I feel like. When Dorian loves people, when he decides they are his, they become his, and there is a sort of responsibility, a certainty, an arrogance, even, to it.
And it's not to say that Dorian doesn't love people he counts as his, because he does (maybe a little too much). But that that love comes with its own mantle, its own weight. He loves these people, so they're his, and so he- is responsible. Responsible for them, for keeping them safe and well.
Not entirely, they're individuals who can make their own decisions and he respects their agency- of course he will. But when push comes to shove, when things get dicey, Dorian relies on himself- to make the hard decisions, to call the shots. It is on him.
Dorian's love is defined by this- by doing the right thing, doing the hard thing, taking responsibility for your people and ensuring their wellbeing, no matter what you have to do. And he trusts the Bells, he looks at Orym and tells him, "I trust your judgement, I trust you", and there are miles and miles of importance to that.
The Bell's Hells are his, and that's why Dorian would unhesitatingly make hard decisions, unpleasant decisions for their benefit. Cyrus, is his, and so Dorian is going to make the hard choices to keep him safe.
(Dorian loves the Bell's, but he also trusts them, to keep themselves safe, to make the right decisions, and that's the crux of it- he loves both of these parties, but he trusts one more.
And if loving people is keeping them safe, keeping them well, even if it sucks- then it's not really a choice at all, is it?)
(Dorian says: "I don't want to be a burden to this group, anymore", and I think about how love and obligation and duty must be so intrinsically linked, in his mind. And what that means, for him.)
Dorian may have been running from his princehood the whole time we've known him. But being responsible for his people, watching for their wellbeing, making the calls so they don't have to- sounds pretty princely to me.
While I definitely think there was a thing between Dorian and Orym, I also think there was a thing between Dorian and Imogen. Please note that first and foremost I ship Imogen and Launda. Those girls have SOMETHING going on and I can’t wait to see it unfold. The are my favorite they are soulmates (”her thoughts are like music” Imogen and “whatever magical bond we share” Laudna. yeah. Like slay me now Marisha and Laura. I will not survive this campaign with your ladies)
That said, I also ship Imogen and Dorian and I DEFINITELY saw a spark between the two, though I think Imogen was more obvious about it with her teasing Dorian about being a prince, Imogen’s inadvertent slip into his mind that resulted in a whisper that made Laura slap Robbie on the arm (and I don’t think it was about his mom. I firmly believe Laura knows who Robbie was crushing on), her disappointment when she thought, Dorian was asking her to leave the shop they were in to get outfits for said ball, and her disappointment at being regulated to a servant at the ball. I think, a lot of Imogen’s crush came from wanting to be a princess, if only for a little while.
None of this is based on the Drama team up in episode 3 and I admit I pay the most attention to Laura a the table, but there were a couple of notable moments where Dorian I think may had had a little something for Imogen, namely, his reaction to Imogen never having been on a date and then the aftermath of that date. In the aftermath, I felt he was being uncharacteristically mean about the girls being dumped to the point where you can see Imogen’s face fall though she throws it right back at him. Even FCG picks up on this and tells Dorian to tone it down. He plays it off as the one always being teased and giving back, but it’s not the gentle teasing he’d get from Imogen or Laudna.
Then, right before he leaves, the tells Imogen no one has challenged him quite like she did. Which leads me to this little bit from an interview Robbie did with Comicbook.com made me tilt my head a little bit and go hmm?? What does THAT mean Robbie?
Now that could be a direct correlation with the ball, but I don’t think it was just in reference to that - though that was the most obvious. It also goes back to that moment after Pretty dumped the girls. There was a lot of push and pull between the two of them that would have been a hell of a lot of fun to see unfold.
Either way, there was definitely a spark (hahaha see what I did there with the two storm themed characters) between the two. Did I want them to be end game? Nah. But I definitely wouldn’t have minded FWB situation til Imogen and Laudna figured themselves out.
TLDR: There was definite chemistry between Dorian and Imogen but Laura and Robbie are such good actors it was really subtle.
I just want to clear up something. What are your view on Dorian having a huge character change (as a lot of fans/antis might put it) after Sorscha's death and he is with Manon? He feels guilt for getting over Sorscha so quickly but it still feels a bit forced.
