I've been thinking about Sarafan Raziel. Because it grings my gears that the fandom mischaracterizes him so.
In the fandom, everyone calls him a prick and an asshole, but I think it would be way more coherent to his character if he were an extremely kind person, who still dirtied his hands in the name of righteousness.
Imagine a human Raziel who is well liked by his peers, who is good with children and kind to women, and who leads the sarafan with a strong will because he has a sense of purpose. Not over status and power, but because he genuinely believes the cause he is part of. Imagine that noble person, that paragon of humanity, that charmed even his wraith self for a while.
And then imagine this person commiting unspeakable acts of genocide in the name of faith. Blinded by righteous rage, he doesn't pity his victims because he was led to believe they were a plague, and doesn't even mind the monster he becomes in the process, because in his eyes, everything he does is for the good of the world and that absolves him. And that would make Wraith Raziel even the more horrified. What do you mean this gentleman he looked up to can turn into that brutal murderer? Capable of wiping out an entire culture?
And it shows that humans can be monsters, and that monsters can be human. That he's not a cackling evil maniac like Moebius, but instead a sweet man. That even war criminals have human lives and go back home to their families at the end of the day.
And everything Sarafan Raziel did against vampires, Vampire Raziel did tenfold against humans over the course of the thousand years that he was Kain's lieutenant. Raziel as a vampire enslaved humans like cattle and turned them into playthings out of boredom. I don't see the fandom criticizing Vampire Raziel nearly as much.
And here's the thing. Once he turned into a Wraith, Raziel had a process of unlearning his idea that humanity were lesser beings. He started fighting to protect them just as much as vampires, because they're also part of the world of Nosgoth, a world he wishes to see restored.
You know, if Wraith Raziel was capable of unlearning a thousand years of his vampire self enslaving humans, and start seeing them as equals and worthy of saving, and later on even as noble beings, I like to think the same would be possible for Sarafan Raziel too. Because even if he lost his memories, his personality stays the same across his lives. I he only had more information. He just never got the chance to.
Or, he did, when he became his new self.
I like to think that, in the end, when he was struck with the Soul Reaver and killed by his wraith self, the memories from the future came rushing through, and he had a glimpse of his entire future history. That would probably have changed his views. But alas, he died too quickly to be able to process it.
