i like to think that neither alexei nor his father hate ilya, i think resentment and control can just make it look like that. i do think ilya's father thought irina was a weak, soft woman and that it reflected badly on him that she was prone to depression and he disliked how she parented ilya bc it was making him soft. i think he was harsher on ilya after she died to prevent him turning out like her and hindering his potential- and i think simultaneously turned a blind eye to alexei bc he didn't have the same potential as ilya. which creates more resentment between them bc its bad enough that ilya was his mother's favorite but he's also his father's? i think the dynamics between all of them worsen when his father gets the dementia diagnosis bc this proud, government man now has to rely on his sons to take care of him and provide for him and it also stings alexei that his brother is the one providing for him and his family but only monetarily. he's not actually there. he gets to leave.
all we’ve got from his dad is that he didn’t marry until he was in his 40s, that he chooses much younger wives, that he was some kind of police, and (based on the medals) that he was in the military. so i always figured he was probably at war in the 70s and 80s, and didn’t return to civilian life until he was in his 40s and aged out of that, and then comes back maladjusted and traumatized and struggles to integrate, hence choosing a younger wife who is reliant on him and who doesn’t have the life experience or really the life choices available to her to refuse him.
there’s this trauma cycle that happens again and again across families that gets passed down and it goes like this:
do violence -> hate yourself and be convinced you’re toxic poison -> be convinced people are going to leave you, because you deserve it -> resent them preemptively for leaving you and act out -> feel shame for acting out -> shame transmutes to blame, how dare you make me feel this way, it’s your fault i’m acting like this in the first place -> more explosive violence -> hate yourself and be convinced you’re toxic poison
i don’t think ilya’s dad hates him. i think his father feels terrible shame when he looks at him, because grigori drove irina to suicide with his abuse, and ilya is a reminder of that (and i decided ilya looks a lot like irina). and that shame becomes resentment and blame and fear and mostly violence, because that’s often how we react to shame, we experience it as an external threat to neutralize.
i DO think alexei hates ilya. i think ilya was their mother’s favorite because ilya doesn’t look like grigori, and alexei is the first born, alexei is the thing that meant irina was trapped. and i think irina resented alexei so hard. that’s her husband’s boy, he can have that one. the next one the second son, that one is HERS.
so alexei grows up with a father who hates him for being like him (because their father hates himself), and a mother who hates him for being like his father. and beautiful golden baby ilya is so talented and so special and so convinced their mother is an angel and their father is a demon. and when their mother kills herself maybe alexei thinks finally ilya’s going to see what i see, that she’s terrible too, that she decided who to pick and love and who was worth mothering. what a grief and what a satisfaction that ilya is finally also left behind. but no, ilya is convinced it’s their father’s fault, because their mother is perfect, because of course she is. she loved ILYA.
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