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Aaravos and the Purpose of Dark Magic (It’s Control)
Okay, buckle in because, like Viren, I’m back on my dark magic bullshit. We’re gonna do some thinky-thoughts about what the nature and effects of dark magic are, and why it was specifically created to be that way.
So first to clear up a few assumptions: most of what we’ve been told so far about the history of Dark magic–and what the principal characters believe to be true–is partial or incorrect.
Specifically:
- Humans were solely responsible for creating dark magic: False. We’ve suspected for a long time and it now seems pretty clear that Aaravos had at least some hand in creating dark magic.
- Before dark magic, humans were miserable outcasts struggling for survival: False. At the time of dark magic’s inception, humans were doing quite well for themselves. Elarion had been a thriving city for hundreds of years.
- Humans had no other magic than dark magic: False. There were human primal mages.
Ugh. I hate to say it but I think this is correct. They are being very blatant with the idea that Dark Magic was only ever introduced to let Aaravos control humanity, which is a shame because “flawed but effective tool invented by the underprivileged to even the odds” is so much more interesting than “corrupting gift offered by sparkly Sauron and accepted by greedy people who couldn’t be happy with what they had”.
To be fair though we haven’t confirmed that there were real human primal mages before the introduction of Dark Magic and judging by Ziard’s words to Sol Regem (which is the closest we have ever come to a firsthand source) humanity was helpless without it so there is that.
What I can definitely say though is that I will be pissed if the part about Claudia believing Aaravos is just a result of his influence. I can’t think of a more effective way to completely ruin any respect I had for this show than to finally have a character express their generational trauma and then go “silly human, you are just brainwashed into thinking you were oppressed”.
I mean, I wrote a lot of crabby posts a while back about how I couldn’t reconcile the way dark magic was described in the setting as “innovation that uplifted an oppressed class” versus how the narrative treated it thematically and how it was treated in meta materials as “this is bad and dark mages should feel bad,” so I get it. For me though, that not being the final direction is kind of a relief, because the cognitive dissonance there was severe.
I would also say that the generational trauma is definitely real, and even without any Aaravos meddling, Claudia would probably feel it more keenly since the history is all centered around dark magic and likely passed down particularly between dark mages–Viren is definitely motivated by it on some level, in all his “bright future for humanity” reasoning. We’ve also seen her express a light version of it to Callum, emphasizing that before dark magic, humans had nothing.
But Aaravos apparently has told her that he’s the one who gave magic to humanity, and she just takes that completely at face value. She also seems to now be all-in on freeing Aaravos, not just because she is terrified of abandonment doesn’t want her dad to die (again), but because his version of the narrative has convinced her that he’s a benevolent force and there couldn’t possibly be any downsides to this at all.
Granted, Claudia is very, very good at compartmentalizing and closing her eyes to anything she doesn’t want to see, but the fact that she can’t even muster an explanation that can cause Soren, poster child of ideologically-flexible people-pleasers everywhere, to have doubts is… odd. It suggests to me that even if the trauma is real, the specific way she’s being motivated by it is enhanced or directed.
I mean, fair, but also, the cognitive dissonance isn’t going away by leaning into dark magic as an absolute evil or manipulative force that wasn’t actually needed because we can still see that Xadia was the more powerful party in this conflict so doubling down on “dark magic was bad and completely unnecessary though” just comes off as justifying genocide. The only way to resolve the issue would have been to fully confront the power imbalance and treat the way dark magic was framed in the narrative until this point as a red herring. Not necessarily to absolve it of its flaws but at least treat the extremely negative way it is viewed by the “good” cast members as a prejudice against non-conventional or distasteful practices that parallels the audience’s familiarity with “witchcraft=bad”. I find that sort of trope subversion infinitely more clever.
Good points about the trauma still being valid. I just don’t have much faith that the show will ever deal with it in any meaningful way. I like season 4 way better than 3 but the more I examine it the more I see the same tone-deafness in how they treat generational conflicts.
IMO, that’s where it’s important that all of the false/forgotten history is interconnected–that humans did have primal magic, that Elarion was an eight-hundred-year-old thriving city at the time of Ziard, that the dragon monarchy was comparatively only about 200 years in–it changes the narrative dramatically. Dark magic wasn’t lifting humans out of mud and starvation. It could very well have been unnecessary. The elves seem to have already on the back foot, if they brought in the big guns by entering a vassal alliance with the Archdragons–humans were doing well enough for them to be concerned and want powerful protection.
Then you bring in dark magic, which can give basically anyone near-limitless magical power. Significant, given how hard it is for humans to become primal mages–if dark magic propagates, dark mages could easily outnumber Xadian primal mages. Sol Regem does what he’s supposed to do as essentially liege lord of the elves and steps in to contain the threat, but it turns out he’s actually total shit at this and we wind up with a situation where a) it’s clear that a single dark mage can maim an Archdragon, and b) Ziard, who had followers, is now a goddamn martyr. If human use of dark magic now escalates and tensions continue to rise, Xadia could find themselves in a position of actually fighting a losing war against humans, which is a hell of a situation to suddenly find yourself in. The level of power an Archdragon commands makes the revelation that dark magic can match that power comparable to, in my opinion, surprise development of nuclear weapons.
Was Xadia therefore justified in their retaliation? Absolutely not. Was it the right decision to uniformly expel humans? Also absolutely not. But if you look at everyone involved as being motivated by fear, instead
of… idk, just being bitchy and superior, it becomes a lot more
nuanced and ties in a lot more clearly with the show’s primary themes about escalation, retaliation, and cycles of violence.