Since we have officially entered the Aries' season I thought I should honor the fact that it's the Darkling's birthday! 🎉🎊
(No, we don't know his exact birthdate but we know he's an Aries. Anyways)
To celebrate it let's remember some facts about him.
Even though he was a Shadow Summoner, he loved bright colors. Blue, red, purple but most of all the color of sunlight.
Since we mentioned that he was a Shadow Summoner, isn't it endearing and ironic how he feared the dark when he was a child?
Once he didn't sleep for two nights because his mother had left him in a tent without a lantern.
He loved sweets! Cakes, pies etc. but his two favorites were a cake with cherries and sweet cream from Kerch and candies coated in sesame from Shu.
He had trouble mastering his powers as a child. He felt embarrassed for the fact that he couldn't make the Cut at the age of 13.
He could play the violin. 🎻
He was really intelligent from a very young age. Until the age of 13 he could speak three languages fluently and could read people and their behavior like an open book.
He was awkward and felt uneasy around children his own age since Baghra always kept them on the move and insisted not to let anyone touch him or for him to get close to someone.
He never met his father although he kept asking about him to his mother and wanted to meet him. The only thing he (possibly) ever knew was that he was a Heartrender.
He loooved nature. The trees and forests. The smell of them. Especially the evergreen trees. He even decorated his room in the Little Palace with carvings of trees.
Oh and he loves animals too! In the "Demon in the Wood" he got excited in the thought that he would see white tigers for the first time and Leigh once mentioned that he's kind to animals (we even saw that in "The Tailor" when he took time out of his duties to visit his horses, pat them and whisper to them soothingly).
And he actually saw those white tigers eventually.
Apparently he has great good looks to the point that he attracts others (and especially girls) like magnet since forever.
And his life was full of sex so he was experienced with it (Alina, your opportunity to fuck around and find out was literally right there).
The author confirmed (in 2014-2015, years before even the show came out) that he indeed harbored strong feelings for Alina and believed that they were destined for a future together (my man was ready to buy IKEA furnitures for their future house😭😭).
He had many, many half-siblings (one of them was a mermaid) and throughout the centuries he sought them out, out of a need for kinship, companionship and a desire to not be alone (🥲🔫)
This one is especially sad. He wasn't conceived out of love.
On another note though, his smell has been described as the smell of winter, forests and of the night.
In a solar eclipse his powers wouldn't be affected.
He's the Grisha with the most aliases in the Grishaverse (that's what living in a persecuted environment as a child does to you).
It's confirmed by the author that he was created after fantastical villains that she used to love, so please let that rumor that he was inspired after her abusive ex finally rest for good.
He had indeed fallen in love many times in the past but he kept witnessing the people he loved die from their mortality. At some point he just gave up on love and became more and more closed off. (Let's talk about the break he never had💀)
We might not know which person was the first he ever fell in love with, but we know which was the last one: Alina.
Do you remember those countless letters Alina was sending to Mal in "Shadow and Bone"? Well, the Darkling not only kept them secretly but read ALL off them.
He has a throat-neck fetish. And it's probably canon. The way he kissed Alina's throat every chance he got, the way he once nipped it, the collar and how he was always touching it.
According to Leigh, he didn't start wanting to be King. But this ambition came eventually after deeming it the only way to change things.
Kaz has been described as more selfish than Aleksander.
Well most of them turned out to be sad and tragic but that's because he had a tragic life and he himself was a tragic character.
Happy birthday to one of the best and most iconic book characters ever created. 🎉🎊
