DEA's Junk Bin

My first objection is about character. Attacking people unprovoked, even people he finds distasteful, simply isn't in line with Spite's characterization. Spite is consistently reactive, not proactive. Even when we see him attack Illario in "Bloodbath," it's only as a response to Illario doing something Spite finds upsetting. Spite does not just attack people he dislikes on sight. He's Spite, not Aggression.

The deal Spite and Lucanis make in "Inner Demons" is either to rescue Caterina or to "I didn't say kill, I said beat the crap out of" Illario. Spite agrees, with only slight grumbling, to limit himself to helping Lucanis kick Illario's ass one time, on Lucanis' terms, without taking over from Lucanis or going out of his way to cause suffering. If Spite continued attacking Illario, going beyond what Lucanis is comfortable with, that would be a breach of Spite's truce with Lucanis.

If Spite intended to override Lucanis' wishes regarding Illario, we'd see it during the boss fight against Illario in "A Murder of Crows," and we don't. Lucanis and Spite are in alignment during that fight, acting in tandem. In "A Moment's Peace," Spite seems smugly satisfied with Illario's defeat, not eager to hurt him even more. It's a critical plot development that, as of the events of "Inner Demons" and "A Murder of Crows," Spite is no longer at odds with Lucanis on most issues, and they've come to understand and share each other's priorities. That's the resolution of Lucanis' story. His storyline is incoherent without that ending.

In "Bloodbath," we see that Lucanis hates seeing Spite attack Illario. I think we can safely conclude that continued conflict between Spite and Illario would stress Lucanis out, and we would see Lucanis' behavior reflect that distress. Instead, what we actually see in-game after "A Murder of Crows" is a fairly relaxed dynamic between Spite and Lucanis. Spite and Illario simply cannot be at each other's throats anymore, because if they were, Lucanis would be upset, and Rook would probably hear about it!

My second objection is about themes. The idea that Lucanis' possessed status genuinely makes him a danger to the people he cares about is antithetical to one of the central themes of his storyline. This story is about (among other things) Lucanis accepting and embracing the parts of himself he's ashamed of, as represented by Spite, instead of treating his own distress signals and vulnerability as a dangerous "monster" to be suppressed and concealed. Illario suggests in "Bloodbath" that Lucanis is "a danger to the family" as a lie, in order to manipulate him into inaction and disqualify him from inheriting. It's Rook's task in "Inner Demons" to reassure Lucanis that this idea is completely unfounded.

Besides Illario, I'm only aware of two other major characters who raise the possibility that Lucanis might, due to his possession, be a threat to anyone who wasn't threatening him first. We hear about these concerns via party banter. One of the two is Harding, who later admits she was wrong and apologizes for not trusting Lucanis sooner. The other is Davrin, whose overly dogmatic definition of "monster" is frequently a topic of philosophical critique from his teammates. Davrin's intense distrust of Lucanis is narratively treated as an antagonistic force, an obstacle that the characters need to overcome. Davrin and Lucanis eventually agree to set aside their concerns about each other in the name of teamwork, which is portrayed as a good and necessary outcome.

In short: this game consistently and comprehensively wants you to understand that Spite is not a danger to Lucanis' inner circle. Other than the events of "Bloodbath," which are pretty clearly an unusual circumstance, Spite does not harm Lucanis' friends or family against Lucanis' wishes, and every character who suggests that Spite might do such a thing eventually proves to be either lying or wrong. There is a good reason for this trend.

Symbolically, Spite represents trauma (among other things). Through Lucanis and Spite's relationship, Dragon Age: The Veilguard argues that experiencing messy, distressing, chaotic symptoms of complex trauma doesn't make you broken, unworthy of love, or dangerous to the people you care about. It's a beautiful, affirming message, showing a welcoming and supportive attitude towards players who feel monstrous and gross because of how their experiences have affected them. To imagine that Lucanis' possession, and by extension, his trauma, actually makes him a danger to his friends and family, is to imply that traumatized people, both in the story and in real life, are indeed rendered unavoidably monstrous and hurtful by their trauma. That idea is nasty, wrong, and unkind, and I do not care for it.

