#astarion analysis

[stars-and-clouds]

HE DIDN'T WANT TO LET GO HE DIDN'T WANT TO LET GO HE DIDN'T WANT TO LET GO!!! -screams-

[michanvalentine]

Astarion’s body language in one of the harshest scenes in the game.

Well yes — that scene with Raphael revealing Astarion’s scars in front of the entire party. For his own personal satisfaction, I would add.

This has probably already been written about a billion times, but please let me vent — I’m doing it for the sake of my mental sanity. So...

First of all, I should say that I absolutely love Raphael and the way he’s written. I’m the kind of player who, every time that line comes up during a playthrough — “I think he likes us” — always chooses the reply “I like him too, but I’d never tell him to that smug face of his.” Lol.

Now, we all know Raphael is a devil: lawful-aligned and highly refined. He has his own particular way of being evil — almost gentlemanly, logical, cognitive, even alluring. Yet he remains evil nonetheless. And in this scene he shows his worst side.

Cruel and gratuitous, though not entirely unexpected, because Astarion gives him the opportunity when he proposes a bargain. “Before you go, I have a proposal on my own.” As we know, Astarion needs someone to decipher the infernal writing on his back.

Raphael makes his position clear right from the very beginning. He doesn’t take Astarion seriously, starting with his sophisticated and theatrical remark about wyvern whisky (I love the way he delivers that line!!!). He calls him vampling, and when Astarion does not refer to the one who carved the markings as his master, the devil is quick to point it out himself, even mentioning a contract of ownership — almost as if he wanted to remind him who he is.

In short, it is obvious that he sees him as inferior. And that, automatically, grants him certain rights in his eyes.

Of course, we are talking about a scene that can only occur if the romance with Astarion has not been triggered. In that case, the player — and therefore Tav/Durge — does not yet know that Cazador carved those markings into Astarion’s back.

And the moment the devil realizes it, he completely exposes Astarion — without his consent — leaving him fully bare for everyone to see, in his most vulnerable place: the body he has only just begun to reclaim as his own, the scars that bear witness to his humiliation.

And not only that. What Raphael says while performing this vile gesture makes the whole thing even more painful.

“You didn’t tell them? And you’ve kept your clothes on this whole time. How unlike you.”

And then:

"Why not let them see? Don't be shy."

It’s awful. The subtext hits like a punch to the stomach. Raphael points out that Astarion chose not to speak about it with anyone — only to dismiss it completely moments later. On top of that, he adds with sarcasm that Astarion has managed to keep his clothes on for more than five minutes, which is supposedly very unlike him.

In practice, he reduces him to the role he has been forced into — offering himself in exchange for a rat — as if that were the only thing that defines him, or the only thing he is capable of. “How unlike you.”

The even more dreadful thing is that “don’t be shy” — with those words Raphael claims the right to do whatever he pleases with Astarion, with his body, with his trauma. But we know that embarrassment or modesty have nothing to do with it. They are not the point. Reducing everything to that essentially means minimizing everything else — the real implications of what is happening.

And that, perhaps, is the most insidious cruelty of the moment: not the exposure itself, but the way Raphael reframes it as something trivial, almost playful. By turning a violation into a joke about modesty, he strips Astarion not only of his clothes, but also of the legitimacy of his pain.

The screenshots show Astarion’s reaction. The first two are the spontaneous one, unfiltered. He is frightened. He doesn’t want this to happen. But it is happening, and there is nothing he can do about it. Once again, someone powerful has made a choice for him and is humiliating him.

His eyes are wide, fixed on Raphael, filled with disbelief and an implicit plea for him to stop. His shoulders are drawn in, his arms lifting in a futile attempt to bring his hands up to cover himself.

The third shows how he immediately reacts: his features harden, he regains a sort of composure, hides his vulnerability behind sheer stubbornness, and faces the devil despite everything. With a simple:

"Gods damn it."

This is very significant, in my opinion. Imagine being suddenly stripped in the middle of the street, in front of your friends, by someone who is treating you with open condescension. How far would your protests go? The shouting? The insults? The hands? That is, assuming there weren’t laws and a justice system that would send that person straight to trial, lol. I think you can easily imagine it.

