Headscratchers / The Dragon Prince

Exiling the humans

• You mean to tell me becfause one human discovered dark magic and used it to nefarious ends, all humans were forced from their homelands? There's nothing to suggest its discovery and use was sanctioned by humanity's leaders. Even then, unless the research had popular support, punish the leaders not the people. Heck, the only human king we've seen so far seriously frowns upon its use. And by the sounds of that Mirror, the Elves and/or dragons' leaders have some messed up magic on their side too. This is also assuming that the process of forcing humanity out of their homelands didn't result in the deaths of any innocents either.
  • I think that's kinda the point. The elves majorly f'd up.
  • Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is all just part of the show's Grey-and-Gray Morality. The Elves greatly overreacted in their reaction to Humanity's discovery and this is what likely provoke them to go kill the Dragon King in the first place. They were mad about getting kicked out of Xadia.
  • My main problem is that while we're constantly reminded of the monstrous things the humans have done, no one brings up how cruel it was to force all of mankind out of a land as plentiful as Xadia seemingly is because of the actions of what was at worst a minority. Or how hypocritical it is for the Dragon Queen and Elves to have things like the mirror, literal nigh-unbreakable assassination blood contracts, and conspired to kill a human king and his son. You know, the horrible thing humanity did to them we're constantly reminded of. Oh wait, the humans only killed the adult king who had been an active hostile force in the conflict and the faked-assassination-but-was-a-kidnapping of the prince was completely unsanctioned.
  • As of Season 3, it's been shown that killing the king and his son (or attempting to) was done in direct retaliation for Harrow killing Thunder and (supposedly) smashing his egg, which would make the assassination tit for tat. It fits well with the series' exploration of the cost of revenge.
  • It's likely a setup for a twist later on. The introduction is done by a star elf, so it's likely a case of Unreliable Narrator being told from the elves' perspectives.
  • It's implied that more than the discoverer of dark magic used it, though the prologue does skip over that part - it's fairly easy to imagine that there were a few years of havoc as dark mages fought each other and everyone else, ripping the magic out of everything around them freely. And while Harrow may not be entirely pro-dark magic, he's also used it in the past, and has a dark mage as his closest friend and adviser.
  • Its also quite clear why they overreacted so hard. Dark Magic is powered by killing magical beings and elves are themselves magical beings.
  • I'm pretty sure the creators of this show are aware that collective punishment and ethnic cleansing have been considered horrific war crimes ever since the Geneva convention. That entire prologue sounded like a Written by the Winners justification of why the elves had the right to commit such atrocities in a civil war that the human population lost. I mean, what we've seen of the elves in the show's present hardly suggests that they are a nice and ethical people, does it? At least the human guards refused to take young Callum into a 1possible battle situation, and none of them seem to be younger than Soren, who looks like he's 18 at the very least. The elves apparently train children to be Black Ops soldiers and send them on murder-suicide missions before they're even done with puberty. (And unlike in the real world, where child soldiers generally have to be press-ganged into picking up weapons against their fellow human beings, and then they have to be kept from deserting by making sure they're far more scared of their officers than of the people they're supposed to kill, Rayla actually seemed eager and proud to be part of that assassination team, at least until she actually comes face to face with murdering someone. That implies a lot of systematic brainwashing. Makes one wonder... Is there an elven equivalent to the Hitler Youth?) Also, the dark magic that Viren and his daughter use seems to rely on the sacrifice of insects and other such small animals. I fail to see how that's really so much worse than slaughtering animals for food, especially if that type of magic is your peoples' only really effective weapon against a long-term enemy who is also using magic and on top of that has access to giant, lightning-spewing battle tanks capable of flight and aerial bombardment.
  • While I do largely agree with a lot of what you said I would like to point out that if I remember correctly it said on the website that Humans were poaching magical creatures to fuel Dark Magic. The intro even shows the original dark mage guy absorbing what looks like magical creatures. So I feel it is more severe than simple hunting for food.
  • I meant to say that the use of dark magic in the present time of the show doesn't seem objectively horrific in a way that the other characters' abhorence of it seems justified. (That is, until Viren decided to completely jump off the slippery slope, of course.) Clearly, the dark magic users can limit themselves to killing insects, so the magic's "evilness" is a matter of degree, not basic principle, just like the use of any weapon. But even back in the prologue, I disagree. "Magical creature" does not mean "sapient creature". The only magical creatures that the prologue treated like people were elves and dragons, and all we saw the dark mage kill was some big, 6-eyed birds. Magical? Sure. But unless you show me those animals could talk or reason, that's still no worse than shooting wild geese for food and quill feathers. Also, the willingness of a society to subject a whole ethnic group to ethnic cleansing doesn't just appear out of thin air. That the elves were capable of doing this (and apparently without much of a fight from the humans), implies that they were socially more powerful and had no empathy for humans in general. So I think the situation for humans, even before they developed dark magic, might well have been so bad that even killing sapient magical beings could have been justified - unfortunately you can't have a revolution against your oppressors without killing a few of them. Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters and all that.
  • As of Season 3, we've clearly been shown that most magical animals in the setting are capable of "speech" of some kind, if Ezran's discussions with them are any indication. In particular, Phoe-Phoe and Bait seem to be quite intelligent and capable of understanding human speech. We also see hints of other creatures that may have been hunted in the past, including ones that were likely to be rare or even sentient (as Sarai's speech about killing the Titan indicates). Viren wouldn't know that unicorn horns and titan hearts can be used in "ancient" spells if it weren't once commonplace to kill those creatures and experiment with them, likely before they were hunted to the point of extreme rarity. In addition, killing animals for food is for sustenance, while killing animals for dark magic is a matter of convenience—it is, as Sarai said, a shortcut. Even more so now that we've seen it's possible for some people to establish connection to the Primal sources for magic instead, if they take the time to understand them.
  • We also don't know what using their life energy does. It could destroy their soul, thus destroying them entirely. Additionally, I took the opening to mean more that one human discovered it, and then it spread, and that's when the Elves and Dragons reacted. They still overreacted, but I don't think it was a matter of one human doing so all were kicked out.
  • If the show creators wanted to establish Buddhist / animist / all-things-have-a-soul type metaphysics for their show and condemn dark magic on that basis, then they have to show that. Show me the elves being vegans and animists, and I stop thinking they're hypocrites for taking such offense that someone is killing animals through magical means. Also, it doesn't goddamn matter if it was one dark mage or a whole army of them, what the elves did to the innocents to get rid of the threat was still collective punishment and ethnic cleansing. Those are crimes against humanity, not "overreaction". Outlaw the use of dark magic and hang and quarter anyone who breaks the law if you must - but nobody, under any circumstances, has the right to punish a criminal's family / community / members of the same ethnicity. There is no such thing as "guilty by association" or "pre-emptive punishment" in a civilized society.
  • No they don't. The idea that "things that are alive have souls" isn't a Buddhist/animist idea. And they DO all but confirm it, unless the Soulfang Serpent eats only humans, elves, and dragons. And the idea that magic that consumes and destroys life energy, even of animals, would be evil isn't a revolutionary thing. That's the norm in fantasy.
  • My interpretation of the fact the human side of the continent has few magical creatures (and is limited to small ones, like insects) is because humans drove them to extinction, or near extinction, by using dark magic. That's not a very nice thing to do, specially when it's just a shortcut, and magic can be done without resorting to that. The only reason magical insects still exist in that side is probably due to the fact insects are pretty quick in repopulating, and quite difficult to fully exterminate. And I really think the intro talking about a single mage is hyperbole (just like they only show a single elf from each tribe as the acting forces), and there probably was a huge conflict before the exiling happened.
  • Personally I'm convinced that this is on purpose and even the way the prologue is presented is part of that. If my understanding is correct (upon which this theory hinges), the narrator of the prologue is Aaravos, who is an elf, so it would make sense that it seems like the backstory was Written by the Winners. However, we later see that Aaravos is the elf trapped in the mirror, and come to find out that mirror was kept a secret in the home of the Dragon King and Queen; after Viren discovers him there and they begin to communicate, Aaravos uses Dark Magic to speak with him and later to send the shadow-elf assassins to the other kingdoms to manipulate them into agreeing to attack Xadia. He freely admits to Viren that he does not know where he is, and it has been a long time since he's communicated with someone, indicating that he's not wherever he is by choice. What we don't see in any of these interactions is Aaravos expressing distrust or disdain for Viren as a human like any of the other elves have, which indicates to me that he's worked with and befriended humans before.
  • Subtitles confirm Aaravos as the narrator.
  • Or 'Dark' magic was never a bad thing, to begin with. The elves and dragons were just happy to be able to use magic while humans could not and got pissed when a human found a way to break the status-quo. The fact that Viren became evil may have more to do with his personal character than with the use of magic.
    
    So the narrator of the prologue is an elf who was and is friendly to humans and, in spite of treating Dark Magic as a great evil in the prologue, aids at least one person in using Dark Magic to manipulate four other sovereign kingdoms to send their men and women off to war to achieve his own ends after one of them already explicitly refused and the others began to have misgivings. And, once cornered, he possesses that human to use lethal magic force on the guards of the kingdom he's supposedly protecting. My theory is that Aaravos is himself on the humans' side; he did something that the elves would not accept (for legitimate reasons) and instead gave aid to humans because he saw them as more accepting of his shady behavior. As punishment for whatever it was that he did, either (1) he was trapped in the mirror as a kind of fate worse than death, or (2) he desperately did something to seal himself away to prevent him from being executed; they couldn't find a way to get him out and he couldn't escape, and they couldn't break the mirror because of some kind of enchantment on it, so it was kept with the Dragon King and Queen to guard him away from the rest of the world.
    
    The way he frames the prologue is meant to make us see humans as sympathetic and elves as oppressors so we'll be on his side; the show then begins by largely proving that point. He is explicitly described as a manipulator in his official profile; it wouldn't surprise me if one of the people he's trying to trick is the viewer. As we venture on into Xadia, I think we're going to hear more of the story and see that there's more to the conflict that makes it more even-handed.

• It could also be a case of Bad Powers, Good People; the only people we see using dark magic are Viren, Claudia, and Callum. While the first fell off the slippery slope, Claudia and Callum try to use dark magic for helping people. It's interesting how the dark magic works; this troper thought about Fullmetal Alchemist and how alchemy is changing matter from one form to another. The same principle could be applied here: energy changes from one form (a living being) to another (magic). How a mage uses that power is what effects peoples' perception of it. And, unlike in Xadia were only a percentage of elves can become mages, dark magic allows any human to become a mage.
  
  The elves probably figured that, by forcing humans away from Xadia, they'd be able to stop the use of dark magic (since the magic sources on the human side are much weaker/non-existent). Essentially, they thought that humans would stop using dark magic once their sources dried up. But instead, it forced dark mages to become creative and develop spells that didn't need the same amount of life energy as before. Using insects and smaller animals means a larger variety of energy sources, but it requires more planning and extra ingredients. Think of it like a camera with a bad battery; it still works perfectly fine, but you need to be constantly aware of that power level and plan ahead (like bringing a charger or extra batteries along) in order to properly use it.
  
