While I do find Astarion's (cut?) backstory intriguing
For me, Astarion is and character not only a survivor, a victim and cycles of cruelty. But also, a predator, a tormented one, who has so many ambitions and desires. They are inward, strong and tempting.
He wants to be the strongest predator in Faerűn - "Lord, King, Master." We can still see this in the game.
So what the theme is centered on is not carved in stone. It's just in the crowd. Everyone has to interpret it their own way.
His story also illustrates: "
the theme of Desire".
Few people talk about.
This elf's desire for not just enjoyment, than he has,
a taste for power a hunger for eternal life (Digital Deluxe Artbook), its drove him to alliance with the vampire clan (it doesn't say that in the artbook, where else would he look for eternal life?),
transformed into the vampire spawn of a sadistic master (and this is here) On his way to the top,
he fell. Really, really hurt.
Now the squidwards have helped him up. What's he doing? He wants to try again, "he doesn't just want to survive, he desires for his triumph," quote. He's a fighter, and he fights for himself in a very bloodthirsty way - this makes him a character with gray morals. And the vampire spawn, remember neutral-evil, is even more bloody.
The theme of Astarion's desires is extremely interesting to me. He wanted eternally young and power, but he didn't want rotten rats. That's kind of the point! Even if it is karma, should it be so cruel? Why?
Is it? So his background working great for me right now, too.
Absolutely agree with you about Cazador.
We don't have the upper city where Astarion lived, nor do we have more information about the magistrate.
Neither do we have Cazador as an ally. Dathaminer stuff. (I saw it somewhere, no link, so I'll stipulate, but I willingly believe it)
It's a pity he such a bad-cartoon villain. Many ones wants to see him as tabouret. Cazador is smart, and he should be.
There's a theory, that Astarion betrayed Cazador very badly and it makes sense why he enjoyed torturing him so much. And the fact that Astarion was selling prisoners made him laugh even louder. There's a moral issue in that too. My opinion: it's bad to torture someone for 200 years, even if they sold criminals and betrayed you. See? It's a good theory. But we don't have an upper city.
In this regard it's still very important to understand the author, what he was writing, what he was inspired by, what kind of figure Astarion is, given the descriptions I listed in the post, all of which are canon nowadays, you can see that the character was written as something very
controversial, bold. And charmingly dark.Sorry, non-English speaking there may be errors, I use DeepL.