But Astarion’s line is not something you say when you are truly trying to stop someone. He doesn’t say: “Don’t touch me.” “Stop.” “You can’t do that.” “How dare you,” and so on.

Why?

Perhaps out of pragmatism. Astarion knows perfectly well that Raphael controls the situation. He is a devil, he has information Astarion wants, and he is negotiating from a position of superiority. A stronger protest might risk ruining the opportunity he is trying to secure.

So the reaction remains restrained.

Or perhaps it suggests something deeply consistent with his past: Astarion’s ability to openly oppose a powerful figure is limited. For two centuries he lived in a system where saying no achieved nothing — at best. At worst, it was directly dangerous. Painful.

So the protest remains brief, almost automatic, but it never turns into real opposition. But even though the reaction is minimal, Raphael still has something to say about it.

"Don’t pout, spawn. Just destroy the beast and I will happily reveal your secrets instead of your skin."

That’s how Raphael continues.

And when he tells him not to pout afterward, it only makes the whole thing worse. Because at that point Raphael is no longer just exposing Astarion — he is policing his reaction to it. As if Astarion’s anger or humiliation were the real impropriety, not the violation itself.

Once again the responsibility is shifted onto him: don’t be shy, don’t pout, don’t make a scene. The message is clear — whatever has just happened is supposed to be trivial, almost amusing, and the only unacceptable thing would be refusing to play along.

It’s a subtle but deeply cruel form of control: not only taking possession of Astarion’s body for a moment, but also trying to dictate how he is allowed to feel about it.

"Scars tell such wonderful stories — I think yours might be truly exquisite."

And this is the line Raphael exits the scene with. But let’s analyze it more closely in its possible meanings.

The sentence itself might almost sound elegant, even poetic. But context matters: said immediately after stripping him without consent, humiliating him in front of everyone, and telling him not to pout, it takes on a far more cruel meaning.

There are several layers to it.

1. The aestheticization of violence Raphael takes something that is the mark of abuse — the scars carved by Cazador — and turns it into an object of aesthetic contemplation. He does not speak of pain, torture, or enslavement. He speaks of “wonderful stories” and something “exquisite.” It is a form of refined dehumanization.

2. Predatory curiosity The line is not empathetic; it is curious. Raphael is not interested in what Astarion has suffered, but in how interesting the story might be to him. It is the gaze of someone observing a wound the way one might examine a rare object.

3. The pleasure of power Raphael enjoys the moment because he has complete control over the situation — all the more so because Astarion needs something from him. Not only can he expose Astarion’s body, he can also comment on it calmly and with irony, as though he were savoring something refined.

4. Continuity with “don’t pout” After denying him the right to anger (don’t pout) or to shame (don’t be shy), Raphael immediately reframes the scars as something fascinating. It is a double violence: first he minimizes the trauma, then he turns it into spectacle.

That is why the line is so disturbing: it is not brutal. Quite the opposite. It is a cultured, elegant, almost courteous cruelty that treats Astarion’s suffering as a narrative curiosity worthy of admiration.

In the screenshot we see Astarion’s facial and body expression — his reaction to Raphael’s cruel words. He is simply resigned. Completely slack. He’s just waiting for it to be over. That’s all.

His arms, shoulders, and facial features all seem to droop, as if they were bearing an enormous weight. And yet they are not tense — they are still, almost inert.

It’s worth noting how Astarion’s head remains upright despite everything, his back straight, his chin slightly raised as if in a reflex of pride. But none of that pride is visible on his face; it feels more like a remnant from his time under Cazador.

“Don’t slouch before me, boy,” almost — as if, for a moment, he had been taken right back there, standing in front of his master.

And Raphael’s cruelty echoes that same dynamic. Not in the same form — Raphael is not Cazador, and his violence is not the same. There is no intimate bond between them, like the one between creator and creature, master and spawn, almost father and son in a twisted way.

Raphael is neither possessive nor sadistic toward Astarion. He simply wants to amuse himself. Yet he shares certain traits with Cazador — for instance, the aestheticization of violence. To the vampire lord, the scars are a poem; to Raphael, they are a story worth admiring. Both also take pleasure in holding power over others.

In that sense, the structure of the moment is disturbingly similar.