  However, most elves know little about dark magic other than what was witnessed at the beginning of the conflict. Like how humans believe that elves drink blood, elves have only heard the negatives of dark magic and how it's used by human mages. While the audience sees Claudia use spiders for casting powerful spells, most elves haven't, and assume that dark mages are still hunting down large magical creatures. Like humans, elves are reacting to a certain stereotype without thinking that things might have changed between the past and the present.
  • Just to bounce off the FMA connection, considering that elves and dragons are innately magical—and that Claudia explicitly mentions dark magic being possible with dragon parts—I can easily imagine massive dark magic rituals being enacted on large Xadian populations like the (FMA spoiler) Xerxes and Amestrian mass human transmutation circles. It's definitely an out-there scenario, but not impossible. And as the above mentions, given the cycle of revenge thematics throughout the show, all it takes is one large-scale dark magic atrocity to lead the elves to lash out and view humanity as deserving of mass exile and thus setting the cycle in motion.
  • In addition, we've now seen that the founder of Dark Magic intended for it to be a way of helping humanity rise up to be equal to the other species. He's clearly portrayed as the sympathetic one in his conversation with Sol Rex, who states openly that he considers humans an inferior species. The founder is also horrified and disbelieving that the dragon would commit atrocity just to get him to stop using magic, and protests at one point that he had been promised that no harm would come to him during the meeting. (A promise which has been completely violated by the end.)
  • From what we've seen with Callum, it's entirely possible for humans to figure out how to use primal magic. Apparently, it's just been so long since it was practiced in any meaningful numbers that humans and elves believe that it isn't possible. For one reason or another, humans now believe that the only method of using magic power possible is to use dark magic, which consumes the lives of magical creatures. It's not too hard to figure out that this being enacted on a large enough scale to make a difference to human development would inevitably involve enough magical creatures being sacrificed as to create very bad blood between the two parties. The dragon kings we've seen so far have been arrogant and unnecessarily brutal, but they do have a point given that the only reason we've seen humans come to Xadia before the mission in this series is to exploit it for dark magic-related purposes. I'm not going to claim that they're fully justified in their unnecessarily destructive aggression and neither is the plot, but let's not pretend that it's entirely blind bigotry solely on the magical side when the power source for human expansion is literally magical lives.
    • The bigger problem is that the show depicts the entire conflict as a Cycle of Revenge story, where neither side is in the right for what has been done, when what the elves and dragons did, as presented in the show, resembles more the actions of an oppressive class than a side of the conflict on equal footing to humans. The puzzling part is that the show acknowledges that the dragons and elves aren't exactly right for being bigoted (albeit only in that they go "too far" sometimes,) but also suggests that humans are in the wrong for trying to improve their situation through the only means they were given. The elves performed an ethnic cleansing and forcibly relocated an entire race from their rightful homes (and a dragon slaughtered an entire town of innocent people) because a small percentage of them used dark magic to survive a famine that elves refused to help them with. These are near-genocidal measures, if not outright genocidal. Generations later, dark magic is still being used primarily to help humans survive in a land of less resources which the elves forced them into, not to genocide magical creatures as is being suggested (in fact, as pointed out, insects and the like seem to do just fine most of the time for dark mages.) Human actions are explained in-story as being about survival and not merely revenge/warmongering, but the narrative still pushes a "wrong was done on both sides" idea as if it would be best if humans just accepted the crappy hand that the more powerful elves dealt them and let hundreds their people occasionally starve to death when it could be prevented. Perhaps the solution is meant to be that when humans learn to use primal magic again they will finally be "superior" like the elves, but that still suggests their treatment was fair back when they didn't know they could use magic. That's the confusing thing. It's an elephant in the room that is not acknowledged; how can the cycle of revenge end when one side is typically shown to be motivated by something other than revenge?
    • Let's look at the scene from "The Dagger and the Wolf" in season 1. Rayla disguises herself as a human because the people of this town will want to kill her on sight. To get the band off her wrist, she says she will catch up to the guy with the magic dagger and "ask nicely". And she does. It is not an euphemism. The guy agrees at first, if confused by the request. Then, as soon as the guy finds out that she's a moon-shadow elf, his demeanor does a 180. Rayla could have killed him then, he was certainly expecting it, but she doesn't. She doesn't steal his magic dagger either. Unharmed, not even threatened, and he still rallies an angry mob within minutes. It's not just dark mages that cause trouble, and this scene is clearly not about survival. So again, let's not pretend that it's entirely blind bigotry solely on the magical side.

Child king

• So does Katolian succession law literally say that ten year olds can rule without oversight? It's pretty well established in monarchies that a ruler who is too young or infirm to be capable of making decisions will be replaced by a regent until they come of age or get better. Why doesn't Viren simply claim the regency for himself? Ezran won't be of age for at least another seven to ten years.
  • The necessity of a regent is far from universal, but that sort of situation causes weakness and it's perception even so. Maybe Katolian precedent would call for the appointment of a regent; maybe it doesn't, we don't know. Maybe the other human kingdoms would get involved, maybe there'd be a council of advisers that Ezran would have to listen to even while making the ultimate decisions - it's not just regent or not. And even if it was a regent, we don't know at what point he'd be considered of age - if Rayla is considered old enough to serve as an assassin at fifteen, maybe Ezran would be considered old enough to rule earlier than we'd expect. In any case, it certainly wouldn't be as simple as Viren claiming the regency - there would likely be other people with a right as good as his.
  • Lampshaded and discussed by Season 3. Opeli suggests to Ezran that he can select his own regent, but he chooses not to.
  • Katolis does seem to have an oddly small royal family for supposedly being the largest human kingdom.
  • Viren prefers an adult on the throne, because a child ruler in a feudal society (even one with good advisors) always means internal instability as the nobles fight for power and influence over the child ruler. (The king has a hereditary/god-given right to rule, which no-one can usurp without causing the general population to revolt. But the Regent? He's got no such tradition-based job security. Any of the nobles could take over and enrich himself during the years that the child heir needs to reach legal maturity.) Also, the lack of an experienced overall military commander (Harrow's second-in-command appears to have been Soren, for Heaven's sake. I guess the senior military all died in the war with the Dragon King?) in addition to the political infighting means that kingdoms nominally ruled by children are seen as ripe for invasion by any neighbor who would like to increase their territory. So, after Harrow was so self-absorbed and proud to just abandon his young sons and the kingdom he was responsible for rather than compromise his own conscience by sacrificing one guy (though I note that he still ordered half the castle's guards to be meat-shields for him instead of meeting the assassins in the courtyard), Viren decided that the best thing to keep the whole mess stable and avoid wide-spread bloodshed was to put either himself or another adult on the throne, succession be damned. Unfortunately, in that situation of the new ruler being in effect a usurper (even Amaya is not blood-related to the royal line), people loyal to the old ruling house (and other nobles who might want the throne for themselves) usually use the child heir as a rallying point.^note  Look what happened to the Princes in the Tower during the Wars of the Roses. Even after they were quietly murdered, there were several boys paraded about pretending to be one of the princes, by powerful factions who needed a symbol for their own fight against Richard III. And that's a recipe for all-out civil war. So, unfortunately, the prince has to "disappear", for the sake of stability and peace within the country. ...What? You didn't think people eventually rebelled against the whole system of hereditary monarchy because it was a good way to rule a society, did you?
  • Soren isn't in charge of the military. He is just the head of the Crown Guard. Amaya seems to be the one actually in charge of the military and she is very competent and experienced. Also it is very doubtful that Viren would be accepted as the ruler, even if the princes die. Firstly, the people don't like him. Secondly, Opeli (who seems to be the religious leader) absolutely hates him. Thirdly, Amaya (the leader of the military and a total badass) distrusts him and if she finds out Viren killed her nephews, she won't led him get away with it. Fourthly, Viren has no legitimate claim even if the princes die, because if a Katolian dynasty dies out, a young orphan will be chosen to start a new ruling house. This would give people the perfect chance to overthrow Viren, which would likely result in a civil war. So it is very doubtful that Viren ruling would result in more stability.
  • The whole reason the kingdom was even in this mess is because Harrow compromised his conscience to follow Viren's dark magic suggestions multiple times. I'm not going to say that he didn't screw up or that his Honor Before Reson approach, itself helping to cause the initial famine problem, but it's easy enough to see that accepting yet another seemingly-easy magic shortcut at this point would likely lead to more complications.
• The promotional material for season 2 makes the dangers of having a child ruler more clear as one of the 5 rulers of the human kingdoms Queen Aanya is ruling at around Ezram's age and the character bio to quote "Aanya had to grow up quickly when she inherited the throne of Duren at an extremely young age. As a young queen, she earned many enemies, as many saw a child ruler as an easy target"
  • In Season 2, she has a speech to exactly this effect, including specific mention that she's survived assassination attempts before.
• While the latter part outlines that she has risen above this and is wise beyond her years it makes it clear in universe the dangers and risks to a monarchy for having a minor as the ruler. Note that the minority of Aanya when she became queen happened in living memory so Viren as the chancellor and Archmage of Katolis would be aware of this.

This provides extra in universe context for the danger of having a minor as a ruler especially in Katolis now due to the added dangers as:

• Katolis is the military power house of the human kingdoms and its territory lies right next to the borders of Xadia.
• The death of King Harrow and the following instability makes it a prime time for the elves to take military action.
• A child ruler in minority is a beacon for political instability and civil war. So you can see why Viren despite his less noble reasons does have a pragmatic point on how dangerous this would be.
  • To be fair, none of those dangers are happening to their kingdoms, and there's no indication that Xadia wants to conquer or move into human territory, or would have any interest into doing anything to their kingdoms, just that they and the rulers of Katolis now have a blood grudge against each other. Throwing their own citizens into death for a war whose only motive is revenge between two powerful families isn't protecting their people, it's just aiding an ally, and that's not always worth the cost.
• Viren claims that he's being pragmatic, but it's clear that he's fooled himself into believing his own hype. If he were just being pragmatic, he'd work to convince Ezran to appoint a regent he could manipulate. Instead, he continually goes out of his way to kill or imprison the kid and appoint himself king. He's just wants enough personal power. Anything else is just him making excuses to make his egotism seem more justified. It sounds sincere because Viren partially believes his own excuses. Even that is wearing away as he gets closer to obtaining what he wants.

Ezran stealing

• Why was Ezran stealing from that baker? He is literally the crown prince of the largest Human Kingdom on the continent yet he apparently can’t get jelly tarts anywhere else? Plus the Baker would likely lose a good bit of money considering how much Ezram took.
  • I assume it was the royal baker.
  • I also assumed it was the castle cook. But as to why Ezran would steal so many tarts after being told that they were for someone else (the guards, I assume)? Because it's not unusual for pre-pubescent children to be thoughtlessly antisocial and selfish, especially if they were raised privileged and spoiled.^note  The mental capacity to consider the effects of one's actions on others, as well as a true sense of empathy, generally only develop around the age of 10-14. It's part of the reason why child soldiers are a thing that exists in the real world. It's much easier to brainwash a child into being okay with killing people than it is to convince an adult who has a fully developed sense of ethics and other-people-are-real-humans-too. And I guess people think it's cute and funny if a little rascal ruins some grumpy adult's day. Also, do remember that the primary intended audience for this show are kids. There is such a thing as vicarious enjoyment of stuff we can't do in real life (hence the popularity of, for example, pirates), and so kids want to see child characters get away with minor crimes on occasion.
  • My assumption was that those tarts were for later and not intended to be eaten in large amounts. King Harrow may have given the baker specific instructions to not let Ezran go overboard on the tarts because it's not healthy for him to eat that many sweets at once.

