#tdp analysis

i'm not even being facetious this is an official title

the fucking. the fucking double kiss. i cannot believe this is real.

he's holding her by the shoulder right yes

and then she moves away just slightly and he immediately goes to take her chin

TO PULL HER BACK IN 😭😭 SHUT THE FUCK UP

and as if this all couldn't get anymore disgusting he has the NERVE to tuck her hair behind her ear--WHICH MIND YOU, doesn't do ANYTHING like he didn't even catch her actual hair HE LITERALLY JUST WANTED TO TOUCH HER EAR AND THEN HE GOES EXTRA SLOW AROUND ITS TIP IF ANYONE NEEDS ME ILL BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN.

i don't think rayla even needs wings cuz with that look in her eyes she looks like she would just levitate

i don't even have anything to say here just look at them

her lifting her head to look at him and then BURYING it back into his shoulder and squeezing her eyes even tighter 😭 oh she loves him she loves him she loves him

their ability to go from genuine peak romance, to cavity-inducing sweetness, to the dumbest mfs on the planet in a 5 second span is a truly beautiful thing

ok it's a good thing sneezles intervened because fucking look at that we would've NEVER made it to the nexus

his reaction time is astounding

lips perpetually puckered. bros just 😗

Upon rewatching this, I think he disappeared in this moment because he could no longer hold his composure.

That's the body language of someone who is about to collapse.

A single, fleeting moment of honesty from someone who tailors his every action, his every word, to be inscrutable.

He could have stayed, he could have manipulated them with his tears. But I don't think he wanted to stick around. To hear them deliberate whether or not his pain was justification enough to free him. He could see it on their faces, in Claudia's tears, in Terry's concern and doubt. There was conflict. He just needed to be alone, lest he be reduced to begging.

Why are the ethical questions always "Is it ethical to steal bread to feedy family?" and never "is it ethical to hoard bread while families are starving?"

And to those saying "it's the dark mages's fault", I'd say the fault for bombing, deporting and starving primarily lies with the ones bombing, deporting and starving, but to each their own I guess.

The showrunners themselves, in early interviews and panels, said outright that humanity’s exile from Xadia was meant to echo the Trail of Tears, one of the most brutal and well-documented genocides in North American history. The elves were meant to be wrong, blinded by their own sense of purity, committing an atrocity they would later regret. That was the premise on which the show’s moral universe was built.

This early commentary about the humans’ exile being inspired by the Trail of Tears seems to have disappeared along with the original Twitch streams where it was mentioned (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/313015763?t=15m34s). What remains is the impression that the series discreetly rewrote its own foundation.

Maybe it's in a "Fire and Blood" type of narration : scattered, incomplete, partial, forcing the reader to be active,to compare the sources like a historian would. The show tried to take advantage of its limited runtime and its "obligation" to expand on bonus material to create this scattered narration (quite badly so, for they kept putting important character meetings and development there instead of the actual show, but that's a whole other can of worms). But the biais has been so consistently against humans I can't help but discerning intention here. The show was most likely meant as an ecology metaphor, but an American show (state built on a giant Natives cemetery) spending most of its runtime ignoring or vilifying the victims of ethnic cleansing, especially during a recent intensification of the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, gives a sour taste in the mouth.

The revelation that, after their exile, humans supposedly fell under the rule of dark mages who drained the land and caused famine makes sense, because there is no real reason one half of a continent is just barren. The ressource disparity between west and west was there all the way back in s1 : one vial of moon berry juice fed three people for days but Duren has been suffering from famine for seven years.

The problem isn't that it revises Xadia's history because it doesn't: problem is, it revises guilt.

Starvation, displacement, and moral decay, the direct results of oppression, are reinterpreted as proof that the oppressed deserved their fate. It’s the same reasoning used to blame the Irish for the potato famine or Indigenous peoples for the Trail of Tears: punish them, starve them, drive them from their homes, then claim that their violence justifies the violence you put them through.

In reality, the Trail of Tears wasn’t just about being sent to poorer lands, the U.S. government dammed rivers, burned fields, and slaughtered bison to ensure starvation, breaking every treaty it signed. It was calculated deprivation.

