I’ve been thinking a lot about Xavier and how he deals with his approach to emotions/feelings about MC, especially now after getting those little drops of lore from the new World Underneath stories related to Philos and their customs relating to not showing emotion.
I find it fascinating that their entire culture is basically centered around greed and base desires. There is no falling in love with someone because you care about them, there is only ‘having’ someone because they serve a purpose in your life (status, having children to carry on your name etc.) And while Xavier is definitely an outlier, he still struggles with his upbringing and literal centuries of suppressing who he really was in order to survive in that kind of society. The way I see it, this is really telling in the why Xavier’s first quickfire response is so often jealously. It’s the base reaction of “this is mine, and you can’t have it”. And leads him to stake his claim the only way he knows how. Words of genuine emotion are very hard for Xavier. You can see this in the way he says things in a roundabout manner: “You’re the one I like” or “I want to stay by your side forever” and to be fair I find this highly romantic, but I do think it’s interesting to look at given the context. Xavier cannot simply say ‘I love you’ because he’s just not programmed like that. And to him, I don’t think it has a ton of meaning. This is why he’s more often drawn to showing his love physically. He’s always touching MC and keeping her close to him (and of course we all know his go-tos for apology and jealousy.)
I theorize that he learned genuine love and emotions from his mother. We only got to see her in a flashback from the King of Darknight myth, but it seemed they had a really different relationship than Xavier did with his father, and she doesn’t seem to be in the picture anymore by the time we get to the Shooting Stars myth so I think she probably died when he was rather young. Most likely before the Where Shooting Stars Fall anecdote. So we know that emotion isn’t so much impossible for Philosians, it’s just frowned upon in their society.
I think it’s interesting too to look at Xavier opposite of Sylus who is a completely different story. Of course we saw him struggling with the same lack of emotions in the Dragon myth but Sylus always felt different than Xavier. It wasn’t so much programming to be emotionless, as it was he taught himself to feel nothing so he could be stronger. Even in the current timeline, we don’t see Sylus struggling with the same issues as Xavier. In fact, they’re pretty opposite in a lot of aspects. While Xavier is reserved, Sylus is extremely open about what he wants. He’s proactive about it. He’s not afraid to explain his affection for MC in detail and tell her precisely why he loves her. His greed is well fed, hence why I think he is able to control it so well, even with his Aether core. (Let’s not forget that he would have literally let it eat him alive in Shared Bliss if MC hadn’t basically forced him to allow himself to feed it. This man is a new level of strong.) Again, this is very opposite Xavier who will more often than not initiate intimacy with MC when he can’t think of a better way to express his feelings. And on occasion, yes he uses it in ways that could be seen as manipulative. However, I really love how we see MC completely understanding him and what Xavier needs and loving him for who he is, which is the main thing he never had from anyone else.
Anyway, that’s my ramble for the day because I’ve been thinking about it recently and thought I would share my thoughts.
