except himself) for military purposes. he forcibly married destin’s mother, frances, because her noble birth would elevate him in the court. he’s the main strategist in a war that was started because the queen of another country rejected his king’s proposal for marriage. he tries to sabotage the military careers of anyone competent because he’s afraid of losing his power. he does not care if he causes hundreds of conscripted soldiers to die. he’s the right hand man of king gerard, a man who killed his six brothers in order to take the throne and consistently kills children as his way of quashing rebellions.
2) his dad is also a very very shitty father. marin karn wanted to have many sons, so that he could select the most talented one to inherit his legacy and kill the others. however, his wife only ever had one child. destin is born a mage, and doesn’t have the military prowess of his father. destin describes himself as a songbird in the eagles nest. he’s not the son his father wanted, though he acknowledges that probably no one would satisfy his father. his father beats his mother, and when destin gets older, starts to beat him. he forces destin into military service as a child. this leads to destin stabbing his father when he’s 13 years old.
he and his mother run away, but his father keeps chasing for 2 years, and then, after hurting destin, destin’s mother, and attempting to kill destin’s only friend/romantic interest, drags destin back home
3) destin vows that he’s going to kill his father for good. he feels that he’s been complicit in the general’s cruelty. his father knows that destin hates him, and threatens to kill destin’s mother if destin tries to harm him.
4) destin gets out from his fathers control and becomes spymaster to the king, an important position at court. he and his father are widely known to hate each other. the king finds this amusing because he’s evil
5) when the general found destin in hiding, he left behind destin’s mother’s dagger that he’d stolen from her. destin’s friend brings it back to him years later. destin carries it around, and eventually gives it to a young girl to defend herself against a creep. she kills the creep with the dagger. destin takes this as an opportunity to frame his father for murder.
7) destin brings this “murder” before the new king (the old one got pushed off a burning tower by his wife dw about it). he creates false documents that would make his father a traitor to the crown and blames the stalemate of the war on his father being a traitor. this is all fabricated by destin, but the court believes it. the king orders destin’s father to be arrested
8) destin’s father is enraged by the false accusations of treason. he attempts to kill destin in the council room, surrounded by guards and witnesses, his anger getting the best of him. this of course does not make him look less guilty, and no one raises a finger when destin stabs his father in the heart with his mothers dagger (that always feels very symbolic to me, reclaiming the stolen weapon to finally kill the man who took it from her).
9) so not only did he kill his father, he implicated his father as a traitor and the king puts his fathers head on a spike. his father cared so much about his own legacy and his years of loyal service were destroyed by destin’s plotting.
10) after killing his father, destin helps an usurper take the throne. he kills the young king with his own hands. he supports the northern queendom and helps root out traitors in their midst. then he gets on a dragon to go save his boyfriend from death by lava pit
11) in the epilogue it’s said that he settles his mothers estates, essentially removing any ties he has to nobility in his home country, and moves across the ocean to go be the arm candy for his very powerful pirate boyfriend. effectively destroying any semblance of his father’s legacy.
12) he has no remorse about it. just nightmares of his father coming back to life, but he doesn’t regret it for one second
so yeah 10/10 patricide character i love him killing an abusive parent in fiction is always very cathartic and i approve of it