#mostly i just felt sorry for him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

margindoodles2407 · 11 months

Text

In Defense of King Rhoam

okay so before I start this I just want to say, before you go dissing me in the comments just hear me out. I know that some people absolutely despise Rhoam, and I'm not trying to change their minds because I completely understand why. I just thought I'd offer my perspective on his character and why I don't hate him as much as other people do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will defend King Rhoam to my dying breath.

Not his actions. Of course not. The way he treated Zelda was a way no parent should ever treat his or her teenage daughter. But even though we focus so much on Zelda's pain- as rightly we should- we tend to forget about her father's.

As far as we, the players, know, Zelda was an only child. Unless she was a miracle child conceived in old age, that means that Rhoam and his wife were married probably at most two years before she was born. Therefore, if she was six when her mother died, then Rhoam and the Queen had been married probably at most eight years. They were newlyweds. And, let us also not forget that the Calamity's return was prophesied very shortly after Zelda's birth.

Imagine being the head of a huge country, home to six major races and thousands of people. Imagine that your wife has just had a baby girl and that whole country celebrates. Imagine that, on that occasion that's supposed to be so joyous, an evil so old that everything about it but its name has been all but forgotten is said to return soon.

Imagine, then, that that wife whom you love throws herself and her sacred power into the work she must fulfill, because if she doesn't, those six races and all those thousands of people could die in a heartbeat.

Imagine that, one day, she suddenly dies.

Imagine that your six-year-old daughter doesn't even cry.

(We know why Zelda doesn't cry. We can't forget that Rhoam doesn't.)

Rhoam's in grief. He mourns his wife, and as everyone knows, when you're in grief you become blind to the pain of others because yours is so intense. But he also knows that his kingdom is still in danger, and that his wife must have passed her sacred power onto their daughter.

Zelda didn't cry. But she's six years old. She doesn't know how to tell him why. So he jumps to conclusions, and assumes that she's just mature- because she's SIX, and she doesn't know how to express her emotions- and so he sends her away to start her training.

Zelda tries, and she tries, and we KNOW that she tries; we know she tries her hardest, we know that she passes out in the freezing water of the Sacred Springs because she's trying so hard and nothing's happening. But we also need to remember that, because of this, she's away from home- where Rhoam is- all the time. Rhoam only gets to see her when she's at the Castle- which isn't often- and when she's there she wants to do the things she loves and not worry about her destiny. She's sixteen. She she still doesn't tell Rhoam how she's feeling, and since he can't see her trying her hardest, he once again jumps to conclusions and assumes that that's all she does when she's gone, too.

And Rhoam is running out of time. It's been ten years, and he doesn't know how seriously the princess takes her duties, so he keeps pushing her because he also has six races and thousands of people to look after.

He has to sacrifice being a father to be a king.

And we can see the whole picture, so we're quick to judge him. And to be clear, yes, the way he treats Zelda by jumping to conclusions isn't a model of parenting that any parent should ever follow. But, unlike us, Rhoam can't see the whole picture.

Not until it's too late.

Rhoam probably dies first when the Calamity hits, and then suddenly, as a ghost, he can see his daughter. He sees her flee the guardians with her knight, he sees her slip her hand from his, he sees her sob in wretched agony as she chokes out that the terrors around them are her fault because she couldn't access her cursed power. He realizes that she did take everything seriously, that she cared so much- that she probably cared more than he did.

He loves his daughter, he always has. But he realizes that he never showed it.

He realizes that he was a terrible father, and that is why he is stayed to the earth as a poe.

Ghosts are the souls of people with unfinished business. Rhoam's was that he was a bad father- and so, by extension, a bad king. So he haunts the plateau where his devoted Sheikah bodyguards buried him, and 100 years slip by like sand in an hourglass.

Link awakes from the Shrine of Resurrection, and Rhoam decides to atone for his past mistakes. He as a ghost can't save his daughter, but Link's alive. Link can. And so he becomes like a father to this boy he knows but who doesn't remember him, guiding him along his way, providing him with direction, food, and shelter, and he tries to fix all the mistakes he made in his life.

And when Link completes the shrines and meets him in the bell tower of the Temple of Time, Rhoam provides him with the Paraglider and the story of 100 years ago. He pleads with the boy to save his daughter, to be the man he never was.

When Link agrees, Rhoam can finally pass on.

He can't tell Zelda that he's sorry. Not yet, not until her time comes and she peacefully passes over into Hylia's realms of light. But he can send her someone, someone to care for her like he never did.

He can only pray that she forgives him.

#okay dude you messed up and yeah #you were a really bad father #but I understand where you are coming from #the legend of zelda #tloz #breath of the wild #botw #king rhoam #after the great plateau and all the ways he helps you I don't have it in me to hate him #i totally understand why people do and I respect that #but it never really made me hate him #mostly i just felt sorry for him #i mean he obviously loved Zelda it's just that he was also stressed #I'm NOT excusing how he treated her of course #but I think he deserves a little less hate and a little more of people being like #anyone else wanna join the 'we don't exactly hate king rhoam fan club'?

