Do you think ilyena and dimitri got along? Were they friends? What about anna and dimitri ? Does mikhail even love his wife? I just love when you talk about these mfs 🥰🥰
firstly aaa thank you for enjoying the ramblings abt the faustins and dimitri bc i just. love their dynamic so much !!
secondly, well. i like to think ilyena and dimitri get along (considering i'm pretty sure she calls him 'dima', suggesting they are close friends, at least). dimitri is pretty much the only other person who remembers the old mikhail, the mikhail who laughed and talked about the bright future the three of them would have, once they got their shit together. i like to think that even after being in prison, mikhail still wasn't that far gone, sure maybe he smiled a bit less, but he still was gentle in a way with ilyena. dimitri and ilyena, sitting around, talking about the old days. a picture of the three of them somewhere in their house, in a shoebox buried under a pile of bad memories, forgotten.
honestly, i don't think ilyena would've even guessed dimitri would betray them. because they would've been close. he's mikhail's best friend, he probably made sure all their affairs (day-to-day) are in some sort of order. how could someone who has done so much for them just. kick their house of cards down?
and anna, misguided and rebellious anna... she definitely thought of dimitri as an uncle, i mean, he's always with her father, always around the house. driving her to piano recitals and ballet lessons as a child when mikhail was too busy, telling her to stay away from drugs and boys with nasty grins. somewhere along the lines, she grew up, understood what the people around her did, and got lost trying to find herself. i think the anna we see in-game would call dimitri a hypocrite and condemn him to be just as bad as her father, but baby anna would've thought the world of him (and that makes me sad)
lastly, well. mikhail loves his wife. or maybe loved. i.... he's so just. fraught with anger and perpetually coked up. he's losing touch. i know all we see him do in-game is scream at ilyena, and ilyena blames herself for how he turned out, but 1) she isn't at fault at all and idk. she... it's... kind of a domestic abuse thing to be like 'oh yeah it's my fault' and i'm not saying mikhail is a nice person or he treats ilyena well during the course of the game. 2) she mentions how he used to be a better person. it's... it's a tricky question. he loved her. he loves her, now, still, in his own drug-addled way, through the haze he's constantly in. i'm not going to pretend he isn't like. flirting w girls and banging chicks on the side. he says he's done everything to get them all to liberty city with a nice house and a nice life (supposedly). the love he had for ilyena is no longer the same as when they first met and fell in love and got married. everything curdled and soured with time and due to his own habits. he loves her in a way that's just soured with hate, but i think sometimes, sometimes, when he's sober enough, when there's a delicate break in the screaming, there's something in his face and manners where it's almost. as it was before. (ilyena still loves him. i... believe she thought he would come back from the brink some day, but, well, we all know how that turned out.)