The Moon-shadow elves already destroyed their own Moon Nexus, sabotaging lands humans were forcibly displaced on, and sending dragons (Pyrrha) and assassins (the moon path) beyond borders they created, borders to which humans could never agree to, because of the evident power imbalance.

Originally, dark magic could have represented the Promethan metaphor as cost of survival : humans forced to moral compromises to live in a hostile world. Now, that ambiguity is gone. The elves’ cruelty becomes foresight, their prejudice is actually wisdom, and the moral of the story shifts from "fear and hatred breed tragedy"  to *humans corrupt everything they touch". The supposed "nuance" has turned into a racial hierarchy where elves and dragons embody purity while humanity stands for greed. It’s not a parable about coexistence anymore; it’s suspiciously sounding like an apology for segregation.

That's why I feel like the new lore isn’t there to deepen the mythos and universe, it’s there to absolve Xadia. The writers probably read all our Reddit threads on r/thedragonprince or r/characterrants, and now seem desperate to reassure us that the elves were right to expulse humans.

But the framing of it doesn't even make sense : Xadians are made completely incompetent. The Trail of Tears was to kill as many natives as possible while making them entirely dependent on the white's ressources, trade, education to survive. It was assimilation in its darkest form. But TDP's Trail of Tears isn't that. To stop humans from abusing magic, Xadia somehow hand them an entire hemisphere to abuse, then morally condemn them for doing exactly that.

No one ever calls Xadia out for forcing humans to these extremities... apart from Claudia, the villain, who apparently slaughters Elf children in TDK.

When your villain has too many points you don't want to address, make sure they slaughter kittens.

And isn't recent in TDP. This biais starts actually pretty early on, insidious and pervasive.

Rayla mocks humans as greedy warmongers but humans never confront that she was trained as a child assassin, or that Rex Igneous hoards mountains of gold. Queen Keesha, in her gold crown, on her golden throne, in her golden palace, calls humans parasites, and the scene obligingly cuts to Viren revealing that he is indeed a parasite. Zubeia can order Ezran’s death and still never be called out on it, while Viren, though a criminal, still dies saving humanity, and is yet erased. When Soren kills a dragon that burned a town for no reason, he’s treated as the monster and the dragon as the poor victim. The soldiers who died protecting Harrow (for no reason, since he wanted to die anyway, but no one brings that up apart from Viren) are disposable. But Rayla has an entire subplot dedicated to apologize for surviving to her squad of elves assassins, who were set to murder a human child.

The first arc, despite upholding the necessity of empathy above compromise, defense and survival, ends with convienenty dehumanized humans killed in thousands. It told the audience that human suffering is not tragedy but justice. It normalized the idea that extermination can be redemptive if committed by the right species.

And I knows these were invading soldiers. But the show's whole controlling idea is that empathy ought to be above every other consideration including necessity. Ezran agonized over the lives of these exact soldiers four episodes ago. The Zym quest was about avoiding violent deaths. The heroes didn't just fail in their peace quest : they had to perpetuate the war themselves. By burning people alive. And it's never treated as a tragedy.

Sarai asks about a titan if it thinks, feels or has à family, but the show demands us to cheer watching humans getting burned.

Once you accept that visual grammar (the dragons’ fire as cleansing light, the human army as corrupt contagion) the season 7 framing feels inevitable. Of course the writers would decide that humans poisoned the land themselves; they had already staged a scene where killing them was presented as beautiful. Even Sarai’s refusal to slay a magical golem to end a famine reiterates the hierarchy: magic is sacred, humans disposable. She's worried that the golem might think and feel and have a family, but doesn't worry about her starving people, nor does the show about the s3 transformed humans who still show fear, ability to plan and to surrender, and who were confirmed to still be themselves at the end of s6. Ezran just tries to burn his own people without hesition or conflict, and he's the moral center of the story.

"But dark magic is evil". Well, I think people who groom children into murdering other children don't have any right to judge the use of organic matter to save the kids dying of lung cancer. But let's delve deeper in the symbolism.

