the thing abt ardbert is how fucking pissed off he is for all of 3.4 and the beginning of shb ok i know a lot of people typically downplay it by virtue of making him the wol's Ghost Bestie but like. this is a man who literally had to kill his friends to sever their souls from their bodies to travel to another world to HOPEFULLY try and save their world after dooming it even though they thought they were saving it and being heroes. this is a guy who was spat in the face by god and then when all his friends were able to finally make things right and granted eternal rest he was left to wander as a shade by himself with no one to talk to for one hundred years, watching as the world he died to save curses his and his friends' names and continues to succumb to the horrors they wrought on the world (the horrors they deliberately thought they were saving the world From) and then boom the warrior of light shows up and has the GALL to think that they can just fix it. the same way ardbert and his friends thought he could fix it. but this is the only person he could talk to for 100 years. so he does. and that jaded hostile personality he holds in the beginning is so interesting to me and what makes him so cool, as he interacts with the wol believing himself to be their jaded, more experienced counterpart--the dead counterpart--who doesn't want them to go down the path he did... only for them to of course succeed where he did not and remind him why he believed in the first place. he's nice dont get me wrong but hes also been stabbed in the back at literally every turn. he's jaded. he's pissed. he's tired. he wants to believe. he's been punished for believing. he still wants to be a hero despite it all, even though god punishes him for it. yeah
