#reading Caleb's backstory through that lens. of generational trauma and the strange incestuous one person has to be every relationship me

[astrid-beck]

The thing about trent ikithon is that he's not just their boss or their mentor. In a pretty real way, he is their father—linguistically, caleb calls the other volstrucker his brothers and sisters, present tense, trent calls their dinner a family reunion, he talks about being proud of caleb and hurt by having to hurt him like he is reconciling a wayward son. But they were also literally taken from their families, stripped of those connections, made into dependent wards of the state, with one man to raise them and give them their livelihoods and their discipline and their home. The whole bren/astrid/eadwulf story is so uncomfortable and fraught with the understanding that they love each other, but they have also been forced to seek support and affection and love in the only connections they are allowed to have, with the only people they know will understand. Like astrid is so clearly in a cycle of abuse, she resents trent but she stays and she can only imagine overcoming it by being stronger than him. It's almost a king lear story, a succession story, it's about generational trauma. Leaving the fold is not just leaving a career it is abandoning your family.