It's not suffering breeds compromise. It represents the moral danger of treating life as a resource. It’s an allegory for exploitation under all its negative aspects (war (Viren transforming his soldiers), drug abuse (Viren gets high harvesting Zym, him and Claudia repeatedly destroy their own body over the years in the name of service), capitalism (Viren transforming people in coins), environmental destruction (the Mages wars), poaching (poor, poor red dragon who was burning a town?!) and sexual violence (Viren literally exploiting his wife's body through force without her consent), where others are reduced to means instead of ends. And that's the worse sin you can possibly commit according to The Dragon Prince.

"Viren exploited his wife's body! He harvested her tears against her consent to save their dying kid! Monster! "

"Poor dragon was just defending itself by burning these civilians for no reason"

The only ethical use of dark magic is self-inflicted death: using only one’s own life as fuel, as Viren does in his final act, rather than exploiting others alongside yourself. His use of his wife’s tears to save Soren represents rape; but his willingness to die for others aligns with the show’s ethics. Dark magic is only good when you kill yourself, meaning you can't exploit yourself or anyone else anymore. The series upholds a cosmic morality in which nature’s “balance” has absolute authority. Killing a creature for human's survival is portrayed as worse than just letting thousands starve, and Moonshadow assassins eat meat, and can kill children to restore nature's balance, because human defiance of nature is treated as hubris. Thus, even though humans are the oppressed species, the narrative still blames them for using dark magic; the only means they have to survive.

The biais also runs in the vuctim-blaming Dialogue. Ezran’s claim that “humans always blame everyone but themselves” in a comic is presented as moral clarity, not the internalized shame of a child raised in a conquered culture. Callum says he's sorry for what humans did. Ezran also said "Everything Avizandum did was to protect Xadia" (including killing Ezran's mother who was preventing a famine Avizandum caused). Callum says "Humans, dragons, elves, we all made mistakes", but I wouldn't call ethnic cleansing a mistake. Rayla calls the passage Viren torn through the lava border a scar, without acknowledging that it was the dragons who tore the land apart with this lava border to trap humanity on a wasteland, because the show never does either. Zubeia’s attempted regicide is never brought up. Runaan’s assassination of Harrow, the only time a Xadian acknowledges their own wrong, is actually all right, because Harrow turned out to have survived this whole time, so Xadia actually has nothing to be forgiven for.

Every ethical burden slides off Xadia’s shoulders onto humanity’s back.

And don't forget how this Mages Wars narrative was introduced.

When Ezran, usually the moral center, finally shows anger (not cruelty, just fear and grief) the series immediately aestheticizes it as corruption. Where he's sitting from there? Well, his kingdom has just been burned by a dragon; he's watched his people die despite spending the last two years upholding peace, and now he just learned that his brother and closest friend freed the assassin who killed his father. But the camera codes his moment of pretty justified wrath as a moral fall: low angles, heavy shadows, the small propaganda figurine of a monstrous elf in his hand. The human king is framed like a tyrant for daring to think humanity should protect itself. The cute baby dragon, Zym, recoils in fear, so that the audience, too, learns to flinch at the sight of human self-preservation. Yeah, that's why Viren was evil; there's no middle ground.

And then Aanya arrives to neutralize the moment with the history lesson, telling Ezran the history lesson: that humans, once given freedom, destroyed their own lands, enslaved themselves to dark mages, and brought famine and ruin upon their people. The message is just unmistakable : Ezran’s instinct to resist, to defend humanity, stems from the same selfishness that supposedly doomed his ancestors. His pain is rewritten as inherited sin.

So when season 7 declares that the famine was humans’ own doing, it’s not an isolated misstep; it’s the logical end of this cumulative bias. The show promised moral complexity but clearly mirrors the rhetoric of empire: the colonized are miserable because of who they are, and the oppressors are merciful for enforcing their exile.

 “See? Our ethnic cleansing was right; they ruined the world just like we said they would.” 

In Cameron's Avatar, the Na’vi are pure because they’re the "noble savages" being invaded, their moral clarity exposes human greed with no nuance at all. In Princess Mononoke, quoted as an inspiration by TDP's show runners, Ashitaka seeks to “see with eyes unclouded by hate,” recognizing both sides’ (nature and humans) reasons, flaws and pain. TDP twists both lessons. Its representative of nature act as colonizers yet remain morally superior, exiling defenseless humans; and the show frames it as balance and demands peace without ever wondering why people are scared of their oppressors. Humanity’s desperation becomes proof of corruption, not the result of oppression.  Avatar condemned it,  Mononoke sought to reconcile it, The Dragon Prince justifies it.

