#also i say that most of the time validar prefers non-violent methods

[iturbide]

Is it weird that I kinda wanna know more about Validar or rather seem more stories with him since there are no doubt so many f-ed up things he could do to poor Robin. I somehow see him as someone who just touched Robin like overly so. Soft strokes, but there's something off about it. It's possessive and "slimey". I wonder how he even got to the point of siring robin in the first place. Was it consensual? Would he ever drop down to that level of abuse if he had Robin from the start?

Oh hey it’s one of my favorite thought experiments 8D 

So I have put an inordinate amount of thought into understanding Validar and how he ended up the way he did.  History is important: if even one thing had changed in Validar’s life before a certain point, it’s very likely that he could have ended up an entirely different person, someone with more capacity for kindness, someone even capable of truly loving another person. 

But that’s not what happened.��

I have a lot of thoughts about how the Plegian system of government works – namely the fact that the king and the hierophant of the Grimleal are not necessarily the same person.  It’s a bit weird and complicated owing entirely to the fact that Grima’s not involved directly anymore, since as a theocracy, Plegia looks to their divine dragon as the one true ruler.  In Grima’s absence, and lacking any proven proxy, they have instead turned to a system based on divination of their fallen divine’s will.  Whenever a king dies, the six most powerful diviners in Plegia (one for each of Grima’s eyes) are called forth to select the next ruler by interpreting Grima’s will through their chosen medium; in order to keep things relatively simple and ensure the nation can keep running, the diviners limit their selections among the heads of the Grimleal faith and the members of the former king’s council, since those two groups have existing experience.  

Now, while there should logically be an equal chance of a Grimleal priest being selected as a former council member, for the past several centuries, the diviners’ selections have almost always been members of the king’s council; this heavy bias has coincided with the increasing corruption within the upper echelons of the church and the worrisome zealotry that’s gone with it.  In particular, Validar’s family has very long-standing ties with the church, and have held the rank of hierophant for countless decades, and they have been some of the foremost perpetrators behind this horrific spiral.  Which brings us to Validar’s father. 

Validar’s father was not a kind man.  He was not a caring man.  He had no time and patience for things like family: his sole interest was in restoring Grima to the world.  Initially, his goal had been to secure power over the nation in order to hasten that very goal; however, when the Plegian king died and the diviners were called, he was passed over for a member of the king’s council.  Irritated but not deterred, he proceeded to make arrangements and married a woman who boasted a very prominent bloodline, hoping that the child created from such a union would at last herald the fell dragon’s return; unfortunately, Validar did not bear the Brand, and his father never forgave him for that.  In his eyes, that absent mark proved his son a failure, and no matter how hard Validar tried, no matter how great his accomplishments or how prodigious his talents and genius, he was still worthless by his father’s single-minded estimation.  

As a child, Validar attempted to win his father’s favor with scholastic accomplishments.  When this failed, he began searching for other ways to change his father’s view, becoming an adept strategist and politician.  When this, too, did not bear the desired results, he turned to increasingly dangerous means of proving himself, researching dangerous, ancient magics and becoming one of the foremost sorcerers in the nation at a very young age.  And none of it had any effect.  Bitter, jaded, and hell-bent on proving his worth regardless of the cost, Validar shed any trace of ethics or morality he might have harbored up to that point, and turned his eyes on a new goal: bringing Grima back into the world – not just the one marked as the fell dragon’s proxy by the Brand, but the fell dragon himself, a feat that he knew would be possible thanks to a formidable ritual he’d uncovered in his research that, with suitable modifications, he was certain would call Grima’s own soul into the Branded vessel that bore the fell dragon’s blood. 

Shortly thereafter, the reigning Exalt in Ylisse launched his crusade against the ‘heathen’ Plegians, striking out across the border and laying waste to any settlement he came across.  Many of the villages in the eastern desert evacuated, and the refugees flocked to the capital for protection; among them was a young woman who, despite being a refugee herself, put all her time and effort toward helping others in whatever way she could.  She came to Validar’s attention less from her altruism, more for the raw, volatile magic she demonstrated in her attempts at administering first aid through magic: knowing that powerful arcane talents often implied a strong connection to Grima’s blood, Validar reached out to her, using his impressive speechcraft and manipulative nature to try and gain her favor before proposing to her. 

This woman, however, was well aware of who Validar was – as the son of the present hierophant, it was impossible not to know – and knew equally that he had no real interest in her.  But she accepted regardless, because she had no real interest in him, either: she knew that marrying into a family with such strong connections to the Grimleal hierarchy would give her immeasurably more opportunities to reach out and help the people of Plegia, from the refugees fleeing the warfront to the individuals fallen on hard times in need of aid and kindness.  In spite of the ongoing war, she still spent her days in the capital rather than cloistered safely away (much to the consternation of her guard), providing food and medicine to the masses huddled in the capital and awaiting the conflict’s end. 

Though they led separate lives that only led to their occasional meeting, Validar’s primary interest was in siring a child that might act as a suitable vessel, and they shared a bed regularly for this purpose.  In time, his wife became pregnant, and for months Validar bided his time, waiting for the birth, outwardly confident even as he prayed for success in his endeavor.  And, much to his delight (and relief), when the child was born, he did in fact bear Grima’s Mark. 

For the first time in Validar’s life, his father looked on him with approval.  And so he sought to push forward with his goal, believing fully that he was on the right track. 

AUs are great things, and depending on the situation, this can go a lot of different ways.  For a canon-type situation, where his wife escapes his control, Validar’s intention was actually to remove her from the picture entirely so that he could have full control over the child’s upbringing.  Though he is capable of extreme violence, Validar much prefers not to bloody his hands, instead preferring methods that cannot be tied back to him: he fully intended to murder his wife through use of a virulent poison, a plot which she uncovered along with the knowledge of what he intended to do with their child.  Desperate to protect her baby, she took Robin and fled Plegia – and with the loss of the Branded child, Validar’s father once more looked on him with contempt, berating him that he did one thing right in all his life, and then he ruined that, as well.  This cold dismissal is the last straw for Validar, whose yearning for the man’s approval twists fully into hateful loathing: he bides his time for several more years, kidnapping Aversa and training her to act as his right hand in the interim…and when the time is right, Validar sends her to murder his father in cold blood, staging it as a political assassination rather than a calculated crime of passion. 

In other situations, where Robin does remain closer for whatever reason (either with his wife still present or with her gone), Validar’s methods remain ultimately non-violent.  He prefers manipulation and mental or emotional abuse to physical methods in most cases, saving touch as a form of praise – but the way he uses it feels like an abuse of its own: often his preferred form of such praise is stroking his son’s hair, which seems more like a man petting a dog than a father engaging with his child.  And that’s very much because Validar doesn’t see Robin as his child, or even a child at all: he’s nothing more than the vessel Validar intends to draw Grima into, and he has no interest in anything beyond preparing that vessel to the fullest so that when Grima enters it, the might and magic at the fell dragon’s disposal will be unmatched. 

tl;dr hi yes i think about validar too much and it generally ends with me hating him more