Also, in case anyone is wondering: yes, I do think it's canonically true that Illario is lying about being scared of Spite, and reading Illario as genuinely scared of Spite is an outright misunderstanding of the story. Not "there's room for interpretation." Not "you could argue a case for it." Not "it's ambiguous, but I think this headcanon works." I mean that it is straightforwardly what is happening in the text. It's not even particularly subtle!

Illario is pretty overt in conducting a gaslighting campaign to make Lucanis seem unfit for the position of First Talon, beginning as early as "Coffee with the Crows" and concluding in "A Murder of Crows." Illario's speech in the opera house explicitly uses Lucanis' possession to justify Illario's ascension as First Talon, with the note "Family Tree" corroborating that Illario's goal is to remove Lucanis from the line of succession.

Since we know Illario lies to us at least some of the time, it's often rewarding to contrast Illario's statements with his actions, and see where they don't match up. Despite what he claims to Rook in "Bloodbath," Illario never actually acts as though he's worried Spite will go berserk and attack him. Even after Spite literally does attack him, Illario sounds completely unfazed, speaking in a commanding, self-assured tone of voice that starkly contrasts with the words he's uttering about allegedly being shaken and distraught. The real primary concern on Illario's mind seems to be that Lucanis and Rook might find out about his betrayal and stop his coup attempt. He appears confident that Spite won't cause any serious damage, and remains casual about Spite's presence, even when blood magic fails to restrain Spite in "A Murder of Crows."

In "A Letter to Lucanis," we get hints that there are some aspects of the possession situation that do genuinely upset Illario, but Spite being a stabbing risk is not one of them. Complicating matters, that letter is dripping in dishonesty, making it tricky to interpret. If the letter is at all truthful, it sounds like Illario is more worried about Lucanis' possession hurting Lucanis than anything else, which would align with Illario's alarmed reaction to Lucanis' passive self-harm behaviors in "The Wigmaker Job."

As far as I'm aware, the only place we hear about Illario potentially doing paperwork is the note "House Business," found at Villa Dellamorte in "A Murder of Crows." In this note, Illario says that papers pertaining to household finances ("the accounts") should be forwarded to him, so that he can handle them the way Caterina used to. This document simply isn't enough evidence to prove that Illario would consistently perform well at tasks like examining forms for discrepancies, filing reports, or organizing a messy office.

The note doesn't say that Illario actually wants to do the family's financial paperwork for its own sake, or that he would enjoy that kind of work. It doesn't actually tell us anything about Illario's aptitude for the task. All it says is that he claims to want to be the one to manage House Dellamorte's finances in Caterina's absence. Illario has told Rook something untrue or misleading literally every single time they've spoken to him, so we can't be sure that he genuinely wants what he says he wants. Even if he does, he might have no personal enthusiasm for the task. There are plenty of reasons someone might want to take on work they don't actually enjoy doing.

Aside from "House Business," we do have one other clear piece of evidence about how Illario handles paperwork, and it doesn't sound too favorable. Early on in "The Wigmaker Job," Lucanis and Illario's introductory short story from Tevinter Nights, we learn that, at some point before the story opens, Lucanis prepared a report for Illario that explained important information about the mission. Specifically, we learn that the report exists when Illario reveals, at the absolute last possible minute, that he didn't read it. Instead, he asks Lucanis for details face-to-face while they're en route to the target's location.

Illario doesn't explain why he didn't read the report, which makes me think he may be too ashamed to admit the reason, or might not understand it himself. I've never been assigned to read a dossier on how to kill an evil politician, but I have been assigned to read books and essays for school. When I fall behind on those readings and avoid explaining why (which is often), it's usually because I forgot about it, got distracted, or both, or possibly just found myself inexplicably mentally stuck (ie, executive dysfunction). That's my best guess as to what happened with Illario.

So Lucanis gave Illario an important document, and Illario didn't get around to dealing with that document until the exact moment it became too urgent to ignore. That's not a good sign for Illario's ability to stay on top of Villa Dellamorte's finances. If reading a single report eludes him, even when the stakes involved are literally life-or-death, then he'll definitely struggle with regularly maintaining a ledger or answering mail. The man needs an Adderall prescription and a fidget spinner, not extra work.