The resource scarcity makes sense. But it’s framed as humanity’s moral failure instead of Xadia’s cruelty. And that's a problem.

It's easy to understand that TDP was actually never meant to be about war and oppression and nuance, but merely an ecology metaphor about humans being the real monsters, greedy parasites, disrupting nature just because they can. But then we wonder what was the point of putting in such nuance as "humans are put through ethnic cleansing and burnings of civilians" in the first place.

Runaan says Avizandum's death happens four moons before the assassination of King Harrow.

Some of Katolis is still snow-covered during season 1.

Callum is 14, and his birthday is July 15th. Ezran was said to be 10 that same year, with his birthday being March 19th.

In Season 4, however, Ezran says that his father died when he was nine, not 10.

Callum also says he is 14 and 5/6ths in season 1, which means it's about two months before his birthday.

Callum and Ezran's respective claims cannot both be true. Two months before July is April, which would mean Ezran's birthday is already past by the time Harrow died if Callum's fractions are correct, making him 10 as the story would happen in May.

However! The snow in parts of Katolis does lend itself to the idea of Season 1 being set in early spring.

The weather we see in Xadia surrounding Avizandum's death is also fairly pleasant, no snow, but also not an abundance of flowers like one would expect from spring. It's hard to say what time of year that happened in, but a late fall could work - it would even lend to Viren's urgency, as if they wait too long not only could Harrow's temper cool, but the weather itself could prove dangerous to travel.

It happened long ago, when humans had only just learned to hold fire in their hands without burning. They nurtured their precious primal flames secretly—in the dark of night, beneath shadows and shrouds—as cultivating its glow drew the eyes and ire of monsters. Eventually, for the audacity of their fire, they were hunted, and—though they looked to the stars for salvation—the stars, too, looked down upon them with disdain. Humanity had been given something it was never meant to have. And so there came a calamity.

--Ripples

I've been thinking about why the stars and the Cosmic Order would turn their backs on and refuse to watch over Xadia. If they could see the future - why is there nothing they're willing or able to do to stop it?

But if the human's unchecked use of magic would attract the attention of a certain type of monsters -

Speculation that Aaravos was hoping to attract a star devourer dragon to destroy Xadia is an idea that's been bouncing around the fandom for a while.

And this would explain why the other Startouch elves on the Cosmic Council would stay out of the way; why they would turn their backs and avert their eyes; why they wouldn't want to look past a certain point via their timeblind powers either.

"...the beginning of the end. The long slow spiral to chaos." They won't look past the cosmic-prophecy-event-horizon because there's a star devourer dragon sitting just beyond.

They're afraid of being driven mad.

"...I can feel my very being shattering from the inside out!"

Aaravos gleefully goading the humans on; taunting the Cosmic Council, "are you watching?"

I have not seen the stars in centuries. But when I see them again—when the stars are forced to look upon me, their dark brother—they will know how I have waited. And when everything they have built lies shattered, I will savor their fall from the sky.

--Patience

In lieu of a conclusion paragraph I'm gonna leave y'all with a piece of my terrible humor:

Really hammers in the main theme, that fear mongering and hatred won't solve anything. Only leads to more violence and misunderstanding each other.

J'étais en train de penser au deuil dans tdp et je suis rendue compte d'une chose. Le deuil de Callum s'oppose à celui d'Aaravos en revanche celui d'Ezran fait parallèle à celui d'Aaravos. Déjà contrairement à Aaravos qui a perdu un seul membre de sa famille. Callum en a perdu trois : d'abord son père biologique, Damian à cause de sa maladie respiratoire. Puis Sarai qu'il a perdu étant plus jeune et enfin Harrow qu'il a crû perdre le jour où les elfes de la lune sont venus à Katolis. Et dans l'acte 1, il l'ignorait jusqu'à ce qu'il l'apprenne de la bouche de Claudia et a été incapable de le dire à Ezran ne sachant pas comment l'aborder.

