Beyond “Degrade Yourself”: Power, Self-Worth, and the Mask of Ascended Astarion
Small disclaimer: Using the “Ascended Astarion Critical” tag not because there is hatred toward the character, but mostly so people who dislike critical interpretations of the route can filter it if they prefer.
“He will always see you as degrading yourself if you continue to be with him. But perhaps you wish to degrade yourself. And he knows it.”
Lately, I’ve seen this quote popping up here and there on Tumblr again.
Naturally, my stupid brain started thinking about it without my consent. Lol.
As far as I can tell, there are two main interpretations of this line. One revolves around power. The other around self-worth.
And honestly, I think it’s genuinely ambiguous—and deliberately so. Written that way by some incredibly talented writers to leave behind that doubt, that lingering suspicion, that little worm that keeps gnawing away at your mind.
Does he mean this?
Or does he mean something else entirely?
I think the line was written to allow for both readings, and from my point of view, they are equally plausible and equally meaningful. Especially because, in my opinion, Ascended Astarion is written to be fundamentally ambiguous. His dialogue, his gestures, his promises, his displays of power, and even his affection constantly invite multiple readings. They can be interpreted as manipulation, as calculated performances, as assertions of dominance, or as genuine glimpses into his inner world.
And the fact that all of these elements often coexist and blend into one another only makes his characterization richer, more nuanced, and ultimately more compelling.
And what surprised me the most is that, the more I thought about that "degrading line", the more I realized that both interpretations align beautifully with my own reading of the Ascended Astarion.
So, on the one hand, we have the more literal interpretation—one that reflects a profound shift, not so much in Astarion’s personality, but in his attitude, his newfound status, and the very influence that empowered vampirism now exerts over him.
"I am the greatest vampire to ever walk this land. Even the Pale Knight would have knelt before me." "Now, I can hear it at last. See it at last. How all the lowly creature of this plane are begging to serve.[...]" "In you, too, I can tell... Your heartbeat races... You hold your breath as i speak. You await my command."
Grandiosity. Omnipotence. Dominance. All at once. Ascended Astarion stands above everyone and everything.
Even at this point, one could argue that Ascended Astarion sees his partner’s voluntary submission to the Vampire Ascendant as inherently degrading ("lowly creature of this plane", "you too", "you await my command"). Which, by the way, does not automatically exclude love.
But there’s more.
After all, throughout the game Astarion repeatedly tells us how horrific it is to be a spawn; how vampire lords are cruel, paranoid monsters consumed by power; how they would never willingly give up a pawn only to create a potential rival; how physically and psychologically traumatic it was for him to be turned into one of the undead; and how the servants who willingly grovelled at Cazador’s feet in the hope of one day receiving the gift of immortality were, in his eyes, complete fools whom he openly despised.
“The biggest threat to a vampire is another vampire. They’re scheming, paranoid, power-hungry beasts. So why would any vampire give up control over a spawn to create a competitor? Trust me, it doesn’t happen.” “I remember how it hurt when I turned into a vampire. My body writhed and warped while I was utterly helpless. The grip of death owned my heart as it beat its last.” “A vampire spawn is less than a slave. They’re puppets. We have no choice but to obey our master’s commands. They speak, and our bodies react. It’s all part of the deal.” “Oh, no. It’s far worse than that. They’re fanatics, here of their own free will and utterly devoted to Cazador. Each one came to our door and begged to be given his eternal gift. They’re sure he’ll turn them if they serve him well enough. I’d almost feel sorry for the poor deluded souls. But they’re idiots who brought this upon themselves, so don’t.”
On top of that, Vellioth’s lessons and Cazador’s own condition make it abundantly clear that the world of vampires is warped, harsh, cruel, painful, and, ultimately, profoundly lonely—even for those who stand at the very top.
First Lesson: “Always dominate. Allow none to be your equal.” Second Lesson: “Power comes from solitude. To share with others is to be weak, and to be weak is to fail… and die.” Third Lesson: “Act not in haste. A near immortal has time to plan, time to act when others will pay the price of action.” “These deathless dreams hold memories of a mortal life once-forgotten. Of the boy I was, the man I became, the monster that will not end. I sleep, but cannot rest. I live, but cannot die. I’m eternal, and I grieve.”
In this reading, Tav/Durge knowingly turns a blind eye to all of it. They first help Astarion ascend, and then willingly surrender their own life, their freedom, and everything they have ever been, much like those servants before them. They do so out of love, certainly—but also for the promise of power and immortality, to be shared with the person they love.
