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2. Mysterious father.

Ravion never knew his father because it turned out there was none.

Orion thought that he knew who his father was but later realized that he actually never knew him.

3. Both grew up unaware of their true nature.

Both accidentally discovered the truth later.

Neither took the revelation well, but Ravion's approach was definitely less bloody.

Having no support system, Ravion chose to hide his pain under the mask of cynicism and self-deprecation.

Orion, scared that telling anybody will ruin his life, unfortunately found no better person to confide in than Cyran. We know the rest - imprisoning and torturing Kazim, cutting his own wings off, slandering the queen and Peggy, which would probably have ended up with their exile or worse, taking advantage of the king's "mysterious" illness to attempt the throne, supporting the idea of full-fledged war against Bantus, and so on.

4. Lost wings

Ravion's wings were never explicitly mentioned, but "being born in the condition of full dragonization" very much implies it.

5. They both end with "-ion"

6. It's a bit of a stretch, but they share certain self-destructive tendencies by the hand of an unwilling other.

Ravion expected Indris to kill him during the coup (fortunately Indris didn't get the memo). And Orion wanted his wings cut off (he made Kazim help him with torture and dark magic).

7. Other little things that are the polar opposite of each other.

Their imagery: Night and Day: Ravion, "Twilight Burden", grayish pale, basically monochrome, dressed in dark clothes, surprisingly wearing no jewelry vs Orion, with his radiant "Golden Prince" persona, dressed in sky-blue and sun-gold, covered with gems, including his full golden crown, with his blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and rich golden-rye hair.

Ravion might not have stood behind that season's events, but he definitely did a lot to prepare the ground (he gave more power to the commoners by changing the system and allowing them to join the guard and personally prepared Indris for the role of the leader). While Orion, to an extent, was a puppet in Cyran's hands.

Orion was backed by (and would act in the interests of) the old corrupt aristocracy, while Ravion openly favors commoners (btw, remember that little quest where a girl called Cinderella wants to join the guard in Savannah but can't because commoners are not allowed there? DON'T TELL ME SAVANNAH HAS MORE INEQUALITY THAN PRE-INDRIS SAL'THORIN!!! Send for Ravion the Reformist, he knows what to do)

Orion grew up knowing that he's the future king. Meanwhile Ravion probably never saw himself as a king, spending centuries as a child in the palace of his millennia-old immortal mother queen.

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Some additional thoughts.

I wanted to talk more about how and why they both acted in the situations they found themselves in. I even waited for Phase 2 in hope there would be more info on Orion. But I guess not. (Orion's introduction and character tales can tell us more, we'll see.)

So the following are my ramblings in defence of Ravion.

I think we don't appreciate enough what Ravion did! (Some people consider him morally grey?? or even evil????)

To the point that I actually saw people being angry at him for "giving Indris more work to do"!

Come on, he gave Indris his kingdom! People kill for the throne and do other terrible things! And he gave it away for free. Because the other guy would be better at it.

Like, imagine if in the end, instead of doubling down, Orion came to his senses, owned up and admitted that Gwendoline and Peggy should rule instead. And everybody reacted like, "You lazy ass, how dare you abuse your sister like this???" Nobody would do that! Why do people do this to Ravion?

Indris never shyed away from work. Not like it's a burden for him. Don't tell me it's not the biggest honor and desire for him to finally have the power to change his people's lives for the better.

But there is also an idea that he's just lazy.

Did he just want Indris to do all the work? Or did he really think that Indris would be better at being the ruler?

First let's not forget that often gacha characters, who might have been complex in the main story they were in, later get reduced to a single simplistic comedic trait for events and other post-story appearances, so let's not take it too seriously.

Besides, Ravion follows the theme of wearing a mask to a tee. One of my first posts about him was about how everything he does has a surface-level reason, or several (consistent with his "I'm a silly, harmless guy nobody should take seriously" persona), and a deeper explanation, actually consistent with his actions. I'm not going to repeat all the examples, but the neat thing is that the "surface level" explanation he presents to the world isn't necessarily false either.