There's also the nature of the paperwork to consider. A mission dossier is a different type of document than financial records. I actually think it's disturbingly plausible that Caterina might never have taught Illario financial management skills at all. She never intended for Illario to inherit, so why would she educate him about the managerial side of their work? The Crows operate on a need-to-know basis, and Illario doesn't really need to know that much about how contracts and payments work on the back end in order to do his job. He only needs to know how to sign on the dotted line and pick up his money. Household bills and expenses? Not his department! Maybe Illario wants a chance to learn how to handle a subject that he's never had properly explained to him. I don't think that's the main reason he wrote this note, as I'll get into later on, but I do think it's worth considering.

I have heard that "The Wigmaker Job" mentions Illario gambling, which might be relevant here. I sadly don't have access to Tevinter Nights, and have only been able to read excerpts from "The Wigmaker Job," not the full story. I don't know any more specifics about this tidbit, or even the exact quote(s) where it's mentioned. I'd be very curious to learn more about this detail. However, though it's not my specialty, I do know a little bit about the psychology of gambling. Gambling is not typically a habit that plays nicely with orderly personal finances and a strong understanding of cost-benefit analyses. It does, however, play nicely with impulsivity, distractibility, and feelings of dissatisfaction with one's life.

Just like cults and confidence scams, gambling isn't something you can be too smart for. You are not immune to propaganda. However, there are some circumstances and traits that tend to be correlated with gambling, or that seem like they might make it more likely for a person to develop a gambling problem. Take everything you read about causes of gambling with a tablespoon of salt, because it's a highly stigmatized topic and the scientific research on it still has a lot of unanswered questions! But we do know some stuff.

There are some useful things you can learn about how gambling works that can help you keep the risks in perspective. A lot of the appeal of gambling comes from certain common logical fallacies and cognitive biases. There are many fields, such as psychology, sociology, financial literacy, statistics, and probability, where a good instructor can often educate you about these pitfalls. Being aware of a fallacy still doesn't make you immune to falling into it, but it can help. I think it would make a lot of sense, if Illario was never taught much about how to handle money, for him to not fully realize what actually makes gambling so risky, or know how to tell what he can and can't afford to lose.

Since I've brought it up, here's the mathematical argument for why you shouldn't gamble. The amount of money you spend on any single thing is not the true amount of money you're losing. You can visualize this concept with lottery tickets. Because each lottery ticket is a separate purchase, it's easy to think of each ticket as a complete transaction. A single ticket is pretty cheap, whereas the amount of money you would receive if you won the lottery is massive, so each ticket you buy seems like a good deal. As an individual buyer, you feel like you have little to lose and everything to gain by buying a ticket. But that feeling is a trick, intended to keep you coming back to buy more tickets. The true cost of winning the lottery is not the cost of a single ticket. It's the cost of every ticket you have ever bought.

It may seem like a Captain Obvious statement when I phrase it this way, but you're extremely unlikely to win the lottery after only buying a single ticket. So people don't buy just one ticket. They keep going back to buy just one more lottery ticket. Running a lottery is a viable business model because people will buy lots of tickets, consistently and repeatedly, in hopes of eventually winning. Some people even make a routine of buying lottery tickets at regular intervals.

Since there's only one winner at a time, but fucktons of hopefuls, obviously most people who buy lottery tickets aren't going to win. And those people? The vast majority of lottery ticket customers? A lot of those people, each time they don't win, think, "Oh well, no harm done. The ticket was so cheap that I basically didn't lose anything. Better luck next time!" and go buy another ticket. In the long term, all those ticket sales are much more valuable than the lump sum received by a lottery winner.

You might, at this juncture, be thinking something like, "hey, that sounds like a pyramid scheme." If so, congratulations! You now understand gambling. Technically, a pyramid scheme is a specific type of scam that isn't exactly the same thing as gambling, but you would be largely correct to compare the two.

This principle holds true for all kinds of gambling, from card games to roulette to sports betting to slot machines. Each individual instance feels like a small price to pay, which distracts you from how they gradually add up to bite you in the ass. The big shiny payouts feel like they make up for the losses, but in terms of the literal actual numbers, no the fuck they don't. If you keep a thorough ledger of all the money going in and out of your bank account, it's gonna get really depressing really fast.

If you tally up the total amount of money a veteran gambler has spent on gambling in their lifetime, that amount is, statistically, practically guaranteed to be much larger than the amount of money they've gained. There will be a tiny percentage of people who did, due to pure chance, make enough money from gambling to outweigh their losses, but you, as a random individual, cannot ever safely rely on becoming one of those people. You only have a miniscule chance of making your money back, and an even smaller chance of winning big. The odds are against you, and most people won't beat them. That's how odds work. A small chance of someone winning means a lot of people are guaranteed to lose.

