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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 2 years

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Storyline Study: Season 3

Prev (S2) | Next (PoF)

I've already done a study on S3, but it's more of a brief overview and there are also several ways to see the ending.

See, the last episode of Season 3, One Path Ends, was not originally planned. It was extra, because there was some time to fill between the original end of S3 and the release of PoF. My original S3 study includes One Path Ends (the real-Lazarus, Exemplar Kerida/Livia stuff, and the return to Orr) and gives it extreme narrative weight, but I won't be doing that here because it doesn't have extreme narrative weight.

While I do think the events happened, I don't think it has any bearing on the narrative arc, as Its supposed developments have no impact on the future story. I'm going pretend the narrative arc ended with the Commander having just faced Balthazar in the volcano. I'll also be ignoring the Knight of the Thorn side-quest.

Now: the story in S3 is about the aftermath of HoT as experienced by the Commander. It's not about the Pact or the sylvari, it's about the Commander.

Trahearne's death was a highly traumatic event. Not only was Trahearne a close friend and ally, but the Commander themself was forced to kill him.

And afterwards there was no support. None of the five allies who were present gave the Commander a shoulder to cry on. Not even Caithe.

Support or the lack of it is a huge marker of the development of trauma after a traumatic event. The Commander has always had support in the past. (This began eroding in HoT as a result of the Commander's actions at the end of S2, and in fact, Trahearne’s death is also consequence of these actions. It's also a result of the Commander continuing to reject the story's thematic Truth.)

In S3, this pattern of lack of support continued; a memorial was held for Eir, but nothing was done for Trahearne. General Almorra showed up in Rata Novus with an update concerning the role of Marshal and Trahearne’s legacy among the members of the Pact.

The Commander further stepped away from the Truth at this moment by resigning from the Pact. This action, I believe, was motivated by a mixture of grief and anger towards the Pact who have been blaming Trahearne for the disaster in Maguuma. That's understandable. But sticking to the Truth requires sacrifice, and the Commander wasn't willing to make it.

At this point in the storyline, the main characters that the Commander has been adventuring with through S2 and HoT - all the potential members of Dragon’s Watch - are the graph that charts the Commander’s growth (or decline) regarding the thematic Truth and Lie. In Guild Wars 2, the number of allies the Commander has directly correlates to how good they is at following the Truth (which is enumerated in the words of the Pale Tree: with unity, many impossible things may be achieved).

With the Commander’s resignation from the Pact, the number of allies they has plummets sharply, leaving them with only the potential members of Dragon’s Watch. Now and for all of S3 and into PoF, every ally counts.

The Commander’s next step, after resigning from the Pact, is to put Dragon’s Watch together, and they manages to recruit Rytlock, Rox, Taimi, and Marjory. Canach is around and involved with the conflict, so he also counts despite not being recruitable yet due to his obligations to Anise.

However, Rox leaves to find Braham, and as of episode 2, Rising Flames, Rytlock is taken off to the Black Citadel indefinitely. These are reminders that the Commander's current lifestyle isn't accomdating the Truth and that they should work on that.

Now, with the conclusion of Rising Flames, the Commander finally receives the payoff from their sacrifice of and departure from the Truth in S2 - Glint’s egg is hatching.

At the same time, the minions of Primordus attack. The Commander defends the egg with ruthlessness and zeal, even going so far as to threaten Lazarus’ life if he goes near the egg. However, he's a mursaat and anyway, the Commander needs his assistance to fight off the Destroyers. It’s simply not a credible threat. The Commander is clearly still suffering from the trauma at the World Summit - and from the Lie associated with it: an overprotectiveness of Glint’s egg that has a strange power to overshadow other practical concerns, given its relative importance.

Lazarus, after proving himself an ally and having done nothing to indicate otherwise, offers aid to the Commander in fighting the dragons (at this point both Jormag and Primordus at once) - something the Commander knows full well is needed and necessary, given the Pact’s devastation in Maguuma and the fact that it is, at this point, still leaderless, not to mention the unprecedented threat of two active dragons at once.

