What exactly is it that makes Astarion evil? I mean, specifically?
What does he do, outside of player control, to make him objectively evil?
He does pull a knife on you when your back is turned and try to exsanguinate you while you sleep.
Pulling a knife doesn't make him evil, right? He's worried and in danger, just crashed from a nautiloid, has no idea who we are... Do you really think that qualifies as evil?
The blood drinking... it's certainly doesn't strike me as good, but I'm not under the impression that he had any intention of draining Tav dry. Just that he had been forced into his state as a vampire and enslaved for two hundred years without being able to satisfy his intense biological need to drink the blood of something other than a rat. In fact, he seems somewhat conflicted about it.
I mean, I certainly wouldn’t pull a knife on a random passerby. If I thought they were a threat, I’d hide. I definitely wouldn’t wave them over and get them to turn their back on me.
As for blood drinking, vampires are often associated with sex because the penetration of fangs is a symbolic sexual act. So doing that without consent… hmmm. Not a good look for old Astarion.
In fairness, I probably wouldn't go get in a fight with Dror Ragzlin, either.
I think the drinking blood is more about hunger than sex, personally, but even so, I agree, it's not a good look. Still, though... evil?
There's definitely a line that gets crossed somewhere that turns a person from "normal" to "evil." But the more I examine Astarion and really consider his actions... I see him as a victim trying to survive amidst terrible circumstances.
It wouldn't be hard, in my opinion, to tip him over into full-blown evil. And maybe that's where he'd end up left to his own devices. But right now, at the start of the game, I see him as a creature sitting on the cusp, so to speak.
