#so this is not only rewatch thoughts but also what i've been percolating for 'what do we talk about when we talk about loving this

[tunedtostatic]

I've been rifling through my rewatch thoughts about Astrid all day and I was going to make a joke about "no one needs me to contribute a post about Astrid being an interesting depiction of a victim of abuse when it has been written about" but fuck it, no such thing as too much Astrid, in this essay I will. I think if you ask "What makes Astrid compelling," most people will indeed say something about her being a depiction of many years of abuse, especially since she's a bad victim (in the sense of being too compliant with her abuser, not being too loud and crazy).

Part of what makes her a compelling depiction of someone who has been abused for many years is the way Mercer portrays her ability to think multiple things at one. It's not a binary where the way Trent messed with her head didn't work and she's secretly a good guy, or she's evil without his coercion and believes everything she says about protecting the Empire. She's just having to do what people in abusive situations do, and keep multiple levels of thought and consciousness going at once, feeling some degree of support for Trent in part of her mind while knowing what's happening in another part.

When Caleb shows up at Astrid's house, she's been trapped by their abuser for nearly twenty years. She tortures and murders for the Dwendalian Empire and she both does and doesn't know that what she does as a scourger is horrific. She tells Caleb that she thinks of the faces of the people she's killed and laments, and in the same conversation she tells him that what she does prevents terrible things from happening and protects innocent people like they used to be. She conveys to him that she wants to kill Trent. She conveys to him that she wants to take Trent's place.

Being a d&d wizard is about knowledge. The wizard plotlines in cr2 are epistemic, focused on what can be known, remembered, realized and discovered: Trent and the scourgers, Vess and the ancient knowledge she uses Lucien to try to harness, Essek, and even Yussa and his focus on Who You Know.

Many popular narratives of abuse are also about knowledge. "Knowing" is conflated with "escaping:" the abuse victim is too naive to realize they are being abused, and if they had that knowledge, surely their next step would be escape. Surely abuse is a fluke, and a strong person will always be able to get away.

"A Volstrucker has never disentangled from Trent before. No one who knows what he does, how he breaks us, has shared their trauma with the world. With the king. Imagine the threat you are to him now that you carry respect of both crown and Kryn. So yes, he's invested."

Astrid knows. She knows the nature of what Trent has done to them. She knows what outsiders would think about Trent's abuse if they were to hear about it from someone they respect. The knowledge alone is not enough to save her.

The horrific abuse of the scourgers is administrated by Trent but enabled by their world. Margolin sends the Blumendrei to Trent. Their professors ignore the bandages on their arms. Ludinus is looking the other way. If a powerful "good" person were to know what Trent has done, that would also mean knowing what his scourgers have done, and who, they must wonder, would be willing to help them then?

Astrid knows she does not have the recourse of that respect from the Crown. She knows she does not have powerful allies to protect her from Trent if she were to run away. At their first meeting, all it takes is for Caleb to express open anger at their abuser - and accuse her of not understanding what he does - for her to tell him her own recourse.

LIAM: "I, um…I'm sorry. I will…never forget what we were. And…even now, all these years later, I can't shake it, I still, care a great deal…about you. At least…the girl I knew. But…he has blinded you. You and Wulf and all of his little helpers. And I mourn our childhood, and our souls." MATT: She reaches up, puts her hand on your knee. "I understand your anger. And as much as…he's been our teacher, he's not infallible. He's just an old man, with the right connections, who will one day pass, like they all do." LIAM: "You always were ambitious." MATT: "So are you, apparently, Bren. Like I said. I'm proud of you."

Her frame of reference for Bren is "also ambitious, also a victim," and she trusts him to understand how ambition and safety are the same thing for her. Astrid's hell and Caleb's hell have been so different for the last decade and a half that he misreads the situation in a single line - you always were ambitious - and throws her under the bus at the dinner party, taking her ambition as a cue to see her as less endangered, or less salvageable.

Both their horrible wizard goals - turning back time or becoming an archmage of the Cerberus Assembly - are the multiple of power as safety. Caleb hasn't realized that his own desire to bend reality to his will to save his parents is hubris, so he can't do the math backwards and realize that Astrid's ambition is {her way of saving Eadwulf and herself; her own way of responding to the death of her parents; a desire for magic and power that is inseparable from both of those things}. Like...it's open to interpretation, but I think the answer to "Does Astrid also have evil unsympathetic ignoble desire for power?" is that "also" isn't the right word. Power is magic is safety is a reward for her suffering, and Astrid's ambition, like everything else in her life, means many things at once.

Trent chose to abuse the scourgers and their world chose to let him. Astrid survives Trent for over a decade and a half, helps the Mighty Nein, and saves them in Nicodranas. For Caleb? As a maneuver to save herself? That also might be a question with more than one answer. I don't have a conclusion to this other than hats off to this coerced evil wizard for being an interesting depiction of strength in extremis, figuring out how to know multiple things at once when even her magic isn't her own and hang on all that time.