Oh look It's "being angry that the Astolfo gender discourse has completely overshadowed the fact that by all rights he should be a disability rights icon" hour
Listen I'm going to make it exceedingly clear that above all else I blame the 4chan dudebros who have turned him into a weird homophobic/transphobic meme forcing us to have the gender discussion and be loud about reminding people that men and male-aligned people can wear whatever they want for reasons that have nothing to do with sex or "deception" and that the idea of doing things as part of both the men's group AND the women's group is a thing that people can want to do for reasons that are NOT just some otaku shitpost joke -
HOWEVER because it is Pride Month and we are critiquing the fuck out of performativity and pinkwashing and lack of intersectionality we're gonna talk about this for a second here.
Sieg is disabled. Like, there's no way around this. When he escapes the basement he has birth defects that amount to a terminal illness. Even after his magical heart transplant this still affects him in a way that actually pretty well parallels the risks involved with a mundane organ transplant - he uses up all his Command Spells, his heart rejects and he dies. This has painful effects on him still, especially toward the end.
In other words, we have on our hands a protagonist with a life-threatening chronic illness that definitely has a major fantasy spin but is still portrayed in a pretty believable, grounded way.
And how did he get here?
By running into a definitely neurodivergent guy who saw someone who needed help and, unlike a lot of people in the world including MANY ACTUAL FUCKING DOCTORS IN THAT WORLD AND OUR OWN, heard "this guy is only going to live about 3 years at most" and said "oh, shit, then we REALLY need to get him somewhere safe because he doesn't deserve to spend any more of that time laying around suffering than he absolutely has to" rather than the far more common "what a ~tragedy~, what's the ~point~ in breaking out at all if that's ~all~ he's going to get?"
And through all their time together, what is the one core thing that Astolfo constantly pushes?
Live.
You deserve to live.
You're not obligated to sacrifice yourself.
You have the right to live.
You have the right to be happy.
You have the right to want to be happy.
You should live.
I want you to live.
You know. Things most disabled people - especially chronically ill people - are constantly hearing the exact opposite of, especially as of right now in 2021.
Like, it's great to acknowledge an openly, visibly queer character - but let's not forget that his main character arc was basically him screaming "DISABLED RIGHTS" over and over and over again until he was blue in the face.
His gender presentation is basically window dressing; his neurodivergence and belief that life is worth living no matter what are CENTRAL to his character.
The fact that it was a visibly queer character who did this should only add to the value of it, not serve as a reason to sweep it under the rug.
Hell, it was what made Siegfried give his heart up, he basically told him, "I'm a Paladin of Charlemagne & that means saving anyone who needs me, no matter how long they have to live." 3 years, 30 years, 300 years who cares?
Someone needed help & he helped because it was the right thing to do, & that Siegfried had no right to call himself a hero if he can't save one person who needed his help. He says all this shit to someone who could easily kill him, but Siegfried couldn't because he knew how right Astolfo was & that this sick & dying boy deserved to live just as much as anyone else & gave him his heart in an act of atonement.
Astolfo was always Sieg's biggest supporter. He was always by his side no matter how sick or injured Sieg got. Astolfo is the most true hero of Apocrypha because he knows that all life has value worth preserving, even that which some or many would consider worth objectively less.
I was gonna just quietly add this edit I made but I've gotta appreciate the addition too
