#my favorite guy...

the second issue breaks into headcanon territory, so take it with a grain of salt. i include it in pretty much all my analysis of dante because it lines up very nicely with canon and, in my opinion, it's a pretty reasonable extrapolation of canon. maybe it's a theory then? who knows... disclaimer over... the headcanon is, essentially, that dante's gem contract, the one his ancestor made with huey way back when, concerns 'taking care of solaria' similiar to how quincy's contract is about protecting his tribe. obviously, dante's parents were pretty staunch on not protecting solaria while they were alive because they abhorred violence. this, in turn, violated the terms of dante's gem contract. as we see with rei, violating your gem contract makes you Sick as Hell (though rei has other stuff going on too. my sickly victorian child). so, we can reasonably attribute dante's childhood sickness to his gem contract and solaria being left undefended, especially since, after his parents died and dante took over solaria and started taking care of it, at some point, dante stopped being sick. this could also be attributed to him taking his second contract with the elemental spirit of fire... so, it's not air-tight. anyhow. actually getting to the second issue: if dante's parents didn't die, then they would continue ruling solaria and dante would continue to be sick. his parents would continue to coddle him. and solaria would probably just... be stuck in an endless conflict. dante would basically be stuck as a caged bird, something he would come to resent because, even before his parents died, he was someone who wanted to do something. (to be clear, the illness isn't really the issue. it's the utter lack of agencyyy)

he's such a fun character because of that. so much of what he does is rooted in a deep love for people. though he of course is devoted to advocating for tall-men being responsible due to growing up among long-lived races (it's neat hearing his bitterness about elves and dwarves seeing tall-men as children and therefore not worthy of respect in terms of sovereignty, something that Toshiro wouldn't fully get bc, if I recall right, the Eastern Archipelago has barely any long-lived races there), he does still care about people as a whole. and that of course extends to those he's around. I'm always rotating that daydream hour comic that establishes how he adjusts contact with his party depending on who it is. like I wouldn't have thought he'd give piggyback rides to Mickbell but the more I thought on it, the more I went "oh, well, this makes sense. he would." and he'd do it again!