Pro Darkling - Tumblr Posts

Aleksander never had any worldly possessions- just the bones in his hands and shadows he was afraid of throughout his youth. And then he finally found something(someone) who he thought the making made especially for him(His soulmate. His sun summoner. His) and she's the thing that killed him in the end. Not by any other hand than the ones he believed belonged to him was made for him to hold (hands he believed would comfort him, help him, save him) was he stabbed straight through the heart.

The Demonizing of Change

A trend I've noticed in modern media is that many stories have the message of "protect the status quo". Whether it's a Marvel movie or a fantasy book, the fact that so often the villains are the only ones who fight to change society remains the same.

We all know the story: they were hurt by the system's flaw(s) and so they rose up to destroy that harmful system and in the process destroyed themselves. I'm not saying that this character type is wrong or bad (definitely overused imo), but the framing of the narrative and the protagonists is the issue.

The narrative typically shows the villain's first wrong doing to be the act of rebelling against the system. From the moment the person chose to reject the harmful system, they were in the wrong, or so the narrative frames it. Meanwhile, the protagonist may question and see injustice but they never fight it; it's just accepted and blindly defended. What's worse is the audience chooses to completely accept this telling and sides with the harmful regime the protagonist defends.

I find that some of the most drastic examples of these issues are Daenerys in GOT and the Darkling in the Grishaverse/SaB.

Daenerys Targaryen

One thing I want to specify before I go into this is that Dany's GOT ending is purely bad writing. It's not foreshadowed or justified in any way, so I'll be addressing how D&D tried to frame her past after S8e6 aired and how her antis interpret her.

According to D&D, we should see the beginning of Dany's "madness arc" from the very first season. Namely how she reacted to Viserys' death. While this isn't Dany rejecting a harmful system, her choosing to not defend Viserys (why would she??) is also her choosing to leave behind the cycle of abuse of her early life. It also sets the precedent of Dany killing/allowing the deaths of evil men.

Speaking of evil men, D&D also tried to paint Dany's campaign against slavery as a sign of her "megalomania and madness". This is where we get to the actual fighting against the system. Dany is leading a slave revolt and forcefully overthrowing the masters and the oppressive governments.

The way D&D tried to spin it was that Dany was wrong for using violence, and Tyrion's peaceful method was more successful. Except Dany did try peace in Meereen, it didn't work. She made concessions, she made agreements, she locked up her dragons and they weren't working. That's the whole point of her last chapter in ADWD.

However, the show chose to make it so Dany was failing because she was "too violent" and ultimately made the freedmen hate her. This choice, a clear deviation from the book, is the beginning of them trying to make Dany fall into the trope of "as bad as those you're fighting". In her fight to end slavery, she becomes as oppressive as the masters.

Which is just blatantly wrong. We see in the show that the freedmen are still free, they sit in her councils, they can come to her with their complaints and she listens. Dany is a queen, not a master. The show was already trying to gaslight its audience into believing the opposite of what they wrote. The same goes for her supposed violence. The violence she exerts is almost always towards the slavers, except when she executed Mossador for murder. That was her carrying out justice, why that was portrayed as a bad thing is beyond me.

The implications of the choices D&D made in adapting Dany's Meereen arc are very disturbing. They're basically saying that systematic and centuries old oppression should never be addressed with violence. The people who actively fight oppression are just as bad as the oppressors. If you can't magically fix a system that's been flawed for centuries immediately, you're a tyrant.

The choice to resolve the arc by having Tyrion come in with some great peaceful solution was plain stupid and sexist. We have seen in history that trying to unobtrusively phase out slavery doesn't work. By leaving the elite slave owners in peace, they are allowed to simply find ways to get around or wear down the changes. We see that in ADWD in Meereen by the way. Also the whole idea that a wise man had to come and fix the irrational woman's problem is so gross.

So basically: D&D took an arc about fighting oppression and learning that concessions only continue the cycle of violence and made it into a story about how violence is bad and you can actually just reason with slavers.

