#something i want to make note of in tags is once garen reconciles with his disposition towards magic and learns hes also a mage

[miighted]

                related to the previous headcanon, the reasons garen often endures a lot of cruel treatment is because he harbors a lot of guilt any time he feels he’s failed in his duty of protecting demacia, he admittedly has a lot of deeply ingrained negative self-esteem ( as in, he believes he often deserves said treatment ), and because at the end of his day, he love for other people is a very, very powerful force. garen, even if he is terrible at making emotional connections and expressing his emotions, has a genuine profound love for demacia. he adores his people and he feels he owes it to every single one of them to try protect them in all that he does. garen sees himself as a servant to them more than anything else. 

                this means that whenever garen feels he has made a mistake, he hurt people when he should have protected them, or he did not rise to the occasion he will tenderly carve that guilt into his soul. he deeply, wholly, and genuinely makes to atone for any of his mistakes. atonement or servitude towards others, primarily to the people of demacia, is often what garen does when he is faced with a lot of grief. when his uncle died, he fervently dedicated himself to his training to become a knight. when he believes jarvan had died, he gave all of his wealth to families who had lost their homes or family members during the noxian invasion. penance, as an act, holds very true to garen.

                his negative self-esteem is another very deeply entangled mess that takes a lot of patience to unravel. it also requires gentleness and reassurance to be able to get garen to climb out of that grave he was dug as a little boy and made to believe was meant for him. his parents were cold to him as a child, especially after his uncle nikkolas cut his hair, and pieter has always held impossible expectations over his head. 

                despite all of his accomplishments, garen still feels he is not a worthy son, brother, or soldier. he will forever bare a mark of shame on his family’s name in his eyes as him being a trans man is treated as a family secret in a similar vein that lux’s magic is treated ( which is why garen believes lux should conform to her “role” since he was forced to as well ). he is constantly chasing his parents’ impossibly high standards and having a part of yourself being treated as a shameful secret has deeply wounded his self-esteem to the point where he believes he is deserving of his parent’s neglect. he also feels a very intimate disgust for his own body due to this. garen feels a lot of dysphoria any time he sees himself in the nude and generally avoids it, as well as being even shirtless around other people. 

                unfortunately, garen’s way of coping with a lot of that emotional trauma is usually avoiding addressing it. he believes he deserves it inherently, so he also doesn’t talk about it, not even to his sister— garen doesn’t want to burden her with it. his acts of atonement are the way he copes with his guilt, while the rest of his emotional pain he carries on his back as another weight, the same way he carries his father’s crushing expectations.