You might then wonder, if gambling loses you so much money, where is all that money going? Why, to the house, of course. To the casino, the bookie, the guys who run the lottery. That's what "the house always wins" means. You are essentially paying them for the adrenaline rush of taking a risk. You literally might as well spend that money on a theme park visit. I'm not joking. Ride a rollercoaster instead, save your wallet.

Hopefully, after that explanation, my skepticism at the idea that someone who's particularly skilled at financial paperwork would have a gambling habit makes more sense. I'm not saying it never happens, by any means! Gambling can still provide an emotionally satisfying thrill, even for people who know exactly how it works and can explain to you in detail why it's not worth it. I'm sure that somewhere in the world, there are accountants, financial consultants, and statisticians who still gamble for fun. I just don't think that's likely to be the case with Illario.

Also, while I'm on this topic, let's take a quick side note about terminology. "Problem gambling behavior" is the psychological term for gambling that becomes a problem for the gambler. You can sort of think of it as the psychologist's name for gambling addiction. Technically, gambling addiction is not the same thing as a chemical addiction, and I don't usually see papers referring to gambling as an addiction. Instead, they use the term "problem gambling behavior." Without details from "The Wigmaker Job" about what Illario's gambling behavior looks like, I can't say for sure whether he has a gambling problem or "addiction" per se. However, since Illario seems to have nothing but problems when we meet him in-game, I'd call it a pretty safe bet. (Ha.)

The study of addiction is very complicated and not really my field, but as a short introduction, addiction is a psychological health condition with two parts. One part is a social and emotional pattern of thoughts and behaviors, which can theoretically form around anything, including gambling. The other part is a physiological dependency on a chemical that screws with your neurotransmitters. If I'm understanding the research correctly, psychologists don't use the term "gambling addiction" because it doesn't include that second part. Someone who has a gambling problem is not going to get physically sick and die from withdrawal. However, the reason we colloquially call problem gambling behavior an "addiction" is because, in terms of the emotional and social aspects of addiction, unhealthy gambling habits can often look pretty damn addiction-shaped.

Getting back to the note, Illario seeking an opportunity to take on more administrative work could easily be a case of biting off more than he can chew. People overestimate how much they can handle all the time, or overstate it on purpose to make themselves look good in front of an audience. Put a pin in that latter idea, especially. Illario always makes more sense when you assume he's performing for an audience.

For now, though, let's be generous for a moment and assume that Illario is not being dishonest in this note. Suppose he's telling the truth when he says he intends to handle the accounts. As any neurodivergent nerd could tell you, intent is a very flimsy guarantee. There's still always the possibility that he'll forget, or get distracted. In fact, based on what we know about Illario, from both "The Wigmaker Job" and Veilguard, I think it's not only possible, but likely.

For a really blatant (and hilarious) example of Illario getting distracted at inopportune moments, we can go back to "The Wigmaker Job." I've already talked about Illario not reading Lucanis' report, which is a stellar example by itself, but it gets even better, if you can believe it.

Lucanis and Illario, still bickering about Illario not reading that report, sneak into a fancy house where their target is hosting a party. All of a sudden, Illario, in the middle of his conversation with Lucanis, abruptly gets distracted watching the partygoers. I don't think we're clearly told what exactly these revelers are doing that's so eye-catching, but I remember getting the sense that they're probably dancing, and/or doing something sexually suggestive.

Lucanis tells Illario to focus. Illario says, "I am." It seems like he's making a joke, to the tune of, "Ha, you didn't say what I should focus on! I'm complying with the letter of your order but not the spirit! Neener neener!" However, since Illario was just complaining about Lucanis being uncommunicative and cryptic a few moments ago, I think this line makes just as much sense if you read it as serious, as in, "I'm trying to focus, but I can only do so much when you won't give me anything to focus on." Either way, it's a spectacular moment, and definitely makes Illario come across as easily distractible.

We hear more about Illario's difficulty focusing in "Coffee with the Crows." If you choose to have Rook say that Illario "only seems to hear about one word in ten," Lucanis will agree, adding that Illario "hears what he wants to hear." They're both wrong to attribute Illario's weird behavior in that conversation to inattention, of course, since he's actually just lying to them, but this exchange serves as an interesting character testimonial.

