post thebatman stress disorder

im not gonna sit here and pretend i dont know what it is, it's misogyny mixed with a healthy dose of emotional incest as well as the insistence that talia in particular is similar to his late wife and greatest love sora (who's not talia's mother if you're unaware) and contrasting nyssa with her own deceased mother in ways that glorify both dead women while simultaneously vilifying his daughters and their personal desires; desires which boil down to not wanting to serve him as eternally loyal sidekicks with the sole responsibility of giving him grandsons and/or marrying men to give him an heir.

looking at the batman chronicles #8, the al ghul story is one where ra's tasks talia with killing bruce. the issue starts off with talia's monologue which reads, "you are dead, bruce. i hold your lifeless body close to me as i dream of the love we will never share. i feel your cold skin and know i will never have you back. and it is i, talia, who have been your executioner. my mission is accomplished. the batman is no more. i think back to how all this came to be. how it came to be that i... became your killer."

flashing back to earlier, before talia was tasked with killing bruce, we see that she'd previously been in charge of ratting out and getting rid of another one of ra's enemies, whose only crime had been wanting freedom. talia cries and shows open remorse for what she'd done, which in and of itself ra's took as a betrayal and violation of his hold over her, while talia herself was thinking of the fact that betrayals and violations end in death for seemingly everyone but her.

despite her disdain for her father's way of life, she recognizes within him weakness and fear and loneliness by being near immortal while those he cares about are not.

in her internal dialogue she notes that her love is the only thing keeping ra's going which is why she feels such a deep sense of loyalty to him, that she "exists to end his torment". in a dream sequence we see her picturing her father as both a demon of hell and a merciful caretaker, one laughing at her for killing the man she loves, and the other allowing her to fall out of the window of his himalayan stronghold into the glowing golden light and into freedom, the same way he disposed of the body of the man she'd killed for him previously

long story (not rlly) short, towards the end of this segment, bruce is rendered unconscious at which point talia pulls a gun on him, meaning to finish him off as her father had instructed, but she instead decides and winds up leaving bruce on the ground alone with the intent to go back to her father and tell him she not only couldn't but refused to kill the man she loves. "you have my love and devotion, but you will not have my soul. you will not have my dreams."

the segment finishes off with this page where ra's has a short internal monologue which you can read below

wow! that's a completely normal thing to say about your daughter 💀 like i said before, ra's goes from immediately comparing talia to his wife who he loves and never got over the death of, to talking about how she's his to own, "body and soul", and how he'll never let her be free because he relies on her too much. without talia not only would he lose the opportunity to have an heir by marriage and later through a grandson, but his entire will to live is hinged upon knowing she loves him. without talia's devotion he'd probably just let himself die or something. at this point in the al ghul's publication history (1997) talia is an only child i believe, nyssa came a few years later and was retconned into ra's history through death and the maidens. she was his daughter before talia came along, and someone he betrayed severely. while i have plenty of criticisms of death and the maidens, specifically surrounding ra's's characterization, one of the traits they kept consistent was the fact that he's extremely abnormal about the women in his life, both in terms of his wives/mothers of his kids as well as his daughters themselves.

looking at death and the maidens #1 we introduce nyssa during a time of grief and frustration, losing her great-grandson and last living descendant. a few pages later, she meets her father in a cafe where ra's is asking her with help to defeat the batman because his efforts to close up the lazarus pits is killing him. with nyssa being her father's #1 hater she ends up rejecting his offer, which for whatever reason prompts him to say her mother would find her refusal "base and vile". nyssa bites him for that one, can't blame her.

in the next issue, we see the beginnings of nyssa and talia's friendship which is all an elaborate plan for nyssa to kidnap and torture talia to prove a point to both talia and ra's that his actions have severe consequences, including his enemies coming for the only person he seems to love. talia and nyssa are 100% getting their own post at some point

issue 3 features an extensive flashback to 1809 when nyssa was her father's right hand, following him around north africa. here are these pages

i think im gonna leave a further analysis of the rest of isssue #3 through #9 for a specific post on talia's kidnapping at nyssa's hands and their relationship development

there's plenty to say here but the common theme i noticed between the way ra's treats nyssa and talia is the fact that they both have incredibly specific expectations placed on them to both be their father's supporter and right hand, and simultaneously be okay with being deemed unworthy of being a direct heir and living under the expectation of marriage and childbearing, not for their own fulfillment but for his own.

in moment in both books he claims them as women he loves, people worthy of a mutual kind of gift where the supposed benefit is ra's having a male heir to mold and shape to his liking. referring to talia as his "body and soul" and claiming nyssa is the only one at that time who could provide him with an heir because regardless of any potential future wives or a harem of wives she's the only woman he could love. again, incredibly normal things to say to/about your daughters.

i think one of the defining traits in al ghul comics is the fact that they do love each other in a lot of ways, but it's always overshadowed or ruined or otherwise not enough in the face of ra's al ghul's plans for control, of both the world and his loved ones.

they're his daughters but they're also his possessions, things he needs for his ideal, regardless of their own personal desires. there's something particularly emotionally incestuous about the way he compares them to his deceased lovers, not that there's anything wrong with fondly recognizing traits of loved ones in other loved ones, but sora died before he was Like That and he left nyssa's mother at some point when nyssa wasn't born or was a baby. he has these fond visions of them and projects it onto his daughters, who have the audacity to have thoughts and feelings of their own.