#eomir

Oh well *cough* 🐑 <--- 🐴

...

Setting: AU, Rohan, when they were younger and Denethor sent his boys to visit Rohan. There they met with Éomer. And he seemed to be sticking around with his little lamb. It's the king's order, he claimed.

This will mostly be a dive into Eomir as a character as there's not heaps of lore for him, mostly just information about him as a person, but let's just get into why he's one of my fav villains!

The short answer is that he's not some poor, manipulated, misunderstood little guy, he doesn't have a sad backstory that absolves him of his crimes, he just sucks, and the game tells us as much, both upfront and through diary entries found in the environment and the way the thorned faction (which he leads) in general are described.

I will let this speak for itself

Eomir has always sucked. It's stated by Dahnie and Arden a few times that they fought alongside Eomir and that's how all three became sages, but throughout chapter 2 and 3 you often get the sense that no one who knows him personally really likes him, he's just tolerated due to the past. He's respected by those who don't truly know him because with his leadership the thorned guards defended the dark forest against the hypofiends.

He is one of the characters I'd say is irredeemable, not just because he killed people/allowed an entire village to die, but because he used his status to exert control in order for it to happen.

Eomir has a need for control, he makes this clear throughout his dialogue, but again, his controlling nature is also shown to us before we even meet him in the form of lyca's description of the thorned guards (see image 1 in this post) and the way he uses the thorned guards to unilaterally execute the exclusion edict despite no one else wanting it, and how he manufactures situations in order to "justify" this (the thorned guards trying to purposely injure and kidnap Damian in order to blame it on the refugees)

He also boasts his perceived superiority over Dahnie, Arden, and even Eironn, repeatedly putting them down as he claims to be the one true leader, you see him get more aggressive with this whenever he feels threatened.

A few examples in his dialogue:

Back to the ghost village, yes he actually did allow those villagers to die to the corruption. That's why no one knew about the corruption in that village, and that was also likely his motivation. He had to start somewhere in order for the corruption to take root, he always planned for those villagers to die so that no one could be warned, and so his reputation remained intact, he used his status as a sage to achieve this.

Eironn says he chose to turn a blind eye, I personally believe that to be untrue, I feel that's his way of coping, trying to perceive it as him not paying attention rather than him planning their deaths from the start. They were sacrificed, as Lorsan puts it, it was intentional.

Throughout chapters 2 and 3 it's clear he's never really been a pleasant or nice person, the traits mentioned above are not new, but some of them are amplified by the situation. I love the fact he doesn't have a sad backstory that tries to justify why he's like this, I love the fact he just. Sucks. It's refreshing to have an irredeemable villain that's not super satan! He was not manipulated into doing any of this, he did it because he wanted to, he was already the kind of person who would do this kinda stuff and that's why Illucia targeted him, because she didn't have to manipulate him into doing anything, he was easy pickings, a willing subject, a power hungry wannabe dictator.

I hope you enjoyed my yap sesh, thank you for coming <3

Also bonus screenshots of Arden just being like "yeah slay that bitch to get the life force back bbg, dw it'll go into the egg" just cause