In Upon a Dark Ascension, I like to imagine Astarion's shoulders are more stooped, curved outward, feigning an embrace or closing in to ensnare his prey.
When he was a Spawn, he had a role to play, a theater mask to hide behind. Heinous though that role was, it was everything he knew for two hundred years.
He had to stand straight and tall because there was always a higher power above him: a threat overhead he had to outwit or thwart with charismatic defiance
No matter how many tears he she'd in silence
But now the threat is gone
And worse: he is the threat
There's no one above him to stand tall against. No one to defy.
No reason to weep in the dark, unseen
There are only those beneath him to keep in line--to watch, jealous and wary, lest they destroy him the way he destroyed Cazador
So he watches, he waits, he looks down...and slowly with time, his bowed shoulders echo his thoughts.