Aeterna amantes, and all that—the classic tradition of dark romance.
However, the way I see it, while this relationship certainly contains elements of dark romance, like so much else in Baldur’s Gate 3, it also has a deeper layer. A reading that is more nuanced, more complex, and far less straightforward.
The fact that Ascended Astarion loves Tav/Durge does not prevent him from thinking—or acting—according to everything he learned from the vampire lord before him. Love and control are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one of the tragedies of abuse is that they often coexist.
To me, Vellioth’s first two lessons heavily inform both Ascended Astarion’s attitude and the role he now occupies in that moment: “Always dominate. Allow none to be your equal.” And: “Power comes from solitude. To share with others is to be weak, and to be weak is to fail… and die.”
And this is precisely why Ascended Astarion must turn Tav/Durge into his spawn. Once he has embraced the mindset of a vampire lord, it becomes the only framework within which he can imagine continuing the relationship.
Howeaver, what makes the relationship between Ascended Astarion and Tav/Durge even more complex (and compelling) than the one between Cazador and Astarion is precisely that, the presence of love. Not least because Cazador and Astarion are fundamentally different people.
Where one relied on terror and torture, the other relies on charm and manipulation to maintain control.
And within that context, at the very moment Tav/Durge is kneeling before the Vampire Ascendant and looking directly into his thoughts—beyond the beautiful words, beyond the performance—they are given access to thoughts he never voices aloud about the person before him.
And, to me, that makes perfect sense.
In this reading, Astarion is no longer a spawn. He has become the Vampire Ascendant, transcended the limitations of his own kind, and now stands at the very top of the vampiric hierarchy.
He is no longer the one forced to kneel.
Now he is the one others kneel before. Even the Pale Knight. Even Tav/Durge, who is quite literally on their knees at that moment. He is above them. And he likes it. And perhaps, at the same time, there’s a hint of contempt.
Much like he despised the other spawn—his siblings and the other victims alike—because they were an exact reflection of his past self. They were a mirror he never wanted to face again.
More importantly, he sees his partner willingly choosing the very position he has spent the entire game describing as degrading. A position he himself once called worse than slavery. The very condition he spent two centuries trying to escape.
But Astarion loves Tav/Durge. So comes the second part of the narrator’s line:
“But perhaps you wish to degrade yourself.”
From his point of view, Tav/Durge is willingly seeking exactly that kind of surrender. And if so, he is more than willing to indulge them, embracing the dominance that his new status now affords him ("You await my command", "You are going to be wonderfully obidient").
None of this makes the relationship any less problematic. Tav/Durge’s willingness doesn’t erase the imbalance of power between them. Does not make it healthy. It simply means that the imbalance is entered into knowingly and willingly by both sides—which is precisely one of the defining features of many dark romances.
On the other hand, the alternative interpretation rests on an entirely different premise—one that sees the Vampire Ascendant himself as the flawed one. Not the one standing at the top of the food chain, looking down as those beneath him kneel at his feet, despite what he says. Quite the opposite. In this reading, he is the inferior one, the lowly creature.
In other words, to Astarion, in this context Tav/Durge is the moon and the stars. In his eyes, they represent perfection—the only truly good thing that has ever happened to him. And by choosing to stay with him, someone he believes is fundamentally unworthy, they are willingly degrading themselves: giving up their life for him, allowing themselves to be turned into a spawn, placing the reins of control in his hands, even kneeling before him at his request.
As if he were thinking: How can you accept all of this just to be with someone like me?
But that question, of course, raises another question: if that’s truly how he sees it, then why ask any of this of them in the first place?
If we follow this interpretation, the answer becomes less about dominance and more about preservation: Astarion’s role as a vampire lord is still fundamentally based on Vellioth’s teachings. But inside he is terrified of losing someone he considers that extraordinary.
And for me that too makes perfect sense.
That fear doesn’t come out of nowhere. Throughout the game, Astarion has more than one line that highlights his insecurity when it comes to relationships—his uncertainty about whether anyone could truly like him for anything beyond his physical appearance, whether he has any real worth, or even whether he is nothing more than a burden to the person he loves.
“I–I can hardly blame you. I don’t exactly have much to offer right now, beyond new burdens to carry.” “I was beginning to believe someone truly wanted me. But I shouldn’t have deluded myself.” “You gave me precious, impossible moments of comfort. I only really wanted a few more.” “From the start, I was rather counting the hours until it was going to end. Midnight chimes, eh?”
