Crown of Ashes (3)
By the way, this is very spoiler. If you haven't finished the main quests, come back later.
First of all, to Lilith:
This season is super buggy. Not just me, but I am seeing a lot of complaints in chat as well. If you are one of the unfortunate souls stuck on a bug, remember the restart / repair / redownload options. Thank god for season recap because I missed out on two cutscenes after my screen froze.
Alright, where do we start unpacking this mess.
Let's go with Orion and Kazim, because someone's abs has me absolutely locked in. What has been established in canon?
For the dark magic to work, both participants must be blood relatives.
Several years ago, the Lightbearer Empire conquered a Mauler clan, and the Mauler clan sent a prince over as hostage.
So the late queen cheated on King Max, passed off the Mauler child knowingly or unknowingly as a legitimate heir, and then died to unknown reasons. The late queen doesn't appear to be someone of the Augusta royal family, as canon straight up declares Orion as a bastard child. Alternatively, the Lightbearer Empire runs on patriarchy, so only children of the king are considered legitimate, and any children of the queen can go drink piss.
Sure, Orion isn't a legitimate heir to the Lightbearer throne. But wait, his father is a Mauler prince. What does that mean? It means the Mauler clans have their own monarchy which we did not see in Song of Strife iirc. It also means Orion is Mauler royalty. He can contest for the throne, but our poor boy got mixed up so he's contesting for the wrong throne. And do you know what that also means? Kazim is related to royalty. Maybe he won't ever be in line for a throne, but Kazim can claim to have royal blood.
Family tree aside, let's take a closer look at Orion. When we were drooling over his abs, there's also a shot of his back. Orion has wings. Wings that he keeps cutting off whenever they grow back. Surely Orion's late mother noticed, or another servant noticed, when they were bathing a young Orion. So the late queen intentionally kept Orion's heritage a secret from King Max and taught Orion to keep it a secret as well.
Did I mention he keeps cutting off his wings? Orion clips his own ability to fly in order to remain Prince Orion of Augusta. Orion intentionally suffers this pain every interval to keep his heritage a secret. Did Orion hate his mother for the choices she made? Was Orion terrified to lose his father's love once he understood that he wasn't the king's son? In Orion's mind, did he ever have another choice? Could he afford to make another choice?
Isn't this the very same fear that led Orion to stage a whole play that seals his legitimacy in stone? To bind Kazim to himself?
Ah, our handsome bird man. Kazim seems to hate, or at the very least dislikes Orion, from the way he reacts when we mention Orion to him. Understandable, because no living creature would want to be trapped like this. We will learn more in the epilogue in phase 2, so I shall reserve Kazim thoughts for then.
Back to Orion. Speaking of choices, he did have a third choice. To renounce his claim on the throne and support Peggy. There is always a choice, I hear you cry. Orion did have choices, yes, and he took the bad choice. Or at least, what is perceived as bad if dishonesty as the means to an end is a sin.
But look at the cutscenes. Orion never meant to hurt anyone; not if the way he reacted at the Hypofiend attack was any indication. He also threw himself in the way to save Peggy. Our boy was panicking in that moment; he definitely wasn't orchestrating another heroic play for PR. Ultimately, he flees. When does he flee? When he breaks down. And when does he break down? Right after Peggy looks up at him with big bright eyes, calling him brother.
Maybe Hendrik was right; Orion simply got mixed up with bad company like Cyran. How much of this was Cyran's idea, one can only wonder. Still, Orion gave his consent for this to happen.
Okay wow this is long, moving on to part 4 (I hope it stops here)
