Originally Posted by SerTomato
3. Some of your memory of old games are inaccurate, "Viconia on the other hand has not only always been faithful to the greatest source of evil in all of Faerun", she hasn't, not in her default ending (evil ending btw, not her romance one). They retconned it on purpose.
I'm aware she was at one point a worshipper of Lolth. But in the videogames she always worships Shar. In her default ending she kills other cultists but there is no mention of her own worship stopping. Any point at which she explicitly did not worship Shar is entirely prior to her introduction. There is never a clearly labelled point at which she stops, you know unless any ridiculous thing happens and she did and was kidnapped and re-indoctrinated for it between BG2 and 3, but that still seems a little out there compared to the Goddess that actively manipulates memories just kinda doin' her thing, or as I mentioned the gradual lore changes about divinity made the writers consider that her scope of worship didn't need to remain so narrow. Sure that's maybe an unsatisfying reason but I find it greatly interesting that as divinity rules change so too do the followers.

Again, I'm not arguing it wasn't a retcon. I'm saying it's not character assassination and that I don't see it as nearly so far removed from her original characterization as others. I see connective tissue both in-universe and in the meta-narrative changes to Dungeons and Dragons that have occurred in the intervening years.