I need to admit that Fane fooled me the first time I was playing DOS2. Since his behaviour was plainly rude, and he was also open about his dislikes, opinions and background: I assumed that he wasn't lying about anything. But he was, of course. In a way. If not to the player character, then at least to himself.
I don't say that there were no clues. There absolutely were clues. I just didn't pay them enough attention back the first time I was playing.
At the beginning of the first act, when the player character can ask Fane about his feelings regarding the need to cover his real face in fear: he dismisses the question, doubting that there’s any reason for him to be afraid of the mortal world. Moreover, his initial attitude is… less than inviting. He expresses clear annoyance that the player character even tries talking to him, going as far as treating the whole conversation as a field research opportunity. What is more, he states his disinterest with the mortal world. He also makes it clear that the current partnership is made out of convenience alone.
Later in the game, Fane can actually warm up to the player character, the team and the world in general. I assumed at first that his change of heart was mostly caused by the fact that Fane was forced into teamwork. I had this idea that initially he had no need for interaction or companionship, but the circumstances made him interact and connect, and as a result he realized that he actually enjoyed it.
It's funny because unless you play as Fane you can speculate, but you may never know for sure when and how did he start wanting to interact with mortals and the world around him as a part of it, not an indifferent observer. I mean, one clue could be for example the fact that he CLAIMS he doesn't wish to talk to the player character, but once asked a few questions he responds in basically walls of text. But it's just a clue.
Whereas if you DO play as Fane as an origin character, you can get the plain, open text answer right there in the prologue. Fane as a player character can, as any other, let Sebille extract memories from him (which is, as we know, a fancy description of elven memory-licking powers) at their first meeting. She will say then that last night when Fane was held captive in a cellar with other sourcerers he was: „Watching. Staring at them. Hoping that none would stare back. (…) desperate to speak up – to reach out – to form a connection with these strange creatures.”
So, Fane does this at night, and then in the light of day he turns around and acts as if he was disinterested in interactions with any mortals. What a clown [affectionate] he is, indeed.
Of course it is also pretty clear why he does not admit to feeling any need of companionship: his pride prevents him from acknowledging that he may not be partial to bond with beings he openly describes as inferior.
Obviously one cannot call any possible response to Sebille’s words more canonical than the others, but they vary from embarrassment through surprised agreement to angry denial (although they are non-character specific). And it’s pretty telling. Even if the situation described by Sebille was on Fane’s part just fleeting moment of vulnerability (but the clues I’ve mentioned before may point towards a different conclusion) it shows that there’s at least a tiny seed of need for connection within Fane that doesn’t include just fellow kinsmen. That he was starved for interaction and wasn’t as picky about it as he had claimed to be. And this makes the whole “change of heart” thing a slightly different story because there was a part of Fane that had yearned for connection with the others from the very beginning, whether he was aware of it or not.
I would put my money on him not being aware, actually, thinking of it right now. After all, he claims he used to be indifferent, a ghost, an observer when he talks about his previous attitude during the main romance scene after the Nameless Isle.
What is even funnier is that after paying attention to both what Fane says and what he actually does, it becomes a common occurrence that despite not really being that polite, he doesn't tell the entire truth in more cases than the one described above. Buuuut this is an entirely different conversation to have.
*Or at least some aspects of it. He seems to find mortal affairs dull, because in his eyes any real value can be attributed just to the knowlegde of the law of the universe. So he claims. I bite my tongue here because he DOES literally have a notebook on mortal races and their customs. One would claim that he does this only for survival reasons to be better at blending in.
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