And yet the Commander rejects Lazarus’ offer of aid right out, saying they can’t keep an eye on him all the time; and even when Marjory offers to do that for them, the Commander strenuously objects. Their objection, however, doesn’t have much basis. It seems the Commander is overreacting to a perceived threat to the newly-hatched dragon, but more significantly, they is rejecting a very powerful ally, plus the support of a sizable chunk of the White Mantle - and this rejection is another step into the Lie.

With that, Marjory rejects the Commander’s leadership as the head of Dragon’s Watch and goes to watch Lazarus anyway - nearly an implicit mutiny, not only rejecting authority but usurping the decision of whether or not to ally with Lazarus in the first place. This is a direct consequence, both logically and narratively, of the Commander’s continual rejection of the Truth and constantly clinging to the Lie.

The Commander then asks Caithe to watch the baby dragon. This indicates that they no longer perceives Caithe as being a threat to the egg, especially in contrast to Lazarus.

In the next episode the Commander spends some quality time with Aurene. One thing I notice about their training sessions is that Aurene is being trained to be a hero, set apart and above; she helps feed orphans and aid wounded soldiers, but when she fights, she fights with only the Commander by her side. I can see how Vlast, presumably undergoing the same training, could come to feel isolated. But this isn’t training in the thematic Truth, that unity is required to succeed.

Now, as stories do to characters who aren’t living in the Truth, they will give you a Moment of Truth, an obvious decision point between the Truth and the Lie. This usually happens around the middle of the story, and since the last episode of S3 wasn’t planned, this means the middle of the story is episode three, A Crack In the Ice - yes, the episode with Braham in it.

Now I have a whole separate post for Braham planned, but the narrative role he plays is as a character who is acting within the Truth. His plan for fighting the dragons involves gaining the support of the norn and leading them against Jormag. This is a unity option, and therefore an option that will work, given the dictates of the story. With unity, many impossible things may be achieved.

The Commander’s plan, on the other hand, is to rely on technology and long-forgotten research, to kill two dragons at once “without raising a single sword.” Now, if I was presented this scenario without knowing how it ended, I would have said that Braham’s plan would work and the Commander’s plan would fail, simply because of how one plan adheres to the narrative Truth and one follows the Lie.

Now, of course, these things aren’t so easily known within the story; the characters aren't aware of the Truth/Lie dynamic as such. However, Braham was right. We hadn’t tested our theory, and Jormag was active, at that moment, killing people. Braham’s plan would have put a stop to that. Taimi’s machine would have destroyed the world.

----

And the Commander’s primary objection was that people would die - a nonsensical objection given that people WERE dying. In addition, the Commander knows that dragons always exert a toll in death, and that it is better to die fighting than not to fight at all - one of the primary motivations in the PS, before we knew that dragons could be killed at all. This is part of the trauma the Commander carries from Trahearne’s death. They wasn’t nearly so traumatized by other deaths, but without Trahearne and with little to no emotional support from his death, they have a new fear of people dying - I hate to call it irrational or unreasonable, since death is a horrible thing, but death is something you have to be okay with if you’re fighting a war.

Another part of the Commander’s objection was that just because he might be able to crack the Tooth didn’t mean he could fight the dragon, because the legends were just stories. But the Tooth was previously unbreakable, and being able to crack it is a significant increase in power and a good marker of success.

And, in the end, we find that Taimi’s machine wouldn’t have worked, and its very existence endangered the world once Balthazar stole it. On the other hand, we know that Braham’s plan did work: he cracked the Tooth successfully, and he and his norn had Jormag surrounded just before it went to sleep. And we found in IBS that there was a prophecy, so I firmly believe that Braham would have succeeded at killing Jormag if the machine hadn’t put the dragon to sleep. Braham was right all along - just as I could have predicted knowing only about the Truth and the Lie.

If the Commander was being sensible - not driven by the traumas of the World Summit and having had to kill Trahearne - then they would have seen the merit in Braham’s plan, and would have agreed that he should work on doing that while Taimi pursues her research. The Commander would have chosen to continue helping Taimi, or would have gone with Braham to the front lines, since that’s their specialty. Eventually Taimi would have run her simulation and found that the machine was dangerous, and Braham’s plan would have gone forward. (Ideally, the Commander would also have not antagonized Lazarus, who would have joined them in the Shiverpeaks instead of stealing the machine.) We could have killed Jormag in S3 and the Icebrood Saga wouldn’t have happened and the charr civil war would (probably) have been avoided. Not to mention avoiding a feud with Balthazar, which was unnecessary since we ourselves eventually killed the dragons he was threatening anyway.

