#(( I LITERALLY JUST RECOUNT CANON INFORMATION AND IT TAKES SIX SEPARATE HEAVY TW TAGS ))

[valflame]

♡ mother

send ♡ + a word for a hc | ACCEPTING

                                   you’re really trying to open a can of worms there aren’t you

under the cut because if you know arvis in canon you know exactly why.

Arvis loves his mother. He loves his mother. It goes well beyond a child’s natural devotion toward their parent and barrels straight into unhealthy and obsessive. When his father Victor was alive he abused and mistreated his wife and child to no end; Cigyun was criticised for everything she did whether she was right or wrong and thoroughly punished for it, rarely allowed outside for fear of her cuckolding him and never treated with any kindness by her husband, and Arvis clung to her like glue. They were kept locked away within Castle Velthomer while Victor went out philandering — he was infamous for being a known alcoholic, rapist and short-tempered man, but none of it mattered in the eyes of the public. He was duke of Velthomer and the inheritor of Valflame, and that meant that he was untouchable. He did as he pleased and didn’t even bother hiding it, and nobody in the noble courts cared enough to even attempt to put a stop to it, and it drove Arvis wild with rage and confusion. He hates his father more than he hates Manfroy, which is really, honestly saying something. There’s no-one on earth he hates more than he hates Victor, and Victor’s abuse left so many psychological scars on him that pretty much every issue he has can be traced back to it.

The writer’s notes for the game say that once his father killed himself and his mother disappeared he outright refused to believe in any of the truths Victor’s suicide note brought to light, because his love and devotion toward Cigyun was so intense that he was blinded by it. He refused to believe that she’s engaged in an affair because she was perfect, and Victor was a liar, and he was only trying to slander her and smear her name; he refused to believe that she’d wilfully abandoned him, because he loved her to the point that she haunted his thoughts and influenced his actions even without being there and plagued his dreams and nightmares at night, and she was good and perfect and had to feel the same; he threw every mistress Victor had and all their illegitimate children out and banished them from court save for a maid that he’d raped and her child, because she’d been unwilling and hurt by him too and she’d been his mother’s favourite, and he saw her and his half-brother by her like family. He canonically has zero attraction to women up until he meets Deirdre and even then it’s only because she looks so much like his mother and she reminds him so much of her and he has a canon oedipal complex. Cigyun threw him away and he kept waiting for her indefinitely and forever because he believed in her that much.

On the surface he does an excellent job of seeming totally put together for someone who Freud would have a field day with. He’s basically a walking Freud Was Right beacon.