Blumenthal Trio - Tumblr Posts
we've all talked about how the kids in liam's story were clearly caleb astrid and eodwulf, but the one detail i keep coming back to that i haven't seen anyone mention yet is that bit about loyalty and sacrifice?
like... the witch wanted one whole kid, not pieces of three of them, but she took the pieces because they refused to offer up any one of them as a sacrifice, the three kids were too close to betray each other like that. every one of them would rather have something vital taken from them than lose one of their friends.
but the blumentrio very much did lose a member, that's caleb's entire backstory
and i can't help but think about what this story means, all that considered, in terms of how caleb sees his old friends, and sees himself?
like he sets himself above (or at the very least aside from) all this when trent is around with snide comments about how he "wouldn't presume to know" anything about his former friends, but that's between him and trent, who he definitely sees as a bad person now
but when it comes to the blumentrio, i think about how tight knit they must have been? like to a certain degree we knew this, they were all from the same town, they trained together, they were very close. but despite the abuse and the conditioning and literally being trained to detach themselves from anyone they loved, to see themselves above others, and definitely in a culture where the ability to crush others for the sake of your ambition is seen as a virtue, they valued their friendship more than their strength
does caleb still feel like he betrayed them? he doesn't feel like he betrayed trent, not anymore, but his friends? the friends who were at his side through literally everything, who would have helped him with anything, who did help him when they shouldn't have, who he turned on, when he broke, who he hurt, and then abandoned, when they never would have betrayed him
(whether or not you believe astrid on who caused her burn scars is a different debate but i personally don't think she needed to lie there, and i think caleb definitely believed her, which is what matters)
he's trying to save them at least to a certain extent out of the empathy he holds for all the scourgers, and trying to prevent the endless onslaught of children sacrificed for this country, but under that, there's definitely a layer of guilt fueling his actions, the same way he still feels like a failure, that doesn't disappear that quickly
i'm also interested in what else you can extrapolate from that about their academy time, like... all three became a sacrifice because they stayed together. is that what happened? we don't know much about their lives then, but, was there a point one of them tried to leave and the others convinced them not to? was it one person's idea to enroll in the solstryce in the first place, and the other two followed?
whose idea was it to lead the kids into the woods, to accidentally stray so far from the light? and once they were there, what even was the right choice?
it's three broken children as opposed to one dead one. and when it comes down to it, who can truly say which is worse?