Netflix's The Dragon Prince

I thought the descent would be better if it was spread out across a few more seasons myself, because he finally got an enabler with Claudia and Aaravos as his Evil Mentor teaching him increasingly terrible magic and gambits.

But Viren was at his lowest at the start of S3 revealing his unhealthy attitude to his son, so there's no way Soren would have stayed with them that long.

And tbh I want the show to continue because Inwant to see where he'll go after his lust for dragon power got him killed, got revived after falling into pieces, and his clear shock at Claudia's appearance. The man's skin is normal on the cake. If there's any time to reflect and realize his mistakes that would be a good time.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 17th 2020 at 1:35:39 AM

Viren criticized Harrow's irrational and hypocritical willingness to let dozens of guards die rather than use Dark Magic to save his life, and he was absolutely right to do so. That didn't make any goddamn sense. Harrow let his disdain for dark magic get in the way of the solution that was most consistent with his own stated beliefs.

I don't know why you keep bringing up Viren's offer to swap bodies with Harrow and die in his place as if it supports your position. It doesn't, it actually supports mine. Viren knew that the kingdom needed it's ruler, and made the decision to sacrifice himself for the greater good. It's only when Harrow turned him down that Viren decided he couldn't trust anyone but himself to defend the kingdom. He had to end up in power because there was literally no one else willing or able to do the job. Amaya said no, Opeli is a toady and both Callum and Ezra are children, not war leaders. There was no alternative. Like I said, Viren doesn't see any other choice. That's what makes him interesting.

The same applies during the assembly of the Pentarchy. Calling Viren's impassioned speech a "childish tantrum" is weak rhetorical spin. Viren wasn't upset because the leaders of the other Human kingdoms refused to do what he said, he was upset because- despite the fact that he had strong evidence that Xadia had hostile intentions- they were too cowardly or incompetent to act in the interests of not just themselves but all of Humankind. That is a legitimately good reason to be frustrated with someone, and you can't credibly claim otherwise. Like the example of Viren's willing sacrifice above, this event just doesn't mean what you say it means, and repeatedly insisting that it does instead of properly arguing the point on it's merits does nothing for your case.

The depiction of Dark Magic is yet another point where you pretend something in the show works in your favor when instead it works in mine. It was Viren's plan to use Dark Magic in combination with the heart of the Magma Titan that saved the lives of 100,000 of Katolis' citizens during a time of famine. It stands to reason that Zym's egg could be used in a similar manner. This is a perfectly rational motivation, and it is entirely consistent with Harrow's deeply-held belief that a just ruler should be impartial. Suppose, if Katolis experiences another famine or natural disaster, Zym could be used in a ritual that saves 500,000 lives. The same logic would apply.

As for Thunder's assassination, the final responsibility for the decision to take revenge on the dragon that killed Sarai is Harrow's and Harrow's alone. All Viren did was give Harrow an option. That is his job. As court mage, it's his duty to offer his liege advice on magic. It worked out well before when he saved 100,000 lives with the heart of the Magma Titan, but even if it hadn't, the final decision was still Harrow's- something which he admits and feels guilt about. He could have just said no, and that would have been the end of it. He's the King. But he didn't.

As an aside, it's deeply ironic how you try to twist even Viren's unambiguously good actions- offering to die in Harrow's place, going back to save Anya's parents- as somehow negative. As if Viren was supposed to guess that Sarai would lay down her life to ensure his plan succeeded despite disliking Dark Magic and disagreeing with the decision to hunt the Magma Titan in the first place. Truly ridiculous.

The "point of the character" as you put it reflects the intentions of the writers. But if the facts of the show outright contradict what the writers intended to portray, as they do here, then I shouldn't care about the intentions of the writers. The writers of The Dragon Prince missed their own point because they did a poor job of thinking through how the facts, as they themselves laid them out, came together. This is where the Moral Luck problem comes from.

Besides, we've seen the "Evil Chancellor" archetype a thousand times. It's practically a stock character in the Fantasy genre. If that's what the writers had intended Viren to be from the start, I wouldn't be able to wield even half as much direct evidence from the text in support of my conclusion. Though in hindsight, to be more specific and less tendentious, I should have phrased it as, "Viren's character has always been someone who's willing to defend Humanity/Katolis no matter the cost, that's what makes him interesting."

Edited by Gault on Apr 17th 2020 at 7:06:56 PM

Its still kinda disturbing to give that much credit to a villain the show doesn't give as much credit for

That's just it- the show does give Viren credit. It just doesn't realize it's doing it. That's my whole point.

The Dragon Prince wants us to believe Dark Magic is somehow inherently evil, then shows us a situation where it's used to save 100,000 innocent lives. These two ideas are incompatible with one-another, I'm just pointing it out.

Edited by Gault on Apr 17th 2020 at 8:14:56 PM

Harrow being dumb doesn't change the point being made about Viren. What's more Harrow was still trying to prevent his death even if the odds were against him.

