I am no stranger to the inherent dehumanising factor of being a copy of someone else, created with one purpose and one purpose only: either free/resurrect the original (where possible) or carry on their work. Your fate, your choices, your entire personhood are predetermined (predestined even) long before you're "born". Shit, you don't even have the honour of a birth, an infancy, a becoming. Right off the bat you're crested knowing exactly what you are and having no say about any of it.
(Then again, universe 38B is an anomaly. It's an aberration. Perhaps its clone is, too.)
All you are is a copy of that person. You're his memories, his trauma, his heartbreak, his purpose and his vengeance. You are his progeny, his extension and his servant. It is easy to resent that. I wonder if Alpha-1 ever did. I wonder if he was even capable of resenting the original.
I wonder if, on some sick level, he loved him. "You made me. You gave me life. Through your death, I live. Through your pain, I live. Through your anger, I live. They are mine, too, and they define me just like they define you. Now wake up, my other self. You have been asleep for far too long. You have been cold for far too long. Look at you shivering, weak as a newborn fawn. Come here. Let me change that. You gave me life. Let me repay the favour."
He says that he is Zargothrax. And he IS, in the same way a photocopy of a document contains all the same information and traits as the original. He's just as vengeful, just as selfish, just as petty, just as vain and proud and self-absorbed. Just as determined to chase hatred and revenge because he cannot imagine doing anything else. He was never hurt by the choices Dundax made, never suffered that trauma, and yet he feels that pain and injustice and hatred for the McFifes anyway. It is not his pain, and yet it is a core part of his very being, because it is a core part of Zargothrax's.
(I wonder if that old love, that old hurt, that old betrayal is present, too. I wonder if he looks at Ralathor and feels it lodge itself between his ribs even though he has never met the man. They have never spoken, never touched, and yet it all writhes under his skin.)
(I wonder if he would grow fascinated with him. Perhaps obsessed. Not something inherited from the original Zargothrax but something original, planted in that soil. Something entirely his own, like picking up a coin dropped by the original and admiring the way it shines in his hand.)
("I didn't inherit this. I chose this. This feeling, this thrill scuttling down my back when I see you, it's my own. How strange. How very new. How very interesting. Perhaps even intoxicating.")
I do wonder about the Zargy hivemind. How the hell do they all know 1992 prime died? Zarg can get freed from the ice and put it together that his clone did it, but how the hell did he scheme across eons and multiple dimensions? Do they all share memories? Do they feel whenever one of them dies? Or is the bastard just kinda making it up as he goes along and only SAYS that he planned it all? "Oh yeah future me died, so my clone is freeing me right now at this current moment in time. Not in the future. Not in the past. Not stopping me from getting frozen in the first place. Yes, muahahaha, just as planned."
(Just as planned. Just as foretold. Just as prophesied. Just as written in destiny. Did Alpha-1 ever have a choice to do anything else? Yes, okay, he wanted to free his original self and that's very nice, but did he ever have a single shred of a choice to do, to be otherwise?)
And yeah. The narrative calls them "double wizard" = one person twice, or "twin wizards/sorcerous twins" = two distinct individuals who happen to look alike. But Zargy calls Alpha-1 his progeny. His progeny has SERVED him well. There is something unintentionally tragic about this line, isn't there? You're right.
And really we don't know what "conjoin ourselves at the brain" even fucking MEANS. After they do it, Angus is still "fighting the sorcerous twins" so there's still an implication of individuality - especially because Zarg still uses "we" when talking about taking Angus's life... But then he uses "I" and "me" when liberating his armies and turning them into undead machines. Come to think of it, I didn't think to assume that Alpha-1 was somehow absorbed/assimilated into the original, but it wouldn't be an unreasonable reading. Maybe their minds were spliced into one? Maybe they somehow both lost themselves in this union and became something else entirely (Zargothrax squared???)
And yeah... The Starlords roll up and kaboom him, and they would've kaboomed him no matter what, because his very existence is a flaw in the grand cosmic plan of the universe and the three weapons would've clashed, anyway, due to the prophecy.
There are so many possible ways to spin their dynamic (depending on how much of a freak you are), but it's interesting how so many things in the world of Gloryhammer circle back to the concept of destiny, and of choice - or rather, its lack.
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