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This is so well-put. I like how this explains the ways in which Astarion was utterly stifled and stalled in his personal development without infantilizing him. I also like that you mention his line where he says "You're the only one. Other people don't have a heart like you. You're you. No one is like that." It's objectively false that we're the only person who accepts and cares for him, because the other companions grow to care for him fiercely (although perhaps there was a bit of a rocky start). That's one thing I felt a little weird about a few times during his romance, as it felt like I was the *only* option rather than the option he really, truly would choose. But by the end, there's enough shared experience and genuine connection that it feels like a sincere choice on his part. I only hope that his future helps him see that someone loving him is not a fluke.
I also think a lot of people don't see that Astarion's storyline in-game is only the very very beginning of his healing journey. At the end of the game (spawn route), he's got a future of hard work and learning about himself to face. But he's not in it alone. In my opinion, I think that's part of why he was so desperate to Ascend; because it would mean he wouldn't have to go through that painful, hard, ongoing healing process. In Ascending, he'd cut off those parts of himself and lock them away somewhere he'd never have to deal with (consciously), at the cost of the best parts of himself and his chances at healing and redemption. The idea of facing a future where he'd have to face how little identity he feels he has deep down terrifies him, even with Tav/Durge at his side. It's easier to latch onto the image of Vampire Lord Astarion, Ascendent, the cruel and powerful. This is also why the traits we see him so proudly state of himself (hedonism, lust, sadism, vanity) are all brittle facades that crumble when you poke at them too much. He's trying to define himself so desperately, and he himself doesn't even know how much of it is true.
In short, our man has about several centuries of healing to do.
I was mentioned in a pro-Ascendant Astarion post with this quote: "Astarion does not have a well-developed sense of self, and by default, he also lacks many of the skills that a well-adjusted adult should possess." This is the post it’s taken from: click me!
No problem at all—it's public, and I don’t see why anyone shouldn’t reference it. Naturally, the post was in opposition to that statement—generally speaking, I mean—but that’s fine too. Everyone has their own opinion and is free to express it. That’s not the point of my upcoming ramble! xD
It’s just that rereading my own words got me thinking more deeply about the topic and made me want to explore it further.
Now, I’m not a psychologist, but I did study psychology. I took several exams at university and I actually did pretty well, lol. I didn’t complete my studies because life took me elsewhere—most importantly, my daughter was born—but the general knowledge I gained from psychology still follows me in everything I do every day.
So it’s second nature for me to analyze characters from the media I consume through that lens—Astarion included. Of course, this is just my perspective; I can’t say for certain whether the developers intended this for his character or whether they did specific research into his psychological development.
That said, today I feel like going off on a little tangent about this beautiful science. Still in reference to that heart-stealing vampire spawn that I’m aaaaabsolutely not obsessed with.
Let me also add a disclaimer. The concepts mentioned are just examples and cannot be applied literally, as every person is different and reacts differently to situations and stimuli. Likewise, the brain is plastic—neural connections change and adapt, and there is almost never a fixed or definitive condition. Above all, I’m not making any kind of diagnosis! That’s not within my competence! Keep these ideas well in mind!
So, why do I say that Astarion doesn’t have a well-developed sense of self? Let’s take it step by step and talk a little about the concept of the "self". I'm copy-pasting something from another post, lol. Rewriting it from scratch is too much work! xP
The self is quite a complex concept with many facets. Briefly put, it’s shaped by various internal and external factors and reflects a conscious image of "me." In psychology, it’s key to building the Ego of an individual—the capacity to act, understand, organize, and interpret experiences. The Ego provides a sense of uniqueness, coherence, and personal continuity since the self encompasses many "faces." All this forms the personality of an individual, which naturally develops (and changes) throughout life.
Particular attention in the formation of the self is given to sensitive periods, such as early childhood. The self determines the level of self-esteem based on an individual’s assessment of their worth and competence in the characteristics they attribute to themselves (Real Self), their future aspirations (Ideal Self), and what they want to avoid (Feared Selves). The greater the discrepancy between these aspects, the lower the level of self-esteem. Social support and approval, as well as competence in domains deemed important to the self, obviously contribute to perceiving oneself as a person of value.