Once again someone powerful takes control of Astarion’s body without asking, turning his humiliation into spectacle and expecting him to endure it without protest.

The methods are different. The intentions are different.

But for Astarion’s body — for the instincts he learned through two centuries of survival — the situation must feel terribly familiar.

A bit like when, despite his obvious contempt for her, he immediately reveals his name to Araj Oblodra the moment the drow asks for it: an automatic reflex, almost as if he were responding to an implicit command from someone who, as usual, sees him as lesser.

It hardly matters that he corrects himself immediately afterward with “But hold on…!” By then, he has already given himself away.

BUT let’s return to the moment when Raphael disappears, after laying out the terms of his bargain with Astarion.

At that point, the spawn’s focus shifts to Tav/Durge, the involuntary witness of the brutal scene. As it should be, the player — and the game’s main character — is shocked by the situation, by what has just happened and by the revelation of the scars.

They are horrified. But not because the marks on Astarion’s back are repulsive. They are horrified because of what Astarion had to endure, because of the pain he must have suffered, and so on.

In short, there is emotional connection.

And unlike Raphael’s curiosity about the “wonderful stories” those scars might tell, Tav/Durge is far more interested in why Astarion never told them before, or in how painful the process of carving them must have been.

That is, of course, assuming one chooses to roleplay a Tav/Durge who is genuinely involved with Astarion.

But again, it is interesting to observe Astarion’s body language as he speaks with Tav/Durge. He has been exposed, the truth revealed; now the main character knows. And this is how Astarion presents himself before them.

In the moment when he awaits their verdict, his posture rises once again into perfect rigidity. “Don’t slouch before me, boy,” again. It is in his head. It is in his muscles, which have learned the lesson well.

His back is straight, his head held high, his chin lifted upward — yet the expression on his face communicates anything but pride. On the contrary, his wide eyes convey only one thing: terror.

Terror for what he has just endured, for what he endured in the past, and for what he might be forced to endure next — if Tav/Durge’s reaction turns out to be different from what he hopes.

But let’s analyze Astarion’s body language more closely in the moment when Tav/Durge shows empathy and points out that it must have been an excruciating experience.

At that point, Astarion agrees and feels safe enough to explain how it happened — to revisit that moment.

I want to emphasize that this sequence is very different from the one in the romance path. In that context, Astarion is noticeably calmer, more secure. I’m referring in particular to the morning after saving the druid grove, and therefore after the tiefling party, within the player’s heroic route.

It’s morning, and the sun falls warmly on Astarion’s ivory skin as he enjoys the warmth of the dawn. He and Tav/Durge have shared an intimate experience, and it is along that line that Astarion’s story unfolds.

He is not hiding. He is there with his back exposed — a sign of trust. And when Tav/Durge asks, Astarion answers. Simply. Painfully. He shares it quite naturally, even if he soon afterward cuts the conversation short and shifts the topic.

In this other scene, however, things are different. The context is different. The relationship with Tav/Durge is different — companions in adventure rather than lovers. And the previous interaction with Raphael matters; it inevitably leaves its mark.

Personally, I find Astarion’s account and demeanor truly painful to watch. For him, reliving the moment when Cazador carved into his flesh with the dagger he called his “needle” is a horrific experience — as if he were suddenly back there again, under his master’s blade.

There is pain, there is shame, there is anger — everything is there, and it’s terrible.

And yet, how does he face it?

Look at his body. Astarion’s real emotions slip out only in brief flashes beneath the mask. He tries in every possible way to downplay his own pain and his own experience, much as Raphael had been minimizing it up until that moment.

He jokes, he laughs — and all the while the true horror surfaces in spite of him. And that hand, gradually closing over his chest? It suggests vulnerability and a need to feel protected.

But the lightness he tries to infuse into the story is only apparent; the account of the experience remains chilling. And behind that attempt to soften it, several defense mechanisms emerge — mechanisms that have likely accompanied Astarion for centuries.

The first is what we might call defensive humor, or gallows humor. It is a very particular form of irony, common among people who have lived through extreme situations: one laughs about something terrible not because it is truly funny, but because humor creates an emotional distance from the pain. For a moment, he is no longer just a victim remembering a trauma — he becomes someone telling a story.

