#ferael

Silvina: Oh wow, my childhood innocence! Thank you for finding this

Ferael: My will to live! I haven't seen this in 10 years!

Kelthur: I knew I lost that potential somewhere!

Nara: Mental stability, my old friend!

Sure!! I hope you liked it!

@hoddentobby​ Yeah he’s definitely questioning whether or not he is still handsome.. and yet, there are so many ways to look at this!

“Am I not handsome enough for you anymore?”

This quote is just SO fascinating to me, there’s different ways to interpret it, because... we don’t know what his tone is! Is he sulking? Hurt? Inquisitive? Mocking? Worried? Apathetic? Personally, I like to imagine something more on the hurt/sad/upset side because I feel like it humanizes him more, and Ferael isn’t given much emotion to his character at all in his story. 

A lot is up for interpretation, and I love the playground that is Ferael’s inner world. He’s a mysterious character, that one.

But going off an interpretation that assumes he’s upset in some way, (the rest of this post is going to be assuming this) it’s fascinating, because for his appearance, he was brainwashed/mind-controlled by the enchantress, then murdered, and almost enslaved. (When you think about the implications about what the enchantress would have used him for, what she would have done to him had her spells remained in place... it’s extremely disturbing. It’s very naive to think she would have just kept him around as eye candy.)

...So he hides half of his face now - very understandable, given the traumatic experiences he’s had. And yet, he seems insecure that he is no longer handsome? Why is it so important for him that he is handsome? This doesn’t bode well for his concept of self-worth.

But maybe it’s not so surprising. Looking back at his story, it seems all of the positive attention he’d gotten in the past was very shallow, mostly focused on his looks and maybe his talents as an archer, and had nothing to do with his personality and him as an overall person. That’s bound to mess with your head, and what you think is valuable about yourself.

So, of course, regarding his appearance and being Graveborn and all, there’s definitely some wear and tear, considering he is a reanimated dead body. Apparently that’s really getting to him. 

(For the record, I personally don’t think it detracts from his attractiveness, it honestly just makes him look cooler if anything. Yes, Ferael, you are more than handsome enough for me.)

hhhhhhhhhh alright, headcanon time: Ferael has a lot of conflicting feelings about being Graveborn. There’s bonuses to being undead but there’s a lot of downsides too. It’s nice to be more powerful, and he’ll embrace that, but at the end of the day he didn’t choose this, and there’s a lot of resentment there. Some days he feels like he’s falling apart - literally, sometimes- and he hates it.

When he’s fighting he feels great, he feels powerful and the bow and arrow bring him a familiarity and comfort. But at any other time, he mostly just feels cursed. Becoming Graveborn has given him a lot of insecurities and self-hatred.

...Also, wasn’t sure where to put this, but I have a headcanon that Ferael actually, over time, becomes more in tune with emotion and compassion after becoming Graveborn. My reason for this? Well..

The Graveborn are quite demonized, and it’s often portrayed that the people who become Graveborn become “worse”. Personally I like to see it as just a change - it can be good or bad or just different (though, you could say it’s bad in the sense that it’s definitely traumatic most of the time, given that to become a Graveborn, you have to, well, die).

One thing’s for sure: Death changes you. But does it have to be a bad change?