Pretty sure the point being focused on was Viren initial failure to understand Harrow's question. It wasn't that Opeli or Amaya being unwilling to save the kingdom, it's that their priorities were different. Viren also gave them both reasons to distrust him (disregarding the laws was a key point for Opeli, the removal of Amaya's assigned subordinate, and assassination order to Soren) had he actually listened things might have gone smoother for him.

In which he followed up on by teaming up with an elf and launching a false flag. Also his "strong" evidence was kinda weak. Harrow's death was tic for tac and the Sunfire Elves hostility was due in part to the base being built on their side. The dragon was the best piece he had, and she didn't engage until Soren attacked her.

Awesome, so why hide it? Viren had no immediate need for Zym's egg nor did he have a reason keep it from Harrow. When the assassination was discovered he made no attempt to disclose that information, and went out of his way to coerce Callum from bringing it to Harrow. There was a potential opportunity to save lives right there, but it didn't fall into Viren's idea of a solution.

Harrow had to be emotionally manipulated into killing Thunder, something that no one other than Viren was interested in.

Not really, the third season even showed Ziard in a much better light, and Claudia has been depicted as a good person slowly going downhill due to her actions not something inherent to Dark Magic,

Edited by Cross on Apr 17th 2020 at 8:36:54 AM

The man even throws a childish tantrum about things not going his way when talking with the Kings because a child showed she's not sacrificing her people out of fearmongering, and this was after attempting emotional manipulation using the fact her moms died on that mission.

She sure didn't seem to mind sacrificing her people to save the elves for no apparent reason other than that it was narratively conventient.

And it's probably not a contentious topic here, but it bears repeating: Harrow was an incompetent, self-righteous moron who would have gotten half his kingdom killed if it weren't for Viren and his oh-so-icky methods.

I imagine if they had done a better job writing Harrow a lot of these issues with Viren wouldn't exist. Because while he absolutely was a terrible king, I'm not sure if we're actually supposed to think that.

In which event, Viren looks better by default for opposing him, even if a myriad of other things about him and how he's portrayed would still be red flags.

Edited by LSBK on Apr 17th 2020 at 2:43:10 PM

Took it as the viewer is supposed to view Harrow as flawed, though not sure on the intended extent

For example, I think he's supposed to be wrong in how he handled the famine, with Viren coming up with a better solution.

x3!You mean after Viren performed a coup in his kingdom leading those who oppose him to her, also revealing why he was really at that meeting, and had sent an obvious magical assassin sent to kill her that she managed to defeat and would totally see was magical?

If anything Viren ended up proving why she should stop him when hw threatened to undermine her nation and people for his war.

I agree with @LSBK: Harrow's flaws tend to make Viren look a lot more reasonable, especially as he was motivated by proving himself to him. That Harrow only admits he wasn't perfect to his stepson in a letter, but Viren had some pretty sutvle flaws they were making explicit in each season, and in doing so, revealing worse implications to his previous actions.

And its not that Viren doesn't have any goodness in him, it's just his flaws make him act on his most selfish impulses instead while believing he's doing it for good reasons. That's why if that Sacrifice himself moment had gone completely different, I have little doubt Viren wouldn't have fallen to into a self-destructive spiral of needing validation, which they were even showing was a foil for Callum who has similar issues.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 17th 2020 at 1:59:13 AM

My own interpretation is that while at least initially Viren really did intend to act for the greater good and to benefit people it just so happened that the greatest good he could think of was one where he was running things.

Unfortunately for everyone that was twisted by his own ambition and manipulation by Aravis into thinking that whatever he did WAS the best thing possible because it was him doing it.

I think at least part of the reason for the flaws in this show is the relatively short length of the seasons. Nine or ten episodes is a little short for the grand scale story they're trying to tell. Avatar had twenty episode seasons, and had plenty of time to flesh things out. It also gave more time for character development and world building.

Granted, not all of those episodes were gold. But if Avatar had had 9 episode seasons we likely wouldn't have gotten episodes like Tales of Ba Sing Se, or The Beach, or The Ember Island Players.

But despite things being rushed, it was still a good show. I'm guessing a fourth season would have a time skip though.

They had a multiple-season plan with three specific eras, as well as prior eras mapped out for books and a possible animated film.

Of course with everything in flux, we have no idea if that renewal is coming.

Edit - An article with the details laid out.

Edited by Beatman1 on Apr 18th 2020 at 9:07:24 AM

So earlier today I discovered the (kind of confusingly named, in my opinion) My Real Daddy trope and this particular entry:

"Though Star vs. the Forces of Evil was created by Daron Nefcy and has the same producers for the last three of its four seasons, there are those who credit the best era of the series' as being the work of director Giancarlo Volpe (Avatar: The Last Airbender and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Green Lantern: The Animated Series). This is because the series is seen as having greatly improved in both comedy and drama when he joined at the start of season two, and his departure following season three's "Battle for Mewni" arc to work on The Dragon Prince coincided with the show's growing Broken Base surrounding a continuously divisive latter half."

