#the problem is that i don't think we're meant to see dracula's wife replacement habit as a flaw of his

[beevean]

You know I actually don't mind Mathias' backstory essentially being a repeat of Dracula's in SOTN

Yes it's a pretty sexist use of female love interests, the early IGA era had this issue pretty frequently

But in a way this sort of plays into the theme of Dracula being stuck in a cycle

He became evil due to tragedy, years later he encounters what was most likely the literal reincarnation of his late wife thus giving him a second chance at happiness but it was also taken from him causing him to further spiral into the darkness and into a seemingly endless cycle of hatred and resurrections. Soma would of course then finally manage to break the cycle though he once almost got trapped in it again thanks to Celia's scheme which recreated circumstances similar to Dracula's turn to evil

It's like fate itself wanted for Dracula to be evil and to stay that way

In fact if you think about it Chaos is not only the manifestation of humanity's evil but is also capable of influencing people during their worst times: it's due to Chaos' influence that people periodically attempt to resurrect Dracula

Knowing this one has to wonder: was it really a coincidence that those villagers killed Lisa right when Dracula was starting to regain his humanity?

Did Death, an entity created by Chaos, start to obey Mathias due to his possession of the Crimson Stone....or was it a deeper motive?

Is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law?

I say that plot-wise it is very lazy (not helped by the fact that we know very little about these women, poor Elisabetha), but character-wise I don't mind that Dracula is painted as an asshole with little respect for his wives, to the point that the official timeline confirms that he got attracted to Lisa because she looked like Elisabetha.

If we see Dracula's story through a Berserk-esque lens of "you can't fight fate, you are doomed to become an agent of evil and an entity beyond will do its best to break you", it's far more tragic. And it fits, since Chaos is pretty much the Idea of Evil. I also proposed that Death helped Mathias creating the Crimson Stone not just because he was bound to it, but because he knew that Mathias would be fated to become the Dark Lord.

Much like with Griffith, we can discuss where Dracula's agency ends, and destiny begins. (but i hope no one says unironically "dracula did nothing wrong" lol)