So I’ve talked about this before.
Dorian’s character change is a realistic result of being possessed and imprisoned by a valg. Maas, at several points in EoS, used the word “violated” to describe his experience. And that’s not an accidental word. That’s a word that holds a lot of weight. And it was meant to get at the idea that someone used his body without his permission. And they used it repeatedly to do horrible things. They violated him. Controlled him. And he screamed and ripped and clawed and tried to fight his way out—and he couldn’t.
He stopped fighting. And he stopped fighting because it was easier to dissociate from what was happening than to consciously live through it.
He wasn’t raped, but he had an experience that was so traumatic, that the only way for his brain to keep him safe, was to pull him from reality and put him in a dissociated state. And we see that with rape victims, victims of sexual assault, people who have been tortured or experience something so traumatic that their brain kind of splits off from reality. A lot of people talk about it in terms of it seeming as if they were watching their attack, or their life, from outside their body. Or as if it were a movie. They see it happening, but they don’t feel it. It’s less traumatic.
And Maas can’t use a movie screen analogy for that trauma because movies don’t exist in Erilea, but she tells us that Dorian pushed what was happening away, and hid in the dark. That he let the Valg do what he wanted because it was easier and safer to hide inside himself.
And it’s that loss of control, and trying to mediate who he is now as a man who’s murdered and tortured people—coupled with the fact that he kills his father and is suddenly king, and the fact that Chaol (his best and closest friend and brother) is suddenly hurt and unable to help Dorian and is gone. Then Aelin and them leave him. And then Dorian is alone. And there is a war coming.
Dorian went through something traumatic, and then is left alone. And the only one who comes to see him, is the same one who came into his life at his darkest moment and brought back the light. Manon walked into the clearing in Oakwald and suddenly Dorian was able to get control of himself. Suddenly he was free. And he knew that if he could just provoke this miracle in front of him to kill him, that he could be free forever.
And when she leaves, he holds onto her face. To the beautiful death she could give him. And when he is finally released, he remembers her name. Dorian who has never remembered the name of any woman he’s ever slept with, remembers the name of the one woman so deadly that even the valg quake in her presence.
And Dorian likes dangerous things.
And the other thing he remembers when he wakes up free, is that the last thing he saw before the collar went on, was Sorscha’s head rolling across the floor.
Valg violation and your girlfriend getting beheaded are enough to alter anyones character.
And where Sorscha plays into this is Dorian’s guilt for not being able to help her. He has all this magic, but still he was not enough to save her.
And I don’t think Dorian loved Sorscha in a way that would’ve sustain a long term relationship. She was too different from the dangerous women he usually liked, and I think it bothered him that she was a spy. I think a part of him felt as if she couldn’t trust him with that information. And I think another part of him felt stupid for not knowing.
He liked her a lot, probably loved her, but he felt as if he’d been swindled, or conned, by her when he found out she was a spy. And all the trust they’d built was gone after that. That’s a huge omission. And in that book, Dorian has struggling to deal with lies, and with keeping secrets. It was a big theme. And we can’t overlook that fact. Because it’s important.
And also, Dorian and Sorscha never had sex. And I think that played into the feelings Dorian had for her and for the nostalgia he feels after she is gone. He likes the chase. And I think if they ever had sex, he’d likely have gotten bored with her same as he got bored with all the other nice girls he slept with.
But I kind of think Sorscha’s lie and the fact that they never had sex, are almost irrelevant to the Dorian we meet in EoS.
And what I mean by that, is that when someone we care about dies, we tend to forget all the bad or annoying qualities they had. We focus on what we’ll miss about them and everything else sort of falls by the wayside. Or seems trivial in comparison. And I think this happened, understandably, to Dorian.
His guilt at not being able to save her, and seeing her beheaded, and then being shoved into a collar—were enough to make him not care about her being a spy. It doesn’t matter to him. The trust he lost in her doesn’t matter. Nostalgia (the longing for a real or imagined past) is a bitch. And it erases all the negative thoughts and zeroes in on the “if I can just get back there things would be different. If I could have just used my magic, we’d still be there, she’d still be alive.”
