My first playthrough doing Pale Elf Quest, it felt so weird how Astarion kept calling Szarr's Palace "home". He repeats that a few times (notably when talking to the werewolf).
The human servants adress Astarion as "master".
He also says Cazador "insisted" that the spawn call each other brother and sister. That they were a family.
It's not strange when you think about it, but i hadn't expected that.
I think it actualy adds another layer of suffering. Not only Astarion went through everything that he went through... How had it felt, to have to keep up the appearances?
It must have impacted the relationship between the spawn too. How much is it Cazador's pretend play, how much is it for real?
It must have been so hard not to go absolutly insane.
200 hundred years is so much time. Even though he knew, he had to know, how ridiculous it was to call Cazador family, if you repeat a lie enough times, it sticks to some degree. If he had something of a proper family before that, then changing that to Cazador and calling it a family must have been awful. If he didn't, if he was alone, how did it feel that the first "family" he had was Cazador?
Astarion must have been so alone, on so many levels. His "targets", the most human contact he got, he hated. His siblings, Cazador pinned them against each other, even if Astarion considered them family (and we know he kinda did), he had to keep distance, never be vulnerable, never trust them, always look out for himself first.