#shadowheart's romance has some interesting mirrors to viconia's from bg2

[optiwashere]

Please write your thoughts about the importance of Shadowheart for Shar/Selûne :D

I FEED on character analysis.

SO!!!! This got long as fuck and also morphed into what you asked + a general character interpretation.

I relied on a combination of 2nd, 3rd, and 5th edition D&D lore, R.A. Salvatore novels, and of course BG3 as sources. Shadowheart's characterization adds up the most coherently on the purely romance / "get her away from Shar" path, and that is what I'm using as a basis for this post. Even when you're playing an "evil" route, she behaves in ways that betray a lot of what I get into under the break. This post, however, is biased towards the "good" path of her personal quest for the sake of my sanity and a somewhat reasonable word count.

First, a preamble for people that are maybe less knowledgeable about Forgotten Realms lore.

One of the biggest characterizations of Shar and Selûne in the Forgotten Realms is that they are twin sides of the same thing: night. Night as an aesthetic is symbolic of, among other things: mysteries, being lost without guidance (such as in faith or purpose), and finding oneself when one reaches for the truth. I.e., reaching light from the moon, stars, or daybreak (which is itself a symbol as the natural conclusion of darkness being light for redemption following suffering, goodness defeating evil, finding faith, etc.)

Shar and Selûne are sisters that also share the Night domain in 3e, a sort of fulcrum they both work around — Shar as the "malevolent" darkness with Selûne as the "benevolent" night. There is even a recognized heresy called the Dark Moon heresy in both cults/religions that Shar and Selûne are actually the same goddess playing one gigantic trick on Faerûn (this comes from a 3.5e splatbook called Power of Faerûn) but it's been pushed time and time again that the two sisters are, in fact, two separate entities. But duality of divinity, and how worshipers interpret their god, is a theme we see played up a ton in BG3.

What we know about Shar is that she despises her sister. Loathes her. Not only does she loathe her, she tricked Selûne's followers during the Time of Troubles, about 140 years before BG3, into worshiping her instead of the Moonmaiden. The Time of Troubles was a period when gods walked the Realms, rather than tossing avatars around everywhere. This lead to the formation of a fanatical group of cultists that followed the real Selûne, called the Lunatics (I'm still proud of managing to reference them in a goddamn Explicit PWP fic)

Meanwhile, Selûne is seen as a calming force. She wars with her sister every single night, and does not like her one bit, but she does it as a means to protect others from her sister rather than as a spiteful game. She's not as omnipresent in people's lives, she is just a natural force to a lot of her followers.

How does any of this relate to Shadowheart? Spoiler stuff and the actual character analysis under the break.

We know that Shadowheart was a "chosen" of Selûne as a child, per her parents' dialogue under the House of Grief. However, it's important to note that most religions in Faerûn name potential clerics as "chosen" ones of gods and goddesses.

We know that, throughout the game, Shadowheart learns that she is being manipulated by the Lady of Loss to do acts that go against some sort of internalized moral code that Shadowheart has. We see her approval go up when you do good acts (as long as you ask for compensation, or if it's to help helpless people/animals) and we see her disapprove when you press her boundaries or act unjustly cruel. "Unjust" is left so vague because she does not behave at all according to how the vast majority of Sharrans behave. There are numerous other flags for approval/disapproval such as her enjoying playful chaos, or disliking when you're too trusting of other companions when you first meet them, but we'll focus on the first set I mentioned.

We also know that Shadowheart was continually subjected to memory erasure via the cult of Shar in Baldur's Gate. This gets mildly restored here and there via the tadpoles and Dame Aylin, but her memory is mostly gone. So this moral code is something ingrained in her somehow, because Sharrans don't have kindness training. There's another entire character analysis to be written about Viconia's role in this as it relates to her own character in Baldur's Gate 2, but let's ignore that for now.

In the cloister under the House of Grief, there is a note you can find that outlines the squad sent to find the artifact that protects everyone from the Absolute's domination. The squad has a leader, and it is not Shadowheart. She is listed as "healer" and the text before this explicitly states that the entire squad is expendable. None of them matter to Shar.

BUT!