I don't think we can completely trust Lucanis' claim that Illario selectively tunes out statements he doesn't like. That seems like a harsh, uncharitable assumption about Illario's intentions, which Lucanis realistically can't know for sure without asking. However, it definitely sounds like Lucanis has observed Illario missing stuff when people talk to him before. That could have any number of causes: attention regulation issues, auditory processing issues, dissociation, brain fog, fatigue, voluntary disengagement, being preoccupied by other priorities. What's important right now is that we know Illario sometimes spaces out or otherwise doesn't notice things.

Lucanis further characterizes Illario as absent-minded in "Bidding Farewell," saying that he "always has his head in the clouds." Neither Lucanis nor Teia seems to find it suspicious for Illario to forget something as important as his own dead grandmother's remains at a meeting that is explicitly about her funeral. That's a pretty big slip-up from Illario, almost giving away the truth that Caterina isn't actually dead in front of three witnesses. He only gets away with it because everyone present thinks he's genuinely enough of a ditz to make that mistake anyway.

Now, Lucanis isn't always correct about Illario's capabilities. He's completely wrong when he dismisses Illario as not "good enough" to successfully assassinate Zara in "Bloodbath," and at the end of "A Murder of Crows" he admits to having misjudged Illario's combat skills. However, Teia, who defends Illario as "a good assassin" if Lucanis and Rook get too critical of him in "Bidding Farewell," also responds as though it's normal for Illario to be at least somewhat forgetful. She does point out that it's unusual for him to be so extremely distant and distracted, but she still doesn't seem to find it completely bizarre. Illario being more scatterbrained than usual appears to strike her as an extreme, but totally plausible expression of grief and shock. It evidently makes perfect sense to her that he'd react this way under pressure.

So here we have various instances where Illario exhibits, and is recognized by his peer group as having, certain difficulties with noticing, remembering, and focusing on important information and tasks. Considering these examples, I don't think it's a stretch to sugest that he might find it challenging to keep up with the demands of managing household finances, especially when his "household" appears to be larger than some villages by land area. Villa Dellamorte really is fucking massive. "I will not see my grandmother's house fall to ruin" is actually a pretty ambitious mission statement, and we shouldn't assume that he'll necessarily succeed at it on the first try.

Okay, let's get back to the question of whether Illario is being dishonest in this note. Judged by its surrounding circumstances, the note doesn't look all that credible. Illario, whom we know to be untrustworthy, wrote this one brief note promising to do some financial paperwork. We never find out whether or not he actually did that paperwork. I would assume not, considering that the next time we see Illario, he gets his ass comprehensively kicked and Lucanis gets named First Talon instead. Hardly a ringing endorsement! But surely we can dig deeper.

There's another in-game note, Taash's "Ancient Tablet: Questions My Mother Would've Asked," which, despite not being directly related to the Dellamortes' situation, is very useful here. (It does contain spoilers for Taash's personal questline, but I won't be focusing on those.) Shathann is a scholar, and Taash recalls her teaching them how to detect biases and context clues in written texts. According to Taash, when reading a historical document, Shathann would ask, "Who was this written for? What did these people believe about themselves? How did cultural conflicts affect this message? How do my own perspectives bias my reading?" These are all excellent critical thinking questions! So let's go through Illario's note, short though it is, with these questions in mind.

Firstly, "Who was this written for?" Or, as you might hear this question phrased in real-world literature classes, who is the intended audience? Illario doesn't explicitly say who he's addressing, but we can figure it out from context. Saying "As much as we may wish..." implies that he's addressing a group of people. "We" could technically refer to only two people, himself and a single addressee, but it would be sort of weird to phrase it that way if he was only talking to one other person. In that case, it'd be more natural to say something like "I wish as much as you do..." or "as much as we both wish..." In addition, the nature of Illario's request gives us another clue. He's asking to be forwarded financial documents, which means that whoever he's talking to must have access to the family's financial records.

House Dellamorte is very small, with our three principal characters seeming to be the only members. We never hear of the Dellamortes training any recruits, the way House De Riva does. The only Dellamorte Crows are those who were born into the family, and we know Illario isn't writing this note for Lucanis or Caterina. So what other group of people would have access to the finances of this extremely small and private family?

