“controversial opinion alastair carstairs has potentially had the hardest life out of any of the main characters in the shadowhunters universe so far” now you may be thinking to yourself “WHOA tumblr user thepictureofsdr back it up there, that is an incredibly bold, broad, and obnoxious take” HOWEVER i have a case to make.
(disclaimer this isn’t taking into account the villains or immortal characters while i personally understand cringe teenager psychology i cannot personally understand the psychology of people over 300 nor those with murderous urges, im not finished my degree. one more disclaimer in the notes)
there is one singular thing that i think sets alastair apart from any of his other mc shadowhunter colleagues: the fact that he has been alone his whole life.
you can pluck any mc from any cassie series and create a web of support for them, whether it be family or friends, whether the characters believe they have that support system or deserve it or not, that support is STILL THERE. at all points in TMI, clary, jace, alec, izzy, and simon were all there for each other. alec was pretending to believe jace was evil in coa? izzy was staunchly defending jace. clary had a falling out with the others? she had simon. this pattern continues into the books, with gideon and gabriel being forgiven by institute and allowed a place to heal, with jem and will each going through hell but having each other and then having tessa, with the blackthorn siblings having each other to fall back on (including emma), with kit finding a home in LA and then with the carstairs, with the merry thieves considering each other brothers, with cordelia spilling her heart out to lucie, hell even grace had jesse. obviously i haven’t named every character but you get the trend im going for. every character has had SOMEONE, a friend, a significant other, a parabatai, a sibling, the rare parent.
then we have alastair. he had a roughly normal childhood for a few years despite the moving around, having a healthy relationship with his baby sister. but then he turned 10, something changed and he lost everything. on top of having moved around a lot and not having a single stable friend, in a way, he lost his sister and parents. it’s impossible to have a carefree sibling relationship when you’re actively giving up your life and time to protect them. it is by no means cordelias fault that their relationship was lost, but its a sad truth. he loses that reliable open sibling relationship, he loses that relationship with his father, and his mother ceases to be a mother and becomes more a coworker in this panic to keep the family afloat. by taking on this adult role so early on in life he loses the innocence and unconditional reliability of those relationships, and he seemingly never turns to them for comfort ever again, with cordelia only finding out about part of his emotional ordeals in cog, and even then he doesn’t burden her with everything. with this breakdown of the parental units and relationship as well as being isolated, alastair also loses his only example of what a healthy romantic relationship should look like, he has no real idea how a partner should act, which we know will come into play later. let’s also not forget how the one family member that could’ve helped, jem, was actively pushed away by elias who raised his children to not trust silent brothers for his own personal selfish needs.
then he goes to school, desperate for friends and what does he get? a year of verbal and physical bullying, with rumours being spread about his family and bruises slowly covering him. he then has to spend years pretending he’s awful just to survive and by some miracle he gets out and makes 1 (one) singular friend who then publicly friend breaks up with him by threatening to throw him in a river at an engagement party attended by what i assume is the entire enclave (thank you matthew). THEN (yes this tragedy is still going) we get to one of the most unsettling relationships in the series, mostly because the bizarreness of it is just… never addressed? we get alastair and charles who were together in 1902 when they wouldve been about 18 and 23, meaning we got a man who would’ve graduated college by then going after someone who would have just graduated high school… on top of that it was an incredibly toxic relationship with charles making him feel as though he were worthless and a dirty secret and centered the entire relationship around him, his own schedule, his needs, his wants, never making time for anything on alastair’s terms. on top of the love sick teenager syndrome, alastair had never personally witnessed a healthy relationship so on top of that AND being desperate for the closeness and intimacy and support he’d gotten from no one before, he had no way of knowing he was being treated badly, he didn’t know any better until much later, after witnessing charles propose to not one but TWO GIRLS while still keeping alastair sidelined.
so to summarize, alastair has never had a lasting, appropriate, healthy, unconditional, relationship with 1. a parent 2. a sibling 3. a friend 4. a significant other 5. family. he has never been loved for the sake of being loved, hes never had someone care for him because he simply exists, everyone wants something from him and he’s never felt what its like to be truly cared for. for every trauma he has endured, for every night he went out as a child to find his drunken father passed out in a bar to drag him home, for every beating he suffered as a school boy, for every friendship that crumbled to nothing, for every time his only relationship used him and sent him to sleep unsure of his worth, he didn’t have a single person. there was no jem to assure him that no matter his faults he deserved love, no cecily to hand out forgiveness and remind him to not dwell on the past, to just move forward, no julian to turn to when he couldn’t hold up anymore, no izzy to tell him he deserves better or to point out the flaws in how he’s treated, no alec to let him rest and defend him, he has never experienced those healthy dynamics.
not only has he been dealt an awful set of cards, hes never had a single person to help him through life to the point where hes not only alone but the few relationships he does experience actively cause him more problems and pain. mind you this post doesn’t even really address the main traumas he endures this is just the breakdown of his relationships so just mentally add on his MAIN story to all of this… everything elias made him endure, all the bullshit the thieves throw in his face, every time hes given up his life for the sake of someone else… this is just the background to all of that.
in short i think alastair has had one of the hardest lives maybe even the hardest, not because i think hes suffered the worst traumas of all or i think he wins the sadness games, but because he has never had a single person to help him through what he’s experienced, to love him because he exists, never had a single person to care for him through it all and not only is he aware of this tragedy, he thinks he deserves it. he pushes people away, keeps his walls up, thinks he doesn’t deserve love from others, thinks he is too damaged and twisted to burden someone with his existence, and despite his genuinely kind soul, he still thinks he’s cruel and awful and deserving of nothing, but are we surprised? its not like he has anyone to tell him otherwise.