Recently I've been making my way through more modern Batman comics, and as of right now I'm at the near end of Dick Batman and the return of Bruce cos apparently he wasn't dead, just traveling through time (?). (I read the Red Robin run like two years ago, and I'm still confused on that part, ngl.) And while I've been enjoying it, especially because Damian is there, and he's my favorite Robin, but I still have a gripe with his introduction, which I'm sure almost every Talia fan has.
This character assassination of a panel:
And, like besides the multiple problems with this that everyone has already stated in the past, this is also infuriating as a writer and someone who read Son of the Demon.
There is so much potential lost because Morrison didn't read that comic run and only wrote Damian's backstory with it half (probably less than half, honestly) remembered.
The thought of Talia, who is always caught between the love she holds for her father and the man she loves, choosing her child over either of them. And, in a way, choosing herself first for the first time too. So she fakes a miscarriage, conceals her pregnancy from her father and those under him for the months it takes for Damian to be born, and then leaves him in an orphanage somewhere in the US to be adopted into a family where he will grow up where ninjas are nothing more than cool concepts and the streets aren't crawling with crime. He will not become her, stuck between two men and their perspective wars, never able to choose and always pulled apart. She chooses to break that cycle by giving up her baby, because she loves him enough to let him go, leaving him with nothing but a necklace Bruce gifted her. (I also like to think she would leave the name she chose for him on a piece of paper besides his birthdate, though she would never know if whoever chose him decide to keep it or not.)
And so Talia keeps going on with her life afterword. Her thoughts still wonder to her child, her Damian, but the sting of giving him up is always lightened by the thought of him growing up happy and safe. Living a normal life with parent's who will love him, who will put him first, and who will grow up with the maximum combat experience being in classes with other children. That will never lead to any serious injuries.
But, you say, this would completely change Damian as a character, you say. His backstory is completely different, you proclaim. How do we get the tiny assassin child we know and love!
And to that I bring you the whole, Talia wasn't in Damian's life for years thing. But in this version of the story, it was because Talia didn't know he was even in the league. Because, surprise surprise, Ra's somehow found out about what Talia did, and he goes and collects his grandson without her knowledge. He locates what family adopted Damian and either he sends a group of ninjas or he goes himself, but either way Damian's adoptive parent's are killed and he get's snatched. (This concept alone would be interesting enough to explore, Damian becoming another unsolved case of missing child (baby in his case, because he would have been younger than 4 in my mind) and the what could have been's from all that) Ra's has Damian trained, with Talia becoming this goal for him to keep pushing himself. Ra's being all like, "If you get good enough, I'll let you meet your mom!" sort of deal, like how Damian got to meet Bruce. And Talia is completely blindsided when her father introduces Damian to her, this small child with a mixture of her and her beloveds features hardened by training and with blood on his hands far younger than she had been the first time she took a life. Talia spent years comforting herself with the though of her son growing up as a civilian, with the choice she made, only to find out that her father had nulled that choice in the most horrible way possible.
Talia does her best with Damian after that. She has complicated feeling's about it of course, but she still does her best by him as someone in her circumstances. She train's him, teaches him how to cope with what he does even if it is framed in a way where he see's it as a way to be better at being an assassin. I also like to think Damian look's up to her the same way he did Batman thanks to all the stories Ra's told (Guy's insane, but he does love his daughter, though not enough to change himself to be better for her.) Eventually, she get's an excuse to take Damian to his father, that while not her favorite choice (that would have been Ra's never finding Damian and her son staying with the nice couple who adopted him which Ra's got killed) is still much better than the League of Assasins.
Damian's introduction stays much the same this way, except we also get the added angst of Bruce grappling with the mixed feeling he has about his tiny assassin child who he believed died before he ever got to hold him, who he has been grieving every would have been due date, who looks so much like Talia and his dead mother (this is just a head canon, I read someone's take that Damian takes after the woman in both sides of his family, and it stuck with me. So the bit's of Bruce in Damian are actually the bits of Martha in Bruce.), who he has lost so much time with, and who is actively causing problems and being a little shit. To say their relationship is complicated from the start would be putting it lightly.
And all this is not getting into how Damian would feel about everything.
Anyway, this is all to say Talia Al Ghul deserves the world and better writers, dammit DC! (Also, please hire me *bats eyelashes*.) Also also, if you can't tell, I love complicated parent-child relationships.
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