So Dorian in EoS, is depressed for many reasons, and he’s stuck on this idea that it’s his fault Sorscha died. Not that she was a spy who knew the risks. It’s his fault. And all EoS, Dorian is in his head thinking. He talks about the threads that whisper to him in languages he’s never heard in his dream. He thinks about how no one knows that Gavin came to visit him. He is the first one to verbalize that they are a group of ancient warriors and heirs without thrones. He’s trying to put stuff together and he’s staying quiet about it. (He’s also struggling with the fact that he ran away from his people to try to save them. That’s a heavy choice.)
And when Manon shows up, and their bond/the thread that runs between them is constantly pulling them together—Dorian feels even more guilt. Because how dare he be attracted to anyone when Sorscha just died.
But at the same time, he can’t stay away from Manon. His magic reacts to her on instinct. He pulls a sword on Fenrys when he thinks Fenrys is going to shoot an arrow at Manon. Him, Dorian, utterly human and with little control over his raw magic, thinks he is going to fight Fenrys?
And this happens at several points in the story. When Manon can’t breath because of Rowan, when Dorian tastes the lie in the Bloodhounds words and sees how the lie stopped Manon dead (he kills the Bloodhound and his eyes are “utterly merciless”), later that night when they’re on the deck after the ilken attack—Aelin laughs at Manon in a bad way and Dorian’s magic flares in his hands because he’s ready to defend her, days/weeks later when they’re trudging across the marshes and Rowan lets that animal through the shield—Dorian stops it even before Manon (or anyone) can process what’s happening. There are more instances too, and there are just as many for Manon and her pull to Dorian (which start in QoS).
And in the marshes, I’d argue that Dorian was shielding himself from Manon. Because he wanted to keep her away from him. And when she talks to him, he doesn’t hear her at first. He’s lost in his thoughts likely thinking about her and Sorcha and his guilt. And she has to ask again. And then he tells her about Sorscha and why he’s there. And there is that moment where he grabs her wrist. Why grab her wrist, Dorian? I argue he can’t stay away from her and he cares about what she thinks of him. And at every point in the story where his emotional struggle/thought process is called into question or somehow showcased, Manon (and maybe Gavriel and Rowan to an extent) is the only one who offers him her understanding. She validates his feelings out in the open/in front of the group. No one else in the book does that (except maybe Gavriel when Dorian asks to let Manon out). But in this scene on the marshes Manon says, “Good.” And she sees the “glimmer of relief” cross his face.
And that’s not the first (or the last) time she validates his feelings, or that he touches her etc. It’s one of many. And I think that by the time we get to the end of the book they can’t stay away from one another, and they have sex.
And that sex scene is really intimate. There is a lot of open trust verbalized between them in that moment, mostly on Dorian’s part, but also on Manon’s acceptance of what he says and what she allows him to do. And I think part of that scene was 100% a “if we have sex, then I’ll get this person out of my system and be done with it.” Only that’s not what happens. And I honestly think that Manon and Dorian, on some level, know they’re mates. Because they’re the only two (at least that I can think of right now) that tell us they know Rowan and Aelin are mates. So I think it’s safe to say that even if they can’t identify the bond between them (Manon and Dorian) they can at least feel it to the point that they know something is between them.
And that’s why I think Dorian, after sex, says that stuff about sex with Manon not taking the edge off. He had fully thought it would, and I think it only made it worse for him. That’s why he says that thing about “we’re not done here you and I” or whatever it is he says. And I think he leaves because it’s morning, but also because he needs to think about what he feels and what just happened.
And then, on the threshold of the door, he solves the riddle. Old Dorian Havilliard pops back up there and is able to start thinking clearly about the riddle. As if some fog had been lifted. Two thoughts on this:
1) In the visual arts, threshold symbolism is HUGE. And I’d argue that this could be a happy accident (informed by exposure to movies and art that utilize the threshold as a symbol), or it was deliberately planned out. Maas tends to write cinematically, so I’m inclined to think that this was purposeful. (And if it wasn’t, if all her cinematic scene writing is just unknowingly informed by movies and TV, then it’s still not wholly separate from the symbolism of the threshold because on some level that’s what she was getting at here regardless of conscious awareness.) But whatever the reason, this is important. Dorian is literally on the “threshold” of something when his brain snags on the riddle and the word “iron” and we can interpret it many ways. We could see it as a new beginning (him and Manon), we could read it as his depression has ebbed or gone and old Dorian is returning etc.