Alongside this there is a second mechanism, even more painful: internalized minimization. After two centuries under Cazador’s control, Astarion lived in a system in which his suffering was constantly diminished, ignored, or reinterpreted. In such a context something paradoxical often happens: the person ends up internalizing the same language that was used against them. And so, when Astarion recounts what happened, he instinctively tends to downplay it with a laugh.

And we should remember that Raphael had just done exactly that in the very same scene: “Don’t be shy”, “Don’t pout.”

Astarion falls in line with that same framework of denial and non-recognition. And that is perhaps the most painful part, because he is repeating against himself the very same mechanism that once wounded him — hurting himself even more in the process, without even realizing it.

The third mechanism is what we might call anticipation of judgment. When Astarion tells this story to Tav/Durge, he does not yet know how they will react. He does not know whether they will feel disgust, pity, embarrassment, or something worse. They might even mock him and say it was nothing at all.

So by trying to treat the experience with a certain lightness, he sends an implicit message: it’s not such a big deal, you don’t have to react too strongly. It is a way of protecting himself from the risk of yet another humiliation.

This ties perfectly into the way he chooses to end the scene.

“But what’s done is done. So how about we stop discussing it and just kill this beast?”

And then he adds, with a little chuckle at the end — a chilling one, considering the context and everything that has just happened:

“Although I should probably get dressed first... Ahah.”

Enough talking. There’s no need to remember, no need to linger on the episode or on what it meant, on what it left behind. What would be the point of facing it now? It’s already done. Let’s just kill the beast and move on.

Run from the pain, from the trauma, and make a silly, slightly flirtatious joke about the fact that I’m still completely naked — as if nothing violent had just been done to me, by Raphael and, in a way, by myself as well. Come now, what’s the big deal?

And with that I conclude with the last two screenshots, where Astarion’s body language perfectly accompanies these ideas. After the forced opening — far less spontaneous and genuine than the one in the romance scene, because Raphael compelled the revelation — Astarion closes himself off completely and brings out his familiar, hardened seducer’s grin.

Alright, I’m done. Well — honestly, there’s probably still more that could be said, but it’s better if I stop here. I have scripts to memorize, pages and pages of them. Argh.

And to think I was just taking a few screenshots to pass the time… then the brain gremlin took over and everything spiraled from there. Oh God, animated GIFs would have been more appropriate, but I didn’t have the time. I just hope the text isn’t too confusing and that there’s still a logical thread you can follow, because at a certain point even I was struggling to keep track of it.

Anyway, thanks to anyone who made it all the way down here. <3 You’re heroic.

[bloodless-sandpiper]

CW/TW: general discussion of abuse

One of my favorite things about Astarion’s story is that there is absolutely no push for Astarion to forgive or understand his abuser. 

It’s true that we get a small glimpse into Cazador’s past, where we learn that he was once a victim in the centuries-old cycle of vampirism and abuse, but that’s all. It serves its purpose as showing that vampirism is a trap and warning of what can happen to Astarion if he goes through with the ritual, but does not excuse Cazador’s actions or go out of the way to make us feel sorry for him. The player may feel some sympathy for Cazador or they may not. None of the companions express any sympathy for him, Astarion doesn’t waver in his resolve to destroy Cazador despite learning of his past, and there are no options from the player to push any understanding or forgiveness on him.

Honestly, I find this refreshing. Getting a little personal here, but experiencing generational trauma both in my family and with my partner’s own horribly abusive dad, we’ve been told “oh, they didn’t know any better”, “they were abused too”, “you have to forgive them”, etc., more times than I can count, but the fact remains that even though our “Cazadors” were victims, they’ve moved on to causing pain themselves and have shown no genuine remorse. The game accurately shows that there is a point where a victim becomes a perpetrator and can become beyond redemption. I love that Astarion’s end of breaking the cycle does not include him forgiving or feeling sorry for Cazador, but with catharsis and closure that many survivors don’t get in real life.

I’ll end this little ramble with a screenshot from an interview with Neil in which I appreciate his take on this topic. Link to full interview here (try to overlook the typos in Astarion's name, lol).  And with a GIF of one of my favorite moments in any media, ever.