Astarion, as we know, has had his sense of self fundamentally undermined. For him, the world is divided between those who have power and those who don’t, with the former always being the "winners" in his eyes. The magistrate he once was is long dead, along with his moral compass and the life he used to live—especially after 200 years of servitude to Cazador.
As vampire spawn, akin to a newborn in some respects, Astarion learned to exist solely within Cazador’s world, revolving around Cazador, for Cazador.
There are lines of dialogue within the game that highlight this in a painful and terrifying way. For example, when Tav/Durge directly confronts Cazador, or when Cazador ends up on his knees in front of Astarion after one of his brothers or sisters dies during the ritual. Cazador says: “He [Astarion] is afraid. He’s afraid because all he has ever knows is you and me. And without us, he is nothing.” Or: “And then? What will you be without me? A shade? A specrte in the shadows, devoid of all purpose.”
It’s a terrible thing, but it’s true. Cazador represents everything—Astarion’s entire world—and when he dies, he leaves behind a void that’s even more frightening. And let’s not forget that, in the real world, it takes very little to completely erase a person—and two hundred years in the hands of an abuser is an overwhelming amount of time, a detail that too often gets underestimated or completely forgotten.
The whole matter becomes even more disturbing and painful when Cazador suggests that without Tav/Durge, Astarion would have come crawling back to him with his tail between his legs. To his fucking tormentor. And sadly, it's a painful concept because it really happens in real life—when you have nothing and no one, when you have no means of your own and are completely dependent on another person, no matter how terrifying they are. Cazador is certain that Astarion will return to him, even if it means dying. And it's a concept with a devastating impact.
So Cazador was the domineering father figure, and vampire society functions under strict rules handed down by vampire lords. In this hostile context, without any room for self-expression or choice, Astarion developed a fragmented and damaged self-image. Constantly belittled by Cazador as an individual (small, weak, useless, incapable, all words he uses in the game), always pitted against his brothers and sisters, and degraded from a magistrate to a prostitute (this is important because it’s the only skill—or "talent," as he calls it himself—that Astarion believes gives him any value or power, forming the basis for his self-image). It’s easy to imagine just how high his self-esteem must be, right? Most importantly, he never developed the skills to navigate life as a free individual—at least not in a healthy way.
Good Lord, he thinks that in order to receive support, he has to sell himself to Tav/Durge and offer his sexual services—otherwise, he has no hope of survival! And that’s why I say he doesn’t possess all the skills of a well-adjusted adult. Other glaring examples of this—so glaring they hit you like a punch in the eye—are his inability to say no and to recognize his own limits. And shall we talk about the infamous question: What do you want? The first time, he deflects, and essentially gives the answer the player wants to hear. The second time, he states it plainly: he doesn't know. He doesn't know how to make decisions, he hasn’t done it in 200 years, and the very idea terrifies him to his core. These are all skills that a well-balanced person possesses—let’s not kid ourselves.
Like any mature and well-balanced adult, one knows how to recognize their feelings, define them, communicate them, and most importantly, not fear them. Astarion, on the other hand, is unable—after 200 years of pure shit—to understand what he feels for Tav/Durge, and he won’t be able to until the end of the Pale Elf’s quest. “I don’t know—but isn’t it nice, not to know? You’re not a target, nor a victim, not just one night it's better to forget. But then... whatever in the world could you be?”
So, even if reluctantly (and despite his fear), he ends up leaning on Tav/Durge. He needs a guiding figure to help him figure out what to do because making decisions and acting independently don’t come naturally to him. Especially outside of his talents, sex and survival. He needs to be rehabilitated, re-educated, and to achieve this, he requires a safe and healthy environment where he can experiment and grow, perhaps developing other faces of the self on which to base a new evaluation. Like, I'm not just a slave or a whore: but I'm also a companion, a friend, a lover, a hero and I'm able to listen, to help, to learn, to collaborate, etc.