Stars and the Sun

• After only watching the first episode (and liking it a lot) one thing struck me: Stars and the Sun are different types of magic sources but...aren't stars just other "suns" in the galaxy? Is there a distinction?
  • Magic does not need to operate by the same rules as normal physics. It may be that in whatever interaction allows magic, many things far away act differently to one thing (comparatively) close, or perhaps it has to do with the sun being associated with and visible during the day and other stars being associated with and usually visible during the night.
  • It could also be a simplification (or them not understanding the science yet) and that the Sun is the power of the closest star or possibly the power of daytime versus the power of night, and the Stars is actually more of the powers of outer space/the heavens (comets, planets, galaxies, etc).
  • If I remember correctly I’ve read that Star magic had to do with divination and such. And it was the most mysterious magic. Sun magic meanwhile has to do with pyromancy and stuff.
  • I realized after writing my original note it most likely has to do with divination. Thanks.
  • We can't assume the universe is like our own. It could be geocentric for all we know, in which case the sun and stars would be very different things.
  • Stars create many forms of energy (heat/light/magnetism/gravity/etc). Since the sun is the closest and gives heat and light to the earth, is is a primal source for the fire arcanum. The distant stars and other celestial bodies might still be lending some form of energy (cosmic/nuclear/??) but it is less prevalent, which is why star magic is less common and why it's practitioners are more enigmatic.
  • I believe that many of the names of Primal Magic’s are just shorthand for certain elements. "Sun magic"; for example, is shorthand for "heat, light and fire" magic, considering how Sun magic imbues weapons with intense heat. They call it “Sun magic” because the Sun is the most potent source of it. Like how "Moon magic" seems to be illusion magic, "Ocean magic" is most likely shorthand for water magic, it seems different schools of magic are just named after their most potent sources.

Relations

• Alright, this isn't so much a headscratch as wanting to iron things out. So as I understand it, Callum and Ezran are both Sarai's children but Callum has a different father. So the two are half-brothers while Callum is Harrow's step-son. This all correct? Seriously, the whole show I thought Callum was step-related to his entire living family because the show did not nail these things down.
  • I'm pretty sure the way it goes is this: Callum and Ezran are both the children of Queen Sarai. Sarai had a previous marriage that took place before the start of the show. Ezran's parents are King Harrow and Queen Sarai while Callum's parents are Queen Sarai and a unknown father.
  • Season 2 pretty much confirms this. In a flashback from 9 years ago, we see Harrow and Sarai with a baby Ezran, suggesting they're his biological parents.
  • Callum and Ezran are half-brothers. They're both Sarai’s children, but have different fathers. Callum came from a prior marriage that apparently ended with his biological father's death and Ezran came after Sarai married Harrow when Callum was around four or five.

Gender

• How did everyone know that it was the egg of a dragon prince and not a dragon princess before it even hatched? Are there dragon egg sonograms in this world?
  • Sex in real life reptiles is determined by the temperature at which the egg is incubated. Maybe dragons operate under the same system. If you want a prince, set the incubation temperature higher, if you want a princess, set it lower.
  • Well considering the Dragon Prince knew his own name upon hatching and how Ezran was able to tell he wanted his mum that suggests he was already self aware as an egg. Most likely there is magic involved in how they know who it is.
  • Could simply be a case of she is the king, gender doesn't matter as long as she's the ruler.
  • Maybe female dragon eggs are a different colour or shape? Point is, they knew somehow.

Lightning Spell

• Why didn't Rayla tell Callum the draconic word for lightning before their journey to the Cursed Caldera? Like say during his first attempt at casting such a spell? That would have been a lot more helpful, and isn't Rayla supposed to know these things anyway? Did she forget about it or something?
  • It wasn't a decision she made to withhold the information. When it came up, she outright said she only knew a little draconic and she was trying to think of the right word when Callum decided to just throw the charged primal stone at her. It took being reminded that he thought Claudia had been saying "fool" to jog it from her head, and even then it was a guess.

Mage Villads

• This troper is having a hard time finding any moments when Captain Villads used primal magic, even on a subtle level! I know he said something about having a connection to the wind, but he also said something it being a sailing sense.
  • Where is it claimed he was using primal magic?
  • It says so on his profile in the Character section.
  • Nothing in the actual episodes says he's using primal magic. One may speculate that he does, but such speculation belongs to the WMG page, not under the character page, so I removed that bit from there.
  • I think it was hinted at subtly with how he feels the movement of the ocean and air, having an innate understanding of it that allows him to navigate even when blind, is actually him accessing magic. It is either Sky or Ocean magic in all probability. We just don't know if he is feeling the air and sky around him, or the push and pull of the ocean. It isn't unlike Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender who uses earth to see around her.
  • He doesn't use primal magic. That whole thing was supposed to be foreshadowing for Callum connecting to the sky arcanum.
  • He doesn't cast spells, true — but his description of his own connection with the wind and the sea matches up with what the illusionist told Callum, and makes Callum start to think that such a connection can be forged because, apparently, the captain has done so.
  • It's possible that humans, including Villads, have connected to various primal sources but never took the next step and learned actual primal magic because they believed it was impossible. Even among elves, real spellcasting seems pretty rare; Rayla knows some stealth tricks, but nothing above that. Callum is a prodigy, so not only did he connect to the sky arcanum in weeks instead of decades, but he was able to use his previous experience to cast an actual spell.
  • We have enough information to conclude Villads is not connected to any primal source. In their interview with Cartoon Universe, Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond said that, while there have been humans in the distant past who could have done what Callum did, "nothing like this has happened in a long, long time." Based on that, we know that neither Villads nor any other human has connected to a primal source (if they did, we would have seen humans channeling primal magic in various ways, even if they can't cast spells). However, what Villads shows us is that connecting to a primal source may in fact be in reach for many humans. This might be the endgame for the series, where Callum helps instruct many of these people, who have spent time in the elements, how to leverage that experience.
  • “Connecting” to a primal source isn't the same as being magically empowered by it. Villads has gotten a very deep understanding and appreciation to the wind from his sailing, but he isn't so invested in it that he could manipulate it as some spell. He's just a good sailor, not a mage.

Gren's bathroom problem

• Commander Gren is chained to a wall by his hands, wearing full armor, in the castle's dungeons. How does he relieve himself? Nobody Poops seems to be in full action, as his clothes and his surroundings both appear to be extremely clean.
  • Not just Gren; Runaan, too. And Runaan's been imprisoned longer.
    • Runaan was not eating or drinking though.

Lujanne and guarding the Nexus

• Lujanne let three human children, a human soldier, and a human dark mage of all things enter and leave the Moon Nexus with their minds intact. Children may be well meaning, but could easily tell the wrong people. Soren and Claudia are the exact kind of people you don't want knowing about this—it's egregiously stupid to let them in, considering their views on elves and Xadia. Why doesn't Lujanne refuse them entry, or at the very least drive them to insanity after they arrive? They now know the place exists, know the Cursed Caldera is full of illusions, and Claudia saw the Moon Nexus. Claudia especially, since she's a dark mage and would logically be, at least to an elf's eyes, one of the people most eager and capable to take advantage of this knowledge. Lujanne stated that she has particularly powerful illusions ('mind-melters') to Callum that she'd use on people who actually discovered the place. And yet, she just let a whole group of people, several of whom would reasonably want to take advantage of this information, into the Nexus and then leave it with their minds intact. Not to mention how Soren and Claudia incredibly oblivious about what they just found. First of all, they are totally fine with staying in a place where an obviously powerful elf could slit their throats while they slept or whatever. Then, there's how neither think of how valuable this knowledge is. This elf literally sits on top of the mountain to guard it, and Callum told Claudia exactly what the place was. Why doesn't the not-otherwise-stupid Claudia go back to her dad or send word back going "hey there's a super powerful magicky place thingy right here on top of this mountain"? Nobody's actions here make sense.
  • Finding the baby dragon was the most important part of Claudia's mission. Everything else was second to that, as Claudia understood her father. These people don't have instant travel or messaging capabilities. Or at least Claudia doesn't know those spells. to make an arrow like the Moonshadow elves had to send back to the Dragon Queen. So, all she could do is stay on course and then go back to her father, dragon in hand, and say, "We also found this really cool place."
  • Lujanne, has enough goodness in her heart to trust the heroes because of their actions and courage. As for Soren and Claudia, she also suspected them of being bad, hence her aiding in the deception. She is also confident in her capabilities to protect the nexus, so mind-raping them if they come back is fine with her. Remember she is not shown to have any super strength or speeds. Her mount was already being used by Callum and Ez, so she couldn't be close by. We also don't know how far away the team actually was when the ambush happened. It could be Lujanne only goes so far to not risk others noticing her power or leaving the place unprotected.

Dismissal of humans learning magic

• It seemed easily dismissed that humans couldn't learn magic because they didn't have a born connection, unlike elves. However, elves only seem to be born with connection to one element, and there was at least one recorded person who mastered all the elements, which clearly meant learning elements you weren't born with was possible. Why then was Lujanne so certain that humans couldn't possibly learn magic?
  • Maybe a single person can normally only have a single Arcanum, and Aavaros found a work around, but most people don't know that he did and think he just had a collection of Primal Stones and was really good at all of their magics.
  • In an interview, Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond revealed that, for whatever reason, Aaravos is unique among the elves in mastering the other primal sources. They also implied that the "power to choose one's destiny" in forging one's own connection to a primal source is something that is a trait for humans.
  • Elves are inherently magical beings. To them, using of their affinity is as natural as moving a limb. Even though few become dedicated mages, they can all activate some magic related to their affinity. Humans don't have a natural connection to any of the primal sources. The only way that anyone knows they can use magic at all is by channeling it from an external power source, like a Primal Stone or dark magic. Elves know that humans just can't use magic the way they and other magical creatures do, so it would make sense that they'd assume it just wasn't possible for them to forge connections on their own. Callum proved this idea wrong. It's possible that the dependence on dark magic is the reason human mages didn't figure out the same trick he did before this point.
• Callum is proof that humans can learn primal magic. How is it possible, that after so many years, only one human has successfully been able to do so? In a world without magic humans were able to harness the elements, but in a show where they apparently lived side-by-side with elves and other magical beasts it wasn't until one kid got shocked by lightning and then had a nightmare that they realized humanity wasn't limited to Dark Magic? Do you know how many people get shocked by lightning a year? I don't buy it, and I think this is why the 'Half-Elf Callum' theory is such a popular piece of fanon.
  • From all indications, magic as a whole is a rarity in human lands. Katolis, the largest human kingdom, has a grand total of two active mages by time the show begins. Given that dark magic requires a rare ingredients and even rarer knowledge, it makes sense that there simply aren't that many dark mages running around. At least not in the current era of the series where magical wildlife to use as ingredients is practically nonexistent outside of Xadia. So with so few magic users around, the chances of them stumbling onto the secret of natural primal casting is slim. If some did figure it out before Callum, they either didn't or couldn't spread the knowledge of their findings far enough to make a difference.
  • Perhaps other humans do possess arcana, but are unaware of it. It seems that no other humans even believe that their race is capable of primal magic without a primal stone. Thus, they have no reason to consider that they themself might have learned an arcanum or be might able to learn one. Humans who have somehow accidentally learned an arcanum could easily go their entire lives without realizing it; possessing neither knowledge of the runes and incantations necessary to harness primal magic nor a handy-dandy color-coded dice for all their magic-detecting needs, most people would have no way of discovering their latent primal abilities. Only Callum, who was actively trying to obtain the sky arcanum and had prior experience casting sky spells, was savvy enough to recognize when he had learned an arcanum.

Ghosting

Why would you exile them by making it so your own people can't see them rather then making them not able to enter and see the village? Isn't that a major security issue especially since anyone who is exiled will likely be someone who has already done a great crime against your people and likely to hold a grudge? they can spy on the village without any of them knowing, and since this ghosting apparently extends to everyone they bring in one elf with a grudge could bring in a whole squad of human soldiers or anyone else with ill will towards the elves and they would have no way of even knowing they are there till it is to late.