The disgusting ideas continue in season eight, where Dany torches KL for no reason and is put down like a rabid dog. Dany is the only character who wants to end oppression in this show. She's the only person to see and experience the suffering of the oppressed and chooses to do something about it. Season seven is full of her talking about leaving the world a better place and breaking the wheel. But in season eight "breaking the wheel" is turned into th deranged battle cry of her desired empire.

Let me restate that: the one character who fought to end systematic oppression is turned into the "true oppressor". Dany's desire to tear down the system that the entire show established as being unjust and awful is made into a sign of madness. Even in season seven, people were rolling their eyes at her talking about breaking the wheel.

Meanwhile, the protagonists of the show end it benefitting from the same system that tortured them the whole time. Westerosi society is shit, but the show ends glorifying the sexist, homophobic, classist, and feudalist kingdoms. They even laugh at Samwell Tarly when he suggests destroying the monarchy. All this sends the message that embracing the system is good, rebellion bad, and shut the fuck up if you're not happy.

Dany was reduced to a cautionary tale against fighting the system. I've seen people frame it as "seeking power is bad", but that doesn't make sense, as characters like Sansa actively seek power and are rewarded by the narrative. Dany's mistake was trying to change the world, rather than supporting it as it is.

The Darkling

The Darkling is a very different character from Dany; he's an actual villain. Aleksander is someone who has already reached the "become what you hate most" part of the trope, so he spends the whole story committing atrocities. The issue with his portrayal is the fact that the narrative and protagonists never address his very real reasons for fighting in the first place.

The grisha as a group are persecuted all throughout Ravka, they have been for centuries. The whole reason Aleksander begins his fight was to protect his people. By the time the series begins, the grisha are more protected, though only because they have become weapons of the state. That was only through Aleksander's mechanisations.

Aleksander became a villain in his attempts to save his people, making him a tragic character. So he has perfectly fallen into the trope, and, unfortunately, so do the protagonists. Alina and her allies all have seen and suffered under the cruelty of the Ravkan monarchy, however, they quickly dismiss just how awful it is. By the end of the story, the Darkling has become, in their eyes, the sole perpetrator of evil in Ravka.

There are no attempts made to rectify the constant damage done by the Apparat, in fact he's left to run free. Alexander Lanstov and Tatiana Grimjer are simply shipped off to a private island where they never are made to pay for the awful things they have done. There are no political reforms done to ensure the safety of grisha in the future; they're basically relying on the goodwill Zoya and Alina have bought with the people.

So basically, the minor villains who all had no reason to be completely atrocious receive basically no punishment from the narrative. Meanwhile, Aleksander, who had very valid reasons for wanting to overthrow the government, is ultimately given a fate worse than death. All his reasons for hating the Ravkan government and the power it has are ignored, even though the story set up that he's not wrong. The resolution of the story leaves the grisha just as, if not more, vulnerable to the prejudice and hatred of the world than they were before.

The narrative is communicating that Aleksander rising up for his people is worse than the centuries of corrupt Lanstovs. Aleksander is worse than the man who stirs up religious fanaticism and exploits the people through it. Yes, Aleksander did horrible things, but so did every other antagonist in the series, but he's somehow the worst because...well, he's grisha.

That's the only other difference between him and the others, aside from his motives. So either Bardugo is supporting the in-universe prejudice against grisha or she's saying rising up against an oppressive system is wrong. I don't expect her or any other author to have complex political and social commentaries in her story. However, she chose to create a world containing those elements and a main character who suffers from them. She chose to make the issues with the system have a prominent place in the story. And she chose to ignore them in the end.

Aleksander did awful things in the name of a just cause, this creates a complex moral issue that the story just never addresses. The established injustices and sanctioned atrocities by the Lanstovs are all ignored in favor of bringing down the dangerous rebel. That kind of message is pretty fucked up. Yes, Nikolai is a better man than his father, but what about his descendants? The propaganda of the Apparat and his church are extremely strong, it's only a matter of time before that propaganda once again starts turning people against grisha. The hatred of grisha is still embedded into Ravkan society.

Aleksander was the only character who was actually set on protecting and bettering the lives of the grisha. His original mission was still extremely important, no matter what he devolved to. The fact that the protagonists just blatantly dismissed just how dangerous Ravka still is for grisha is frustrating.

