I've seen people talk about the implications of Gortash tadpoling his parents and so on, but I've never seen anyone talk about the fact that he gets genuinely pissed if you kill them:
And the devnotes fo point out that he really does feel betrayed by that action.
It could be that he is just angry about the fact that you dared ruin his revenge (by setting them free from the tadpole), but given that he is, behind all his bluster, nothing more than a scared child desperately clinging to the illusion of control, I do wonder if he is also hurt by their deaths.
Don't mistake me, I don't say that he is actually grieving the people his parents were; I think he gets upset because he is "mourning" the parents he wanted them to be/thought they were when he was still only a child (children usually struggle with putting abusive behaviour into words and/or understanding what abuse is (the whole talk of 'you would have sold him as well. He was always an ungrateful child')).
By tadpoling them, he was able to keep that illusion alive, able to have them tell him that he is loved and good and that he is successful. He can delude himself and ignore their actual resentment against him.
And then the player kills them.
And now Gortash has to acknowledge that not only his control over them was not as final as he may have believed, but also that he no longer has anyone to tell him that they are proud of him... at least not from someone whose opinion might actually matter in that regard.
Durge? I think he would value Durge actually telling them that they like/respect/value him, but that is a statement from a friend/ally/lover.
A parent's love is very different.
You can have multiple friends in your life, more than one lover, many allies. But you can't have more than two parents (biologically speaking, at least).
And honestly, the closest thing he might have had to any family during his time in the House of Hope was 'Hope' herself (the dwarven lady). I can see her acting like an older sister towards him (given the chance), but, ultimately, her demeanor and madness must have confused a young Enver. Although it could also have acted as a very strange source of comfort for him.
This might explain why he loathes Orin so and what he means when he talks about feeling something when looking at her.
It's not just disgust; it's fear. And given that he wears an anti-anxiety coat, it would make sense for him to be unable to actually name this feeling.
Gortash sees Orin, mad and raving and broken, and, maybe, has to think of Hope as well. How Hope spoke, how her speech pattern seemed somewhat similar to Orin's, how she was insane and terribly broken and in pain, but kept going. It could be that a part of him views Orin as this terrible perversion of Hope; of what Hope could turn into if Raphael ever manages to break her like Bhaal did with Orin. If Hope brought him comfort as a child, then meeting Orin (witnessing the other side of madness, one that is strangely familiar but at the same time so utterly different) must be horrifying. Suddenly, a behaviour that once brought him comfort makes him wary.
Anyway, back to Gortash's parents.
Raphael and the rest of the inhabitants of the House of Hope are no parental figures.
So if Gortash's parents die, then he loses the last thing that connected him to his own innocent self: the child that was no god's chisen, no master-schemer, no man that sought to control the whole world.
At this point, he has no real home; he has no real friends (even Durge is no longer quite the same person), and now, with his parents demise, he doesn't even have any real family anymore. Because I truly believe that he told himself that because they sired him, they mattered. What else was he supposed to do?
He knows that Bane doesn't care about him, that his followers only serve him as long as Bane wills it, that Orin and Ketheric are both set on backstabbing him. He has nothing. During the time in which he tadpoles them, he believes that the only real friend he ever had (Durge) is dead.
So, yeah. I totally get him.
This is not just anger at a thwarted revenge or loss of control making him react like that; it's the realization that the last part that he had, the one that I believe he truly did cling to (the tiny spark of innocence/carefreeness still left to him), was gone. And he would never be able ton regain that, because even if he did resurrect his parents, the tadpole would be gone and they would start calling him a monster/ungrateful/unwanted/unloved again.
He wouldn't be able to bear that.
Anyway, his parents as some twisted sort of anchor to his once childlike innocence and Orin as a constant reminder of how afraid he actually is of utter madness, is fascinating.
It also illustrates of why he respects Durge so much.
Durge, like Hope, is constantly being manipulated and used by a more powerful force. And both still cling to their sanity with all their might. Durge acting as a reminder of Hope is perfect.
I adore the interactions with Hope, and they only grow more meaningful if you talk to her as Durge.
Now, if only we could bring Raphael's head to Gortash and tell him that Hope is free... alas. That's what fanfictions are for.
stormborns
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romaincrisis
