#dex rants

According to Nintendo, this is meant to tell the "canonical" story of what happened before Tears of the Kingdom. Okay, fine. So why does Sonia have narration talking about how Ganondorf will stop at nothing to take over Hyrule? Why are there so many shots of her fighting hoards of enemies? If it's "canonical," then I don't think I need to remind anyone of this, but she dies! Early! Her death kicks off the war!!!

I feel very confident this will be another Age of Calamity, but I just cannot fathom why they're advertising it as canonical in the first place. If they do follow canon, she'd be a playable character for maybe the first two or three missions? A few more if they stretch it?

So this could be something that only bothers me, but I recall—a long while ago—seeing an interview or commentary of some sort where Pacat claimed they wanted to write Vere in particular as a culture without religion. I think it was partly so there would then be no religious prohibition on same sex relations, but this is where we run into an issue: Vere has an explicitly religious prohibition on premarital heterosexual sexual relations. It might not seem like it initially since the framework for Vere's religious institutions isn't Christian in nature, but it absolutely does exist and I find it difficult to wrap my head around this discrepancy.

To be clear, when I say Vere is religious, I am referring to two things: the social stigma towards bastards, and Laurent's own explanation for why bastards are so hated. The first on its own wouldn't be good evidence that Vere has some form of religion, so most of this falls on the second:

“Bastards curse the line, and sour the milk, ruin the crops, and drag the sun out of the sky” (Prince’s Gambit, Chapter 10).

I'll concede that this could be exaggeration on Laurent's part (and I think the very end certainly is) but this is interesting. In Book 1, where the focus is on Vere's nobility, the implication seems to be that bastards are undesirable because they confuse matters of succession. And this ties in well with Kastor, whose actions are a direct result of the fact that he was groomed for kingship from a young age, only to have that part of his identity ripped away. Prince's Gambit, however, indicates that there are other justifications (if not reasons) for this hatred; namely, superstitious ones.

The consensus (at least as Laurent phrases it) is that bastards cause the world to fall out of its natural order. By virtue of existing, they throw everything out of alignment and curse those around them. This is probably an extension of the basic fear of complicating inheritance, but that doesn't prohibit this manifestation of that fear from being religious in nature.

It reminds me of the Greek concept of miasma: actions against the proper order of society ripple out and cause further damage, and the people who commit them must be shunned in order to avoid being cursed themselves. This is distinct from offending a god; an action that causes miasma is evil on its own, even if it was ordered by the gods or fated (Oedipus and Orestes are good examples if you like mythic evidence). The act of bastardry in Vere is believed to cause a host of other problems for everyone else in the country, and this ties into their opinion of Kastor; from their perspective, he's a perfect example of the consequences. His birth ends up harming his immediate family, their friends, their servants, and eventually the entire country. The reader can distinguish the actual cause—Kastor was raised with the promise of absolute power, like Damen, and his worldview was so warped by it that when he lost it, he became violent—but the people of Vere cannot. I would even equate their reaction to that of conservatives who blame gay rights for natural disasters; the only difference is that Christians believe the laws of the universe being 'broken' were set down by a superior being. Belief, however, is a relatively recent characteristic of religion, and shouldn't be used as the only indicator of whether or not an action is 'religious.' If that sounds confusing, my best analogy is agnosticism: the belief that there is 'something' out there giving order to the world that nevertheless is undefined. The absence of a specifically named deity does not necessarily mean the absence of practices intended to maintain some kind of higher order—and that was the basis of most religions until the belief-focused model of Christianity, which emphasizes salvation through faith rather than action.

So, yes: if Veretians stygmatize bastards because they fear that their normalization would bring curses, plagues, and the deterioration of their state, then I would consider them to have some concept of religion. They have a specific, identifiable practice intended to reinforce a specific state of the world that is not too dissimilar from, say, documented practices in ancient Athens to combat miasma. I would also include Laurent's punishment of Govart here as evidence; the two worst offenses that allow Laurent to punish him are the implication of incest, and the fact that he was having sex with a woman. Damen even notes that "there was a ripple of reaction" the moment the woman was brought out, from men who otherwise seem to despise Laurent (Prince's Gambit, Chapter 3). Damen seems to believe Laurent's justification for a fight here is 'petty' (his words, not mine), but given he misjudges everything leading up to this fight based on his own assumptions of Laurent's abilities, I think it's safe to assume he's also missing something cultural here. Govart feels comfortable flouting Veretian taboos because he knows he has the backing of the Regent, who has managed to manipulate the Veretian court into looking past his own transgressions. Yet even Govart tries to hide his most transgressive acts (heterosexual sex) from the rest of the army. And it's telling that even he doesn't go as far as vaginal sex. Laurent has social permission to whoop Govart's ass specifically because his poor captainship is now tied to a form of sexual perversion; only by expelling him can Laurent ensure the success of his expedition.

And in case it isn't clear, I'm not arguing that Laurent specifically claimed Govart had broken a religious rule—I'm arguing that in order for Govart's sexual intercourse with a woman to have such an impact on whether or not he was fit to be captain, it has to be viewed in the same framework as Laurent's later quote about plagues and curses. We are meant, based on Laurent and Damen's later discussion about how Laurent paid the woman, to assume that it is this act specifically that Laurent knew would give him permission—coupled with Govart's second sexual taboo, which is the implication of royal incest.

So, to summarize: Vere does have some form of religion in that it has practices stemming from superstition. It may not be organized, or necessarily involve belief in a higher being, but it is widespread and it can be used to provide legal justification for a punishment.

Idk. I guess the tl;dr here is that it's fine to do whatever in fandom, but can we please quit it with the combattive attitude towards scholarship? It's really not relevant to whatever you're doing on Tumblr.