• I mean...the show doesn't really give a satisfying answer to this question, but my guess is that "ghosting" isn't simply making it impossible for other Moonshadow elves to see the exiled person, or for the exile to be unable to see their faces. Being rendered a ghost might also mean you can't even interact with anything as well—you can still see everything, but you and everyone you bring are occupying a different plane of reality. So, it wouldn't matter how many soldiers you bring, they wouldn't be able to attack anyone.
• The show does imply that the interactions they have with their surroundings are "fake" in some way, given that Callum slamming the table right next to an elf doesn't elicit any reaction.
• That and it is a much more disturbing punishment to be able to see faceless versions of your loved ones live on in a world where you can't interact with than just to be unable to enter your village. If the illusions didn't have some method of preventing the subject from directly effecting the real objects they cover, then cloaking the village would be useless as any exile would be able to lead enemies right to it.

Ezran abdicating / King Viren

• So Ezran gave up the throne and became a prisoner in exchange for avoiding the war. Which part of this deal means they should let go of someone being accused of treason and let him be the king again?
  • On top of that, when Ezran is taken to prison and Viren is freed in front of his eyes, he's not surprised at all, which means this was all part of what he agreed to. Which is totally inexplicable, because Ezran knows Viren tried to have him and his brother killed. Why would he agree to freeing him, instead of just abdicating and letting Viren stay in prison with him?
  • The deal Ezran made was never explicit. We know he was faced with either letting his people fight a pointless war with another human kingdom, or allowing them to invade Xadia. His compromise was that he would allow himself to be imprisoned and free Viren, a deal that was probably explicitly proposed by his adviser, who clearly negotiated the situation beforehand with Kasef. It's likely the adviser told Kasef that they would be able to restore the capable regent that Kasef had met before and wage the war that was initially promised. Ezran could likely predict that once released, Viren would become king, but that should legally never have been the case, at least not so quickly (as Opeli protests). Ezran may have been hoping to buy a little time for Callum and Rayla to return Zym as his advisers debated who should ascend to the throne in his place post-abdication. Or, as a kid with principles, he may have believed it better for Viren to be the one to lead the assault rather than for him to be the one to capitulate and start a war that goes against all his values. (Making this an example of Honour Before Reason quite similar to his father.) Finally, as part of the deal, it's agreed that everyone who doesn't wish to fight should be allowed to leave, which seems to apply to *both* armies, his and Kasef's. Even if he'd agreed to invade Xadia, it's not at all likely Kasef would have agreed to this term if Ezran were still ruling, meaning their bargain was the only tool Ezran had for freeing Kasef's soldiers from the obligation to go to war as well as his own.
• While we're at it, can Ezran really just become king again after quitting? Abdication's already considered a dereliction of duty; un-abdication kinda cheapens the whole "absolute ruler for life" thing.
  • I imagine it would be viewed that Ezran didn't actually abdicate and that Vieran had a coup to take the throne. Besides the fact that his abdication was in an effort to save the people of the kingdom. And the firsthand account of the corruption that led to it. Ezran would never have considered it if one of the advisors hadn't betrayed his duties.
  • We were told the procedure for choosing a new line of succession in the case of an abdication - the council chooses a suitable orphan. As it happens, given Erzan's young age and the fact that both his parents are dead, he qualifies, and the council is now filled with his loyalists, so they can just choose him. But more likely his abdication, which occurred under duress, was probably just considered a coup and he officially never abdicated.
  • As of the Season Three finale, the human kingdoms are all going to have to deal with large political upheavals thanks to Viren's schemes. Even if Ezran retaking the throne technically violates some laws, I'm sure that some exceptions will be allowed thanks to the many unusual circumstances and pressing concerns the new status quo will bring.

Ziard's opinions on dark magic

Does anyone else think Ziard have too high a opinion about the importance of his dark magic(like believe in it evolve them from "lesser beings"? They humans had a city and today seems to be more technologically advanced then the eif and I don't think dark magic is that hopeful with that.

• A city. One. As far as we know, the *only* city humanity had. And they lived in a world with *individuals* with the personal power and willingness to casually lay that city to waste. Ziard's dark magic allowed him to singlehandedly stop Sol Regem, albiet at the cost of his life, when a whole army apparently wouldn't have done the trick without it. In fact, Thunder killed multiple armies singlehandedly, but fell to a single spearman with a cursed weapon. Dark magic is a big deal. Plus, we don't know if that city was established before or after the dawn of dark magic, so it might only be there in the first place because of it. As for their technological advancement, while modern humans do seem to be more advanced than the elves, they probably weren't at the time, and again, dark magic proved the far more effective tool between the two. Armies fell before the dragon king, even with their technological advantage. "Unspeakable dark magic" laid him low, just as it did his predecessor, albiet in a more lethal fashion. Now, we don't know how bad it was for the humans before the magic, but Ziard implies it was quite terrible, and considering the jump here, I'd say his pride in his accomplishments is warranted.
• Ziard does glorify dark magic, but it is justified to some extent. Apparently, he was taught the secret to it by "one of the Great Ones"and its use elevated the quality of life for humanity greatly. It's no surprise that he might come to see it as some near miraculous gift that gave humanity hope. As far as he knew, sacrificing magical creatures is the only way for humanity to have a chance to flourish. Neither he or anyone else knew that humans could just be taught how to use the much-safer primal magic sources. Had Sol Regnum been remotely diplomatic and explained the damage being done instead of imperiously ordering of him to make humanity to give it up or face death, it's possible that Ziard could have been convinced to comply and try a new approach.

Callum's wing spell

In the Book Three finale, when Callum does the spell that makes his arms transform into wings, the transformation tears off his blue jacket and he never appears to be wearing it for the rest of the episode; however, it somehow does not similarly affect his fingerless gloves, which we see him wearing later on? Why weren't those destroyed as well?

• There are rarely any hard rules regarding magic, but my guess would be either A) they were made of leather or some other compatible material, or B) they were skin-tight and the spell registered them as a part of him.
  • He might have had another pair in his pack.
• It's also supposed to be symbolic—Callum usually fights on the sidelines, but here jumps right off the pinnacle to save Rayla. When his jacket is torn off and revealing only red, this represents his transformation from sheltered prince to powerful mage. For a similar reason, we also never see his sketchbook for the rest of the episode, even though he likely still has it.
  • I understand why his jacket is torn off; it wouldn't have survived his arms turning into wings. So it's less that and more just wondering why his fingerless gloves survived, though the people above seem to have raised some good counterpoints.

Claudia's Resurrection Spell

• Why is the fandom so convinced that Claudia committed a (human or elf) murder to resurrect Viren? We saw many people die in the battle, so there were plenty of extremely-fresh corpses around. Isn't it more likely that she just made use of one? We've seen already-dead animal parts used for very powerful dark magic before.
  • It's only a guess, but it would seem that performing Dark Magic spells with living creatures rather than dead ones have a different effect, both in what you can do with it and what happens to the spellcaster. It took a living deer to cure Soren's paralysis, when other solutions didn't work. Claudia's hair only turns white after this spell. Here, resurrecting someone is even more drastic than curing paralysis, so it's natural to think some other living being was sacrificed for this. The fact that almost half of Claudia's hair is white supports this as well, or at least raises the question of just what exactly she had to do.
    • But it's not like she killed the deer right in front of Soren. She butchered it in the middle of the woods and walked (or magick'd) her way back to town...And it seems like dark magic's effect on the user is proportionate to the magnitude of the spell. Her hair turned white after she cured Soren, not after she killed the deer. Viren wasn't the one to kill the Titan, and the heart was used only after they made it back to Katolis. Whether or not Claudia was willing to do it, I just don't think a sacrifice would have been at all necessary. But yeah, it's all Wild Mass Guessing at this point...
  • In settings like this, there's usually some sense of equivalent exchange. If you want to make something alive, that would mean you have to power that spell with something also alive. You notice that to heal Soren, Claudia didn't just find a deer that had died naturally — she needed one that was young and alive. She says as much. The spell to bring Viren back from the dead is clearly something that required far more power than she'd used in any one spell before — therefore, it would have needed more of a power source, and it's almost always the case in settings like this that living things and sacrifices grant more power than a dead one.
    • Sounds about right - Claudia herself says that it's about "squeezing" magic out of a creature. Most stories' dark/forbidden/black/blood/necromantic magic are sinister and unnatural because it meddles with life and death itself, and there's usually a high price for that kind of thing... "only death can pay for life" and all that.
• We don't even know that Claudia used Dark Magic to resurrect Viren. She was quite capable of using Primal Magic during the Battle of Storm Spire, probably through a Primal Stone in the Sun Staff (which Claudia still has at the end). And if any Primal Source is capable of healing and even resurrection, it should be the Sun.
  • Only dark magic has shown the ability to create an effect as unnatural as reviving the dead. For more concrete evidence, Claudia had the characteristic black eyes and dark purple glow of dark magic. She also suddenly had a much larger portion of her hair struck white when Viren "woke up". Even if she did have the staff of the sun elves, it had been corrupted by dark magic to empower it turn the army into those magma monsters, so anything involving it is still deep in the "dark" magical territory. As for why we assume she killed someone, look back to the last time she healed someone: when she fixed Soren's spine, she sacrificed a living fawn to do it and was left with a single lock of white hair. This time, she had to undo a violent death and was left with almost half her hair whitened. This implied that she had to use much more potent dark magic to achieve this miraculous resurrection, and we know that power requires sacrifice. A living fawn was needed to fix a spine. Resurrection would demand a far more valuable living sacrifice. Now where, in this battlefield filled with injured, helpless soldiers would she be able to get something like that? Claudia was in an unstable emotional state and has been shown willing to take life for her own purposes before. It's not hard to imagine her grief at losing the person she loved the most and fear of being abandoned would drive her to take a very dark step.
• Claudia is a naive teenager, but she's not a blind innocent. She's aiding her father's armed invasion of Xadia. This is a war of conquest and revenge. Killing is not only unavoidable, but expected. Even if she was, like Soren, deluding herself into thinking the mission wasn't going to be as serious as that, any doubt that it would involve mass casualties would be shattered after he sacked the Sunfire elves' capital. If so many are going to die anyway, it would be easy for a desperate dark mage to rationalize taking a few more lives to save someone they loved. Especially one who has deep abandonment issues and has been desensitized to killing nonhumans for power. The possible victims involved are easy to dehumanize, being mutated savage lava monsters or strong, somewhat ruthless enemy elves. She could come up with dozens of excuses to quiet her remaining conscience and do it. It would be a big step into full villainy, but one that makes a lot of sense for her character: showing that she’s on a similar path of corruption as her father, but keeps her just barely sympathetic enough to leave hope that she could join her bother in redemption.

What are Primal Stones and where do they come from?

• What is up with Primal Stones? They seem to be able to give humans the practical ability to use Magic.Nobody who has a problem with dark magic seem to have any issue with them.And it's supposed to be made by Master Mages a long time ago. Did the elf used to make them for people before the continent was divided into two?
  • The Primal Stones are artifacts that contain vast primal energy. Not only does it allow individuals without an Arcanum to a particular primal source cast spells, but it also allows rune mages to cast spells when the environment is lacking in primal energy (such as casting aspiro without a storm or a strong breeze). As a result, they are very valuable but extremely rare, as the process for creating them has been lost. So, using a primal stone is simply not an option for most humans.

Why banish Rayla?

• Why did the Moonshadow elves assume Rayla ran away? The only information they had was if the assassins sent were alive or not, and probably a rough estimate of when the attack would happen. Then, on that fatefull night, all assassins except Rayla and Runaan died and they recieved word via magic arrow that King Harrow had been slain. Then a few days pass, and Runaan (seemingly) dies. Given that information it would be possible that she ran away, but it would be equally possible that she was captured instead.
  
  Now, it might be the elves thought Humans Are Bastards and doubted they would leave the assassins alive, but the interpretation that they would be captured and tortured (for information and to death) also fits that worldview. Especially with Runaan (seemingly) dying days later - since that is more or less what happened to him.
  