But the Commander was suffering from trauma and kept on with their pattern of choosing the Lie, so we got S3 and PoF instead. Braham tried to make the Commander see reason - a bit abrasively, yes, a bit angrily, but with a true heart and true intentions nonetheless - and the Commander rejected everything and, at this narratively crucial moment, chose the Lie instead.

There’s another thing that happens narratively when the wrong choice is made at the Midpoint: the protagonist falls into a worse, deeper Lie to cope with the consequences the story is throwing at them. Look:

After the Commander rejected the Truth and Braham’s plan, they told Braham that he was “taking it lightly” - which Braham took a lot of offense to, and with good reason. He left in anger, their friendship ruined. So the Commander lost a good, loyal ally - and those are in short supply - and fell into the worse, deeper Lie that, not only was unity not required to have victory, but nobody wanted to be their friend or ally anyway. I’m sorry, Commander, but those are the natural (and narrative) consequences of trying to do it on your own.

Losing Braham was the first consequence, but the story continued punishing the Commander in other ways, and also more severely since it seemed they wasn't getting the message. Rox went with Braham, so that’s another ally gone. The Commander’s opportunities to change began drying up, too, after that display of an unwillingness to change. Logan took the position of Marshal, and then Canach refused to join Dragon’s Watch - another ally (or two, depending on how you count) lost.

In episode five (the final episode in this analysis), the machine was lost to Balthazar, and the Commander lost Marjory due to injury.

Even putting the machine out of reach didn’t stop the Commander, however - didn’t make them stop and reconsider that maybe Braham’s way was easier. They could still have gone back and apologized. Instead, the Commander pressed forward, now targeting Balthazar. Kasmeer wasn’t willing to do that, so the Commander lost yet another ally.

It was down to the Commander and Taimi, now. Then, finally, the narrative imposed its last consequence in an effort to deter the Commander from the Lie - Taimi ran her simulation and realized her plan was futile all along, that the machine would destroy the world if activated.

This is turning into quite the tragedy, isn’t it? That this one fatal flaw of the Commander’s should leave them with no allies, no friends, and three hugely powerful enemies - two Elder Dragons and a god of war - and their only plan, their only possible way out, would doom the world. See the decision points that led here, all with their balances resting on the difference between the Truth and the Lie, unity and pride?

Even then, however, the Commander could have backed out; the machine had not yet been activated, and we know that Braham was on the brink of killing Jormag. If the Commander had gone to help kill Jormag, the machine wouldn’t have been able to smash Jormag’s magic against Primordus’, and the destruction of the world would have been averted. (Presumably killing just ONE dragon wouldn’t have destroyed the world, since the Commander would finally have made the right choice.) However, the Commander continued to hope against all reason that the situation could be remedied, and went in to try and stop Balthazar from activating it.

Balthazar activating the machine was the point of no return, but the machine wasn’t activated until the Commander was actually in the volcano. There were many chances for the Commander to make the right choice, and it was never taken, and now the Commander was committed - they could no longer make the right choice. There wasn’t enough time to turn around and join up with Braham. And they’d failed to stop Balthazar, and “victory” meant sparing two Elder Dragons - two active Elder Dragons who would be free to continue terrorizing Tyria.

Now, the dragons were put to sleep, but only because we can’t have a whole Elder Dragon killed offscreen by Braham, and we can’t have the Commander being murdered on the spot by Primordus. And that still left Balthazar. All the same threats as before, and none of the allies. And the Commander was still by themself, laden down with traumas and Lies that would continue ensuring their failure.

~oOoOo~

Keep an eye out for my next post on why I dislike the sixth episode, One Path Ends, which I’ll probably finish before I finish the PoF study.

#braham eirsson #primordus #jormag #s3 #a crack in the ice #lazarus #balthazar #taimi #aurene #glint's egg #dragon's watch #gw2 #story theory #fiction #narrative #season 3 #lws 3

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