#diamant is such a good person for nel to have met hahaha

[nelithic]

nasturtium :   describe your muse’s relationship with their birthplace ,   or homeland .

▀▀ 　BOTANICAL HEADCANONS　₊　

despite what she would have you believe considering she betrayed sombron during the war a thousand years ago and turned her back on gradlon, ultimately nel is ambivalent, leaning lukewarm.

i consistently find it telling that ( as far as i'm aware; i definitely haven't seen all of her potential post-battle lines, etc. yet ) you never actually see nel speak poorly of sombron or of her experiences growing up in gradlon. as the player, you assume it must have been terrible because of the distress she shows during the flashback sequences in the fell xenologue and the fact that she escaped from it eventually. but nel herself never says that she had suffered there or that she's personally glad to have left it behind; the times she does mention gradlon or anything related to fell practice, she just tells it like it was and doesn't seek to either apologize for it or justify it.

looking at her diamant C in particular:

nel: you are no doubt aware that i am a child of the fell dragon sombron. despite our differences in heritage, you are also a child of royalty. we have this in common. i never understood my father. i thought perhaps you could share some experiences with yours.

right off the bat, nel relates herself to diamant as both being royal children, and the only difference in circumstance she sees is that she's a dragon and he's human. nothing about sombron being a known tyrant and force of evil; there's a notable lack of anything resembling "i know what sombron did is evil / i'm not trying to liken him and your father at all", anything to indicate a moral judgment or even personal desire to un-associate herself with sombron. if anything, she follows it with "i never understood my father", and is asking for diamant's insight in hopes that she might understand him better.

after diamant expresses surprise and says that things are done differently in brodia, she says:

nel: i see. unlike your father, lord sombron preferred to silence all dissent with execution. to object to his decree was out of the question. to survive, there was no choice but to obey.

nel is naturally pretty monotone in her delivery usually, but i think it's still worth noting that there's a lack of anger, frustration, or even particular sadness in her explanation of how things were done in fell!gradlon.

in the end, it's diamant who makes the value judgment:

diamant: i can't even imagine living under such a vile dictatorship. i'm so sorry.

to which all nel has to say, still without much emotion, is:

nel: there is no need to apologize. that is all in the past for me now. hearing your experiences has taught me a great deal. i hope we will speak again soon.

it's left unclear exactly what diamant's perspective has "taught" her in this exchange, though it can be argued, based on the trajectory of their supports later, that it's the beginning of nel understanding the importance of objective third-party observation and assessment on the nature of someone's character, particularly leadership in their specific case.

given that nel spent a war and some time with the fell!cast of engage in her own world after betraying her father, it's unlikely this is the first time she's heard value judgments on sombron's rule and gotten a sense of what other people feel about him and his leadership style outside of the gradlon bubble. i think we do see an objective acknowledgement of that difference in perspective in this scene, particularly in her final "that is all in the past for me now". there does appear to be a recognition that there were elements that could be considered cruel where she had come from. but between this support and the fact that she continues to never speak ill of gradlon or sombron throughout the rest of her in-game dialogue, it feels as though that way of seeing it is something she only became aware of through hearing what other people had to say about it, rather than coming from herself and how she felt about it.

i think her absence of value judgment is particularly apparent when considered alongside rafal, who actually does have lines ( i think it's one of his post-battle lines but i'm not remembering exactly where off the top of my head right now ) where he casts aspersions on sombron.

i could keep going, but it'd probably just be additional discussion around the same point, which ultimately is: nel has since recognized after the fact, after seeing more of the world and realizing how different it is outside of gradlon, that her homeland is a brutal, and even possibly terrible, place. however, i don't think she necessarily feels that way herself fully. for nel, who was surrounded by that consistent environment growing up and saw it as normal, she approaches it more with a " it just was what it was " kind of lens. she sees it as neither good nor bad, sometimes one or the other.

it's notable that, though she aligned herself with the divine dragon's goals eventually, the reason she originally left gradlon at all was because life there threatened the person she wanted to protect, not because she necessarily hated it there or wanted ( initially ) to bring down sombron.