  Again, Rayla running away also fit the information they had, but why jump to that conclusion? Did they think it was in her genes or something? If so, though, why let her on the mission at all, prodigy or no?
  • It's probably due to the fact that her parents are believed to have abandoned their duty to guard the Dragon Prince's egg. As for letting her come along on the mission, she really seems to hate that her parents were cowards who abandoned their duty, so she was allowed to come as a chance to prove she wasn't like them.
  • This troper has another angle/question here. What if they sent out the (however many) assassins, things turn sour, and all but one are killed, but the last one succeeded? Why would they just jump to "she's a traitor" before she even got home? I mean, it would be one thing if she got home and they decided that her helping those filthy humans return the Dragon Prince was counted as a betrayal of her team, but it just seems like they're not even considering that she might have pulled it off and it was just a really pyrrhic victory.
    • Because the assassination failed. Only one of the targets died. She survived but they only got one death notice.
    • Just because the initial assassination attempt failed, that doesn’t mean Rayla had given up, nor that the remaining assassination wasn’t yet to come. Based on the limited knowledge possessed by the elves back at the Silvergrove, it is entirely reasonable that Rayla might have remained at or around Katolis Castle, but had yet to attempt the murder. To successfully carry out the assassination, Rayla —the youngest, least experienced member of the assassination party— would have to succeed alone where a much larger group failed, and she would face a defense that had had much more time to prepare. And she would have to do this all one-handed, while her other hand slowly succumbed to blood deprivation. Given all these obstacles, it is more than plausible that Rayla would choose to wait for the perfect moment to strike (for example, the full moon, when she would be at the height of her power) rather than risk everything by impulsively revealing herself too soon. It doesn’t really make sense to dishonor Rayla with exile when it is entirely possible that she might have intended to complete the assassination.
  • You're assuming the elves are operating on pure logic. They aren't. They sent out an assassination team for a crime that happened over a decade ago. This is a mission of righteous anger to them. Rayla is the child of the two disgraced guardians who indirectly allowed the crime they're trying to avenge to happen (as far as they know). Letting her join in was a courtesy to her, a chance to redeem the honor her parents lost. But then the mission failed and somehow she's the sole survivor. They put two and two together and assumed she abandoned the others to their fate to save her own skin, just like they think her parents did. So they gave her the worst punishment they could think of and ghosted her. She failed the mission that was supposed to her last chance. They don't intend to extend her any more grace in assuming she's "intending" to complete it now.

What exactly was the diplomatic status between the humans and elves before the killing Magma Titan and Thunder, the Dragon King?

• I know the humans get completely kicked out of Xadia before this series began but that was like multiple generations before anyone was born. And I got to lock plenty of arguments about what counts as an act of aggression in Assassin and What things escalate into warfare before Thunder got killed. Or was that the main instigator of the elves acts of aggression against the humans.
  • The humans were barred from Xadia long ago and Thunder guards the border to prevent human incursions. Their mutual diplomatic stance is that they are enemies, and attempted incursions into each other's territory is seen as hostile, but there is no open conflict between the two other than small scale skirmishes. Given there's no real information about conflict between the two in the years between Sarai and Thunder's deaths, the killing of the Titan didn't trigger a war. It was just another incident of Thunder attacking a group of humans who dared to trespass on Xadian soil and it ended, as far as the Xadians were concerned, when those humans paid for their trespass with their lives. For the humans, however, that was not the end and Viren and Harrow's killing Thunder and, supposedly, the prince in retaliation triggered a Xadian response, leading to the events of the series.

Rayla's parents supposed cowardice.

• Why were they the only ones acknowledged to have abandoned their posts when the rest of the Dragonguard had done so? Did they let everyone assume Rayla's parents did to hide their own cowardice? Hendyr scoffed at them for choosing to remain.
  • Given the lack of information on the subject, I would guess that all the Dragonguard were shamed for their flight and Rayla emphasizes how her parents were cowards because they are the only members of the Dragonguard that matter to her.
  • No matter what happened to the others or their motivations for doing so, the fact remains that they failed in their duty and essentially sold out the Dragon Prince's egg to human invaders. Sure, it was a ploy to ensure that Viren didn't smash the egg rather than to save their own lives, but it still resulted in the egg being taken by humans with no guarantee that they won't drain it to death or kill it later. The gambit only succeeded in saving the Prince due a number of unlikely events years later no one could have predicted. So, even if the other elves knew all the details, they'd still be at least partially justified in lashing out at Rayla's parents for their decision.
    • Years later? According to Runaan in season 1, episode 1, the death of the dragon king and the alleged destruction of the egg only happened "four full moons past."

Aaravos's opening narration: Watsonian Versus Doylist

• Was Aaravos narrating the opening scene of the first book of the Dragon Prince in-universe? If so, when, where, to whom, and why?
• Or was the narration just a way to inform the audience about the setting, with no bearing on the plot of the Dragon Prince itself? If so, why was Aaravos doing the narration and not, say, Harrow or even Viren?
  • Probably because Aaravos was actually alive during the events of the opening unlike Viren and Harrow.
    • Aaravos was imprisoned by the time Viren and Harrow killed Thunder, and he didn't even know that the humans called the Dragon King Thunder, or how he was killed, until Viren told him in s3e6. And by then Aaravos had already learned (in s3e3) that the egg had not only survived but hatched, putting the lie to his claim that "without mercy, they destroyed his only egg, his heir, the Dragon Prince."

Viren becoming king

• So Viren was arrested for abusing King Harrow's seal (amongst other things), as well as killing some of the guards sent to arrest him (you don't just walk off a fireball). With all of this, along with at least some suspicion that he tried to have the princes killed, why then is anybody willing to follow this guy as king? For that matter, why did the guards do nothing when Viren literally used dark magic on Callum, right in front of them no less.
  • The even better question is indeed if there's actually anyone in Katolis who's willing to support Viren, and just how he thinks he's supposed to become a king of a nation where pretty much everyone in a position of power hates his guts. As for the guards, I suspect that since Harrow, nevertheless, respected Viren and considered him a friend, the guards didn't object to his actions as a sort of respect for Harrow.

Tracks

• In season 1, Viren sends his children after the Princes and Rayla with the secret task of murdering them and so on. I can understand that the "search party" is composed of the two of them and a handful of hounds, since by the looks of it pretty much every single human in the castle would knee Viren in the groin if they could get away with it, but my problem starts when the two loses the tracks on the river bank. What was I expecting: they put 2 + 2 together and either 1) check a map for nearby fords in the river and check the other bank or 2) assume they got a boat and follow the river, seeing if the dogs can pick up their scent somewhere else. Instead, they act as if they suddenly vanished from the kingdom and decide that the only sensible thing to do is to go around gathering ingredients like an RPG Hero in a sidequest, detour to climb the tallest mountain in the kingdom to cast a spell which will reveal the location of the heroes... without apparently considering that they're still on the tip of the tallest mountain in the kingdom when the spell is cast, which means that by the time the descend from the thing alone the heroes would have move away even further. Really, what was the purpose of all this? Just an excuse to not have Soren and Claudia catch up with the Princes too soon or what? Seriously, was my above-mentioned expectation too implausible and overwordly?
  • Claudia (like her father) seems to use dark magic as her standard method for doing pretty much everything, even if there is a more practical, non-magical way of doing things and Soren was told his whole life that he was too dumb for his family, so he probably assumed Claudia's plan was better than anything he could come up with.
  • Except that Viren (Claudia's father) issued the order... and rather than use immediately dark magic (as implied by the answer) opted for the mundane solution (hounds to follow their tracks) from the beginning. So I assumed that both, even Claudia in spite of their quirks, could be studied and intelligent enough to think "tracks ends at the river = boat or look on the other side".
  • Claudia is an experienced tracker of magical creatures, and her father presented the quest for the dragon egg as her latest quarry in a long career of hunting down magical ingredients to fuel spells. Claudia’s capture of the horn of a unicorn (which were rare and elusive even before the species was hunted to near extinction) was almost certainly not achieved by mundane means, and it is reasonable to assume that the magic wielded by many other Xadian creatures would also render them highly difficult to catch without the use of spells. Thus, it is probable that Claudia’s modus operandi when tracking would be to rely on magic to locate her prize. Given that she is accustomed to hunting magical creatures against whom nonmagical methods prove ineffective, she likely did not even consider the possibility of pressing forward with mundane tracking attempts when they failed her so early in the search. Since Soren seems to be the one leading the hounds’ effort when Claudia is the one with experience pursuing magical creatures, I’m not even sure Claudia bothered to learn any mundane methods of tracking at all, and thus might not even recognize how to troubleshoot this situation.

The Border with Xadia

• Leaving aside the fact that a thin stone pathway behind a magma fall should probably cook like an hot dog anyone passing through, I have a couple of questions on the border between the two continents. 1): Considering that the Elves have a hidden path to enter Xadia via land, why did they even bother to show up and stop Amaya's attempt to blow up the path behind the lavafall? If they wanted to kill a few humans, all they had to shot a well-aimed fire arrow at the powder barrels while the soldiers were still close and boom! Since the humans do not know about the hidden paths (I'm willing to assume there's more than one), letting them destroy what they think is the only way in goes only to the Elves' advantage and in no way a good strategy for the humans. 2): Is there actually something openly stated about why noone tries to reach Xadia via ship? Not even raising a suggestion to do so? 3) Is a single keep and passage the only known way into Xadia in the whole mountain range? A single one?
  • It seems like only the Moonshadow elves know about the hidden path. The soldiers at the Breach were all Sunfire elves, so they probably don't know about the hidden path
  • Ehm... they're on the same side? Common enemy? They want to make sure they don't return and start feeding on magical creatures with dark magic? Are you really telling me that all six groups pretty much stopped giving a crap after exiling them from Xadia and putting Avizandum to watch the border (from dawn to dusk, so not even that much of a guard)?
  • Remember who was guarding the path? Sol Regnum himself. Even in his blinded state, he'd be more than a match for a normal group of humans. The path is only accessible with knowledge and/or magic that only an elf can provide and has one of the most powerful entities alive to guard against anyone who could get through. It was well protected. They just didn't prepare for the possibility that an elf of power and knowledge would betray them.

Soren’s Appearance

• Why is Soren’s outfit so unique? All the other members of the Crownguard wear uniforms that match each other (this assumes that the soldiers shown to be defending the royal family, such as the guards who barred Corvus’s entry to the throne room in “The Crown” and the guards who watched Harrow and Sarai’s fight in “Breaking the Seal,” were Crownguard members, which I don’t think was ever confirmed. However, it was confirmed that Marcos (the soldier who Rayla spared in Echoes of Thunder) was a member of the Crownguard, and he dresses the same as the other guards mentioned), so how come Soren looks so different? His armor, cloak, and sword are pretty certainly not standard-issue, and his cape and lack of a helm are also unusual for his position. Why doesn’t the unspoken dress code apply to him? (Obviously, from a Doylist perspective, it makes sense to give a plot-relevant character a distinct outfit to distinguish them from everyone else and make them easy to pick out amid the chaos of combat, but was there a Watsonian explanation for his appearance?)
  • In Season 4, Corvus joins the Crownguard, and he doesn’t adopt the uniform either. Maybe the standard-issue armor is provided for members who can’t afford to buy armor for themselves or didn’t own armor prior to recruitment, but people who can afford higher-quality gear (like Soren, who was the son of the High Mage) and people who are already accustomed to a different form of armor (like Corvus, whose leather armor was better suited for his previous occupation as a tracker) are allowed to break from the paradigm.

