Has anybody else noticed that Konrad Curze+Night Lords (yeah yeah I'm almost done with this hyperfixation, just finished the omnibus, moving onto Fabius Bile) does a great job of encapsulating a narcissist family system?
Like Curze gets called a psychopath a lot, but he's more in line with vulnerable narcissism. Intense martyr/victim complex, full of self-loathing, incapable of taking accountability/addicted to deflecting blame, pathologically self-centered, constant need for validation, etc.
And it's like he's set up his own lil narc family system with his legion. Guys like Sevatar, Talos (and Shang to a lesser extent) are his Golden Children whereas the rest of the legion are the Scapegoats; Curze heaps attention and praise on Sev/Talos because they feed him validation on demand, show him unquestioning loyalty, etc. whereas Curze regards the Scapegoated members of the legion with contempt because they inconveniently reflect his negative qualities back to him and/or they don't feed him supply by idealizing him.
And, in typical narc parent fashion, Curze cannot handle the idea that he had anything to do with actively fostering this behavior in his Scapegoated children, instead settling on "Well they're just like this, they were always bad"
Moreover, Sevatar and Talos are two different kinds of Golden Children:
-Sevatar spends decades occupying the Ultimate Golden Child role by essentially running Curze's own legion for him, regulating Curze's emotions for him, feeding him supply on demand by putting Curze on a pedestal, never questioning his deeply flawed rhetoric or orders, etc. You see Sevatar basking in this favoritism in the short story "Massacre" when he's boasting to Shang about how Curze favors him most because he understands Curze's vision and he's willing to do what others can't, echoing back Curze's own compliments. He's gulping down the kool-aid.
But then he hits a wall later on in "Prince of Crows", where he's beginning to see through Curze's bullshit and is becoming increasingly burned out by his Primarch being a bottomless pit of need.
Sev is going nuts keeping the legion together as Curze lies in a coma, and then jeopardizes his own health and safety by triggering his latent psyker abilities in an effort to help Curze, but in the process he challenges Curze's worldview one time. Wuh oh, can't do that.
It also illustrates Sev's abiding belief that everything is going to fall apart without his father--he needs Curze--while oblivious to the fact that it couldn't be further from the truth; he's doing great as a commander on his own, if anything everything is better now that Curze is absent.
And Curze confirms this by coming out of the coma, immediately sabotaging Sevatar's work, demanding Sev drop everything to help Curze carry out his own self-absorbed personal vendetta, and then abandoning Sev when the aforementioned latent psyker abilities cause Sev to stroke tf out mid-battle and get captured.
And, as he sits in his cell, you see him briefly hope that Curze will come save him before promptly going "...lol that's not gonna happen". Sev blew up his brain to help his father, but Curze can't be fucked to break his son out of space jail.
Then when other imprisoned Night Lords trash talk Curze for being an idiot, Sev doesn't come to his defense. He doesn't join in, but his reluctance to defend Curze for the first time speaks volumes. He's poured everything he's had into his shitty parent for scraps of praise and he's finally realizing "This is not worth it, I'm exhausted, I think I'm done". And ADB has said we're only 1/3rd through Sev's character arc, meaning Sev does escape at some point but chooses not to return to Curze. AKA he goes No Contact with his shitty dad.
-Meanwhile Talos is the Golden Child who never stops drinking the kool-aid and suffers greatly for it. He's convinced that if he keeps clinging to Curze's vision, his bullshit rhetoric, his flimsy justifications, that eventually it'll pay off by providing his life with meaning and purpose. He has to, because the second he confronts the idea that Curze was never Justice Incarnate--or even knew what the fuck he was doing--he'll have to accept that he gave up any semblence of personal identity and principles just to make a deeply shitty asshole happy...for nothing.
And he starts spinning the fuck out because of this, he becomes more erratic and deluded and self-destructive. In other words, he starts becoming his awful dad.
So Sevatar is the Golden Child who wises up and decides to stop the cycle, whereas Talos is the Golden Child who perpetuates the cycle because he can't let go of the idealized perception he has of his abusive father.
Meanwhile you have the Scapegoats doing what Scapegoats do best: standing on the sidelines and saying "Are you insane, our dad's a fucking asshole, he's always been a fucking asshole, how the hell haven't you figured this out by now? C'mon, you're smarter than that"
EDIT TO ADD (SORRY): you also get a neat example of how a Golden Child and Scapegoat experience two very different versions of the same parent, effectively creating vastly different parallel realities within the same household.
Talos speaks about Curze with admiration or, at worst, a sort of reluctant-yet-still-sympathetic recognition of Curze's mental deterioration. His comrades have to manually force him to take off the rose tinted glasses and, even still, he's like "Okay yeah dad wasn't doing great at the end BUT--"
Meanwhile you have Cyrion, who was not a favorite, snapping at Uzas for licking his teeth because it dredges up memories of Curze filing his teeth to points, then compulsively licking them until he'd cut his tongue and sit there bleeding all over himself.
Cyrion's recollection carries this undertone of disgust and horror; he does not appreciate being reminded of Curze, to the point that it feels like he's being low-key triggered.
Moreover, you have Talos getting angry over his brothers' inaction in the aftermath of Curze's death, like "Why am I the only Good Son who did Right By Dad". Talos never considers that the rest of the legion isn't motivated to avenge Curze because Curze was awful to them. Like, yeah, no shit you wanted to avenge him, he wasn't a complete and utter bastard to you.
