“I’m taking what’s mine, even so. Not like you - you lost your nerve, you lost the game. But you and I, we’re not the same! I’m not lost, this fate was mine to choose. So I chose to lose my doubts and lose my chains, lose each weakness that remains, now that I have nothing left to lose.”
The interesting part to me about this passage is that Cass is saying Varian was right to do what he did, but disproving him in the same breath. “You lost your nerve, you lost your game” - she believes that Varian should have pushed harder, gone even further than he did to achieve his goals. She believes the reason he failed was because he had too many doubts - though he might have convinced himself at the time, he really wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to get his father back; he still had a (somewhat blurred) line he wouldn’t cross. Yes, he wanted his father back, and he was willing to both physically and mentally injure whoever he needed to in order to do so - but he couldn’t do more than that, and the damage he inflicted was relatively minor. Like we see in the scene with Arianna, he is full of doubts, and he doesn’t actually want to do any of the things he’s done so far, but he believes the only way to get Rapunzel’s attention is to hurt the people closest to her - or, on a more twisted level, maybe stealing her mother could help him feel there was some sort of “equal trade” taking place: if she wouldn’t help him save his father, then he would take her mother. That way, they’re both down a beloved parent and there is some kind of perverted closure for Varian. If he can’t have his father back, this is the next closest thing.
Cassandra thinks Varian should have gone further, pushed harder - taking Arianna wasn’t enough. He should have taken others too: Frederic, Eugene, hell, maybe even Cass herself (though he wouldn’t have been able to keep her for long). He should have hurt them more than he did. Worst of all, she knows he’s smart. He recreated an army of fully operational automatons from seeing one in a dark room, he’d created his own solutions/elixirs/what-have-you to solve various issues he faced - he made multiple earthquake machines under the earth. This boy is a genius, and if he’d fully adapted his abilities to do the utmost harm to Rapunzel, he would have succeeded. If he’d used even half of his brainpower against her, he would have crushed them all. But, again, Varian has that line he won’t cross - the one that allows him to cause pain, but not irreversible damage. Everything he did, his opponents could recover from with the right resources.
“I’m not lost, this fate was mine to choose” - what Varian did required a conscious decision. No one was (directly) manipulating him, no one told him to construct an army of automatons to attack the princess, and no one told him to kidnap the queen. He was lost, yes, but he did choose to do all that. He made a bad choice, and he suffered the consequences. Cass is blinded by the fact that she herself is headed down the same road, but with one crucial difference: she doesn’t have the line Varian did. With Zhan Tiri directly influencing her decisions and making it an active struggle to go against her darker instincts, Cass is completely convinced that if you want people to see it your way, you need to crush them first. And we’ve seen a lighter version of that throughout the series - Cass has always been a “punch first, ask questions later” kind of girl, and that has only been amplified in season three. Where Varian was struggling with his morality, knowing that every choice he made was a bad one, Cass has chosen to “lose [her] doubts and lose [her] chains”, completely freeing herself to do whatever she deems necessary to accomplish her endgame. She has severed ties (she believes) successfully with everyone she cared about - Rapunzel, Eugene, Lance, the Captain, and others; and now, she’s attempting to sever ties with Varian. What she doesn’t know is that they all still see her as a friend who’s lost her way. They all want her to come back home, which is what Varian is trying so hard to make her realise. She still has so many people who care for her, who love her for who she is, and who want to see her safe. Because of her emotionally-stunted upbringing, unfortunately, she has a harder time seeing this. Since Gothel only treated her kindly when she was out of the way, she never knew how to read genuine love. Now, Varian is presenting her with the most earnest expression of care that he can...and she’s short-circuiting. Varian has no ulterior motives, no hidden desire for her to return so he can further abuse her later. He wants her to come home so that she can heal, and have others around her to help her through that process. He’s trying so desperately to prove to her that people can simply care about you without wanting something in return, and she is responding by throwing his worst regret back in his face. He wants to remind her that he’s been through this, and look at how it turned out for him! He lost the battle, was thrown in jail, and helped enemy invaders nearly destroy Corona. He doesn’t want her to make the same mistakes, but Cass takes his pleas as a reminder that yeah, Varian was a terrible person and if he could get away with something as big as that, why can’t I? She can’t see the guilt that is eating him up. She never saw his nightmare when he touched the red rocks; she doesn’t know that what he did will haunt him for the rest of his life. All she sees is a boy that was too weak to carry out his revenge, and someone she has to be “better” than. Varian may have failed, but she won’t. She doesn’t have moral inhibitions, and she doesn’t have anyone to stop her, so she will keep going until she wins...or she destroys herself.
Can you tell I’m an English major?😂 this got LONG
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