I think the answer is Caterina's non-Crow employees. This category would include household staff members with important custodial roles, such as the estate's housekeeper, groundskeeper, and so forth, and possibly financial advisors, like Lucanis' contract negotiator. We never meet the servants at Villa Dellamorte or Lucanis' contract negotiator, but Lucanis mentions both in party banter conversations, so we know they exist. The servants would be responsible for running the estate on Caterina's behalf, so a lot of the household expenses would revolve around paying them and providing them with necessary supplies. Similarly, anyone employed to advise the Dellamortes on their business decisions, like a contract negotiator, would obviously need to know something about their finances. That's probably who the note was written for.

At this point, I think it's useful to ask an extra, situationally-specific question that Shathann doesn't include in her more generic list: why did Illario feel the need to explicitly tell the staff to send him this paperwork at all? Why weren't they doing that to begin with? Lucanis is out of town for work, and Caterina is presumed dead, so Illario is the only Dellamorte present to handle the household finances. Maybe the staff are still treating Lucanis as the heir, but realistically, they would still need an interim administrator to sign off on regular payments. For the duration of Lucanis' contract with Rook, if those documents don't get sent to Illario, then they won't get done at all until Lucanis comes home. And considering the cosmic scope of the Veilguard's mission, who the hell knows when that might be?

And yet, in this note, Illario has to explicitly request those documents. It seems like, before he wrote this note, House Dellamorte's financial records were not being sent to him. In other words, the mere existence of this note, where Illario promises to start handling the family's accounts, is proof that Illario has not been handling the family's accounts. He says he's going to, which suggests that he isn't already doing it!

It's not specified who has been dealing with the accounts in Lucanis' absence, but my guess would be Teia. Lucanis mentions in "A Moment's Peace" that Caterina likes Teia, and it's Teia who handles Caterina's funeral arrangements in "Bidding Farewell." I imagine some among the Crows and their associates might consider Teia, rather than the obviously disfavored Illario, to be the next in line for Caterina's position, after Lucanis.

We also don't find out whether the staff ever received Illario's note, or what they might've done after reading it. For all we know, they could still be sending documents to Teia instead of Illario. Or, if they're really stubborn, some of them might've figured out Caterina was still in the building and started passing her forms to sign through a crack in the door. No secret can withstand the power of perceptive servants for long, especially if something gives them a reason to worry they might lose their jobs. A change in management is a very common reason for layoffs in any sort of workplace, so Illario's coup attempt would likely make the staff extra cautious and attentive. Such nervousness would only increase with the presence of Venatori, who are probably accustomed to abusing enslaved servants back home in Tevinter.

All right, time to unpin that thought about Illario performing for an audience. Typically, when you ask about the intended audience of a piece of writing, you also ask about the author. It's important to understand the person behind a piece of writing, because it can help you figure out when that person is wrong, biased, or lying. This line of inquiry also leads us neatly to our next question. Shathann doesn't explicitly ask "Who wrote this and why?" but I think it's implied in the question "What did these people believe about themselves?"

In Taash's analysis of the text they're studying, an ancient tablet, they don't actually limit themself to answering "What did these people believe about themselves?" by literally listing cultural beliefs the tablet's creators held about themselves. Instead, Taash seems to be treating the question as a prompt to write down everything they know about the tablet's authors. Taash knew Shathann best, so if they think it's reasonable to interpret the question this way, they're probably right. We can presume, then, that Shathann means this question a little more broadly than its literal wording would initially suggest.

What do we know about the author of this note? Illario is the author, and he's a glory-seeking liar with an obvious agenda. He wants to install himself as First Talon. The job of First Talon, as Lucanis tells us in party banter when he assumes that role and starts receiving an unholy amount of mail, involves a lot of paperwork. Therefore, Illario's desire to become First Talon gives him a strong reason to present himself, honestly or dishonestly, as prepared for the administrative paperwork associated with that title.

See, Illario can't just call himself the First Talon and consider his work done. On some level, even in systems that aren't democratic, most political power at least partially derives from the consent of the governed. If Caterina's subordinates won't accept Illario as her successor, his rise to power is over before it's begun. That's why he calls a meeting of the Crow Houses. He's trying to rally their support. Without the other Houses to back it up, the title of First Talon is meaningless.