And let’s not forget that when the fateful confrontation with Cazador is brought up, Astarion explicitly asks Tav/Durge for help. “I need to take the fight to him. And I need you to help me,” he says. How to help him—whether to ascend or not—is up to the player and how they choose to play. But the fact remains: Astarion needs support.
Meanwhile let’s take a look at some of the consequences of low self-esteem:
Difficulty opening up in social settings and communicating one's emotions and needs
Extreme self-criticism
Devaluing or ignoring one’s own qualities
Tendency to constantly apologize and feel guilty for things that are not actually one's responsibility
Tendency to appease others due to perceiving oneself as inferior to one’s peers
Use of negative words to describe oneself
Difficulty making decisions and maintaining personal goals over time
Negative and self-blaming internal dialogue
Belief that success is due to luck, with difficulty attributing accomplishments to oneself
Not believing compliments that are given to them
And now, let’s look at the most common causes for the development of low self-esteem:
Being raised by extremely critical and demanding parents
Being heavily devalued by parents or other authority figures
Being ignored or ridiculed during childhood
Being a victim of physical, sexual, or psychological abuse
Achieving poor academic results
Experiencing episodes of bullying or mistreatment in the workplace
Suffering a financial collapse or a significant breakup
Being subjected to a prolonged period of stress
Suffering from a chronic and persistent medical condition
Suffering from psychological disorders (e.g., anxiety or depression)
Does this remind you of something? Or maybe someone in particular? Does that person, by any chance, have red eyes and pointed teeth?
Naturally, these are just examples, and everything varies depending on the individual, but I believe these points still manage to convey the concept.
They especially give the idea of how much events—and especially the context in which we live—impact our psyche. For example, thanks to neuroscience and increasingly detailed brain imaging, we know that brain areas change according to the factors mentioned above; they train like muscles, so to speak, becoming larger and more reactive every time they are activated.
So, if someone is subjected to chronic stress, the brain areas responsible for managing it will become easily activated, bringing with them a whole series of consequences that affect performance, behavior, perception, thinking, and so on.
Likewise, the more the “right” areas of the brain are activated, the more the brain itself will develop in a healthy and balanced way, forming neural connections that support the tools (perception, thinking, etc) mentioned above.
Meanwhile, other areas—such as those related to stress responses—will remain small and more difficult to activate. (Obviously, brain areas don’t literally “grow” or “shrink” in size, but the connections between neurons (synapses) are strengthened or weakened depending on how much they’re used. This is a principle known as “neural plasticity”: what you use becomes reinforced, what you neglect becomes weaker.)
A curiosity: even our mood influences how we perceive people and the world around us—and consequently, our thoughts and impressions too! xD
This image is heartbreaking, because these brains belong to two three-year-old children—and the differences are significant.
The brain on the right is missing key areas that are present in the one on the left. These missing parts impact the abilities of the child with the smaller brain:
this child will likely be less intelligent as an adult compared to the one with the larger brain,
will be less capable of empathizing with others,
and will be at higher risk of becoming addicted to drugs and involved in violent crimes.
Additionally, the child with the smaller brain is more likely to remain unemployed and dependent on social services, and may develop mental health issues or other serious health problems.
The large difference in size and development between these two brains is not due to illness or injury, but rather to how the two children were treated by their mothers.
The child with the larger, more developed brain was loved by their mother, who was consistently present and attentive to their needs. The child with the smaller brain, on the other hand, was neglected and abused. It is precisely this difference in treatment that explains why one child's brain developed fully while the other’s did not.
Of course, our favorite vampire spawn isn’t a developing child—but the point is that certain environments and experiences have a profound impact and shape many aspects of our lives, making us more or less equipped to face challenges.
