#Anti darklina | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 3 months ago

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Hello! I have not read the shadow and home series, only seen the show and read six of crows (very obvious if you see my account) and I really don't get the whole "is the Darkling is evil or not", because I haven't seen arguments from the pro Darkling side and very few from the anti Darkling side... Can you explain it for me?

Hi! Thanks so much for the ask, I can definitely do my best to explain this for you but I am firmly of the anti-darkling belief so I think the best way for me to go about this is to outline common pro-Darkling points and explain why I disagree with them, and suggest that if you'd like more detail into the pro-Darkling arguments that you look through the tag, or through the pro-darklina tag <3

I just wrote a summary of S&S and R&R to the best detail that I could from memory only to remember that the entire plot summaries are available on the Grishaverse wiki (*screams*). But anyway the summaries were very long so I've cut them and if you want to check the plotlines for more detail you can do that on the wiki the summaries look really good (better than mine lol) but if there are any specific points I mention that you want me to expand on I can just let me know in the replies :)

Nb: this entire post will be spoilers for the Grisha trilogy and probably the entire Grishaverse.

Please be aware that I am going to address the backstories & traumatic experiences of several characters but most specifically Alina, Mal, Genya, and Zoya.

So I believe that the main points in the pro-Darkling argument are that he had noble causes, that he did genuinely love Alina, and that his actions are a product of the suffering he'd been through. However what I also see a lot of, though generally I avoid pro-darkling posts because I don't have any interest in starting an argument with anyone (and btw I'm going to tag this as anti-darkling and anti-darklina, which I always do when I'm talking about him so that anyone who doesn't want to see it can filter it out just as I can do with the pro-darkling and pro-darklina tags if I don't want to see them), is criticisms of Mal as the 'incorrect choice' for the final love interest and a 'bad person'.

So going point by point down these as to why I disagree with them:

"The Darkling has noble causes." -> The Darkling claims that his cause is a safer world for Grisha, and this on its surface is absolutely a noble cause. I would never deny that. The Grisha have been marginalised, abused, and oppressed throughout world history, and at 400+ years old in a pre-industrial revolution/early industrial revolution world the Darkling has seen and been subjected to a great deal of this. It is an undeniably noble goal to want to protect his people and to help them rise up. However, the Darkling can only see it come at the cost of mass death not only caused by the Shadow Fold's construction but the centuries of its presence on the continent, mass death caused by the destruction of Novo Kribirsk, direct and indirect murder of thousands of innocent lives, and the abuse of Alina, Genya, Zoya, David, Nikolai, Mal, and not only more characters we know but countless characters who encountered him during his rise, a compulsory draft for his people in the country where they were supposedly safest, brutally attacking his own mother and leaving her blind in the aftermath, and more. Now I'm not going to talk about the compulsory draft too much because I don't actually know if that was the Darkling's invention or not and I absolutely believe that the infrastructure of Ravka was designed to abuse and manipulate Grisha through nationalism (see Nina Zenik), but I think it's so important to note that after the Civil War massive strides forward are made in the treatment of Grisha in Ravka without any kind of destruction on the levels that the Darkling claimed were necessary. Nikolai disestablishes the compulsory draft but this doesn't stop the Second Army from reforming, or from Ravka sending missions to rescue at risk Grisha. The goal of these missions was still to recruit for the Army, but all individuals were given a choice and those that refused were still offered protection or safe passage. It's by no means a perfected system, but it's a great improvement from a draft that brought Zoya in at nine, Genya in at seven, Nina in so young she has no memory of her life before, and so on, and manipulated them their entire lives.

Before I let the manipulation lead me into my next point, I want to add that I also don't entirely trust a statement of the Darkling's causes being noble in the first place. On it's surface, as I said, a safer world for Grisha is an undeniably noble cause noble cause - but turning the abuse their people suffered against otkazats'ya people is not. I believe liberation that requires oppression is not true liberation. We also see that he willingly kills the Grisha teachers from the Little Palace, despite saying to Alina that he doesn't want to waste more Grisha lives, threatens the children from the Little Palace, attacks Genya for betraying him, and causes mass slaughter of anyone, Grisha or otkazats'ya, who sides with Alina. That doesn't sound like making the world safer for his people. It sounds like a power-hungry dictator using a commonly held ideology to manipulate the populous into supporting him.