Assumption That The Egg Was Dead

• Why did all of the elves assume that Viren had killed Zym in his egg? An investigation of the Storm Spire would have made it clear that the egg was gone, but that doesn’t mean that the egg wasn’t still alive somewhere. Thunder’s death was pretty clearly the result of dark magic (the corrupted unicorn horn sticking out of his chest was probably something of a giveaway), and Zym’s egg would be a powerful and dangerous ingredient in the hands of any dark mage strong enough to bring down the Dragon King. Why didn’t anyone acknowledge the major possibility that Viren might have taken the egg back to Katolis to add to his collection of magical components? Additionally, why didn’t anyone consider that the fleeing Dragonguard might have brought Zym’s egg with them to protect it from Viren, and that the egg might still be alive somewhere under their care? Rayla’s parents even proposed this exact course of action in the episode “Dragonguard”! Given all of the unknown variables and plausible alternatives, it seems unreasonable that the elves would be so quick to dismiss the Dragon Prince as dead.
  • Viren isn't a fool. If he could — and there's no reason to think he didn't have a few more magic tricks stored up in his bag — he would fake some kind of "evidence" of the egg's destruction to leave behind so that no one would follow them to get it back.
  • With the exception of those killed on the frontlines, The evidence that greet Zubia strongly suggested that the Dragongaurd (Which supposedly included Tiadrin and Lain) fled and left Zym's egg at Viren's mercy, as Zubiea found no indication that the Dragonguard slowed nor impeded Viren's efforts to destroy the then unhatched Zym. If you put up a fight of some sorts there's usually evidence of a struggle. World of God:, confirmed that the guards on the front-line were Killed In Action. But aside from that there's was no indication that the survivors made any-attempt to protect Zym's egg.
  • Still, why didn't anyone think to cast the Historia Viventem spell to confirm what happened? It seems like using this spell at a murder scene should be standard practice, especially for something as important as the assassination of the King and Prince of the Dragons.
    • We don't know if anyone besides Lujanne even knew the Historia Viventem spell. Even Rayla said that looking into the past was impossible before Callum showed her what he had seen, suggesting that there weren't any moon mages in Silvergrove who knew how to look into the past.

Risking The Royal Family

• Why did both Queens of Duren and both monarchs of Katolis (along with Viren, who was essentially Harrow’s second-in-command and likely the most powerful human alive, as well as Amaya, who commanded the forces that guarded the Xadian border) participate in the dangerous mission to retrieve the Magma Titan’s heart? None of the monarchs had heirs that were old enough to take their place, so if the mission went disastrously wrong and the entire party perished (which was a disturbingly likely possibility, considering that they faced not only the formidable Magma Titan but also the most powerful archdragon alive), both of the Human Kingdoms that bordered Xadia would be left in political disarray, not to mention crippled by a brutal famine in the absence of Viren’s promised “creative solution”. Additionally, Viren and Amaya, two of the people who would be most influential and crucial in a war against the elves, would be suddenly and unexpectedly out of commission, leaving a major vacuum in their absence and an exploitable mage-shaped gap in the humans’ defenses. Unfortunately, an unprompted covert invasion into Xadia, led by a dark mage intent on tearing out the heart of a rare and powerful creature for use in a dark spell, was the just the sort of thing that would be likely to break the uneasy peace and rouse the elves and dragons to war. Had Thunder succeeded in slaying the party, and had the Xadians chosen to launch a counter-invasion, it could have meant the end of human civilisation (the dragons and elves had already made it disturbingly clear that they had no qualms about genocide), or at a minimum, massive casualties incurred in Katolis and Duren. Given the stakes, it seems exceptionally unwise to risk the lives of so many world leaders and other important figures, regardless of their battle prowess, when a contingent of ordinary soldiers could likely have achieved the same outcome. Lesser leadership than that of the king and queens themselves would likely have sufficed for the mission, but if the monarchs insisted on accompanying and leading the soldiers, couldn’t at least one from each kingdom have stayed behind, to run their respective domains if their partners were lost? Viren, who seems to have organized the mission, is shown to be clever, pragmatic, and savvy; surely he considered all of this. How did he allow so many important people to endanger themselves unnecessarily? The monarchs, too, seemed to have their people’s best interests in mind, and would probably respond to reason if presented with the potential and disturbingly plausible repercussions that would occur if they all died simultaneously and unexpectedly in Xadia. So why did they all end up going?

Challenging Disguised Rayla

• Why did Tristan (the mercenary with the sunforged blade from “The Dagger and the Wolf”) single out Rayla, an unobtrusive bystander, from the crowd to challenge her to duel him? Rayla was presumably an unarmed child (her cloak covered her butterfly blades). Did he earnestly expect her to accept his challenge? If she did accept, did he expect many people to bet against him when his opponent is a young girl without any visible weapons? Even disregarding the obvious no-no of endangering a child stranger by goading her into combat, this whole situation seems very odd.

Cracking Entry Code With Jelly

• In “What is Done,” how did Rayla know which order to press the rocks/stones to unlock Viren’s secret chamber? She claimed to have worked out the entry combination by “press[ing] all the stones with the jelly handprints,” but did the jelly somehow reveal the order in which the rocks/stones must be pressed? With such a lengthy sequence of inputs, it is highly unlikely that she reached the correct combination so quickly with guesswork.
  • On a related note, none of the rocks/stones were shown to have visible stains on them during the scene when Ezran presses them. How did Rayla even know which stones had jelly handprints on them? Was there some sort of subtle residue that the “camera” didn’t pick up? And why weren’t the jelly remnants more obvious? Ezran’s touch was shown to leave large, obvious handprints both before (when he touched the side of the picture frame that served as a secret door) and after (when he smacked his own forehead) he unlocked Viren’s secret chamber, so why didn’t they show up on the rocks/stones?

Aspiro Scent Trick

• In What is Done, it is established that the gust of wind created by the Aspiro spell carries the scent of the user (when Claudia blows air into Callum’s face with it, he is able to smell what she had for lunch). If this is the case, then in the later episode “Sol Regem”, why didn’t the eponymous dragon (who, after losing his sight, had been relying heavily on his sense of smell for years) smell the odors of human and dark magic in the wind that Callum generated with Aspiro, and recognize that he was downwind of the mage?

Ava’s Magic Collar

• The illusion disguising Ava’s missing limb only seems to be active while she wears her collar (I don’t think this is ever explicitly stated, but it is heavily implied: Lujanne mentions in “Wonderstorm” that she enchanted the collar, rather than Ava herself [this is reaffirmed in Callum’s Spellbook], and when Lujanne removes the collar, Ava’s illusory leg vanishes). Does this mean that no one had ever removed the collar since Lujanne gave it to Ava years ago? No one ever bothered to take off the rare, elven-made, collar when they washed Ava? No one ever noticed that it was magically growing along with Ava and took it off to examine it more closely? No one in Ellis’s impoverished family ever thought to sell the glamorous magical collar belonging to the unwanted pet that they could barely afford to feed? Why didn’t master illusionist Lujanne simply make the collar invisible to avoid these issues?
  • This wouldn’t be the first time a magical binding created by a Moonshadow Elf proved deceptively difficult to remove. Perhaps Lujanne enchanted Ava’s collar so that it simply couldn’t be taken off by anyone other than herself.

Runaan’s Disappearing Bowstring

• Runaan’s bow was shown to be able to split in half in an instant to become a pair of swords (in “Moonrise,” this ability was demonstrated in his duel with Rayla and again during the battle outside King Harrow’s chambers). When he does this, where does the bowstring go? Shouldn’t it still be connecting the tips of his blades? Whenever he switches from bow to blades on screen, the bowstring kind of just spontaneously disappears. Is there any explanation for where it goes or how it gets there other than A Wizard Did It?

Fireproof Spear Launchers

• In “The Final Battle,” why weren’t the wooden spear launchers incinerated in the torrent of dragonfire that engulfed the battlefield?
  • And what about the soldiers’ clothes and weapons? Wouldn’t all of the cloth and wooden components have been burned away? Or were those protected from fire by the same spell that stopped the soldiers from being killed by the heat?

Assassins’ Plans for Ezran

• In “Moonrise,” when were the assassins planning on taking out Ezran? Why were they all present for the attack on Harrow’s chambers? Why hadn’t some of them split off to eliminate Ezran, or, if they insisted on staying together, why hadn’t they eliminated Ezran first? He would be an easier target (no one expected an attack on him, he didn’t seem to have any kind of personal guard, and he was too young to put up any sort of fight on his own), and they would likely suffer fewer losses taking him out, so it would make sense to kill him first.
  • Most likely Harrow was a higher-priority target than Ezran. The lack of beef between Ezran and Zubeia over the attempt on Ezran's life suggests that Zubeia had nothing to do with it, and Runaan took great pains to ensure that Zubeia would get the news of Harrow's death but not Ezran's.
  • My interpretation was that the friendliness between Ezran and Zubeia stemmed from the fact that Ezran had returned Zubeia’s precious son to her, not from the fact that Zubeia never wanted Ezran dead. Moonshadow Elf assassins take murder pretty seriously and believe that every life holds value; it’s hard for me to picture them independently appending an extra name to their kill list without at least checking in with the person they were exacting vengeance for. Zubeia was clearly incredibly distraught at the loss of her son, so it seems much more likely to me that she was the one to order Harrow’s heir’s death as retribution for the (presumed) murder of her own son. I assumed that Ezran chose not to bring up the assassination attempt because he was a forgiving person and didn’t want to start an incident, and Zubeia chose not to pursue it because Ezran had proved himself to be an ally of the dragons. Even if she were still intent on pursuing eye-for-an-eye revenge, the safe return of her heir would negate the need to assassinate the Katolian prince. I do agree that King Harrow, who had much greater political significance than Ezran and was directly responsible for Avizandum’s death, was probably the primary assassination target, but it still seems strange that the elves would launch a suicidal full-on assault on his quarters without at least sending one member of the raiding party to dispatch Ezran beforehand.
  • If Zubeia had ever ordered Ezran's death, she should feel some regret for having done so now that they are friends. Her lack of regret is telling. And it also explains why the assassins considered Harrow the more important target.

Breaking Into Harrow’s Chambers

• In “Moonrise,” how did the assassins get through the door to Harrow’s chambers? It was quite a thick door, and none of the assassins brought a weapon that looked capable of bashing it in. Did they slowly chip away at it with their light swords and sickles? While being attacked from all sides by guards? Somehow that doesn’t quite feel right. If they were such skilled, experienced assassins, why didn’t they either, a), bring a sledgehammer (or a similar weapon); or b), enter Harrow’s chambers through a window or something instead of engaging at an obvious choke point?
  • In a castle on lockdown, surely that wasn’t even the only barred door that the assassins encountered. How did they cope with those doors?

Assassins Finding Ezran

• In “Moonrise,” how did the assassins plan to locate Ezran? Katolis Castle is huge, there are only five of them, and (if Rayla’s ignorance is any indicator) they don’t even know what the kid looks like!
  • He is the Crown Prince. They likely presumed he would be wearing some ornamental clue to his position. Maybe a signet ring or they could coerce information out of someone.