Divine visitation by a goddess is incredibly rare. It usually only happens to high level clerics, which Shadowheart isn't really even at 12th-level, and to those that the goddess has an extreme, vested interest in. If you free the Nightsong/Dame Aylin instead of killing her, Shadowheart is wrenched out of the Material Plane and made to suffer for an indeterminate amount of time. That, plus literally meeting Shar in the conclusion to her personal question, is very odd given what we know about Shadowheart.

If we presume that Larian did their jobs, and I'm going to because I trust them, then there is an immediate dilemma presented here. Either Shadowheart matters to Shar (she is not expendable), or she is just another zealot (she is expendable.) There is no half-truth in that logic table that really works for Shar, she's an absurdly dogmatic goddess. See: literally any Sharran you encounter in BG3 that isn't Shadowheart. It's possible that the writer of the note didn't know what they were talking about, but I think that's a lazy out that doesn't hold water with the rest of the evidence.

So, which is it? This being the part where I'm mostly in interpretation territory, Shar views Shadowheart as the perfect puppet, a toy to needle at her sister, not because she is important at all as a person, but because she's a representation of Selûne that Shar can mold to suit her image as she did in the Time of Troubles. We hear that in the game when Shadowheart basically says that she was just a thing for Shar to use. She's beaten into (what Shar believes will be) submission for not becoming a Dark Justiciar, but it only serves to sever the tie between cleric and goddess.

Shadowheart is Shar's answering play to Selûne beating that trick from the Time of Troubles, and there will be another Shadowheart after her eventual death. Shadowheart is both incredibly important and utterly worthless to Shar in the same way that an abuser uses affection and trust to hurt their victims. Love bombs in the form of divine power, sending her on this important mission, and offering the title of Dark Justiciar are followed by pain when Shadowheart displeases her. As if, on a whim, all that supposed mutual respect could turn into non-consensual, extreme violence.

Shadowheart is an objectified opportunity for Shar to fuck with Selûne for the entirety of a single half-elf's lifespan (anywhere from 150-200 years) and nothing more. A plaything to discard when all is said and done after a microcosm of time where a goddess is concerned. Whatever Shadowheart thinks she's benefiting from with Shar, it's all a trick. It's a massive delusion with which she's been brainwashed into participating.

And deep down, deep deep way deep down, Shadowheart knows this even in Act One. She spouts random sayings and the sorts of 2edgy4me one-liners that you would expect from a somewhat goth-y, slightly sassy Stock Evil Cleric in a fantasy RPG. For a good portion of Act One, you wouldn't be wrong to assume she's extremely one note and a total zealot. That is, unless you know two things:

That Shar is a fucking menace in Faerûn, and nothing good ever comes naturally from her cult. Anyone that knows FR lore was probably like me when they first interacted with Shadowheart. I know I basically said, "What the fuck, you're not a Sharran lmao. Either Larian goofed hard, or something's fishy here."

That extraordinarily devout people tend not to babble in verse, prayer, and all that unless they are also trying to convince themselves to have more faith in a set of beliefs that they're not entirely sold on. This isn't 100% of the time, but it's something you see in people whose faith is not very strong. People who have ironclad faiths and hold consistent ideologies tend to rely more on personal interpretation of faith, for good or ill. You see this all over BG3 in the people that are more confident in their beliefs, as well. Isobel, Orin, and Z'rell are three wildly different angles on that, for example. It's really all over the game in the NPCs.

That second point is the more important one here. Shadowheart, in Act One, is constantly talking about her goddess. If she's not hiding the artifact from you, she's couching an event in concern over what Shar would think of how she behaved. Like she's still a scared child who doesn't know how to handle what's happening around her despite being completely capable in scenarios as hectic as melee combat with ogres. The difference shines bright as day if you play a follower of Selûne and push back on her beliefs, though you do of course get a lot of vitriol in the beginning. Even so, it's clear that Shadowheart knows something is off about Shar whenever confronted with actual Sharran activity/belief, but she's been brainwashed and abused so horrendously that she constantly tries to "correct" herself to appease her abuser.

