#pro darkling

I saw a post asking why the women of the Grishaverse seem underrated and why fandom spends so much more time discussing male characters. I think the answer is much simpler than people want it to be.

Characters such as Alina, Inej, or Zoya are largely written to secure audience approval. Both readers and viewers are encouraged to sympathize with them, support them, and ultimately see them as heroes. The narrative rarely challenges that position in any meaningful way. Even when these characters make mistakes, the story almost always guides the audience back toward the same conclusion. They are good, admirable, and deserve support. The problem is that approval is not the same thing as fascination.

After three years in this fandom, I still struggle to find anything about Alina that invites deeper analysis. I see her less like a force driving the story and more like a protagonist being carried through it. Zoya is essentially the embodiment of toxic male traits in female form, yet for some reason many younger girls choose to celebrate them as empowerment, even though they would condemn those very same traits in a male character. Inej is not a character. She is a product, carefully designed for teenage girls to project themselves onto another badass YA heroine. Strip away that fantasy and there is remarkably little left to analyze. Even among their own fans, discussions about these characters are often short, repetitive, built around headcanons, aesthetics and ships. Once the story is over, very little remains to unpack because the audience has already arrived exactly where the narrative wanted them to be.

Darkling is the complete opposite. Whether you love him or hate him, he offers endless angles of analysis. I can still write about him without running out of things to say. His politics, his morality, his relationship with Alina, his view of Grisha persecution, his methods, his loneliness, his vision for Ravka, and even the question of whether history ultimately proved him right remain open to interpretation. One of the most interesting things about him ist that he was never presented as a character the audience was supposed to accept unquestioningly. He was presented as a solution that some still do not want to accept.

I can find more posts about Aleksander from antis than about their own favorite characters. Even when they make edits, write analyses, or create content about Alina or Zoya, the conversation often circles back to him. Their relationship with him, their opposition to him, their reaction to him. It is remarkably difficult to find discussions that treat these characters as entirely self-sufficient individuals rather than extensions of a conflict that ultimately revolves around Aleksander. For characters supposedly overlooked by fandom, they seem strangely dependent on him to generate engagement.

So the issue is not that fandom overlooks the women. The issue is that these female products (not characters) are designed to make you like them and root for them without asking questions, while others are written with enough depth, ambiguity, and complexity to sustain years of discussion. One gives the audience a conclusion. The other gives them an argument. And people will always return to the argument.

Thought it would be a good time to highlight some of the famous retcons done by LB over the decade or so.

1) The book was titled 'Gathering Dark' with Darklina endgame and we all know what happened to it. FYI the original titles of the trilogy were Part 1- Gathering Dark, Part 2- The Shadow Fold and part 3- The Darkest Light. ( @rotteddesires - Thank you for this.)

2) Alina was 18 or older in the trilogy. She deliberarely aged her down in the duology to make sure the readers think Aleksander as some monster.

3) Genya was supposed to be a special power. A Tailor was supposed to be rare and happens once in a few centuries. She was gifted to the vain queen for the very same reason. But lo and behold, Nikolai needed to be masked so now even heartrenders could do it. And by RoW an amateur like Hanne with no training or prior experience was able to change herself to the prince's exact liking in less than 5 minutes.

4) Throughout the trilogy it was power corrupts then in the duology power is fine. In fact power becomes a show of strength. Aleksander expanded the Fold to engulf the docks as a display of power and to warn off Ravka and Grisha enemies. He was killed for it and yet Zoya's temu dragon transformation was done to accomplish the very same thing but is praised for it.

5) Zoya was a white girl in the trilogy but she was turned into suli in the duology and a copy paste of Dannerys's backstory was attached to her as well. Because yea! Diversity points.

6) The most famous retcon is creating a narrative that the Grisha genocide as a consequence of Akeksander's power. Although through DitW we know the druskelle existed long before Aleksander was even born.

7) The popular 'Zoya is Aleksander's victim' done in the duology when we know Aleksander hardly paid any attention to her in the trilogy.

8) The whole ordeal with the amplifiers. The lore of the amplifiers kept switching as plot demanded it.

9) Genya's whole character was switched up. She was a warrior fully aware of her position and then she was retconned into this scared victim just because Nikolai needed a scape goat to get the throne and LB needed to villainze Aleksander some more. ( @taragreenfield - thank you for this point)

10) Rewriting the whole character arcs from the trilogy into Aleksander's fault in the duology was another peak in her retconning skills.

The point is that isn't her first stint. She has done this before for years. But when we on the Darkling side questioned this the loud part of the fandom, predominantly consisting of the Crows belittled and bullied many of my friends. We were called names for supporting our beloved character and for questioning the writer's integrity. But now that the veil is lifting and their Queen is revealed to be a money hungry capitalist, they are crying and throwing tanturms. Now they want sympathy for their plight. Sorry you may never get any. This is who she has always been and it was your side of the fandom that let her grow unchecked.