following on from my post about aerion & romantic love, here's my thoughts on familial & platonic love ;
much like the way he perceives romantic feelings & intimacy, aspd shapes how he views his own family and friends too.
he doesn't show care or interest in a conventional way, he's not so much the affectionate type. his love language, if he truly has one at all, is acts of service & "gift giving." a newly forged blade, an item of clothing that compliments your body type or complexion, armour to withstand any range of combat, someone who insults you or has been working the rumour mill suddenly misplaces their tongue. his approach is more logic driven than emotion, providing solutions & material benefit over words of affirmation or interest.
in his own family, his interest varies, but for the most part is only limited to his mother, dyanna, his father, maekar, his uncle baelor and his older brother, daeron. come the births of his younger siblings, when the attention shifts from him to them, his view of them sours and they become nuisances, leeches that steal from what should otherwise be offered to him as the youngest. prior to his younger siblings, he'd get the bulk of the attention and favour, which helped foster an attachment to those around him. younger siblings take, but don't give, and aerion has no interest in giving to them.
his perception runs on a combination of value and whether or not the other staves off his boredom. chronic boredom is what leads to him acting impulsively or with a higher rate of cruelty. of course, there's no term for aspd in westeros, so there's no real way to put boundaries in place and navigate a knowledgeable dynamic with aerion unless they truly study his behaviour and habits.
friendship needs to be transactional, or stimulating, and you're going to get more party companion approval points if you both don't expect him to change / be better, or if you don't react negatively to his more violent tendencies. if you're either neutral or positive towards his line of thinking, there's a higher chance of a 👥️+ sims interaction.
aerion has one main child in canon (+ bastards), and his first instinct is to call the boy maegor, after maegor the cruel. a tyrannical & vicious man, a cursed name by far. he puts the weight of that name on his own child for his own sick amusement. fatherhood holds no interest or appeal, even if the child carries his blood. whether they're a bastard or from an official unification, aerion's inability to connect on an emotional level makes him fairly useless with young kids. that's as far as his line of thinking goes in a general sense, separate from unique & individual dynamics.
which leads me to developed dynamics. his bond with the child's other parent will play the biggest influence. if this is a relationship he's committed himself to, if his partner knows who and what he is, then there will be open communication. "I don't care for it. If this is what you want, so be it. But I will never choose them over you." If it's sacrificing his partner for an heir, then the babe will never survive. it doesn't matter how his partner feels about it, his selfishness will always reign supreme.
if he's attached to his partner, if they're the limited thing that makes him feel something, then he takes the logical approach with their child(ren). they need food, milk, water, his hands must be gentle. a wound must be wiped and bandaged. it's a mechanical routine, and one he does only for the benefit of his lover. he can't emotionally empathise with the feelings of his lover if he causes harm, but he logically knows what actions will cause them upset, so he avoids them. a fine and precarious line.
in the rarest of circumstances, he may see a reflection of himself in his child, and in turn that brings a sense of "this is a piece of me, an attachment of myself, and therefore I'll tend to it as such." viewing his child as an extension of himself, so the child gets what he believes himself to deserve. there's also the rare sense that he could so easily hurt this tiny thing, the vulnerability of them and the way they rely on his care / interest in them, it scratches that itch in his brain, his ego, to be needed and depended on by something that would die so easily if he let it. because he holds power over them. it awakens a desire to protect, defend, to foster that dependence on him and the potential idiolisation a child might have towards their father. both of these avenues are the closest form of paternal "love" aerion can extend.
