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Always fascinated by this.
Love the effect of friendship and love on behaviour, especially that of villains or otherwise morally grey characters. This also suggests that the fundamental difference between Lord Vile and Skulduggery is love - love is what created Vile (Skulduggery losing his family and being consumed by rage) and love is what killed him too (Val’s companionship and love of Skul allowing him to move on and improve himself.)
I adore this duo so much - platonic soulmates for the win!
I’m a little obsessed with Skulduggery telling alt Vile that he’s the superior one in DotL because it’s such a fascinating trope subversion.
The typical trope is that a character who is a morally good person is faced with an alternate version of themselves who is stronger, but also evil. Then said character must battle with whether or not they value being strong or being good more.
And this is why I love Skulduggery here so much. He has spent nearly his whole life being the despicable one. He’s cruel. He’s strong and he bullies those weaker than him. Even if he is clever, he is ultimately a brute who’s spent so long being used as a weapon that he’s come to love it. He’s been strong his whole life, he doesn’t want to be strong anymore. He wants to be good in order to please Valkyrie.
And finally, he is faced with a version of himself who is even stronger than him, but also a worse person. He is finally the better person, even if that makes him weaker. He’s happy to be the good one. Even if it means getting literally dragged off and tortured, he gets to know that he’s not as awful as he could be. It is no moral battle for him, it is finally being able to claim moral victory.
And he’s never really worried, even when they take him away to be tortured. Because Vile is alone, there’s nobody in the world who loves him. Skulduggery, on the other hand, has someone who’d burn the world down for him. He doesn’t need to be stronger because he has someone he can rely on. And that’s how he gets away with claiming superiority to Vile. His growth as a character over the series has resulted in there being someone who will break him out.
Anyways, subversion of annoying tropes for the win. Skulduggery’s relationship with Vile fascinates me.