#absolute personal posting

1. he’s an only child, the entire future of his lineage rests upon him and the privileges that come along with it must be maintained or destroyed by him

2. he’s been making waves in his family since he first cast his spell, even after they had him practicing for hours on end presumably for days if not longer on end

by breaking the simple expectation of necromancy and death alone, he is inherently muddling the ravenwood name and reputation before he is old enough to truly understand what he’s doing, and he’s urged by his father to keep this a secret

this is distressing to all those elder than him in the family in what’s already a pretty high control environment, which is another thing that seems to be often forgotten or misunderstood (easy to do if you’ve never experienced it) but it’s worth noting that if he had to kill 500 woodland creatures to earn a break

3. we have a brief mention of his grandmother with powers of divination who had no sense of boundaries, meaning he’s frequently faced literal psychic influence from family members from a very young age of unknown qualities; so possibly everything he had ever experienced was accessible to and freely viewed by another person, though we don’t know if this grandmother is still alive or not i guess

it’s sort of implied via bit that this is normal for this world but i can’t help but think of the applications that could have in being shaped into the person a powerful family needs you to be

4. personally i’d consider being in an environment like that for so long a type of arrested development in that he was never able to develop into an individual: he was the thrall of those he bore the name of in any way they could make him, and i’m sure his access to anything other than that was as limited as they could make it so that he wouldn’t, perhaps, run off and join a death game

maybe some of the endless pressure was finally removed when he had an heir, just enough that he could finally look around and think he’s repaid his debt to his family and could finally show the world unapologetically the person he is

there’s a new baby to mold, after all, one they might think could be a better fit for their roles

it’s no wonder he thought something was wrong with him