2) And in many romance stories the trope of the “magic penis” is overused (except in this case, I’d argue for Manon’s “magic vagina”). You know, the emotionally fragile female lead is somehow “broken” but after sex with the hero/male lead, she is somehow cured. It’s as if he has a magic penis. Well, we could argue that Manon’s vagina is magical and it cured Dorian’s depression, or healed his mind in some way that allowed him to solve the riddle.
Then before Aelin and Manon go into the witch mirror, Dorian has a moment where he wants to say something to Manon likely about being careful or coming back—we don’t know. But it’s more evidence for his healing. Then on the beach he is the one who picks up the mantle of the king and is comforting Rowan and Aedion. And he knows what Manon is asking him to do when he take up the keys and Maas writes that Dorian knew Manon wasn’t just talking about the keys or the war when she agrees that the quest does not end here—she’s talking about what’s between them. And then when he gets on Abraxos and puts his hands on Manon’s waist she says something that makes him truly laugh.
So, I think Dorian’s character change is legitimate and if he hadn’t changed, people would complain about how unrealistic it is. And I think the reason he seems to recover so quickly from Sorscha when Manon is around, is because I think he knows that he could never have felt as strongly for Sorscha as he does for Manon. He and Manon are drawn together the same way Rowan and Aelin are. If they’re not mates in the Fae sense, then they’re mates in some other kind of way. They are meant to be together. All the signs that were there for Rowan and Aelin are there for Manon and Dorian. And I think that’s what allows him to move on at least physically. I think he’s started to move on emotionally, but that’s going to take a bit more time. But it’s coming. Because I think he already loves her. He certainly protects her like he does.
flightofthedragon ha respondido a tu publicación “brood-mother: yo why is dorian’s temptation fear always depicted as...”
I agree, but doesn’t the game itself have Dorian mention that the sexy demon tried to make him give in last time he was in the fade?
Come think of it, it does, right? (Sorry, I’m not the best when it comes to analyzing the games/remembering lines, etc - I finished them alright but at my boyfriend’s and I’ve no internet connection at home so you see how that can be an obstacle lol).
@kurosmind said maybe his fear was being tempted to go too much into magical experimentation and end up doing shit like the old Magisters (which is a nice analysis) and I believe that falling for someone is part of the package, too. Dorian seems very shallow and superficial, but what I believe he fears is being ‘tempted’ to fall in love and end up broken hearted, like with his dad.
i’m just ,,,, orym and fearne waiting until everyone else says they think Dorian is the best for the job ,,,, Dorian looking for them to save him ,,, but by that point he’s already said he’d do it !! they want to help they think it’s a bad decision but they trust him and if he says he can do it then he can ! but he cant say it, and so they do what they can and are by his side and even if they’re not the smartest or the strongest they’re HIS !!! im just !!! exu crew !!!
I just- they knew, they could tell he didn't really want to. But Dorian gets the final say, of course he does, they don't want to tell him what to do. They would never- they would never make his decisions for him, take away his freedom like that.
(They just maybe forgot that Dorian is the kind of person to burn the world to help his friends. Of course he would burn himself too.)
But that's their way of respecting him, too, because they know how talented and level headed and good he is, and they trust him, you're so right, they trust him- to lead them, to lead this.
And in lieu of getting to scoop him out of this, they plant themselves at his side- warring between wanting to stay with him and wanting him to be as well protected as possible. (For Orym, its not really a war, because he's already decided he's staying by Dorian's side).
