I’ve been doing some thinking about Darklina/Alarkling and why I ship it even though everyone dismisses it as some vapid fangirl bad-boy thing.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason so many of us like the ship isn’t because we’re “abuse-apologists”, but because of the inherent tragedy of the fact that Alina and Aleksander technically were soulmates and complimentary halves to each other, but by the time they finally crossed paths with each other it was too late. They were basically doomed from the start.
The Darkling had spent millenia walking the earth, living through and witnessing many things that shaped his ideals and beliefs. We can see in the short bonus story included at the end of Ruin and Rising that the Darkling was once a very human boy who tried to see good in other people and sought human connection and friendship, far from the ruthless villain in the books. But something consumed and buried that boy. Ironically, I believe that the Darkling’s immortality is what destroyed his humanity.
The human mind isn’t really built for thousands of years of life and isolation, and his solitary immortal life gradually wore down his humanity, empathy and ability to connect with other people. It’s like how the rolling ocean tides gradually and inevitably erode and wear away rocks. No matter how good of a person you are, I think that living through an unending passage of time would eventually wear down your ability to connect with the world and the people around you. That’s why in the short story from his POV as a child he thinks about how other people are basically dust—the connections he makes with them are futile because their lifespans start and end in a blink-of-an-eye of his immortal lifespan.
So if he’s removed from virtually every other living being on the planet, what does he have left? Power. So he dedicates himself to it for thousands of years because it’s the only thing he has, the only thing he can rely on. That pursuit of power ended up consuming him, his immortality eroded his empathy, which then all combined with his desire to make a world where Grisha could live freely unlike the world he lived in as a child. The sum of all these things is what made him into the complex villain that he was.
Then Alina comes along, a shining beacon of light, and the only other person who could understand him, the only other person in the world who is just like him. There’s a reason the series beats us over the head with “like calls to like.” Despite being fully entrenched in his own corruption and lust for power, there’s a deeply-buried part of him that genuinely yearns for her and that connection that he’s been searching for his entire life. People say he only loved her power and not her, but truthfully I think it’s a bit more complex than that. He genuinely believes that this person is destined to exist alongside him, and she is the only person who won’t turn to dust on him. After thousands of years you would be excited to finally meet someone like you too.
Underneath all that corruption and power he’s just a pathetic, isolated boy, and that’s one of the reasons he lost his sh/it and panicked when his mother died. His mother’s death leaves him significantly more frantic and unstable, because he’s now one step closer to being completely and utterly alone. He has a meltdown and lashes out when Alina loses her powers because it feels like he’s lost her too, that she’s going to turn into dust and slip through his fingers like everyone else. It sinks in that now he is completely and utterly alone in the world.
The tragedy really sinks in with Alina’s knife in his chest. He begs her to stay with him in his final moments (“don’t let me be alone”), and entrusts her with his very human dying wishes. No grave to be desecrated and to hear her say his name. Once all of that power and ambition crumbles away, all that’s left is Aleksander.
In that moment the thousands of years of his immortal lifespan are meaningless—he is fading and dying like every other man on the battlefield. Aleksander, the human boy who felt love and hurt and loss could only return when the Darkling died. His death affects Alina too, despite everything she can’t hate him because on a fundamental level she saw herself in him too, she understands and mourns Aleksander.
The true tragedy is that had they crossed paths thousands of years earlier, before the Black Heretic created the shadow fold, before Aleksander became the Darkling—I believe that they truly may have had a chance at happiness with each other. What could have been if that little girl who he tried to befriend when he was a child in the bonus short story had been Alina instead? If Alina had found Aleksander and not the Darkling?
It’s the tragedy of finding your soulmate but too late. He tells her at one point in the story “you could make me a better man” and what stings is that at one point that may have been true. There’s a cruel irony to finding someone who could have been your salvation and light, but only when you were too far gone to be saved.
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