Evidence for and against him "being too lazy to be a king".

Ravion slacking off is a bit of a running joke. Sometimes he even talks himself about how much he hates work. It might be a part of his "persona" or the fact that he actually likes having fun over dealing with paperwork (big surprise!), so it's not entirely false (an idea for Indris, maybe hire a secretary who's good with paperwork and actually enjoys it instead of torturing Ravion with it?)

But also consider: ADHD

A headcanon intermission. But come on. All the signs are here. He even fidgets with his knife in every cutscene and his idle animation.

And remember that potion event? When we medicated him without his knowledge or consent, he immediately got better.

But also, since when is being a king incompatible with being lazy and self-indulgent? What's a better job to be rich, lazy, indulgent and have parties all day long than being an absolute monarch? So that's not a very good explanation.

Evidence that his decision came from his actual admiration of Indris.

That's the reason he gave Indris while doing it, and later in that little "You are the light" speech.

And let's look at what he ACTUALLY did after abdicating.

Actions do speak louder than words. He stayed with Indris, actively helping him.

He immediately sent Indris away to the surface to save him from being assassinated in the ensuing unrest and stayed behind to lead the city through the crisis.

Then he basically did the same again when people's unrest reached the boiling point, and everybody started fleeing to the surface and turning into monsters.

He stayed behind dealing with the actively dying city while Indris was heroically adventuring on the surface.

He was overseeing Salthorin's recovery in the Reputation Quests (RIP).

He was ready with useful advice.

Indris later mentioned that Ravion is now responsible for dealing with powerful people displeased with Indris.

From some NPC dialogues in Sal'thorin I remember that people see them as "ruling together" anyway.

I actually think he would be a good king despite what he said himself.

But the centuries-long trauma of seeing his mother, revered as a hero at first, slowly turning into a monster, both morally and physically made him want to do nothing with it.

If anything, he might be too soft for this job. Probably an overcorrection to his mother's and Velara's cruelty. I mean, seeing him politely beg the desperate rioting people to please calm down is kind of entertaining (there is even a dialogue choice where we make fun of him for it and he threatens to challenge us and our hamsters to a duel).

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BTW, as a man of supposed immense power in Sal'thorin (a prince and one of the three Excarchs), why didn't he do more to defend his beloved commoners or change the situation in general?

In short, his power was entirely at his mother's mercy. She tolerated his antics as long as she found him useful. Having somebody sympathetic to commoners in that position did probably stop their desparatopn from overflowing. But she would probably remove him immediately if he overstepped the boundaries of the system.

There is a reason wht we saw every playable character from that story interact with the queen. Except her own son.

We saw that he did his best to bend the rules, trying to find "the less of two evils" solution for the commoners he had to deal with. We later learnt from Xera that he allowed, and even expected, his people to do the same.

And remember how he actually put a lot of effort into allowing commoners to join the guard. He went against the millennia-old establishment, against the nobles' mockery, and actually put some thought into making the trials safer by inviting medical priests and so on.

But we also saw that he was genuinely helpless.

Like when we saw him ask Velara not to kill innocent people a couple of times (with no avail, of course). I mean, what was he supposed to do? Openly fight the queen's beloved Velara with her army of priests?

Maybe some learned helplessness played a role too.

I'm actually curious about him. His story is clearly not over.

I like that we'll get a playable villain again (say what you want, but there's no moral grayness in him. What he did to Kazim is absolutely inexcusable.)

That said, he is quite a tragic villain.

His mom definitely knew he was a mauler because he was probably born with wings. Did she bind his wings to hide them? Until he grew enough to make a decision to have them cut off? And he's still a teen. Where did he get such a strong desire to rule from?

There is definitely a parallel with Gervan (I wonder how big of a role exactly did Cyral play in Orion's corruption?). Second season in a row, one of our main antagonists is an evil teen backed by Cyran.