Hazegurl wrote...
Silfren wrote...
Alistair refers to being made to sleep in the stables and of having his status as a bastard commoner hammered home to him again and again. Plus there's his crap self-esteem which backs all of that up: the depth of his self-doubt and utter lack of confidence don't come from nothing. Isolde was far from the only issue, though obviously her contempt for him was a part of it. And Eamon himself makes it clear that he has little interest in what Alistair himself wants. After all those years of making sure Alistair was not a threat to Cailan, suddenly Eamon is going out of his way to guilt Alistair into thinking that it's his duty to take the throne, when it seems clear to me that Eamon knows very well that if Alistair sits the throne, he'll be a puppet for Eamon.
Sure, Alistair cares for Arl Eamon, but since when has this ever ruled out a lifetime of emotional abuse?
I thought Alistair mentioned that he himself slept in the stables, like it was something he simply did as a child not that he was made to. That does changes everything if he was forced to. It makes me wonder even more about the Arl, nto that I ever liked or trusted him to begin with. As for the King deal. I blame Alistair more. He's a grown man and is now responsible for his own decisions. He shouldn't have needed the Arl to even bring up whether or not he should rule. He knew his own claim to the throne was legit. He knew the country was left with no ruler but a paranoid deserter who was hindering aid during a Blight. Regardless of the Arl's purpose, Alistair had the power to tell him to p*ss off or accept. I like Alistair but one of his flaws is his unwillingness to take responsibility for his own life. He speaks highly of the Grey Wardens and Duncan yet when push came to shove he eagerly dumped the responsibility on the shoulders of a new recruit. If you 'rival" him he will then proceed to berate you and compare you to Duncan etc like he has a right to judge you when he himself refused to bear the burden as the higher ranked member of the order.
If in the conversation tree asking Alistair if he was raised by Arl Eamon, you say to him "You were probably luckier than most orphans," Alistair's response is "I suppose you're right. I wasn't raised as the Arl's son though, if you're picturing that. I slept on hay in the stables, not on silk sheets."
I don't know where you would get from that exchange that he's saying he chose to sleep in the stable because that's what he wanted to do.
As for the rest, well, of course Alistair is a grown man and he has to take responsibility for his own life. But that doesn't change the fact of the emotional abuse he was put through as a child. The way people are raised becomes an integral part of them; it isn't something that can be turned off with the push of a button. So while I agree that Alistair needs to take responsibility, I don't expect him to overcome a lifetime of deeply ingrained self-doubt overnight, and I don't see why I shouldn't place the blame for that self-doubt squarely at Eamon's feet. Alistair didn't abuse himself.
I don't think Alistair "knew" his own claim on the throne was legit. He'd been told his entire life not to even consider the notion, and what we hear from Alistair himself makes clear that he doesn't think he's fit for the job, legit claim or no. I can also understand why Alistair dumped leadership of the quest onto the Warden's shoulders. On top of not believing himself worthy or capable of leadership, he's been hit with a hugely traumatic shock. He's
grieving.
As an aside, it's the thing about Alistair not believing himself capable of taking the throne that makes me hate Eamon all the more. The bastard went out of his way to make Alistair believe he would never take the throne, that being a common-born bastard assured that, and he wasn't good enough for it anyway...and then suddenly completely changes his tune when he suddenly NEEDS Alistair to take the throne? He went from apparently browbeating Alistair to ensure that the boy would never even dream of sitting on the throne to insisting that Alistair had a duty to do just that! Oh, no, Eamon, your motives aren't transparent at all, oh no. But yeah, for him to treat Alistair that way, it's no wonder Alistair has issues.
I understand that yes, Alistair needs to be able to take responsibility for his own life because he's a grown man. But I also know exactly what a lifetime of emotional abuse looks like and that people struggling to overcome it deserve compassion, not scorn. When someone's struggling with the level of self-doubt Alistair has, telling them to "just man up, already!" isn't helpful.
It's just me but I find it hard to view someone as a father figure in about 6 months. But I don't know if Alistair was in love with Duncan or not, I just speculate that perhaps he did. But I do know it's a whole lot of hero worship going on. He's not far off from Calian in that regard. As for him not being skilled. I got it from the wiki which came from the Journal of Brother Tevius in Redcliffe. In nearly every Origins story Duncan makes it plain that he is after the best fighter/most skilled and that joining the Grey Wardens wasn't a charity. But Alistair wasn't the best. Also, considering that he(Alistair) would quit the Grey Wardens in the middle of a blight with an Archdemon to fight if he doesn't get his way about Loghain says to me that he really wasn't cut out to be a Grey Warden to begin with.
I can totally see Alistair glomming on to Duncan as a father figure in six months. We're talking about human emotions; there is NO set rule of time that make something plausible or not, and Alistair is fundamentally broken. He looks for Daddy everywhere, it seems. I don't see it as at all strange he would fixate on Duncan for that need after Duncan "rescued" him from the Chantry.
I've read that Journal before but frankly it never seemed fitting to interpret it as Duncan simply taking pity on Alistair. The fact that Duncan was after the best fighters and that joining the Wardens was not a charity speaks to this, not against it. I always figured it simply meant that Duncan found some other quality in Alistair that he believed would be useful to the Wardens.
I don't think Alistair's reaction to quit the Grey Wardens in protest of Loghain indicates that he was never fit to be a Warden in the first place. I think it simply shows that he idolized the Wardens inappropriately due to his gratitude toward Duncan, and that this was compounded by his grief. Alistair himself tells you early on, before the battle Ostagar, that the Wardens aren't heroes and that defeating the Blight at all costs can mean some pretty extreme things. So I think if things had gone along their normal course (i.e. without Loghain's treachery and Duncan's death, etc.) that Alistair would have eventually been disabused of his romantic notions.
You're right, he could have spent a lot of time with him. But I mostly meant in the sense of knowing him well enough to see him as a father figure.
But you don't have to truly know a person all that well for this to happen. You only have to idolize them for some reason and that also doesn't take much. I've known any number of people who have latched on to someone who helped them in a particular moment of crisis. It only takes a certain kind of emotional mindset, which Alistair has in spades.
Modifié par Silfren, 23 novembre 2013 - 07:36 .
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Wynne...Im looking at you baby.