The other Crow Houses aren't the only subordinates Caterina has, though. Power begins at home, and behind every leader is an entourage of assistants facilitating their work. If Illario can't command respect among the household staff, his administration won't function. As such, it is politically beneficial to Illario if the staff at Villa Dellamorte believe, whether accurately or not, that he can handle the First Talon's workload. If they think Illario can't serve competently in the position, they won't want to work for him. People want to be able to trust their leaders to carry out the duties of administration effectively.

You know how "with great power comes great responsibility?" Illario is promising to take on the First Talon's responsibilities in order to prove himself worthy of wielding the First Talon's power. When you read the note in that light, everything falls into place. This note is not actually a statement that Illario personally wants to balance the family checkbook. It's a policy promise, just like you'd hear in a real-world political campaign. It's intended to build up his credibility as a political candidate. He might not be able to muster the executive function for this task. He might not know how to do this task. He might be lying through his teeth and have no intention of following through. But making this statement makes him sound responsible, and that's what really matters.

By exploring the political implications of the note, we've now already answered Shathann's next question, "How did cultural conflicts affect this message?" The conflict between Illario and Lucanis over the succession is a product of the Crows' unique subset of Antivan culture, so I think it counts as a cultural conflict. If you read Illario's note while actively thinking about this conflict, and how his desire to usurp the role of First Talon might affect the way he presents himself to others, it reveals a whole new subtextual dimension to the note's message. He's not just saying "you should send me the household's financial paperwork so that I can start working on it," which is the note's literal, surface-level message. He's also saying "you can trust me as a reliable authority figure in the same way you trusted Caterina."

Aha! It's our old friend, Illario's poorly-concealed desperate need for validation! Fancy meeting you here! Yes, even though Illario is dealing in the theater of politics, the true root of his motivation is not political, but personal. He wants to feel like he's "good enough" compared to Lucanis, worthy of the same dignity and loyalty Lucanis commands. Being fit for leadership, in Caterina's household, is how you earn love. To Illario, being the First Talon means finally being treated like he matters.

People can depend on Caterina, as the Crows' unyielding anchor in times of trouble. People can depend on Lucanis, as a steady and reassuring figure who always takes care of his people. But nobody depends on Illario. Everyone assumes that putting their faith in Illario will only lead to disappointment. They're probably right not to trust him, and I think he knows that. After all, he's a liar and a sweet-talker, and his professional specialty is luring targets to their deaths via seduction. Trusting a guy like that is practically asking for trouble. And yet, despite knowing he's more facade than man, Illario still seems to wish that someone would believe in him anyway.

My poor boy. He wants so badly to be liked, respected, and valued, but the harder he tries to win people over, the more he drives them away.

Now for Shathann's final question, "How do my own perspectives bias my reading?" As you'll no doubt have noticed by now, I'm pretty fond of Illario. The way his family treats him reminds me of the way my family treats me, and I can easily connect with his feelings of resentment and frustration. I also like to interpret him as having unrecognized ADHD that compounds and complicates his interpersonal problems. ADHD sure as fuck doesn't excuse or justify attempted fratricide, but it certainly explains a lot about Illario's impulsive behavior, attention issues, and intense fear of rejection, doesn't it? I believe that this interpretation has stronger textual support than the contrary, with an ADHD reading of Illario being the best fit for the canonical facts available to us, while a non-ADHD reading of him fails to adequately explain his behavior patterns.

However, it's also the case that I am emotionally biased in favor of this reading. I personally enjoy interpreting Illario as struggling with ADHD symptoms, because I find it relatable and compelling. I know what it's like to misplace important documents and forget about major tasks until it's too late. I recognize the plight of the family fuckup whose relatives mistake symptoms for character flaws. You could easily argue that I'm simply projecting my own experiences onto the character here.

I don't believe that's the case, of course. I feel that I've accurately observed a similarity, not invented one. I think I've drawn a reasonable conclusion that is well-supported by textual evidence. But for all you know, my bias could be completely warping the way I interpret that evidence. That's how bias works, and that's what Shathann's final question warns us against. That's why it's important to cite your sources and explain your reasoning when you interpret a story. When you do, other people can look at the same evidence you referenced, then use it to decide for themselves whether or not they agree with your perspective.