#he’s doing astoundingly well for someone who’s working off incomplete information 100% of the time

[tovaicas]

me when I consider the fact that estinien's - crown jewel of the ishgardian dragoons - first decision that's honestly his after the dragonsong war is to be a mercenary is a pure and utter tragedy even if it's not explicitly spelled out because there is the deep, saddening implication that like a lot of ishgardians, estinen bases his self-worth off his martial skill, and without the war fighting is all he knows, so he goes right back to what's familiar bc what else can he do? go back to being that commoner farmer? after everything? and the idea that even after his journey of self-reflection and joining the scions he's still wandering the world, fighting whatever he's pointed at, because that's what's natural to him and that's deeply deeply sad because he's lived like that so long it's just fundamental to him.

but this is never seriously discussed because we just want to make jokes about his 'unintelligence' and ignore the fact he's easily one of if not THE most emotionally intelligent person here, as if his 'unintelligence' about certain things isn't both a reflection of his trauma, his social class in his highly-stratified class-based society where he was born a commoner, the fact his education would've had to come from the Vault which has no reason to teach him anything more than what's strictly necessary to kill a dragon, and the fact ishgard both utterly failed him and was extremely isolationist until the last few years so of fucking course his knowledge abt the outside world is limited. we make these jokes as if comparing his lack of academia to his peers, 3/4s of which are fucking SHARLAYAN ARCHONS and testing it against the inside knowledge of a group he has literally just joined is somehow a fair test of his relative intelligence

laying on the floor crying, screaming, wailing etc