the darkling's death at the end of ruin and rising actually made me emotional even though i hated his guts! and that's testimony to how well he manipulated alina, in this essay i will
the darkling does two things extremely well, as evident through alina's pov
he puts himself on a pedestal of moral superiority and self-righteousness: his ideal of unification and freedom for grisha justifies anything he's done or may do, no matter the cost (which is often grisha lives)
perhaps creating the fold was an accident, and maybe not being able to destroy himself it was the truth, but it's undeniable the fold resulted in thousands of deaths during its creation as well as over the years since (that's through crossing the fold, limiting resources and weapon transport, causing detours into fjerda or the shu han, refugees, etc), including grisha. furthermore, having the fold swallow novokribirsk in front of diplomats was entirely unnecessary. he sacrificed the lives of innocent people for the equivalent of "let's whip it out and measure it". he could've evacuated the shore and then expanded the fold - they would've connected the dots of what could've happened if he'd expanded it into fjerda or the shu han. and if he wanted to kill people so badly to demonstrate, then why expand it into west ravka? his blind hunger for power entirely destroys his seemingly utilitarian principles. it's also implied at several points that he sees otkazatsya as inferior to grisha (so does baghra). he doesn't truly want grisha to be treated as ravkans, he wants grisha to get what he thinks they're owed. what he's owed. why should he be second to an otkazatsya king, he should be a leader, a king in his own right. can a person who doesn't see all humans as equals be justified in his views and his massacres just because he claims he's protecting a minority? can he rule a country of grisha and otkazatsya?
he claims he did it all for grisha and to end the wars but he's been pouring grisha soldiers into the conflict himself, he's resulted in so many grisha deaths and displacements and he's unnecessarily and brutally punished grisha (baghra, genya, even sergei who was "loyal"). despite this, iirc the darkling (or genya?) taunts alina for the deaths she "caused" after running away from his skiff on the fold. firstly, those are incomparable to what he's done, secondly, i wouldn't blame her for those who died on his skiff that he used her to light up the way for, and thirdly, at least she regretted them. he uses this exact manipulation tactic again when he tells alina she "destroyed the second army". him destroying novokribirsk (before trying to execute mal, before alina tried to run away to save him) and marching on the king afterwards tore the second army in half, not alina running away. many second army grisha realized he'd gone too far and chose to desert (e. g. zoya who had family in novokribirsk). the carnage and his coup on the king additionally turned the first army (and otkazatsya in general) against grisha, painting targets on their backs. he needlessly killed thousands, set his people decades back into oppression and marginalization, started a civil war and blamed a twenty year old girl who ran for her life and for the life of the only person she'd ever loved. this is why any argument for him being justified because he's defending grisha (a historically oppressed, persecuted community) and making ravka safe for them falls right through. he made grisha lives ostensibly worse for no real reason and refused to take accountability.
it's implied that he believes the ends justify the means - that the deaths will be worth it in the end because it will work. but it's been years of war and it hasn't. if alina hadn't shown up maybe it never would've. not only that, but the darkling's actions imply he sees no other way than using alina to control the fold and kill innocents to "ensure peace", then there must really be none. but the narrative disproves that epically through the entire character of nikolai lantsov. it draws parallels between the darkling and nikolai in terms of using alina and wanting to rule, and it's not like lantsov has never killed or been brutal, but it decidedly shows that there IS a way other than that of the darkling, and it's a way less deadly and not less grisha-friendly way. nikolai has the ideas and the creativity to bring to life inventions that improve the war effort and the lives of others, he's an excellent strategist and planner, a diplomat, ready to make personal sacrifices, and he sits tf down in meetings and signs documents for hours when he has to. when alina projects herself to see how the darkling is doing, it seems like the crown is heavy.