At this point, I’d like to focus a bit on the reasoning process in general. It’s easy to believe that when humans think, make decisions, and reflect on a problem or task, they do so in the most rational way possible. And that’s where we go wrong! First of all, the cerebral cortex — the part of the brain responsible for complex cognitive functions such as thinking, awareness, memory, attention, and language — is located in the upper region of the brain. Most stimuli, in order to reach the cortex, must pass through all the lower areas of the brain, which often trigger behavioral responses even before the stimulus reaches rational thought. For example, the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for danger responses. A silly example: how many times have we jumped out of our skin before realizing that the loud, scary noise was just a window slamming shut? First comes the fear response, then the evaluation of the stimulus follows.
As if that weren’t enough, the brain plays other little tricks on us — without us even being aware of it — because that sneaky thing does a whole lot on its own, especially when it comes to thinking and making decisions.
So... Astarion has a very limited perspective—mostly the one offered by Cazador. As we said earlier, the world is divided into those who have power and those who suffer it. Period. But we all know that in between there are infinite shades of gray, and that can’t be denied. In the same way, Astarion believes that Tav/Durge is the exception to the rule—the only kind person in the world, the one and only for him. But as much as it flatters our ego to hear that, we know very well that no one is that special. It’s always Astarion’s perspective that’s extremely limited. And in fact, here too, Tav/Durge has the opportunity to broaden his view, to point out that the world is full of kind people who would care for him if only he opened himself up and showed kindness in return. This narrow way of thinking and seeing things, this resistance to noticing alternatives, fits perfectly into the category of cognitive biases.
Let’s start with the premise that the human brain needs to be both effective and efficient. That means reaching a result in the shortest time and using the fewest resources. Therefore: when we think and make decisions, we don’t always do so rationally. We use heuristics—mental shortcuts—often following patterns we've used before. A silly example: if I have to cook a dish I’ve made a hundred times, I don’t sit down to rethink how and why I should cook it—I just switch off my brain and do it the way I’ve always done. Many heuristics are good and useful—others, not so much. And when they fall into the latter category, they become biases.
There are many types, but let’s look at one that we all, even us Astarion fans, share. xD Confirmation Bias!
Confirmation bias manifests when we tend to search for, interpret, or remember information that supports our pre-existing beliefs, ignoring anything that contradicts them or isn’t completely aligned.
Once a certain mental imprint forms, new experiences only deepen that groove, without any willingness to explore other interpretative modes—in fact, they tend to further crystallize internal beliefs.
We can say that the person is cherry-picking—in a complex set of data and information, they pick out only what resonates with a belief they already hold, which, in some way, is convenient for them.
The reason is easy to see: if I don’t challenge a belief—even if it’s irrational—I’ll save time, create less friction, and reduce internal and external resistance to a given situation.
Because confirmation bias shows up when a person selects only the evidence that supports their point of view, it easily becomes a self-sustaining system, keeping them locked in an interpretive and experiential microcosm that risks becoming increasingly stifling—a self-built prison.
Astarion is stuck on tracks he’s known inside and out for centuries, forcibly carved into his mind—and for him, it’s all too easy to filter everything through that lens. And this cuts him off from a myriad of possibilities, in a completely unconscious way. It’s like throwing a wrench in your own gears. So Tav/Durge represents an opening to a different value system, one that could replace or at least expand our vampire spawn’s worldview. Not without resistance, of course—those brain connections will get you!
So, to conclude, let’s go back to the beginning and to the statement in question.
"Astarion does not have a well-developed sense of self, and by default, he also lacks many of the skills that a well-adjusted adult should possess."
Yes, maybe out of context it might sound bad. I certainly don’t see Astarion as half a man, incapable of thinking or choosing for himself. But I do recognize that he has serious vulnerabilities that need to be treated with care and taken into account. Not when we're playing—when we play, we do what we like and have fun—but when we analyze him as a character. When Astarion, at the end of the Pale Elf quest, in the good ending, thanks us for saving him from himself, what he means, in my opinion, is exactly this: thank you for supporting me when my vulnerabilities, my fears, my blind spots, and my narrow perspective were getting the best of me. Because, let’s be honest, Astarion’s story is also about this—about rediscovery, about learning to live again, about changing, improving, growing, developing relationships, new abilities and skills. Not as a rogue or as a vampire, or within game mechanics—but as a person.
