#both nel and alear throughout the xenologue speak to rafal asserting that he's loved/has loved ones who care about him/the past is the past

[rafent]

♡ — How would your muse define love? Do they believe in soulmates? Do they believe this definition of love is achievable?

♡ ; how would your muse define love? do they believe in soulmates? do they believe this definition of love is achievable?

'How would your muse define love'. Great question. Messed up answer.

Rafal loved Nil and put Nil first but he himself was Nil's second choice. Nel loved "Nil" and by that logic did not love Rafal. Sombron certainly did not love Rafal. His siblings likely ostracized and humiliated him when they weren't trying to kill him, so those relationships were also loveless. Knowing the various formative experiences that shaped his relationship with love, it's very reasonable for Rafal to have a troubled outlook on it.

Reflecting that idea is the fact that Rafal (as Nil) ironically utilizes a lot of like/love and attachment based manipulation, an area of focus that subconsciously belies what he's lacked since his early life.

Nil (to Alear): That's right, Divine One. I quite like you.

Nil (to Nel, about Alear): I am off to sink my teeth into your darling Divine Dragon.

Nil (to Alear, about Nel): If you value her life, you will meet me on the island that once floated among the clouds.

He flippantly uses the word 'like' in order to ingratiate himself with the Divine One. Nel's affection for their Divine One is viciously paraded within earshot to inflame her sense of helplessness. Reversely, he fashions a hostage of Nel to extort the present-day Divine One into doing as he desires. This trivializing and profane treatment of people's emotions evidences his inability to relate to them, particularly in the realm of love and attachment.

Rafal stomps on the bonds wielded between individuals seeing them only as opportunities to manipulate them. "Nil" who has never known love at an age where he could articulate it, or never felt that he was loved for his true self as a young adult, therefore doesn't elevate it as any sacred concept. Instead it's clear that love becomes his tool. He acknowledges that it exists and consigns it to the brutal methods that he pleases, seeing any semblance of it between others as a way to achieve his desired results.

Post-xenologue, Rafal's conceptualization of love changes itself for the better.

Alear, vs. Fell Nil: I'm not here for the world. I'm here for the people in it. I'm here because someone wished for your salvation, even if it meant the world would end. Don't you see? There are people who love you! If I have to defeat you to make that clear, I will!

Nel: That is all in the past. Your friends love you. Think of our time at Lythos Castle. All of us together, as a family.

People fought at great risk to let him know that he's loved, so now it's something that he knows exists in concrete relativity to him. Now, if you ask him what love is, he can give you examples. What he feels for Nel, what he felt for Nil; that's love. The sheer extents that he went to for both of those people is also love, though he'd be able to articulate that less clearly because he knows love more by theory and less by practice. His insular upbringing and the difficulty with expressing his emotions or leaving himself vulnerable means he can only define a surface-level idea of it.

As for his belief in soulmates? Soulmates have adjacency to the role of a Fell Child's twin, someone destined to be at your side (albeit to a point) and to share a profound level of closeness offered by no-one else. The soulmates conceptualized by humans and 'the other half' conceptualized by dragons would be comparable in his eyes and he'd offer up Nel's name by example.

#◜ ₊ — 𝓡 ˚ ₊ 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 ╱ askbox. #gentlenekomata #(dreamy sigh) the troubled ideation of love as interpreted by love deficient characters #thank you for sending !! #both nel and alear throughout the xenologue speak to rafal asserting that he's loved/has loved ones who care about him/the past is the past #so love in general is a honestly a pretty big element when it comes to rafal #it's just not something he's Good at