#thinking that he was an abusive asshole isn't exactly unreasonable

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Some people: Kaeya’s bio father is an abusive monster who abandoned his son in order to achieve his own selfish goals. He is an evil man who deserves everything awful that might happen to him. 

Other people: Kaeya’s bio father did the right thing and leaving Kaeya in Mondstadt was the only way to give him a halfway-decent life. He is a better father than he is given credit for and should not be as hated as he is. 

Me: Kaeya’s bio father is integral to the general ‘war is hell and bad choices can reverberate across time’ thing that Genshin seems to be going for. He made unethical choices, but mostly because the ONLY OPTIONS HE HAD WERE UNETHICAL. If our understanding of the Alberich’s role in Khaenri’ah is accurate, General Alberich (my name for him until stated otherwise) was suddenly in charge of a hopeless and dead kingdom which begged to be saved. Assuming that there was a reason Kaeya specifically was chosen for this mission, General Alberich was forced into a position where he needed to choose between the lives/future of every Khaenri’an vs the life and future of his young son. Abandoning either is an awful thing to do and a horrible decision, but the bad decisions of Celestia and Rhinedottir have led to a scenario where General Alberich can only make bad decisions. In the end, he chose to prioritize his people and made his young son into a spy. We do not know the process for this, but knowing how much Hoyoverse loves to torment people (especially Khaenri’ans) we can assume that this process was horrific for Kaeya and could definitely be considered abuse. General Alberich is effectively making his son into a child soldier for a war that the majority of people never wanted or asked for, and one Kaeya was likely far too young to understand. At least, until he was forced to grow up far too quickly in order to fulfill his duty. General Alberich likely loathed everything about what was happening and even in his last moments with his son he asks for forgiveness. He knows that what he is doing is wrong, but to turn back now is to both abandon his subjects and make everything that happened to Kaeya in order to turn him into a child spy be for nothing. So yeah, General Alberich is a terrible person who made horrible choices. But war and the bad actions of others have created a situation where he has nothing BUT horrible choices and where being a terrible person is the only thing he can be. And that’s without considering how the curse/abyssal corruption could impact the scenario. 

#idk #I just think that Kaeya's father is kinda an Asgore situation #where the only decisions he could possibly make were awful and unethical ones but choosing neither would create an even worse outcome #also I want to clarify that both of the other interpretations that I parroted before giving my own thoughts are valid #because we are working with such limited information and yeah no shit people are gonna have differing thoughts #people have differing beliefs and perspectives on things which are CANONICALLY CONFIRMED to be clear situations with lots of info about it #so of course people are going to go in like 80 different directions with his character #BECAUSE WE HAVE NEXT TO NOTHING TO GO OFF OF #and basically every interpretation of him I've seen is pretty reasonable #Like yeah man's son is a child spy who was abandoned in a far away country for the purpose of being a spy for Khaenri'ah's interests #thinking that he was an abusive asshole isn't exactly unreasonable #nor is it unreasonable to believe that he was actually a decent man who left his son in Mondstadt as the 'only hope' of Khaenri'ah #because he just wanted Kaeya to live on and have a life outside of the Abyss #and Kaeya was mistaken when he thought he was simply being left behind as a pawn #Genshin is no stranger to unreliable narrators and this wouldn't be the first time a character story wildly mischaracterizes something #so like...both of those interpretations are valid #and pretty fair ones as well #But I think that it really is like an Asgore situation where yeah this guy sucks and he is an awful person who made so many bad choices #But also was left with nothing BUT bad choices through war and grief and other factors that were genuinely outside of his control #Sacrifice your son's childhood and happiness by forcing him to be a child spy and abandoning him in the middle of a deadly storm #or let your people (including yourself) rot away into nothingness while facing a fate worse than death while they all but scream to be saved #there are no good options #kaeya's father #don't take this too seriously I just really liked Undertale when I was younger and I'm getting Asgore vibes from General Alberich