he makes himself extremely sympathetic and pitiable: the darkling's biggest tragedies - his loneliness and otherness - explain his motivations and why alina, so alike to him, should follow him
the darkling talks a big talk of how unique, alone and misunderstood he is but in reality this is to a large extent prison of his own making that he seemingly takes it out on others for. there's one other grisha just like him. baghra has the same gift, has lived the same long nomadic life, has been through everything he has (and maybe more), and truly knows him. but when we first meet her, it seems he rarely acknowledges her, easily dismisses her as a crazy old hag. we can't even begin to guess she's his mother and so similar to him. perhaps it was not always so between them - my guess would be it was his moral corruption that steadily drove her away, and not that he's always been the only shadow summoner. when baghra betrays him eventually (though she does it because she wishes he can still be redeemed), he doesn't acknowledge he's the one who crossed a line and just punishes her bcuz he can, or to teach her a lesson maybe. he mourns her when she takes her own life, but it's too little too late and ultimately he who forces her hand to sacrifice herself.
alina briefly wonders if he's had children or a wife - it's implied if he did, they're long gone. here's why i think it's unlikely he ever did. he wouldn't have had children with an otkazatsya whom he deems a lower life form, and any grisha he might've had a child with would've likely ended up living quite long too if powerful enough. it's also likely any child he would've had with a powerful grisha might inherit his power and also live long - just like baghra with him. but we aren't aware of such figures in the story, so they likely never existed. we see him push alina away, almost angry and punishing himself for feeling something toward her. he could've had a life partner to share the burden of having great power and a long life or a child just like him to understand what shadow summoning is like. but that would've required he looked within, healed his trauma and relearned how to trust again after the events in demon in the wood. that would've required reaching out.
indeed, he seemingly doesn't even let other grisha close to him. that's partly due to a fear of being killed for being an amplifier (tho he can amplify through touch and doesn't even need to die) and not wanting anyone to know his secrets - not just his age and baghra but that he created the fold (easy fix would've been not creating the fold and killing thousands but i digress). we see he's perceived as very magnetic/charismatic, revered and powerful enough that he isn't swimming in assassination attempts. he has his own loyal guard in the oprichniki. so he could've had friends, not just tools in his arsenal, but he unfortunately sees everyone, including grisha, as means to power. it's why he sentenced genya to a life of servitude and deprived her of the red robes she deserved, and why he punished her the way he did when she let alina get away on the ship.
but it's not just that - he distances himself from all other grisha in symbolic ways too, e. g. by being the only summoner in black, by having the darkling be a title, by sitting at his side of the table alone, by not even coming to dinner. he claims he unified grisha but he also keeps the different orders separated from one another, and you can argue that that's their own choice or that it has pragmatic reasons bcuz they're soldiers in a military structure but the books also implicitly show us a grisha can have a multitude of talents simultaneously (even ones across within orders, think of the twins or genya and morozova) and that they work fantastically well together. he wants to be fearsome, powerful, untouchable and is brutal to achieve that impression but then essentially can't deal with his self-inflicted loneliness and stigmatization. that's why he wanted alina wearing black too (he wanted to claim her as property, an extension of him, another tool), why he worked so hard to manipulate her into believing nobody knows her and would never understand her except him. this is classic abuser behavior - you rip someone from their support system, isolating then from everyone else, and you convince them they need you. in reality, alina and the darkling have so little in common and mal, despite rightfully fearing her and being afraid for her, knew and understood her so much better.
we didn't see the darkling mourn baghra so we can't be sure how he took it but the most broken he's ever been on page is when he realized alina had lost her powers. that's right. we never see him as hopeless as he was when he learned that bringing the three amplifiers together didn't make alina stronger but took her power away entirely. not only did it render her completely useless to him - it redistributed her power among others. there is real, not just self-inflicted, loneliness and isolation morozova felt given his power and his genius (or madness), so he created something that ended that kind of suffering. but that thing wasn't more power like the darkling thought. it made alina not be the only sun summoner so she wasn't unique and so others weren't alone, it made her not be a sun summoner at all so she didn't have to live as grisha, and destroyed with it any leverage the darkling might've had on her if she still had her powers. that's what broke him. that's why he went down without a fight. he chose death over a life without the power he thought he was owed above everyone else, that he thought he could get if he just spilled enough blood. maybe a part of him realized more power couldn't truly save him (community could), but he'd pushed and hurt everyone else away in his pursuit for it.
tho tbh i realized that^ only later and in the moment i had totally bought the whole "i am so alone in the world" spiel and was sad that he was dying, that nobody knew his name except alina and that he didn't want his grave desecrated, he's both a master manipulator and a sad, sad guy