Janai's Derailed Proposal

• In “Rebirthday,” how did Janai fail to predict that her military-hardened girlfriend would respond badly to the unexpected appearance of armed strangers who advanced on her with flaming whips? Amaya, Gren, Janai, and their horses were all fully armored, suggesting that they were concerned about the threat of an ambush, and Amaya was clearly already on her guard due to the suspicious and mysterious nature of the outing, not to mention her companions’ sudden unexplained departure. Additionally, Amaya, who is deaf, would be particularly uneasy about being surrounded, since she has no way of tracking adversaries who are behind her. It should hardly come as a surprise that her combat reflexes kicked in and she went on the attack. Amaya brought a sword with her and, had she chosen to keep it on her person, she could easily have slain all three dancers with it (even relying only on her shield and armored fists, it is likely that she still inflicted at least one concussion). Amaya and Janai have presumably been together for two years at this point, and their mutual military background and martial prowess seem to have been major factors in drawing them together. How could Janai, who otherwise put a fair bit of planning into arranging the ceremony, have overlooked all the warning flags?
  • Janai had faith that Amaya wouldn't react that strongly and hoped she would realize they were dancers and not a threat.
  • Presumably it didn't occur to Janai that the dancers would be perceived as "armed" at all. After all, those aren't whips, they're ribbons. Janai simply didn't think it through, and failed to account for how Amaya is unfamiliar with this particular type of Sunfire Elf dance or the fact that when on fire those ribbons would look like flaming whips to a human.

Inference of Aaravos’s Return

• In “Fallen Stars,” why did Ibis assume Aaravos had returned? Was it just because Claudia showed up and tried to steal her father’s old staff? Aren’t there numerable other plausible explanations for why Claudia would want to reclaim a powerful artifact that once belonged to her family? Even if Ibis didn’t recognize Claudia as the daughter of the staff’s previous owner, why jump to the conclusion that she’s associated with Aaravos?
  • Probably not. That staff was an ancient magical tool created for Ziard, likely by Aaravos. The Elves know more than they told the humans. With what they knew of Viren and the bug creature he carried into battle two years prior, and his goal of draining a dragon's magical power, there is some connection between Viren and Aaravos. And it wasn't just some random human who came after the staff but a skilled Dark Mage. So he could have been thinking the worst case scenario.
  • I agree that the worst-case scenario seemed feasible, but why did Ibis state Aaravos’s return as a fact when he didn’t have any hard proof? The return of one of his people’s most dangerous and hated enemies is not something to be suggested lightly. Wouldn’t it be wiser to tell Zubeia the facts (that her lair had been compromised by a dark mage intent on claiming Ziard’s staff) and allow her to draw her own conclusions? At a minimum, why didn't he preface his tidings with the statement that they might yet be false?
  • After opening the treasure chest she says something along the lines of "One step closer to freeing Aaravos." Ibis could well have heard her say this.

Abandoning Viren on the Spire

• In “Fallen Stars,” why didn’t anyone accompany Viren to the base of the Storm Spire after he decided not to go on? Without Claudia and Terry’s moral support, Viren would be more likely than ever to have a panic attack, and if he made the descent alone, there would be no one around to catch him if he fell. Why didn’t Claudia send Terry down with him, or better yet, why didn’t she use her teleportation spell to take him directly back to the cave, rather than make him wait at the base of the spire, defenseless and exposed, while she hunted for his staff?
  • Claudia doesn't think things through. She is a bit neuro-atypical. They probably guessed if Viren could move away from the source of his trauma, the increasing heights and spot he fell from, he could hold it together until he gets back down to the base.

Why Bring Viren on a Hike?

• In “Fallen Stars,” why did Claudia bring Viren on the hike to the top of the Storm Spire? Viren was physically and mentally weak after his recent reanimation, and was clearly traumatized by his fall from the top of the Spire. Additionally, he would be much safer if the world believed him dead; by taking him on an excursion outside of the cave, where others might see him, Claudia significantly raised the stakes if her mission was to fail, In his current state, Viren would be dead weight both in combat and on a stealth mission. Even if he made it to the top of the spire, was he going to do anything there other than wait outside the cave and keep Terry company while Claudia did all the heavy lifting? Why didn’t Claudia send him back down the Spire the first time he nearly died, rather than insist that he continue to overexert and endanger himself in order to reach a location where he wasn’t even needed?
  • Claudia has tunnel vision when it comes to her father. She sees him as some superhuman prophet who is always in the right. She likely never thought he would be suffering from PTSD after his death experience and when he shows signs of weakness, yells at him to suck it up and move on. She wanted him with her because she wanted him back in the saddle, taking charge and leading her once more.

Claudia’s Portal Placement

• In “Fallen Stars,” when Claudia opened a portal to the Storm Spire, why did she place the other opening at the base of the mountain, forcing herself and her companions to make the climb to the top? Why not just teleport directly into the cave, saving the need for a strenuous hike and avoiding the possibility of being spotted on the way in?
  • I took that as Claudia sealed themselves in a small cave near the spire and used magic to hide right under the dragon's noses for two years. If they looked for her, few would think to look outside the Spire's home. So it wasn't teleport magic.

Zubeia’s Hoard

• Is Zubeia able to access her own treasure hoard? I didn’t see any entrances to the room other than the spiral staircase that Claudia used in “Breathtaking,” and that opening looked awfully small for Zubeia to fit through. Is she unable to admire, catalog, or utilize the items in her hoard unless a servant carries them all the way up the steps for her?
  • She has Ibis whom she trusts to guard and protect it. She may not need to go down there and look at things if he says all is well. And it's not like she needs to use anything down there given her immense magical powers.
• Given that Zubeia can’t fit down the staircase, what was the point of having a dragon-sized button operate the mechanism for the spiral steps? It’s not like Zubeia would ever have a reason to use it herself, other than maybe to open it for her servants, but as Claudia showed, smaller beings can open the passage without too much trouble. Wouldn’t it be wiser to disguise the button somewhere to protect the contents of the hoard?
  • Claudia might have figured it out, but it took time to activate it. That delay could be there to allow others to take notice of the invasion.
  • Couldn’t the creator of the staircase have designed a delay in the mechanism but still just used a regular-sized button?

Sunfire Camp’s Lack of Fireproofing

• Why did Lucia (the chief architect of the Sunfire Elf camp in season 4) not design the camp to accommodate open flames? Do the residents of the camp need to go outside its borders every time they want to cook over an open flame, boil water, etc? Given that she’s serving as an architect for an entire race of people with fire elemental powers, wouldn’t it be top priority to organize the encampment in a way that wouldn’t be exceptionally vulnerable to any accidental blazes as a result of Sun magic shenanigans?
  • In camping I once used a covered metal cylinder with a fire inside to cook on top of it. There are also hot coals made like with a coal chimney. Both ways require a controlled and small fire to heat up the stove or coals, respectively. And then it allows the coals to cook the food in a controlled way with no sparks.
  • Given that no one in-universe suggested your solution during Lucia and Yonnis’s confrontation in “Through the Looking Glass,” I am led to assume that such devices do not exist in Xadia, or else that they are not readily available.
  • Why do you even need an "architect" to design a tent city, especially when that person is apparently incapable of taking into account the needs of the population they are designing for, or even the basic needs of any encampment such as a location for cooking? More importantly, why do you need a human one? Bringing in such a clueless outsider and putting them in charge of the elves for no apparent reason should have been far more insulting than the marriage to Amaya, even before she interfered in the ritual. Are elves not capable of putting up tents on their own?
    • The Sunfire Elves probably didn’t have enough tents to house their entire population, and I would assume that most former Lux Aurea residents had never learned how to make a tent themselves. Maybe Janai needed an architect to create a few good tent designs that could be easily mass-produced for her people? I’m not sure why she selected a human architect though, especially one who was evidently ignorant of the culture that they would need to design for. I can imagine King Ezran sending an architect to the Sunfire Elves as a well-meaning gesture of apology and solidarity; if this were to occur, Janai would feel pressured to accept the aid to show support for Ezran’s ideals and avoid a diplomatic incident. Maybe that could explain Lucia’s role in the design of the camp.
    • You'd certainly want someone in charge of laying out a tent-city. There are a lot of logisitics, inclding sanitation as well as cooking, that need to be designed to avoid it turning into a breeding ground for disease. I'm not sure if architect is the right word for that, but it is close enough. Cooking, and industry, could be done in a whole separate section of the camp where it was safe enough to have open fires. Fire would spread quickly in a tent-city, so keeping very tight controls on the use of it would be a good thing. It is just good health and safety practice.

Retrieving Ziard’s Staff during Viren’s 30 Days

• Why did Claudia wait to reclaim Ziard’s staff until after she resurrected Viren? Why waste Viren’s precious time on an errand where he wasn’t needed? Wouldn’t it be best to steal the staff before she even started hunting for the ingredients, so she could utilize its power during the search?
  • Perhaps Aaravos waited to tell her that the staff would be necessary until after she had gathered all of the ingredients, and she was so excited to see her father again after two years that she chose to resurrect him first. Or, perhaps she chose to wait until after he was resurrected because she thought that Viren, who was the more experienced mage and had (mostly) successfully infiltrated the Storm Spire on multiple occasions, would want to retrieve the staff himself or would be a valuable member of the raiding party. Even if Aaravos had told her up front that the staff would be necessary, she might have chosen to save it for last to avoid rousing the suspicion of the elves and making her quest to retrieve the rest of the ingredients much more difficult.

Xadia's rush to war

• In S4:E4, “Through the looking glass,” The dragon queen, Zubeia reveals that the magical tribes of Xadia (or at least the dragons) knew about the danger Aaravos posed to the world, and how cunning, powerful and manipulative he is. Not only that, but it was a HUMAN that saw right through his trickery and into his true nature and set events in motion for his downfall. So WHY were the Xadian's so eager to fight the humans? Couldn't they have put just the tiniest bit more effort into diplomacy? I mean, the humans were trigger happy too, sure. But they KNEW that this could have been Aaravos' doing. Why weren't they at least suspicious? ...Was it because he's been magically "imprisoned" and therefore could pose no threat? Kind of silly, especially for ancient creatures that are supposed to be wise and intelligent.
  • The actions of a single human, however noble, were outweighed by years of prejudice and hatred between the humans and Xadians. Humans’ use of dark magic and Ziard’s attack on the King of the Dragons were not easily forgotten by the elves, and they weren’t going to set aside their differences just because one clever kid helped them out. Additionally, in the flashback in “Through The Looking Glass,” when Zubeia described how Aaravos had orchestrated various calamities by manipulating world leaders and making it appear as though his schemes had been theirs, the screen displayed a crowned human man at what appears to be a summit of the Pentarchy, with Aaravos saying something into his ear. This implies two important things: firstly, that the world had faced a series of tragedies, some (if not all) of which had been attributed to the villainous plots of human monarchs; and secondly, that Aaravos, now revealed to be an agent of evil, had been entangled with the humans. Thus, in the eyes of the elves, human leaders had been compounding upon their race’s sins ever since Sol Regem’s fall (by taking part in whatever unspecified machinations Zubeia referenced), and they had been associating with the most powerful and dangerous enemy of Xadia. A conflict this complex and societally ingrained would almost certainly not be resolved as easily as you suggested.

• Why were the Elves so quick to assume that the Katolians were responsible for the death of Avizandum? The only evidence that Katolians were involved was the aesthetic design of the spear used to kill Avizandum, and perhaps eyewitness accounts of Viren and Harrow riding into Xadia. The corrupted unicorn horn used to slay Avizandum made it clear that a dark mage was involved in the assassination, and anyone powerful enough to obtain a unicorn horn and kill the King of the Dragons would likely have had little difficulty making/stealing a Katolian spear and disguising themself as a Katolian leader. The Elves think of the humans as an entire race of duplicitous dark mages, and expert assassins who live in a society of Moon mages are probably used to illusions and magical trickery. Why didn’t the Elves at least consider the possibility that a different dark mage, knowing that the Katolians had already trespassed in Xadia once before, could have framed Harrow and Viren? The Elves obviously didn’t even go so far as to cast the Historia Viventum spell to review the scene of the crime; if they had, they would have known that Zym was alive.
  • What reason have they got to give Katolis the benefit of the doubt? As you say, as far as Xadia is concerned all humans are evil. When you see a known arsonist in the area of a fire, you don't think "Oh well, I'm sure all this evidence that points to that arsonist was a different arsonist that's trying to frame him."