That doesn't sound like protecting Grisha. It sounds like killing them.

Back to the manipulation.

This manipulation was not from the institution alone; no, it was very much directly from the Darkling. This brings me into point two - "The Darkling genuinely loved Alina." ->

The Darkling manipulated Zoya, who remember effectively grew up with him because she was brought to the Little Palace at nine after escaping her abusive mother's attempt at forcing her into marriage. Zoya was brought to the Little Palace by her aunt, Liliyana Garin. The Darkling made Zoya feel like she had to rely on him, whilst simultaneously telling her that she was special. The famous quote "You and I are going to change the world" was actually said to Zoya long before it was said to Alina, whom the Darkling used the exact same manipulation tactics against, and it was also used later in Rule of Wolves against Yuri, a monk from the Cult of the Starless Saint, who worship he Darkling as a fallen Saint. The way I read it, this is a very clear writing choice to emphasise that the Darkling does not care about any of the people he speaks these words to; this is the manipulation tactic that he knows, that he is used an unknowable number of times, and that he has had lifetimes to perfect and learn how to use it to his gain. He essentially tied Zoya's self-worth to his opinion of her, and she spent her entire life trying to be good enough for him, trying to impress him, trying to prove herself as worthy of his acclaim, of his attention, and arguably of his protection since he was her protector as a child. After escaping her mother and being brought to safety, Zoya grew up believing that she was lucky to be treated the way the Darkling treated her. In the books it's implied they may have had a sexual relationship, and this was confirmed as part of show canon during season one. Lilyana was later indirectly killed by the Darkling when he destroyed Novo Kribirsk by moving the Fold. Sometimes I'm almost glad she can never know what happened to Zoya, because she loved her and she thought she was protecting her and I think that knowing what the Darkling did to the niece she left in his care, believing that she was saving her, may very well have broken her.

When Alina arrived at the Little Palace, the Darkling discarded Zoya like a toy he'd grown bored of. He manipulated Alina using the exact same tactics that he did Zoya, which of course we see a great deal of first hand throughout the trilogy. During the process of this, Zoya suffers greatly from the process of being tossed aside. The Darkling intentionally sets Alina and Zoya against each other from day one, denying them any chance of camaraderie or realising what was being done to them. The way I read this, this was the pitting of women against each other by a misogynist, not only for the misogynist's gain but also because he actively feared the strength that they would have together. I've spoken about this before but yeah that's how I feel about it, we miss out on what could have been a lot more Zoya & Alina power and just general content because the Darkling purposefully turns them against each other. Alina starts experiencing everything that Zoya did - the Darkling makes her feel important or special on his terms, he makes her want his attention, he makes her feel like her importance is reliant on him, he makes her believe that she is incapable alone and needs him at her side, etc - and since this is all Zoya has known since childhood she doesn't know how to identify the similarities in his treatment of them as abuse but instead believes that he has lost interest in her in favour of Alina because she is more special, she is more important, she is more precious. Zoya has spent her entire life trying to be exactly what the Darkling wanted, and the way he casts her aside is so deeply damaging to Zoya because all those things he did, making her think that she was only special or important or worthy for as long as he said so? She believed them. Her self worth was so utterly destroyed by Alina's mere existence that without understanding it was the Darkling who had done that to her, not Alina, of course she hated her. The two of them overcoming this distance and developing their relationship is probably one of my favourite subplots

