thinking abt musical farquaad’s backstory rn and how, even though to the audience it’s portrayed as funny and a little pathetic, it actually is pretty tragic?
like yeah, it’s funny and all in its presentation. the ballad of farquaad is not meant to be legitimately sad. at all. however, if you remove the layers of comedy and look at the bare-bones pieces of what happened in his life, we get:
his mother isn’t alive, and died when he was very young in a way that was preventable (and something that young quaad probably heavily blamed his father for)
his father didn’t pay any attention to him growing up and was mostly absent, and he likely grew up very poor
not included in the song but like, context clues, i’m sure he was mistreated his whole life too on top of having an absent father and no mom, so there was noone in his life to support him ever
he was being pressured all this time into contributing to the “family business” aka mining which i’m sure he considered a humiliating and low-grade task which, can you even really blame him for not wanting to spend every day of his life doing hard labor
he knew his mom descended from royalty which definitely felt like a slap in the face, knowing that he could’ve had the life he wanted but it was just out of his grasp because she chose to be with his father
somehow he managed to stay living with his dad for 28 years, so i wonder if he was actually trying to pick up jobs and it was not going successfully? -> if he was not trying and just doing nothing (strong possibility), that was likely a product of a lot of hopelessness and built up anger towards the world (and for good reason)
on top of all of this, he had to grapple with a lot of self-hatred as well from his height which, honestly if i’m pushing it can be an allegory for being biracial? is that crazy to say? because looking at it from this perspective, he inherited this trait that he hates (that he hates because of how it causes people to view and treat him) from a side of his family that he now blames relentlessly for giving it to him, and now places blame on everyone else from this wider group of people to a degree so much so that he chooses to oppress them as an adult so he doesn’t have to deal with the weight of looking inward. which is… really sad? honestly this is i think one of the distinctions between him and movie farquaad (assuming they don’t have the same backstory) because musical farquaad’s actions are clearly derived from some sort of projected self hatred whereas movie farquaad seems like he’s just fairytalephobic (although movie farquaad fans feel free to correct me if i’m wrong).
lastly, i’m touchy about saying this out loud in general or making a separate post for it because of how stigmatized the disorder is already (please for the love of god don’t take farquaad as a reference for its presentation, please please please don’t, the majority of people with this are absolutely nothing like him), but all of these things that happened to him were clearly bad enough to have caused him to develop what seems to be narcissistic personality disorder, which is also obviously very untreated in him and something he would be struggling with every day. like yes, now he’s getting what he wants and everything, but it will never be enough to fully satisfy his cravings for attention and affection (which he never received in his past, leading to now) or anything else, because he can’t be god and he will never have full control over everything that he wants to be satisfied. he can look in the mirror and pretend he likes what he sees but it won’t take away from what’s really there, and it’s only a matter of time before the facade wears off and he can’t pretend to be blind anymore. and let’s be honest, his life definitely wasn’t just a series of highs one after the other, and he definitely had a lot of low points where he did see through that facade and it was really upsetting for him. and i kind of like to headcanon that his NPD’s presentation was more vulnerable than grandiose as a child (and well into those first couple years of adulthood) because it just makes sense for his environment at the time, getting absolutely no supply and just having to deal with his emotions in the only way he knew how, which by the way, was his FATHER’S FAULT!!! this is NOT a farquaad apology statement because yes he’s a major asshole who did a bunch of bad stuff he absolutely didn’t have to, but it’s undeniable that the development of these core traits of needing attention and supply are because of his upbringing and how he NEVER RECEIVED IT, was NEVER shown a single healthy coping mechanism, and was NEVER taught that anyone would love him unless he forced them to. he wasn’t SHOWN love, and that’s sad. farquaad is sad. this makes me sad