Anyway, replacing arrogance with insecurity doesn’t solve the problem. It simply changes where the unhealthy dynamic comes from. Whether the need for control stems from a sense of superiority or from a profound fear of abandonment, the result is ultimately the same: trying to hold on to someone through control rather than trust.
At the same time, it’s important not to erase Tav/Durge’s agency. They aren’t coerced into remaining in the relationship; they actively choose it. That willingness matters. But again it doesn’t, by itself, make the relationship healthy. It simply means that an unequal dynamic is being consciously embraced by both people involved.
What I find particularly interesting is that, despite leading to two very different psychological portraits of Ascended Astarion, both interpretations can ultimately be traced back to the same defense mechanism he has relied on since the beginning of the game. As he himself admits: “I had a plan. A nice, simple plan. Seduce you, sleep with you, manipulate your feelings so you’d never turn on me.”
Whether Ascended Astarion acts from a sense of superiority or from a profound sense of unworthiness, the underlying goal remains strikingly similar: tie to him the person he loves, so they "never turn on him". What changes is the form that it takes—not its existence.
But coming back to the line at the heart of this analysis, I’d like to take it one step further and bring these two interpretations together.
Perhaps that’s why this line feels so rich. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one reading or the other. Ascended Astarion may genuinely see Tav/Durge’s position as degrading because he has embraced the worldview of a vampire lord, one in which spawn are inherently inferior like he was and like all the others lowly creature in the world. At the very same time, he may still believe, deep down, that he himself is fundamentally unworthy of the person kneeling before him.
Those two beliefs are not mutually exclusive. One belongs to the mask he has learned to wear. The other belongs to the man beneath it. One shapes the way he acts; the other continues to shape the way he sees himself.
And this is where I find the previus vampire lords influence particularly significant. Vellioth gave Astarion—just as he had given Cazador before him—a behavioral model for what it means to be a vampire lord. He passed on his teachings, his worldview, and the rules by which a vampire lord should live. “The monster that will not end”—as Cazador describes the curse of vampirism through his own existence—has been transformed not only in terms of raw power, but in his very nature. Astarion's strength, his senses, his emotions, and even the way he perceives himself and others have all been reshaped by what he has become, a new and superior being. But Vellioth or Cazador never taught him how to see himself as someone worthy of love, or even as someone worthy at all. Quite the opposite. Vampire lords are broken by those who came before them, and in turn break those who come after them, down to the very core of who they are. Not even ascension can undo that.
We get a glimpse of it in the scene with the drow twins. Outwardly, it should be the culmination of every fantasy of power and pleasure: a devoted partner, two drow, all eyes on him, complete control. And yet…
“Astarion boldly throws himself into the centre of your attention in your little group, and all lavish their pleasure on him. But as you sit on his lap, resting afterwards, you look into his eyes, and see no trace of joy. Just an intensity that makes you shiver.”
This isn’t something Astarion ever verbalizes. He keeps it buried beneath the image he projects. It’s the narrator—not Astarion himself—who grants us access to his inner world, revealing what lies beneath the surface rather than what he chooses to show everyone else.
And perhaps that’s the tragedy I find most compelling about the Ascended Astarion and his "degrede yourself" line.
He may have inherited Vellioth’s worldview and appear in control. He may have embraced the role of the Vampire Ascendant and apper bold. He may possess unimaginable power, walk freely beneath the sun, command wealth beyond measure, and rule from Cazador’s palace.
But if, beneath all of that, he still believes himself to be fundamentally unworthy of the one person who willingly chose him and freely gave him everything… then has he truly become free?
To me, what makes that possibility even more tragic is the context in which this thought appears. This isn’t something Astarion confesses. He never voices it aloud. Just as in the scene with the drow twins, the player only gains access to it through a successful Insight check, in one of the most intimate moments the two characters share.
Even there—even with the person who has chosen him, trusted him, and offered him everything of their own free will—he still cannot bring himself to say it, I feel unworthy of you. Because to ask for reassurance would mean admitting vulnerability. And vulnerability is precisely what the role he has embraced no longer allows him to show. After all, like Vellioth would say "power come from solitude".
If that reading is correct, then perhaps the greatest prison Ascended Astarion inhabits is no longer Cazador’s palace, nor the limitations of vampirism. It is the distorted imagine of himself he still cannot escape.
In essence, by bringing these two interpretations of the "degrading line" together, I arrive at what feels, to me, like the reading that best reflects my own understanding of Ascended Astarion—what he has gained, what he has become, and what he has lost.