David and Genya both suffer at the hands of the Darkling's manipulation as well, though in different ways - and directly I want to talk about Genya but it is still more than worth acknowledging David as well. Genya was found by testers at 7 and presented to the Queen by the Darkling as a gift when she was 11. So super crazy take, I know, but I think there are ways of training someone to be a spy without giving them away into slavery. The Darkling placed Genya in the path of abuse from both the Queen and the King, and it is strongly implied that she told him she was being raped and physically abused and that he manipulated her into believing that her pain was worth something because she was his soldier. Even if she didn't directly tell him, the sexual abuse that the King committed against Genya is not a secret in either of the palaces, and is in fact part of the reason that the Queen physically abuses Genya because she takes out the anger she can't voice against the King on her instead, and the Darkling never did anything to protect her. Even when she tells Alina everything that happened to her, she says that she is his soldier and that this was her role. And after everything that she did for him, for giving her entire life up and enduring years of abuse, the Darkling turns on Genya the moment that she expresses care towards Alina. Genya was simultaneously pulled in two directions: her beauty was what, she believed, caused the King to attack her and subsequently the cause of her pain, but it was also a product of her Tailoring and without it she never would have been worth the Darkling's time. Being so thoroughly manipulated by him, she therefore believed that he beauty was what gave her worth. The Darkling knew exactly what he was doing in taking that away from her, not only the physical pain he caused her, not only the loss of her eye, but the subsequent inability to Tailor her scars and be who she saw herself as before. Genya's scars in the books are described to extend across her entire face and down her neck, down her arms, and along her hands, prompting Jesper in Crooked Kingdom to wonder "what manner of weapon" would be capable of causing them.

"The Darkling is a product of pain and abuse that he suffered throughout his life" -> yeah, absolutely. He wasn't born to be evil and I really enjoyed learning more about his childhood in the prequel graphic novel. But I don't think that excuses mass murder, or abuse, or any of his other actions

"Mal was not Alina's ideal love interest and came across as a bad person" ->

Personally I don't think Mal is a bad person, I think that he made mistakes during the trilogy but that ultimately he begins this story as a seventeen year old child solider; he is afraid for his own life and the lives of his friends, children and young adults make mistakes that older people are more aware of/in tune to or less likely to make, and the world he understood fell from his grip very, very rapidly.

I also know that a lot of people don't like Alina and Mal's ending, particularly with Alina losing her powers. (Brief explanation: Alina fakes her death and they tailor one of the fallen soldiers, Ruby, to look like her so that she and the Darkling can be burned together. Alina no longer has sun powers and Mal is no longer an expert tracker. Together they vanish to live alone in happy obscurity and run an orphanage. One day, the staff of the orphanage see a group of Grisha, including a beautiful Suli Squaller and a Corporalnik missing an eye, bring the woman who runs the place a blue kefta embroidered in gold and see that it makes her cry. They wonder if perhaps she knew a Grisha who died and has been given their kefta in commoration, but that's because they haven't seen the note inside that says "You will always be one of us" (This would be around where I start sobbing) ) Personally I think that this is a brilliant ending, with tragedy and bittersweet beauty sewn right through it. There are many implications through the trilogy that as Alina becomes more powerful she feels the pull and high that power can bring her as dangerously alluring. As she correctly identifies when she fakes her death, the people would have eventually turned on her as a heretic just as they did the Darkling. What I don't think she verbally acknowledged but that I saw as implicit in the text, was that she, like anyone may have done with access to such immense power and such a long lifespan, had the potential to become deserving of that label if she continued down the path. Alina giving up her power shows a distinct and beautiful difference between herself and the Darkling: she knew when to stop.

And she loved Mal. She loved him, and he loved her. So freaking much. Everything Mal does, every single decision he makes - even when they aren't all that smart - is born out of love for Alina. And they are both so very young.

Okay so I think that is pretty much everything I have to say off the top of my head, I hope that this was helpful! I feel like maybe a more nuanced/evenly-weighted explanation was what you were looking for and I'm sorry if this was too heavily weighted against, but people posting in the pro darkling tag will absolutely be able to explain their own arguments better than I can and I don't think I would be able to present them accurately to their opinions because they'd be affected by my own in my writing.

And, again, I am really not looking to start any kind of argument with anyone over this, I'm just explaining my reasons for where I fall and if anyone reading this disagrees then please remember that my opinions don't discredit your own, they are yours and mine are mine :) <33

Thanks for the ask! <3

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