What do you think Rhysand's perspective forming moments have been like? What moments shaped and changed him throughout the years?
rhysand rhysand rhysand. i honestly think that he's had similar perspective-forming moments to eris. they're both heirs to largely corrupted courts with cruel, violent fathers; family they would do anything to protect no matter the cost to themselves; and aspirations of doing better by their people, both out of a sense of responsibility and to spite the pieces of them that are their fathers. they both have a crippling need for control and assume the burden of everything for themselves. but even with so much in common, they come away with very different views of themselves and the world.
one of the primary differences between them is that eris sees himself as an amoral guy (with rot in his blood) who will do anything to keep what he cares about safe, which means he isn't concerned with justifying his actions if that end is achieved but knows that he is accountable for them, while rhysand sees himself as a good guy who exclusively has to do immoral things for moral reasons, which means he genuinely doesn't think he should be held accountable for his actions. for rhysand, they are always justified as necessary and unavoidable—if there were another way, he would have found it; since he couldn't find another way, there was no option, and his actions can't truly be held against him.
the other main difference isn't quite in their trust of others, because i think they are both just as untrusting, but how they rationalize that lack of trust. eris truly doesn't trust anyone. he's been shown time and again that there's no one in his corner but himself, and he knows that as fact, so he can't let anyone else shoulder a burden for him—not when it comes to keep him safe and not when it comes to keeping themselves safe. he doesn't even let anyone else think he wants them to. meanwhile, rhysand does have people in his corner. powerful people who are ostensibly capable of caring for themselves but are still extremely reliant on him in some way. he makes them feel trusted by delegating inconsequential burdens and probably even convinces himself in the doing that he trusts them (just not with everything)—but he never actually does trust anyone, not to keep him safe and, just like eris, not to keep themselves safe.
i think the moments that shaped him into this sort of person started young. beron is a manipulative, mentally strenuous, physically abusive father, but rhysand's father could literally get into his brain to torment him. i bet rhysand's daemati training was torturous and constant. on guard, all the time, and taken vicious advantage of when that guard slipped. he was literally taught to wall himself off from everything in order to protect himself—but what's fucked is his father probably also framed this as keeping those he cared about safe. if your enemy can get in your head and see what matters to you, you are putting them in danger. on top of this, he knows no one else has mental fortifications as strong as him. if a daemati could get into the mind of someone he cares about and see that they're privy to his favor or are trusted with his secrets, this puts their wellbeing in jeopardy. (see: immediately teaching his mate to shield her mind.) so through this training, he learns that no one is as mentally fortified as him and something as simple as trusting others with information could be enough to get them killed.
then rhysand is thrown into the illyrian warcamps. they are brutish and harsh; they are physical and violent. he learns what he doesn't want to be like. he picks out what he needs from his training: combat skill, ruthlessness, leadership, etc. the rest, he demonizes. but he meets two boys who are different from the others there. they spark something in him. a sense of kinship that he hasn't known before, especially in this place of such difference to all he has known. they've been mistreated. they're raging against the world. they're broken, but they're still fighting. he wants to help them because seeing them like this resonates with his own plight. they make him feel less isolated. they make him feel like a good person, in a way his father is not. the problem is that he already knows that to be loved by him is a danger. so that means any harm that befalls them after he cares about them is, in some way, his fault. he has to keep them safe, no matter what, because if he lost them, it would confirm that truth to him.
not long after, rhysand lets someone else in. he meets another heir, golden and glittering green, and this male is just. so neglected. so isolated. so angry. mistreated and raging against the world, broken but fighting. unlike azriel and cassian, tamlin knows what it is to be an heir; he knows what it is to have a father like theirs. and now rhysand has seen that he can let some people in, as long as he is careful—as long as he keeps everything just so. if tamlin is an heir, too, isn't he also powerful enough to keep himself safe? if not, he can be. rhysand will ensure it. rhysand shows him how to protect not only his body but his mind, too. rhysand is so, so relieved to find someone else in this world who relates to his plight—to find someone in this world who defies what he has been taught by his father. and then ... he mentions, offhandedly, that his mother and sister are coming to visit him, and this results in their slaughter. regardless of whether rhysand thinks tamlin did this on purpose or that he was tortured for/pressured into giving up the information, this betral+loss wombo combo absolutely destroys rhysand. it confirms everything he has known to be true in one fell swoop.
so rhysand is certain that he cannot trust anyone more than himself because he is a danger to everyone in his life, but he has already tasted what love can feel like. he can't let that feeling go, and he knows his brothers won't abandon him. that's all that's keeping him going now. so he just has to control everything all the time and never let his fortifications slip for even one moment, and if he can do that, he can keep that which he loves safe and his.