As being discussed in the Star vs thread, the series really went off track after he left, and Volpe left the The Dragon Prince after season three...

To make matters more worrying, he left on seemingly bad terms. When Volpe left Star to work on The Dragon Prince, he gave a fond farewell message on twitter explaining what happened but was dead silent when he left the Dragon Prince. He just removed all mention of it from his twitter, unfollowed Aaron Ehasz, and liked the tweets from Danika and others about the workplace mistreatment and gaslighting controversies. He only confirmed he'd left after being asked why he'd done the aforementioned. Also, Danika said that what little work had been done on season four when she left (just brainstorming sessions) was full of "problematic content."

It all makes me a little worried that, even if season four happens, it might suffer the same way.

Edited by IHOP on Apr 20th 2020 at 4:58:04 AM

"Problematic content" is vague. That could mean anything, especially with how heavily politicized everything is these days. Also, what gaslighting controversies?

Aaron Ehasz controversies.

Have we talked about Viren being a textbook NPD case, by the way? Like, it seems to be the most core part of his concept as a character - he's not written as a conventional villain, a powerful and malicious schemer who always hurts people because he means to, but as a guy with an incurable and incredibly dangerous personality disorder who got given exactly the wrong job because his madness looked like competence at a distance.

So the novelization of season one is either out or someone got an early copy and they've been sharing details on tumblr. Here's some neat details from what I've seen of the spoilers. Nothing beyond the first few chapters though.

-The book is narrated by Aaravos, which has some interesting implications. I guess it ties into him narrating the intro.

-Callum and Harrow's strained relationship is made more complicated. Apparently it was partly due to Harrow just being kind of a jerk to Callum. The book opens with Harrow singing Ezran a lullaby that he's sang to Ezran "every night since he was born" and tucking him in and saying good night, then just glancing over at Callum briefly and muttering good night and walking out of the room.

-Rayla and Runaan have a similarly strained relationship. Runaan considers Rayla to be his daughter but Rayla doesn't consider Runaan to be her father.

-Here's the biggest information piece. The story behind the dividing of Xadia. Unicorns (which I guess are a sentient race?) wanted to help humans and gifted/created(?) the primal stones to them so that they could do primal magic and be equal to elves. Humans realized that it was easier to just use unicorns themselves for dark magic and hunted them to extinction for parts (though a few escaped and survived). The elves were disgusted by this and decided that the proper justice for that crime would be for them to hunt humans into extinction in return. They tried for awhile before the dragons decided to be "merciful" by just exiling humanity to the west instead.

Edited by IHOP on May 28th 2020 at 12:51:51 PM

Does it mention if the elves were okay with the humans being given the Primal Stones?

No idea, I'm just going on some cliff note tumblr posts for information and haven't seen anything beyond my first post.

I mean Rayla's parents weren't gone that long. But I huess Runan and Ethari were the one who did the bulk of actually raising her.

That backstory with the unicorns is honestly stupid and devalues the moral conflict presented in the show.

It does fit with their moms problem with Dark Magic and the disregard of sapient life when you can just rip whatever creature you want to bits for power.

I do think there's an implication here about why Xadia has a lot more magical life compared to fhe human kingdoms which has only specific spots and giant harmless spiders.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 28th 2020 at 10:51:58 AM

That being the reason for the human kingdoms' lack of magical creatures was implied by Aaron Ehasz and Justin in the reddit AMA they did a few months ago as well.

There's the season one credit image of Runaan trying to give toddler!Rayla a bath and the website's birthday posts mentioning that Rayla's birthday is special because its when she gets her "yearly letter from her parents" so I'd say that even before the death of Avizandum she probably saw them very rarely if ever.

Oh, one other thing. When talking about Rayla and Runaan's relationship, the tumblr post mentioned that there's a reoccurring motif that Callum only ever thinks of Harrow as "the King" rather than as his father/stepfather, and Rayla only ever thinks of Runaan as "the elves' leader" rather than as her father/surrogate father. They didn't clarify so I'm unsure if that meant leader as in the leader of the assassin team or if he had some political position in the Silvergrove.

Edited by IHOP on May 28th 2020 at 2:30:08 PM

The unicorn thing actually does answer a question I asked a while back. About whether the exile happened simply because the Xadians disliked dark magic or if humans started hunted Xadians and that's why they were banished. And it is actually in keeping with what we saw in the series, if you pay attention you'll notice that many humans have a tendency to dehumanize (for lack of a better term) Xadians.

By not being gone that long I meant excommunicated and presumed dead for treason. Runaan and Ethari are her primary care givers but Rayla still does have parents that do love her so I can see why she doesn't think of them as her parents.

x4 I mean it does put a damper on the Screw You, Elves! thing everyone was riding, but we have also already seen Dark Magi using sentient beings like dragons and elves for spell food on the show. The origin of the primal stones and near extinction of the unicorns is a better motivator for the dragons and elves to exile the humans then just "They are meddling with powers they have no right to be using!" and has a lot more weight to it.

Edited by lycropath on May 28th 2020 at 12:56:17 PM