Fearne saying quietly "Im just trying to think of the best way to keep you protected." Orym already stone faced and worried and steady at Dorian's side. I keep thinking about just the night before and the three of them cuddled up sleepily saying "Love you. Love you. Love you." to each other, juxtaposed with Dorian, needing to pull on armor and shackling himself in and Orym and Fearne at his sides, worried because they love him, not Bronté, not the second in line, but Dorian. Dorian Storm, bard, their friend. fuck, the exu crew.
I was gonna hold off on meta till I've had some time to recover, and I will do that for the Imogen meta but I can't stop thinking about this so, just veeeery quickly-
I've been thinking more and more about parallels between Dorian and Beau, between cold families and never feeling good enough, and an authentic self, trapped away, unable to flourish. Friends so good you can't quite believe in it. Happiness so pure and new, you're sure you don't get to keep it.
And so today- seeing Dorian sink into training from his past, seeing him panic, a little, seeing him hate every inch of things and slip into other bits of it with terrifying ease, and especially seeing the way he treated some of the others- particularly Imogen-
some of it panic, maybe, but some of it not?
I think about Beau, as the M9 drew closer to Kamordah, becoming brash and angry and "closer to the Beau they knew from the beginning". Regressing. Terrified. Slipping back into old habits, drawing back up old walls.
(And then, after- a terrifying, self destructive offer, Beau outside a hags hut saying she'd rather lose this on her own terms than lose it on the worlds).
I'm just! I'm thinking. And hoping, against all odds, that Dorian gets what Beau got- to stay away, to keep his happiness, to get the space to recover and apologize and stretch back out.
Hi! Absolutely loved your metas about exu and c3 characters. I really am going through it with e12. Do you have any more Dorian meta (I would love to hear it if you do)? Thanks either way!
Well, trying to write coherent Dorian is really hard, both because I'm still parsing through my own feelings about it, and because I've got So Many Damn Feelings About it. In the meantime, a rough outlining on my current train of thought:
- Dorian is introduced to us as an air genasi bard. Light and floaty and singing songs. Bright and free and cheerful, if a little nervous at times.
-- Dorian is light, and carefree, in the way of someone getting to be that for the first time, reveling in it, grasping it with both hands and utter joy and a sense of disbelief. A sense of wonder. A sense of fear.
- Dorian has been running, for the entire time we’ve known him.
- For Dorian, the concept of “home” is a prison. “Going home”, is a tragedy, a punishment. Opal says “i want to go home”, and the thought jars Dorian. Dorian says “everyone I care about is in this room”, and it is, perhaps, a lie, but there is a tragic element of truth to it.
-- Dorian exclusively speaks of family and his past in little, horrifying asides- Zones of Truth, being stifled, being a disappointment. Drowning under expectations. Dorian does not want to go home. Dorian does not want to go back to being Bronté.
- Dorian knows he doesn't get to prioritize what he wants over what is needed.
- Dorian seems to think it's inevitable, that he'll have to go back to being Bronté.
- “I’m a runaway noble.” “I’m second in line.” Dorian doesn’t talk like someone who has severed ties and is starting anew, Dorian talks like someone who was running, who was searching for a reprieve, and got it. He got a reprieve, he got a taste of freedom and happiness and people he loves and people he is comfortable around-
-- but he was never going to be able to keep it. He knew that, from the beginning, didn’t he?
- Dorian looks at the worried faces of his friends, (who need a noble maybe more than they need Dorian, right now), and takes off his pearls and finery and the things he wants. Pulls on a persona he had been running from, and that hurts. But this all started the moment Cyrus was standing in front of him, the moment he painfully admitted that yes, he was a bit of a prince. It was all crumbling since then, wasn’t it?
- Dorian would burn the world for his friends. Dorian would burn himself for them too. Dorian loves these people, even if he can't keep them forever. For them, Dorian would wear an evil crown. For them, Dorian will be Bronté again, with all the weight and fear and pain that comes with.
- Dorian will crumple up his mask and his outfit, trade out his joy for dread. He will shutter away things he loves and things he wants and his joy and his indulgences- all of it. All of it was indulgent.
- If he was going to lose this all eventually, if he was always going to have to go back to his awful painful unbearable unimaginable boring old life- isn't it better that its for them?
- For them, Dorian will stop being Dorian. It was going to happen eventually, right?
