Pelleamena and Priamhark, the poor souls. It's easy to overlook their own suffering because of what their actions did to Harrow, but I can't help but pity them too.
For one, they might've wanted a family for themselves beyond religion and politics. Conversely, they might not have wanted anything to do with raising children. Either way, the fact that they struggled with infertility is still heartbreaking all on its own, especially when considering both of them possessed necromantic ability. To intimately witness the Thalergy bloom of successful conception could be such a profound thing for a couple to experience, and the greatest heartbreak to then see it turn to potent Thanergy and physical pain, especially if they wanted children, which I'm inclined to believe that they did, maybe one time long ago before the idea was so tainted:
If it rings true that they could sense the start and end of each life they conceived, it would be very pronounced considering this aspect of Thanergy:
While we don't have a count of how many times, we do know they'd tried and failed so often for so long that it drove them to draw up a completely experimental theorem and risk the entire future of their house on it. That is monumental desperation, grief, anger, and pain all wrapped into one, regardless of if the the goal to conceive was personal or religious/political.
The fact that genocide worked better to create life than the two of them alone is an awful thing to have hanging over their heads. For Pelleamena to then hold that child in her body; to carry it to term, each kick and tumble within her womb becoming a constant reminder of their failures and one sickening success; the feeling would've been burned permanently into uncomfortable, traumatic memory.
Their budding family was forever haunted by the two-hundered she and Priam slaughtered, and then to see the byproduct of their most shameful act grow into a powerful and skilled magician? Every time they laid eyes on Harrow would serve as a reminder of the past and a representation of all their misdeeds. This child, this living shrine for death that looked to them for comfort and warmth would receive little because there was little to spare. Her parents had suffered and out of that suffering, exacerbated the pain, drawing it further and further downward until there was nothing left but exhaustion, guilt, and resentment.
I like to think they didn't want to be so cold towards Harrow, but how could they not when she was a constant reaffirmation and proof of the genocide and certain house-death they committed? How could they not after witnessing the conception and loss of so many pregnancies, knowing that this one persisted past the fragile first trimester only because of wicked means?
Of course they hesitated to touch her; to hold her; to care for her when her eyes were so black with the death that created her. She is their legacy and their shame and their desperation and as parents, they were forced to care about the thing that came from the darkest parts of their hearts and hands regardless of who she was as an individual. They couldn't see past what she was to them and while this parental cruelty is another failure on their behalf, they are still humans riddled with trauma. Their souls, even while after passing into the River, are probably still tortured by the two-hundered lives that cling to them; their takers of life and parents in death.
