#I think Lae'zel should've been the one to tell Ulder they should've let him drown

[in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene]

I genuinely think that Lae'zel would be Ulder's biggest hater out of all the companions.

Like, her big thing is that she believes the figures of authority should have faith in and reward those who follow them, otherwise they do no deserve their followers. It's the main reason she breaks with the Vlaakith so readily--the Vlaakith betrayed Lae'zel first by not holding up her end of their relationship as god and devotee so now Lae'zel will join a rebellion to overthrow her with a new, nicer god-king to devote her life and spirit to. She's pretty firmly in the camp of giving your entire self to a person or cause, but only if that person or cause gives something back and respects the sheer entirety of what you're giving.

We also see this with how Lae'zel often comments approvingly of other companions breaking with their own abusive mentors/parents/gods and is often openly critical of those authorities exploiting their underlings. I think her belief in this best exemplified by her dialogue when Gale is asked by Mystra to blow himself up. She essentially says Mystra does not deserve Gale because she lacks faith in him and that Gale deserves better than a god who returns his devotion with the callous dismissal of his life.

(That dialogue is also when I began loving Lae'zel despite her abrasiveness. She respects herself and knows her own worth so well, and thinks others should see it in themselves too, to the point of dismissing the demands of a god because the god clearly doesn't respect the life and worth of their follower. For her, the idea that a mortal life is worth little to a god and can be treated as such is not a given, and in fact is an injustice)

And the problem I'd think she'd have with Ulder isn't anything he did during the game, but prior to it. Because Ulder's reactions are, I hate to say it, reasonable if harsh if one truly believes Wyll is a power-hungry warlock (or perhaps just an idiot) who made a deal with a fiend (though, considering the kinds of people Baldur's Gate welcomes on the regular, what Ulder himself has done in the past, perhaps the exile was a major overreaction). But what it took to reach that conclusion, that's what I think Lae'zel would have a problem with,

Because Ulder has no real evidence either way what motivated Wyll to make this pact and we know that devils often prey on the desperate. Raphael outright states that they often go after people who have no choices left and offer them one. It shows a startling lack of faith in Wyll that Ulder would just assume he had no good reason to make the pact. Because he's just assuming! The only people who knows what happened are Mizora (a devil) and Wyll (who's not talking, who can't talk about it), and his son who so far has been nothing but good and loyal to his father and city shows up with a missing eye, a pact with a devil, and an empty field that is quite frankly suspicious in how Wyll clearly was trying to show him something that's no longer there and he's not explaining despite clearly wanting to--

Lae'zel would be absolutely incensed at the lack of faith Ulder demonstrated in his son in that moment, at how Wyll's love and fidelity was repaid with doubt the moment things got hard. All Ulder had was very suspicious circumstance and the word of a devil and suddenly that's enough to banish his son? No, fuck that. Lae'zel knows Wyll as a good and noble man, knows that even his new devil-like looks were gained through selflessness and nobility, knows that Wyll loves his father even now even if she thinks Ulder lost the right to that love. She would rip Ulder to shreds in her usual blunt and direct way and it would be glorious to witness.