Selûne, however, isn't really a "part" of Shadowheart's quest in the same way as Shar. The Moonmaiden is not an active participant, she is not a guiding hand or even a faint idea in Shadowheart's thought processes because of how intense the memory blending got for her. The most we ever really get of Selûne's opinion comes from external sources (pretty much entirely from Shadowheart's parents, Isobel, and Aylin when she's not PROCLAIMING DIVINE RIGHTS.) To the Moonmaiden, Shadowheart is really just another of her many, many children spread throughout the Realms. Yet, Shadowheart retains that sense of inherent goodness that Selûne instils in her followers.

Unlike the Lady of Loss, Selûne's indifference isn't hateful or spiteful at all. For Selûne, the ultimate goal of any of her followers is to find themselves. To illuminate who they are meant to be by moonlight. Two of her domains in 3rd edition are Protection and Travel, and in 5e she has Knowledge as well, while one of her "mantles" (the domain equivalent for psionics) is Freedom. She wants to give her followers the ability to freely tread whichever road will lead to self-actualization.

Selûne demands almost nothing of her own followers so long as they act according to the basic tenets of a traditionally Chaotic Good deity. She accepts flaws, faults, and failures in her clerics as much as she rewards strengths, virtues, and victories. There is no divine intervention from Selûne because she accepts Shadowheart intrinsically as long as Shadowheart finds herself. All it took for Selûne to take Shadowheart back after forty years of being a fanatical Sharran was saving one person, and trusting one of two people that we know she's let in for that forty years (the PC, as well as possibly Nocturne) — Selûne sees that she's an abuse victim at the heart of it all.

Side-note: Selûne's primary holy symbol is two eyes surrounded by stars. She is always a passive witness to her clerics' deeds. I don't think I need to get into that symbolism.

Whenever given the chance, Shadowheart values freedom incredibly highly. Even in someone she can take the entire game to warm up to, such as Lae'zel. Her dialogue after Lae'zel denounces Vlaakith speaks directly to this. It's seen repeatedly in her comments on other characters' personal quests such as Astarion, or Karlach, and with Lorroakan's intent on imprisoning Aylin in Act 3.

Once Shadowheart is pulled away from Shar's influence in the end of Act 2/early Act 3, she is... not a completely different person, but she is absolutely a calmer individual that also allows her emotions to surface more intensely. If you're romancing her by Act 2, she confesses that she wants to be with the PC (forever) IMMEDIATELY after being punished horrifically by Shar; she progresses the romance far faster once Shar is out of her brain; she cries, alone, in front of the PC if she chooses to listen to her parents and spare herself from Shar while also killing them. She's known this entire time that she's purposefully holding parts of herself back, and this is her immediate reaction to being set free.

Of course, it's a video game and things aren't always perfectly paced, especially considering the implementation of the Long Rest system. Much of this interpretation requires you to accept that.

After the small dialogue about Shar's intervention after the Gauntlet, the narrator comments that you're not sure if telling Shadowheart where her divine power now comes from will break her spirit forever. That's interesting, and it makes her almost manic change to "I have to be with this person forever" in the romance so utterly sad. Shadowheart is an almost textbook depiction of someone who struggles immensely with vulnerability and emotional openness due to childhood neglect and abuse. Even worse, she's been suffering that neglect and abuse for forty-plus years and she cannot remember what life was like before the time when she constantly yearned for the approval of her abuser. When she's set free and given the appropriate space to manage her feelings (all of the times she asks to be given space/asks the PC to respect her boundaries), support from friends and loved ones in the way Larian handled the camp crew's reactions to everyone's personal quests, and a purpose in life that extends beyond her abuser, she flourishes almost immediately.

To Selûne, Shadowheart is simply another person finding themselves in a world that's incredibly difficult to navigate. Under Shar's domination, Shadowheart will never be anything more than a useful puppet that dances happily whenever her goddess asks, pleased to be what she thinks is useful as she wears the false title of Dark Justiciar. With Selûne watching but not pushing, Shadowheart can be free of everything but her own choices, her own mistakes and victories. Her own person, freed from expectation.

P.S. "Breaking out of toxic thought patterns" is a common thread in the companion romances and quests. In a similar way to how Astarion uses sexuality to mask a part of himself in his romance, Shadowheart sees all this time she's spent holding herself back as an excuse to reverse course and accelerate ridiculously fast by comparison.

My point is, she is a U-Haul Lesbian.