#yuwiyaps

Again, Athy is misleading us, the audience, because she can be an unreliable narrator, especially in the early chapters (here if you want to read more)

Athy at this point, believes that all his neglect so far is because he doesn't love her or her mother, Diana. That his heart still lies with his former fiancée,

Which makes sense to her, because why else would he treat her so terribly, if he didn't love her mother and, by extension, herself?

but then athy collapses and sees the memory before she was born between them

So now it gets confusing, because clearly Claude had some sort of feelings for Diana. Athy realizes she wasn't a product of a one-night fling but he still clearly doesn't love her, even though he loved her mother, Diana.

She doesn't quite understand their relationship quite yet, but it's clear to her that Claude has some complications about Diana because of her birth even though he loved Diana before she got pregnant.

The only thing that is clear to her is that he doesn't love her right now. It's a firm belief she carries on with her all the way up to season 3, even though it's quite obvious to us by then that it wasn't true.

but here's the thing, Claude's reason for not being to love Athy was far more deeply rooted than just because Athy was the cause of Diana's death

Claude's trauma is about family and betrayal. Specifically, no one ever chose him.

Let's explore this by chronological order, first is Anastacius

In his childhood, his only family besides his sickly mother was Anastacius. Anastacius always cared for Claude in their childhood; in response to that, Claude relied on him a lot

Anastacius was the only person in his life who cared for him in his childhood.

The first betrayal was when Anastacius chose the throne over Claude.

Of course, we now know that Anastacius had his reasons and was led astray by Aeternitas. However, Claude doesn't find out about this until much later and lived with the belief that blood relations mean nothing in the royal family.

Then what about found family?

Penelope was the first person aside from Claude that he opened up to, but was later the second betrayal that he had to experience in his life because Penelope chose Anastacius over him.

In a way, she also chose the throne. She wanted to elevate her status and believed Anastacius was the right person for that. Do I think she could've chosen Claude if he were next in line for the crown? Yes, absolutely.

So that portrait in the office we see was never about longing or love. It was a reminder of his trauma and to not trust others again.

To Claude, the third "betrayal" was Diana.

After all that childhood trauma, he finally found love and could live a happy life again instead of being miserable prior to meeting Diana.

After all this, it reconstructs the scene earlier when Diana is dying from her pregnancy.

"Don't leave. Choose me, instead of the child that's eating at your life as we speak."

Diana's choice of giving birth to Athy and instead of choosing to live with him, which sounds insane, because she never chose Athy over Claude. This was always between her and Athy, Claude has nothing to do with this.

In her eyes, she loved Athy so much that she was willing to lay down her life for Athy to come into the world, but that's not how Claude sees it. Claude thinks this is all about him. Between him and unborn Athy and Athy ultimately won.

Which was the last straw that broke the camel's back because Claude was never anyone's first choice, he wasn't Penelope's and he wasn't his brother Anastacius' first choice either. They chose the throne over him; they both chose power, and when he finally thought he could let someone else in again, it was Diana, and in his eyes, he lost yet again, this time to Athy. He was so traumatized and scarred that he chose to turn to black magic and erase Diana from his memories, because to him it was easier to live that way.

So back to the question about Claude being a bad father. Was he a neglectful father? Unfortunately yes.

but this fandom doesn't really see it past that, the whole reason he couldn't see her was because he wasn't able to separate his trauma from Athy for the first 5 years of her life. He was struggling to separate his own trauma the whole time, and even after they met in season 1.

To me, this scene was the epitome of that struggle. He's still struggling with his trauma with the unhealthy urge to kill Athy, but he's starting to recognise her as an individual and loves her for it.

His trauma really severly worsened and cemented after Diana's death, she really helped him get past a lot of it, and I say this because of the scene where Claude finds out she's pregnant with Athy and he does this

god damn the pure joy when he finds out they were going to have a kid hurts me.

Like Diana single-handedly wiped away all that trauma he had with Anastacius, his experience with his own brother made him reject family ties from blood relationships.

But clearly, this is not the face someone would make if they were pessimistic about building a family.

To me, Claude indeed had his shortcomings about Athy in their childhood, but clearly not without reason. Should we really fault someone so much because of their trauma? I think we fail to recognise that Claude was incredibly broken and traumatised there's clearly something so much more tragic beneath his character than just an absent father

ok anyway that's it for this ted talk, I will probably make another one about how he overcomes it with his relationship with Athy!