[adrielmancy]

When people who have experienced abuse say that they relate to Astarion, they usually refer to some of the most popular lines, such as: "Being with someone still feels... tainted. Still brings up those feelings of disgust and loathing." or "I had nothing for so long. Not even my own body."

And while hearing those when I first played the game has absolutely crushed me and made me feel understood, there is another conversation that speaks to me on a deeper level.

I've been thinking about the pale elf for months and years now, but I think I have finally figured out the core of what makes him so important to me and why are we the same in some aspects when it comes to trauma.

I will get into the ugly personal stuff, so mind your triggers. CW for sexual assault, physical abuse, bullying, PTSD, trauma response

The conversation you have with Astarion when you meet his siblings during the long rest, when they attempt to kidnap him and bring him back to Cazador, hides one line that just shakes me to my core and that I have recently realized is why I relate to Astarion in such a major way in terms of my own personal response to the traumatic events in my life.

Not long ago, I had an intense therapy session, where we discussed why is my body shutting down, why is it essentially playing dead (now literally in the physical sense, as my entire nervous system tends to give up on me). And my therapist showed me a video of an impala being attacked by a cheetah – the impala will lie completely still to avoid being attacked; basically, it freezes and plays dead. In the video, the animal literally looks dead; it's not breathing, moving, or blinking. After the predator leaves the vicinity, only then it starts breathing again and slowly gets up; it almost looks like it's hyperventilating after seemingly not breathing at all for a long time.

Why am I saying this in this parallel? For humans (or humanoids, if you will), it's very similar to the freeze response in terms of trauma. A biological reaction that is supposed to protect your body and mind – just like it protects the impala from getting eaten.

The freeze has been a source of shame for me for many years. Whenever I talk to people about how I was bullied in kindergarten and throughout the ages of 6 to 10 years old, they often tell me I should have just fought harder – I should have reported the kids who beat and hurt me, I should have been louder, more aggressive, more annoying about it. I got similar responses when describing how I was sexually assaulted. I should have just tried to fight more, instead of just lying there and giving up after my fighting back did not yield results. Right.

That brings me to this scene.

You have the option to confront Astarion with the fact that he also, in a way, gave up. He did Cazador's bidding; he also eventually just lay there and waited for death that wasn't coming.

For me to tell him that is very painful, because once again, seeing it through another character's eyes makes me feel compassion that I'm unable to feel towards myself. Where I feel shame and weakness in myself, I see strength and resilience in him. It's funny how brains work.

I don't really have anything smart and witty to say here. I haven't yet figured out how to not feel angry and sad when I feel powerless. But I want to make the point that victim-shaming is such a huge part of what's wrong with this world. There would be more cases of reported domestic or sexual abuse, or also, like in my case, bullying, including getting beaten up and tortured on a daily basis – if only the people who are in a position to help didn't dismiss that with "You should have fought harder." To quote a different character this time: "You do it. I'm tired."

I think this line is actually the one out of the whole conversation that breaks me. Because he scoffs, he's not visibly angry, he's not sad, he smirks bitterly. Oh, I feel that in my bones.

Sometimes fighting back just becomes impossible. Either physically – you run out of physical strength – or mentally, when you just can't keep it up anymore, it's been too long, it never ends.

Astarion's story is, above all, about autonomy and the constant oscillation between what power and weakness mean to him. In this scene, he's doing such mind parkour between regressing, blaming others, and between accepting himself, learning to live with the impossible memory of all those times when he couldn't fight anymore.

I'm not going to go into a deep analysis of Spawn/Ascended Astarion and how ascension kills his only chance at healing that part of his past. Because, in a way, I get it – the delusion that if you become powerful enough, you never have to face this shame ever again. (Sorry to say, it doesn't seem to be working all that well, heh.)

So I'm going to end this with my beloved meme that's for both me and him and everyone whose mind also stubbornly refuses to accept that sometimes there is no way out. And freezing in place is sometimes protecting you from something far worse, starting with getting your bones broken and ending with death in any meaning of the word. OK, YAY.

[spawnbeneath]

Astarion, the Adventurer and Hero

Astarion always wakes just before sunset. Never with an alarm, never late. It’s as if the sky itself whispers his name when the light fades.

He can’t sleep in silence. There’s always a candle burning, a clock ticking, a sound - something alive. Absolute quiet unsettles him.