Callum était triste, car ce n'est pas qu'un parent qu'il a perdu. C'était le troisième parent qu'il perdait. Et cette fois ci, c'était son beau père avec qui il était distant car il ne se voyait pas comme son vrai fils contrairement à Ezran. Mais la lettre lui a permit de comprendre qu'Harrow l'aimait comme son propre fils et qu'il se voyait à travers lui. Cette lettre lui a permit de commencer à faire son deuil. Quand Ezran apprend que son père est mort, il est triste mais aussi en colère. Mais en parlant avec Claudia, il a enfin comprit ce qu'il devait faire et se sentait mieux. Toutefois à cause de leur voyage dans l'acte 1, les deux frangins n'ont pas vraiment eu le temps de faire correctement leur deuil. C'est lors du discours d'Ezran que les frangins expriment leur deuil pour Harrow.

En revanche, ce qui est intéressant c'est qu'on voit qu'Ezran a intériorisé certains de ses sentiments vis à vis de son deuil. Dans l'histoire courte, on le voit écrasé une flèche contenant la lettre annonçant la réussite de l'assassinat de son père. Et cette colère et cette haine explose quand il voit Runaan, le responsable de la mort d'Harrow. Tout comme Aaravos qui après être revenu sur Xadia, s'est juré de se venger dans l'ordre cosmique. En revanche ce qui différence Ezran à d'Aaravos, c'est qu'il avait quelqu'un : et cette personne était son grand frère. Dans la s7, Callum empêche son petit frère de détruire tout ce qu'il a prôné et construit jusqu'à maintenant : à savoir la paix. Lui expliquant même qu'il a pardonné à Zubeia car la situation était compliqué. Ils ont fait des erreurs mais qu'ils n'avaient pas à les continuer. Ici, Callum agit comme la conscience d'Ezran, il ne lui dit pas de le pardonner. Seulement il lui montre que la situation avec Runaan est bien plus complexe qu'il ne le pense. Et honnêtement si Rayla avait attendu peut être qu'Ezran aurait agit différemment. Mais ça on le saura jamais.

Quand Ezran fait face à Aaravos et parle avec lui, le fait qu'il a perdu sa chère fille et a "continué son œuvre" se prétendant comme "l'allié de l'humanité" mais ne voyant ce monde qu'à travers la haine. Sa colère envers l'ordre cosmique fait parallèle à la colère et à la haine qu'a ressenti Ezran envers Runaan. Mais contrairement à Aaravos, Ezran décide d'être miséricordieux envers Runaan lui disant qu'un jour, il arrivera à le pardonner. Tout comme il choisit de pardonner à son grand frère car il lui a manqué et a besoin de lui.

L'autre différence entre les deuils des frangins contrairement à celui d'Aaravos. C'est que les deux frangins n'étaient pas seuls pour faire face à leurs deuils respectifs, ils étaient entourés et soutenus par leurs proches. Aaravos en revanche, n'avait pas personne pendant toutes ces années. Il était seule pleurant la mort de sa fille si il avait quelqu'un, un ami peut être, peut être qu'il aurait pu faire son deuil et enfin aller de l'avant concernant la mort de Leola. Mais ça, on ne le saura jamais.

I was thinking about grief in TDP and I realized something. Callum’s grief contrasts with Aaravos’s, whereas Ezran’s parallels Aaravos’s. Firstly, unlike Aaravos, who lost only one family member. Callum lost three: first his biological father, Damian, due to his respiratory illness. Then Sarai, whom he lost when he was younger, and finally Harrow, whom he thought he’d lost the day the moon elves came to Katolis. And in Act 1, he didn’t know until he heard it from Claudia and was unable to tell Ezran, not knowing how to bring it up.

Callum was sad, because it wasn’t just a parent he had lost. It was the third parent he had lost. And this time, it was his stepfather, with whom he had been distant because he didn’t see himself as his real son, unlike Ezran. But the letter helped him understand that Harrow loved him like his own son and saw himself in him. That letter allowed him to begin to grieve. When Ezran learns that his father has died, he is sad but also angry. But after talking with Claudia, he finally understood what he needed to do and felt better. However, because of their journey in Act 1, the two brothers didn’t really have time to properly grieve. It is during Ezran’s speech that the brothers express their grief for Harrow.