About Gale and Mystra
This post by @messiahzzz has been on my mind for sooo long, so let me share a few thoughts on their relationship, his "grooming", and what context this puts his folly in.
A) Was Gale groomed?
Whatever timeline we apply, even if she never touched him in a sexual way before he was 20, it is safe to call what was done to him "grooming".
Gale was born during the Spellplague, a time when Mystra was canonically gone, but still very much revered and mystified in wizarding circles. She's still the admin of the weave, although dead/ incapacitated. A young boy who can manipulate the weave consistently and (more or less) safely to an extent where he casts fireball and summons a tressym is fucking impressive!
So, of course, Elminster hears of this and shows up. Whether directed by Mystra to do so or by his own will is not the point. Because Elminster would have instilled the reverence and love for Mystra in that young boy's heart, regardless. Elminster is like a father figure to Gale (as we can tell from Gale's reaction after Elminster stabilises the orb), and he has immense influence on him, even in adulthood.
Elminster is a chosen of Mystra himself and ALSO a former lover of Mystra. So if Gale knew this, it might not even have felt "wrong" when she came onto him.
Slight tangent here, but to me it's obvious SHE came onto HIM. He does not have the rizz to seduce a goddess. (see this post by @brainrotbutobsessed). She decided to sleep with him, and he was willing and enthusiastic. Also, I am getting a sense that Elminster kind of raised Gale as a present for Mystra? Like his own version of Gale's folly, a show of devotion? That would make it soooo much more fucked up....
By the time she comes on to him, the foundations have already been laid by Elminster. He "prepared" Gale for Mystra, shaped his entire self-worth and identity around her and made Gale into what Mystra wants: prodigious, ambitious, desperate to please, and convinced that her approval and affection is the ultimate prize. She doesn’t need to “win him over” Elminster’s tutoring has already done the work. All she has to do is notice him.
Also, he is in a bubble where everything is about Mystra. Almost every important relationship Gale has before BG3 ties back to Mystra. Elminster, colleagues, other wizards; they're all within her sphere. Gale’s entire magical upbringing reinforced that Mystra’s approval is the highest good.
Tara and Morena may be the only ones who witness how unhealthy this is and tell him as much. He would have resisted those suggestions fiercely because acknowledging them would threaten his whole identity and purpose. This is a common thread between victims of abuse.
To round this up: Whether or not sex was involved before Gale was “of age” is almost beside the point. The grooming began years before they met: through Elminster’s training, cultural reverence, and the deliberate shaping of Gale’s identity around Mystra’s approval. By the time she entered his life, the emotional groundwork of grooming was complete.
B) What was Gale and Mystra's relationship like?
Their relationship begins with Mystra in the position of goddess, mentor, and ultimate magical authority. "Power imbalance" does not convey how disturbingly uneven they are. She keeps him close, but on her terms. He learns that affection and attention are conditional on obedience. Furthermore, I think if we look at their intimacy, we see that it is on her terms and on her turf, always.
Gale refers to the incorporeal sex in the weave as "the way the gods do it", and he sees this as an elevated, more sophisticated form of intimacy. From Gale's comments, this arrangement also seems service-oriented: he performed for her, and she allowed him to feel lucky for the privilege.
He assumes that, of course, the player wants that. He has to be explicitly told you want him, not just his Weave. This shows how deeply he associates sexual intimacy with magical performance, not physical closeness.
Let's get meta for a moment: Mystra never lets lovers get physically close. Physical intimacy involves vulnerability and equality; incorporeal intimacy keeps her in control and at a safe distance.
By controlling the terms of intimacy, she kept him from ever having an equal, mutual sexual relationship while with her. By instilling a sense of debt and guilt, she ensured he would protect her image and take the blame for their fallout.
These points show that Mystra’s abuse wasn’t just about professional mentorship or divine authority; it penetrated into how Gale defines love, sex, and worth. Whatever sexual or romantic experiences Gale had before Mystra, none were as awe-inspiring or formative. She immensly shaped both his heart and his concept of intimacy.
C) What made him fall?
Gale’s folly is often framed as a simple case of ambition overruling good sense (explicitly by Mystra, Elminster and Gale himself), but when you look closer, it’s less about pure ambition and a bit more complex.
The first driver is his desire to prove himself Mystra’s equal. Not in a hostile or challenging way, but in the sense of being worthy to stand at her side.
The second motive is personal and painfully romantic: he wanted to impress her. The act, in his mind, was a grand gesture, something that would make her look at him with renewed approval and affection. (“You know me, my romantic gestures can never be grand enough.”)
From the outside, there is an undeniable red flag here: Gale did not take “no” for an answer. He pushed at boundaries, ignored limits, and reached for something dangerous. But that drive was cultivated over years of conditioning.
When Mystra rewarded ambition, Gale learned to see it as a virtue; when she punished it, he learned to see himself as the one at fault for reaching incorrectly, not for reaching at all.
And then there’s the part of him that is, at heart, a nerdy wizard kid who loves magic for its own sake. He loves Mystra, but he also loves magic itself! “Her art” is the center of his identity and joy.
Before the weave channeling moment in the game, he tells the player, “As much as I fear losing myself, I fear even more losing my command of her art”. He is sad about the love he lost, he is scared of losing himself and becoming a mind flayer, but the most frightening thing to him would be to loose his magic!
So just imagine this IT nerd with a high end gaming PC, he was like part of the elite and had immense power. But through Mystra, he caught wind of something bigger (think Quantum Computer or something). Flattering the “IT admin” (aka Mystra) to get access didn’t feel like arrogance but like the next logical step in his lifelong pursuit of mastery.
So the folly is not just his ambition or hubris but his loving curiosity and nerdiness, as well as decades of romantic entanglement and professional grooming.
His “hubris” is actually a byproduct of a relationship where ambition was nurtured when useful, then punished when it threatened the power holder.