#“This'll be like 2 paragraphs” she thinks foolishly

[bedtimegiraffe]

I'm on a Valleros family dynamics kick again!

I really believe they had to nerf King Arlan in Book 2 to make him worse, and by extension make Aerin look better. You can of course put in some work and make it make sense in-universe (I certainly tried here), but that sure feels like the meta reason.

In Book 1, honestly, outside of Aerin's account (which is not spectacularly credible given his corruption/ motivation to seem sympathetic/ generally poor mental health), King Arlan seems pretty good, if negligent when it comes to his kids. He:

Seems to genuinely worried about Aerin's safety in the Shadow Realm despite the murder

Looks at Aerin if you bring him back with "rage, pity, and sorrow"

Defends you from the (very powerful) Temple pretty immediately

Pardons Mal from a big enough bounty to 'buy a villa' with a wink.

Overall, pretty decent dude in a terrible situation. If one of my kids killed the other, I'd be pissed too! Aerin comes off like a self-interested ass, while King Arlan looks like a good guy.

If they wanted King Arlan to look awful, they could have easily let him respond to Baldur asking if he should 'rough Aerin up.' King Arlan could have said, "Go for it son, beat up your younger brother to teach him a lesson!" It would have quickly established him as a problem. But that doesn't happen. I'd guess Arlan was supposed to be a classic, good, helpful fairytale king in the first book.

But Book 2... King Arlan becomes drastically worse from his first conversation. He says this out loud! About his only living child! (As far as we know. Never can rule out bonus kids, especially with kings.)

Then in the epilogue (portals or merged realms), if you romance Nia, your MC says, "I really don't like that guy," in response to basically nothing. And Nia agrees.

So Book 2, King Arlan is supposed to be a ruthless, awful person your whole party hates by the end. Why?

Because Aerin has a lot of sympathy to build back up, which is way harder if his father was actually a good guy who cared about him and tried to connect. There are tons of decent people who lack the ability to connect to their kids for one reason or another. But can you imagine Book 2 playing out the way it did if the king was like, "I visit Aerin every week. He still refuses to have an actual conversation with me, but no matter what, he's my son and I won't give up on him"?

(Ok, now I kind of want a version where they both realize they have some responsibility for their current bad relationship and slowly forgive each other and get better. But that's not what we have, so moving on!)

If you captured Aerin in Book 1, as far as MC is concerned Aerin was always supposed to go back to prison. If he was with the goblins, MC still has some motivation to turn him into Morella's government. You know, for all the treason and almost (or, actually?) causing Nia's death.

But Aerin spending the rest of his life in a cell doesn't work for his redemption arc/ is a huge downer. So King Arlan has to be so awful and dangerous to Aerin that it feels irresponsible to turn Aerin in. So Aerin gets to go live his redemption arc and MC gets to feel like they have the moral high ground releasing a man who almost ended the world.