In what way is Callum a prince?

• Maybe things work differently in Katolis, but in our world if a King marries someone who had a child by a previous relationship, that child does not become a prince. Before she married Chuck, Camilla had two kids - Thomas and Laura - from her first marriage. Now that Charles is King and Camilla is Queen Consort (NOT Queen Regnant), the two kids are - afaict - not Prince Thomas nor Princess Laura. If Callum is a prince, then that implies Sarai was a Queen Regnant (ie, Queen in her own right, like the late Queen Elizabeth) and not merely a Queen Consort. But if so, then queen of which of the other four kingdoms? Unlikely - I can't imagine a Queen Regnant giving up her throne to become a mere Queen Consort. Or was there another kingdom and the two kingdoms merged when the two monarchs married? Or maybe Sarai was a princess of one of the other kingdoms (likely not the heir apparent) and Callum is a prince because his mother was a princess. Well I guess I answered my own question. Carry on!
• Adopted into Royalty.
• Harrow loved Sarai dearly and saw Callum as his own son. There is no doubt that he would do everything in his power to ensure Callum was officially considered a prince.
• Additionally, bear in mind that Ezran's royal council includes Barius and Corvus, who were clearly appointed on a basis of pure nepotism. Katolian law seems to be fairly lenient about letting kings arbitrarily assign power to whoever they like.

The first human primal mage in centuries

Why did Ezran call Callum "the first human primal mage in centuries" rather than the first human primal mage ever? If there were human primal mages hundreds of years before Callum, how could Ezran be the only one who knows about them?

• I don't think Ezran is the only one who knows about past Human Primal mages. I think it was something everyone discovered during the two year time-skip. I think somebody found archaeological evidence of humans forming an arcanum to a primal source and informed everybody.

What status is Callum's relationship with Rayla as of in season 5?

And why did she do that to him? SPOILERS UNMARKED.If there's no kissing or lovey-dovey stuff like season 3, I become worried and uncertain if they're really a couple, especially after rayla left him for two years and they seemingly silently broke up, any thoughts anyone? And why did she run away without at least telling him something? I don't remember if it was specifically to save her parents, but I do remember she saying she spent her last two years searching for claudia, for whatever reason. The whole thing sounded forced to create unnecessary drama, maybe a happy couple doesn't make an entertaining show, or maybe writing a more believable "heroes have problems in their relationship and try to solve them"-plot was too hard for them. Their relationship in season 3 looked strong enough for them to support each other, so why would she not trust him to help her in her quest? I don't believe I'm the only one who became mad and said "WHAT?" when season 4 started, wondering if the writers pushing their relationship to this direction was really the best decision to the show.

• Some relevant details about the state of Callum and Rayla’s relationship during the two-year timeskip were included in the Through the Moon graphic novel and the “Dear Callum” short story. The gist is that since no one had seen Viren die and his corpse hadn’t been found, Rayla remained convinced that he had survived his fall from the Storm Spire. She and Callum decided to search for him together, but Rayla was ultimately unwilling to put Callum in danger again, so she set off alone to find Viren, disappearing for two years. She did leave behind a note, but it didn’t do much to console Callum. Callum and Rayla’s relationship in Season 4 was awkward because they hadn’t seen each other for two years. Callum had sorely missed Rayla, but he was also upset with her for abandoning him, so there were understandably some complex emotions to work out between them. (Although, for what it’s worth, I agree with you; even in context of the additional material, I don’t think the relationship subplot was handled especially well, and I think the writers should have done more to accommodate viewers who didn’t follow the short stories and graphic novels).

Rayla’s Lockpicking Abilities

• In “Finnegrin’s Wake,” Rayla picked the lock to her manacles using only a sliver of wood. Why, then, didn’t she pick locks at other points in the series, such as when she broke into Callum’s chambers in “Domina Profundis” and Finnegrin’s in “Bait and Switch”?
  • Even assuming she could pick those locks, lockpicking can be tricky and risk leaving tells like scratches and such behind. Rayla might not want to leave such evidence of her actions behind when she’s trying to be subtle and sneaky and has an option more suitable towards that goal.

Finnegrin’s Limited Domain

• In “Finnegrin’s Wake,” Finnegrin told Callum that Domina Profundis would kill him if he strayed more than a mile offshore. If this was the case, then why did Finnegrin personally captain Sea Legs as it chased down The Ruthless? If the chase was to extend more than a mile beyond the coast (and by the looks of things, it probably did), Finnegrin’s life would be forfeit. Why didn’t he just instruct an underling to carry out the pursuit in his place? Furthermore, why did he follow Nyx’s tipoff and chart a course for the Sea of the Castout while he was still on the ship? Surely the Sea of the Castout is more than a mile offshore. Why risk his life for unspecified treasure promised to him by a prisoner bargaining for her life? On top of tempting fate by defying Domina, he could be sailing into an ambush that The Ruthless had planned to lure him into during the chase, or Nyx could be flying off to arrange an ambush there as he sailed. Why not instead return to Scumport, disembark with his captives, and send a more expendable ship to investigate the alleged treasure? If he worried about the crew defecting with the treasure in absence of his supervision, he could send Deadwood along to keep everyone in line.

Escaping from Sea Legs

• When The Ruthless was captured by Sea Legs (the ship) in “Sea Legs” (the episode), why didn’t any of The Ruthless’s passengers try to escape by air before Finnegrin’s crew boarded their ship? Callum, Zym, and Nyx can all fly, and as established in “The Final Battle,” Callum’s wings are strong enough that he can carry at least one other person with him, so it seems like at least four of The Ruthless’s passengers could have flown away. If they were reluctant to abandon their compatriots to a vengeful pirate, why didn’t Callum and Zym at least fly up out of range of their would-be captors and rain down magical attacks from above? And why did Nyx, who clearly had no such qualms about disloyalty, allow herself to be captured by Finnegrin, only to trick him into letting her fly away? Why wager her life on the mercy of a notoriously malicious crime lord when she had the chance to escape?
  • There is unlikely to be a satisfying answer to this outside of "poor writing". Getting captured by a group of pirates is something that the heroes had levelled up beyond at this point in the story anyway. What would've worked in season 2 was quite out-of-place in season 5. The story tried to rectify this by having Finnegrin be a formidable mage with an advanced powerful technique, but even this wasn't properly set up earlier to make him into a fearsome threat, the reveal bordered on Ass Pull territory, and it was after the capture anyway. It seemed the writers really wanted certain plot points to play out (Callum gaining the sea arcanum and also using dark magic again) but simply got lazy or pressed for time and didn't do the hard work to make the situation logical and believable.
  • Escape by air and go where, exactly? They weren't taking a leisurely cruise down the coast. Not much in the way of land in the sea is there? Kinda why it's the sea and not the land.
    
    As far as flying up out of range of their would-be captors and rain down magical attacks, maybe that's a logical choice, assuming Callum was a "rain down magical attacks" kind of person and assuming he wasn't a literal child and Zim wasn't a baby and assuming both of them were Vulcans. Not making logical choices isn't bad writing.

Akiyu’s Broken Vow

• In “Archmage Akiyu,” why was Akiyu so willing to take Team Zym’s word that they wanted to know the location of Aaravos’s prison for solely benevolent purposes? Shouldn’t she have been more reluctant to divulge a potentially cataclysmic secret that she had vowed to protect with her life? If she was truly convinced that Aaravos’s prison was at risk of being breached, why not accompany Team Zym to secure the prison, rather than entrust such a weighty task to a group of unknown children? (For that matter, if she was going to take matters into her own hands, why break her oath or involve the potentially untrustworthy Team Zym at all? Why not just send them away on a wild goose chase to the wrong place and set off for the true location of the prison to defend it herself? As an Archmage of the Ocean, she should be a far more powerful underwater combatant than any member of Team Zym.)

Callum’s Waterproof Book

• In “Archmage Akiyu,” when Callum jumped into the pool to follow Akiyu, he submerged the book he carried at his side long enough to thoroughly waterlog it. Why did the book show no signs of water damage when he referenced it in later episodes?
  • The same reason it didn't show any signs of water damage in Book 1, Chapter 5: "An Empty Throne," when it got equally soaked.

Rayla’s Underwater Navigation

• In “Infantis Sanguine,” how did Rayla reach the struggle between Claudia and the princes so quickly? She’s not exactly a star swimmer, and the conflict appeared to take place a fair distance away from the boat. Without the underwater propulsion spell used by Callum and Ezran, she would probably have taken significantly longer than they did to travel the same distance. Additionally, how did Rayla know where to go at all? Lacking Ezran’s ability to ask the local wildlife for directions, she should have had no way of knowing where the prison was or which way the princes had gone.

Walking to the Sun Seed

• In “Sea Legs,” why did Kim’dael make her way to the Sun Seed on foot, necessitating combat with numerous Sunfire guards? Why didn’t she just use her abilities to teleport directly to the tree containing the Seed? She demonstrates the ability to teleport long distances numerous times over the course of Season 5.

Finnegrin's Personal Slidey-Sling Go-Fast Rope

• In “Bait and Switch,” why did Finnegrin have a rope that could support the weight of a person leading up to the window of his private quarters? What purpose does the rope serve? Why go through the trouble of rigging it? In a town full of criminals, isn’t something like that an obvious break-in risk?

Which hemisphere is Xadia on?

In season 5, episode 2, Callum talks about a "South Star" in the same way that people in real life talk about a "North Star."

Outside of the tropics, in the direction of the equator, stars rise and set like the sun and the moon; in the direction of the nearest pole, stars never rise or set, and instead appear to revolve around a central axis (which in the north correlates with the North Star in reality). If there is a "South Star" in Xadia, presumably south is the direction of the nearest pole; i.e. Xadia is in the southern hemisphere of whatever planet it is on.

However, in the southern hemisphere, winters are hot and summers are cold. But it was snowing on the eve of the Winter's Turn when Harrow and Viren killed Avizandum, which suggests that Xadia is in the northern hemisphere of its planet.

So is Xadia in the northern hemisphere, or the southern hemisphere?

• Google’s English dictionary defines winter as “the coldest season of the year, in the northern hemisphere from December to February and in the southern hemisphere from June to August.” If Harrow and Viren were using this definition of "winter," the snow scene you described could very well have taken place during June. Alternatively, I suppose the Xadian planet could have its magnetic poles reversed, resulting in the southernmost star being visible from the "upper half" of the planet.
  • Callum's birthday is in (the Xadian equivalent of) July; the first episode of the first season establishes that his birthday is two months away (and therefore that episode takes place in May); and the last Winter's Turn was "four full moons past" (with the fifth full moon due to rise that evening). That means that Winter's Turn is in December.

Viren's Illusory Duplicate Spell

In “The Final Battle,” Viren demonstrated the ability to create a convincing dark magic doppelganger that can bleed and die realistically. Why didn’t he use this spell to create a Harrow lookalike in the first episode, rather than proposing a much more complicated and immoral scheme that required Harrow to swap bodies with a sacrificial soldier?

• A couple of things about that illusion spell: First, it required reagents that Viren may not have had at the time. When the illusion faded, three moon moth bodies were left in its place, suggesting that those were required for the spell at the very least; and we don't know if Viren had more moon moths than the one he gave to Soren.
• Second, we don't know if it was Viren who conjured that illusion; it could have been Claudia or Aaravos. Claudia certainly had more experience with illusions than Viren, since she met Lujanne and fell for her illusions of Callum, Ezran, and Zym (the last of which was also created from moon moths). Claudia getting the idea of using an illusion from Lujanne makes sense, since she also got the idea of "trading places" from Callum, and the soul-switching spell was ultimately her idea, not Viren's.

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