When he cleans his weapons, he hums softly. It’s not a melody anyone recognizes; maybe something he made up. Maybe something from before.

Astarion has found himself a small hobby. He collects scents. Once, after completing a contract to slay some monster, he spent all his reward money on new fragrances crafted by renowned perfumers.

During his travels as a hero through distant lands, he often speaks with herbalists and seeks out new, unusual scents on his own. Clay, plain little weeds with peculiar aromas, rare woods - the world is full of smell

In every region and city his adventures lead him to, Astarion finds a favorite place - a quiet park or a busy street where he can watch countless people going about their lives. Over time, he’s created his own personal map marking the spots he loves, the dull ones, and those that reek horribly. He could easily sell it as a tourist guide.

He also has separate, detailed opinions about the inns where he sometimes stayed for a day or two. He has met many innkeepers: a stout man who spoke with the volume of ten people, an elderly woman as quiet as the gentlest cat. Each place had its own story and style of service, which Astarion carefully recorded in his journal for future reference.

Astarion refuses to sleep in beds with plain sheets. He carries his own, always made of silk, neatly folded in a black case. “Some indulgences,” he says, “are non-negotiable.”

He collects local sayings. Half the time he doesn’t understand them, but he enjoys repeating them dramatically at the wrong moments.

Astarion’s life is full of hardships and battles with monsters… but it also holds countless moments that make defeating monsters and truly living worthwhile. Each of these moments is worth its weight in ink.

[litsenn]

“Decades of hatred will have piled up inside of them. I can’t even begin to imagine" , Astarion says about the spawns in the cells.

And what I find interesting about it, is that this line perfectly encapsulates all his denial in this very moment.

He says it as if he wasn’t like them, as if he didn’t have decades of hatred inside of him. He can’t even begin to imagine how it feels? But, in truth, we know, by this point, that not only he can imagine, but that he feels exactly the same!

As I already explained here, he distances himself from the other spawns; as he did several times before.

He pretends they are not like him. He doesn't want to remember that he used to be just like them, and not so long ago: like his siblings, he wants to see them as if they were nothing, and he can't be as "pathetic" as them... right?"

It’s too hard for him to look at his past and to accept that he wasn’t so different from them. And it’s understandable.

There's another layer of shame here, and it's guilt. Because he was the tool who brought them here, whether he wanted it or not, he's involved in their damnation.

Wouldn't it be easier to make them disappear and pretend they never existed? So that he never has to look at his own shame again, shame of being like them, shame of being the one who doomed them.

Besides, Astarion also widens the gap between himself and the other spawns because he’s lured by the temptation of the ritual, and he knows they’ll be sacrificed if he ascends; so he’s desperate to find any excuse to justify their sacrifices, desperate to numb his guilt by pretending they are hopeless. As if saying: "We can't do anything for them, better make use of them through their destruction".

It’s easier to pretend they’re below him – nothing like him. To pretend there is nothing to expect from them, while he should be at the top. He needs to believe they have nothing in common to make their sacrifice easier to deal with.

But he’s a victim too. He used to be one of the “wretch’s servants” too for decades, and hatred fuels him too, just like it fuels them. As feral, as dangerous, as yearning for revenge.

And it blinds him: his fears, his guilt, his deep need to feel safe. The so called safety of the Ascension blinds him so much it keeps him from relating to the other spawns.

And yet, I tend to believe that, by belittling the other spawns, Astarion belittles himself (unconsciously or not); that’s why he thinks, in this very moment, that only the ritual can make him worthy, put him above them and rid him of his shame: let’s make them disappear so I don’t have to see them again, so I never have to witness my shame, so I never have to see those people who remind me of my own misery, of the slave I used to be.

He used to be one of those “scraps of misery”. But it’s too painful to acknowledge now, now that he’s finally free.

But he will acknowledge all this later on.

The words he says if he doesn’t ascend but if you kill the others spawns are relevant:

If you call the spawns "monsters", he makes it clear you could have said the same about him, and by doing that, he breaks down the wall he built between him and the other spawns: They are alike, there's no great difference between them.

He was just like them, their traumas and violence grow in the same gruesome cradle, and yet, he is not a "monster". Once free, he learned another way, made the best decisions for himself and others, and if he could do it, they could have done the same.