The point is: Astarion has come out of a horrific situation, one that has to have left marks, wounds, infected pus festering beneath the skin. A situation that never allowed him to understand what he liked, what he wanted, who he really was—simply because he couldn’t express himself, couldn’t think about his own needs, couldn’t say no. Couldn’t develop his sense of self in peace and safety.
A situation that left him unable to face the world and the people in it in a healthy way, unable to identify and express his own feelings, unable to say that damn "no" or to make choices. To decide, yes. And in fact, every time he’s asked what he wants to do, his answers are vague—or he says he doesn’t know, or admits that he’s afraid of those damn choices. He’s afraid of freedom, of consequences, and of everything else beyond the four things he knows—the four fucking things Cazador drilled into him, all around power and control.
And I’m really supposed to believe that the one choice he’s absolutely sure about is Ascension? Hell no. Just like he's not sure he doesn't want to ascend!
References
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin. → A foundational text on the concept of the self, self-actualization, and congruence between real and ideal self.
Winnicott, D. W. (1964). The Child, the Family, and the Outside World. Penguin Books. → Explores the importance of a safe environment in the healthy development of the self.
Bowlby, J. (1969–1980). Attachment and Loss (Vols. 1–3). Basic Books. → Describes how early attachment figures shape our internal working models and sense of security.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. W. W. Norton & Company. → Introduces the theory of psychosocial development across the lifespan.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books. → Explains complex trauma, victim-perpetrator dynamics, and the long-term effects of abuse.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking. → Offers neuroscientific insight into how trauma reshapes the brain and affects emotional regulation.
Siegel, D. J. (2010). The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being. W. W. Norton & Company. → Discusses neuroplasticity, integration, and the development of a coherent sense of self.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. → A deep dive into heuristics, decision-making, and cognitive biases like confirmation bias.
Malaguti, E., & Morganti, P. (2014). Psychotraumatology: An Integrated Model for Trauma Treatment. (Translated from the Italian). FrancoAngeli. → Addresses the psychological and neurological consequences of prolonged trauma.
I get a lot of entertainment thinking about how containers are used in video games sometimes.
“Edwin fell first” this, “Charles fell harder” that try and convince me that Charles didn’t fall in love with Edwin the second he walked into that attic. Tell me that he didn’t attribute the fluttering in his heart to the chill of hypothermia seeping into his bones. Tell me that Charles loving Edwin hasn’t been second nature since the moment they met, which is why he never recognised it. Tell me that he didn’t push down the feeling due to years of internalised homophobia.
Tell me that Edwin didn’t fall harder. He suddenly realised that it was possible to like a boy and love fell on him like a tidal wave, heavy and immobilising. Whereas Charles’ love was like a gentle stream that slowly became more and more intense over the years, Edwin’s was like a waterfall that suddenly went from 0 to 100.
"dolphins are completely evil" I actually don't think we should assign human morality to animals with no concept of law or civilisation with an intelligence roughly equating to that of a toddler
Words cannot express how much I HATED this scene:
The "I wish you could celebrate with us" it's not cute, it's not nice, it's not what the writers think they were doing for that friendship.
This was condescending as hell.
And my worst nightmare coming true, which was CK losing and Tory looking longingly at MD cause they are the heroes/saints and if she just chose the right side she could've been happy with them, but she chose wrong and now she has to suffer even more cause she didn't learn her lesson that MD is right and CK is wrong.
THAT'S UTTER BULLSHIT.
She shouldn't feel bad she chose CK when said MD gave zero fucks about her (for MONTHS apparently), gave her spot to Hawk like it was nothing and were then telling her they would've been there for her if she asked/went to them.
That girl was grieving and left your dojo in tears, I don't think she needed to FUCKING ASK for you to be there for her.