#regulus went from admiring tom to absolutely despising him

[lycoryspreachin]

Please please please give me more of your regulus

your wishes are my duty,

i have a school project on moral and civic education about cults to prepare and i keep linking it back to the death eater. which now makes me think of regulus’ relationship with the death eaters and how i choose to see it as a terrorist cult rather than simply a terrorist organisation, that’s an analysis for another post. i do honestly believe that regulus loved the death eaters, i also think he did somewhat admire voldemort though perhaps with some condescendance, but more than that he felt safe within the community. there was for him no conceivable future outside of them.

they weren’t family per se and he probably didn’t care about them on the individual level, but he was willing to fight for their preservation. he understood the need and relevance of such organisations, and thrived in the privileges it offered him. he revelled in the premeditated chaos it caused and was full with ambition.

the wizarding wars are greatly different from muggle wars, their scale was limited and their weapons much deadly. they fought on a level that required specific dwellings. previous to them such violent event scarcely happened and he knew their relevance in the grand scheme of things. i’m sure he had a very large view point, and that’s what made him so crucial. he wasn’t on the front like barty and evan nor was he completely detached like pandora. he was there yet not, like the dust in a shadowed room, unperceivable but everywhere. his understanding of the human condition allowed him to predict uncommon events and is what ensured the well going of the war prior to his death. his decisions were ruthless and seemingly unreasonable at times but always perfectly needed

i think the reason he betrayed voldemort lies in his possessiveness over the death eaters as a whole. he had been there since the beginning, he had watched it ( the cult ) grow, fed it what it needed and protected it when he had to. voldemort was destroying what was his, he could see that the dark lord’s pride and selfishness would trickle down on the death eaters and bring them alongside him in his fall. he couldn’t see the wonders he had so fiercely fought to built tumble to the ground because of riddle’ misplaced judgement. his whole life, regulus had fought, fought for himself, for his freedom, for his power, for what he cared about. so in a last effort, he found a way to destroy the infection tarnishing his creation and ensure the survival of the hive after the queen had died. 

( it’s unfortunate he died before he achieved any of his ambitions. he perished as a forgotten man, only remembered by family trees and victim records of the calamity of the war. in the end, his life, regardless of his many efforts, was truly nothing. )