At this point, he makes it clear that all the things he said back in the cells were driven by fear and guilt, a token of his denial as he refused to be compared to them; he could perfectly imagine how it feels to be like them, he just refused to do it because it would have made him too vulnerable in this crucial moment.

[a-tangled-mermaid]

IMO Astarion is actually extremely emotionally intelligent, despite everything he's been through that should have broken that down and has to some extent.

But like... Even after 200 years of "pure shit" he's able to recognize what he's doing to the player and why, and once he cares for them he feels guilty enough to explain it to them. If you give your body to Haarlep he's the only character who recognizes how violating it is to have your body used without your consent, even if the player thinks they'll enjoy it at first. If you don't ascend him, and then set all the spawn free, he says they don't deserve to suffer just because he lured them into Cazador's clutches and recognizes that they deserve the chance he got as well.

He always respects others taking their freedom for themselves, which is a great display of empathy really. When Lae'zel or Shadowheart fight against their own oppressive masters he recognizes how difficult that is and he's proud of them.

I don't think it's just what he's learned from seducing victims for Cazador either, personally. Whatever he learned from doing that is more the kind of stuff we see from him in Act 1, the flattery and physical intimacy used to get the player on his side.

I don't think deep introspection would have been particularly helpful in his situation. Realizing how broken down he's becoming would only make it worse, it's better to delude himself that he's fine or that he deserves what's happening to him- but he doesn't. He never believes he deserves Cazador's treatment, he stays angry, angrier than any of the other companions about how they were abused. Even angrier than his siblings, which is probably why Cazador treats him especially poorly.

I think that's because he is aware the whole time that he doesn't deserve it, and it's happening anyway. That's why he's so bitter about power and heroes.

"Heroes didn't save me, Mindflayers did."

Because like... Yeah. He's right to some extent. A typical dnd hero probably would have "saved him" by killing him.

I don't think he ever truly lacks empathy or a moral compass, even in the beginning. I think it's more like he sees right and wrong perfectly clearly, and has decided from his observation of the world around him that it doesn't matter.

Power supercedes morality and justice in the end and I think that must have been hard for him. Which is why he's angry when the player tries to make him see it doesn't have to be that way.

Basically ...I've been writing a lot in Astarion's POV lately and the more I try to get in his head the less I think he was a corrupt magistrate when he was alive. I'm beginning to think he actually cared a lot about justice, and that's why he became one in the first place. My headcanon now is that instead of some unfair ruling leading to his death, it was a ruling against the powerful, and that's what got him killed.

Power over justice.

[iamkittybg3]

How to Be an Ascended Astarion Fan Without Giving a Single Damn

Step 1.

Accept something very simple:

Ascended Astarion exists because the writers wanted him to. It is a fully written route with its own scenes, dialogue, and character arc. Players choosing it is not some shocking accident. It is literally how role-playing games work.

Step 2.

Other people's projections are not your emotional responsibility. If someone looks at Ascended Astarion and immediately starts talking about toxic exes, abusive relationships, therapy sessions, or red flags - that is the movie playing in their head. That is their projection. Their fears. Their interpretation. What strangers decide to project onto a fictional vampire is entirely their business.

Step 3.

Enjoying dark fantasy is not a moral failure. It never has been. Vampires. Power. Obsession. Immortal devotion. Eternal love. Stories like this have existed for centuries. The internet did not suddenly become the authority that decides which fictional fantasies people are allowed to enjoy.

Step 4.

Some people create the most extreme interpretations imaginable: drawings, headcanons, and scenarios where Ascended Astarion is turned into something monstrous. A cage. A tyrant. A caricature of abuse. Those images say far more about the imagination of the person creating them than they do about the character himself. They are not canon. They are simply someone else's interpretation. Ascended Astarion is not like that in the game. He's not a tyrant or abuser. He loves his partner and that's what's actually in the game. There are no cages there.

Step 5.

If someone tries to shame you for liking Ascended Astarion, remember this: You are enjoying a vampire power fantasy in a role-playing game. They are emotionally distressed about other people's choices in a role-playing game.

Final Step.

Ascended Astarion fans are enjoying him. Other people shouldn't give a f😼ck about this.

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