The treatment of both Dany and Aleksander by their writers and narratives show a hatred/mistrust of rebellion against the status quo, no matter how atrocious it is. The message of the trope is that people who fight against a system are worse than the system itself. I'm not saying that was Bardugo's intention (D&D I'm much less sure about though), but the way both the Darkling and Dany were written combined with the endings of the stories support that idea.

Grisha would have never come this far if it wasn't for the darkling. They would have been hunted down, killed and so much more (like in Shu Han and Fjerda).

Imagine, Zoya, who would have never learned to properly use her powers. She would have never been this powerful without the training at the little palace. And let's all remember, that Zoya had been one of the most devoted to the darkling before and saw what good he had done for Ravka.

All they do is complain through out the whole book, when in reality they would never be able to keep constant "peace" between Ravka and other countries. In Rule of Wolves they had luck, that the prince of Fjerda died and Hanne took his place. Without that they would have never been able to keep Fjierda in place.

And let's be honest, compared to the darkling Zoya and Nikolai are far from running a country "smoothly" .

The Darkling lifted one shoulder. “An eternity of suffering as penance for my crimes. I ask but one thing.”

“Here it comes.”

“Build me an altar, so that I may be remembered.”

Zoya scowled. “As a tyrant? A killer?”

“As the Starless One. Give me a place in your books. When night comes, let there be one more candle lit for one more Saint. Can you agree to that, merciful queen?” he drawled.

The Darkling seemed almost disinterested, but the demon in Nikolai sensed it was a pose.

“He means it,” Nikolai said in disbelief. “He’s willing to die.”

“It is not death,” said the monk. “Death would be a kindness.”

Genya tilted her head to the side. She was watching the Darkling closely.

“But it’s not death you fear, is it? He’s afraid he’ll disappear.”

Nikolai remembered what Genya had said. All the Darkling ever wanted was to be loved by this country. He knew that feeling well. He’d had to face it when he’d stared down his demon. There were few men Ravka loved. Saints were another matter.

This man sacrificed hundreds of years for Ravka already, and he’s willing to suffer for eternity, but still it’s not enough for our dear protagonists. He already paid for his crimes. He lost everything, he was killed. There are already people who follow the Starless Saint, and Grisha who remember their General who saved them and protected them. To erase him from history would be not only cruel, but also stupid. ‘Those who do not know the history are doomed to repeat it,’ or however that quote went.

“Do we let him play the hero?” Zoya asked.

Genya nodded once. “Let him do it. Let our suffering have meant something.”

Zoya stood framed by red blossoms and thorns, a queen who needed no crown. “It will be done.”

I swear to– Is Genya’s only personality trait being the king’s victim? not even a survivor, just a victim. no agency of her own.

also, ‘let him play hero’ Zoya you are FUCKED if he doesn’t help you, Ravka is fucked, the continent is fucked, the world is fucked. he’s the only hope here, he’s willing to pay the price and he is the only one who can fix this. It’s not the first time he’s the saviour either. Without him Ravka would collapse 400 years ago, even before the Fold.

Mal after seeing Alina for the first time in 2-3 months happy, healthy, strong: "oH mY gOd WhaT ArE YoU WeArInG?? YoU BeLoNG tO HiM NoW?? I CaN SeE YoU'Re HavInG a GoOd TIme hERe!!"😑😠

The Darkling after Alina ditched him twice, tried to kill him twice, the second time by using merzost and throwing a chapel on his face: "Here take this throne beside me, be my Tsarina. You were so hot that night.😩🔥 Also *takes out engagement ring* will you marry me?"🥺🖤❤️

Me with fellow Darklinas: Obviously the Darkling is a very complex and morally grey character. He fulfills the role of the villain but has a heroic cause–fighting to protect his people, but he has been around for so long that he is caught in the big picture and fails to see the individual human cost of his actions. His relationship with Alina is so fascinating because she is the opposite, seeing primarily the human cost, and her compassion/idealism reminds him of who he used to be. In this essay I will…

Me with antis: The Darkling has never done a single wrong thing in his life. Every time he killed it was good and correct. I consider him both a role model AND good husband material. In fact, I wish he committed MORE atrocities. It would be sexy.