74 notes · View notes

meirimerens · 1 year

Note

hi, i know you headcanon some pathologic characters to be homosexual, like Daniil, Artemy, Yulia, Stakh... what do you think their relationship with their sexuality were throughout their lives? also, i remember in one of your older answers you mentioned Daniil coming out to his mother... how exactly did that happen in your vision?

hello darling this reply has made tumblr give me that "there was an error processing your post" over 15 times now for no good reason. it's like it was too big at first but this is the same length and if you read this it means it sent. anyways.

i had posted something kiiinda similar here (below the cut) including bi characters (eva + the twins) but i had forgor to include stakh + by god i can repeat myself/elaborate (i love. repeating myself <3 for real honestly especially on this) so ooh baby here we

Dankovsky (longest because i'm writing about him so the thoughts are many) knew at a young age (like 11-12) he didn't like girls and instead did boys so he had to come to terms with it in some way Pretty Quickly. to me he was raised christian eastern orthodox, which like all christian denominations comes with its fair share of religious-specific homophobia, he wasn't particularly like. Thrilled per se. + the familial/ancestral culture comes with its own set of expectations around masculinity which homosexuality inherently challenges and the fact that he was already more into cello than like war as a kid made his father raise an eyebrow on him right. so from ages like 11-16, dankovsky was like Well i'm going to have to pretend i don't see it and hope the sky doesn't fall on my head. at around 17 it became evident that was IT really that truly what he was and there was nothing he could possibly do to not make it be this way. it came with a sort of like. acceptance that it just was going to be how it was, but he was already starting to think how he could push the Acting on It part long enough for him to maybe become busy with something else. i think as he grew up he shed the concept of "sin" as he actualized himself atheist so no "hate the sin love the sinner" for him, but you can't really pull the religious guilt out of a man raised religious ykwim. eventually as he accepted that He Was, and that by god it wasn't even a bad thing to be/started Embracing it as one more of his Transgressions (when it. not really is, a transgression comes with a degree of consciousness and will to violate a law or code, the fact that he's gay is just. how it is. that's him forever and that'd be him regardless of context etc), he started assimilating gay codes for himself (the red tie…) to be like. Yes. ykwim. he still had not met a gay person in his life so it truly felt like Him Against the World, but he started being more comfortable with the fact that he was gay. however, it still didn't stop him from started a whole… "i'm not in a relationship rn bc i'm focusing on my studies" mindset. at uni, he truly like. came into his own internally while still trying to maintain a certain ambiguousness outwardly. andrei saw right through that and, even if he's like not gay but bi, he was the first dude daniil met who was also (Loudly) into dudes. dankovsky owes andrei the first like. actual coming out to Someone else than his mommy when andrei would bait him into hanging out with other gay and bi men, dankovsky would sit in a corner not fuckin wit anyone just Soaking In The Homosexuality In The Air, and when andrei went "u got a problem with that? you homophobic?🤨" dankovsky had to go like "i don't have a problem with it at all… when it's other people" [implied: i might deal with it not too well when it's me myself]. and from that point on he was like ah fuck me [not literally] why do i bother being insecure about it. from ages 20+ he was still very much in his Married To My Work Era + as he founded Thanatica he tried to lay low to not get investigated and being very loudly homosexual was not the best way to "not make waves" so even as he settled in himself with the fact that Well he's gay and he's gonna be gay forever so he better live with it, he still stayed closeted for his safety. i think from ages 18 to current game-day 28, not getting laid pardon the frankness led to him developing like an internally Fucking Crazy relationship with love and eroticism and he might have kept himself from entering relationships because he needed someone who Understood He'd Want To Eat Him. (love wins!)

re:coming out to his momma i think she had had her Doubts for a while yknow has had her Doubts. his dad too, but from his dad's perspective it felt deeply Painful (bc when the son is gay it is the father's masculinity that is threatened.. i've spoken about it on the post i've linked in the beginning) whereas his mom didn't have that My Masculinity Threatened. dankovsky knew he was gay since age like 11-12 but only came out at around 14-15, when it became obvious for him and hard to ignore, especially as people begin to have little boyfriends and girlfriends at this age. he told his mom first because he was closest to her and she was like.

she believed him from the beginning because she had had her Doubts. for a while she didn't quite know what to do with this information as it all dawned on her that it likely meant no grandkids, no daughter-in-law to whom she could give her pretty jewelry and so on… but also i think she like. could relate her son's homosexuality to like. fucking Tchaikovsky. who attempted suicide because his marriage to a woman made him so miserable. so she was like… well. that's just how it is isn't it. she's just gonna have to make peace with it whether she likes it or not. i think eventually she came to the conclusion that she spent 9 months building him from her blood and bones and a full day putting him out in the world so it would be stupid to be mad at him for that. + that's god's doing isn't it. she can't be mad at god. and if god's mad at her son he can take it to himself. etc .

Burakh for the longest time um. Didn't know. i think he realized that about himself genuinely age 26 in the 12 days. he's going through an entire coming-of-age/coming-into-place story and i think that includes a realization story lol. i think for the longest time he just thought he didn't love anyone period. up until 20 methinks he was like "well i'm just a late bloomer". then he went to war as a medic and was like "well i'm just so fucked up in the head my mind's full of corpses that's why there's no place for love". then he went home and… lord almighty. for years he thought was just not made for love because he truly. hadn't looked the other way (he's just like me fr fr). he went from not knowing what a closet was to realizing he was in it and the door was ajar to being out and in a man's arm in the span of 12 days. he didn't really have the time to brood about what it meant for his future/himself/his relationship to his people for him to be homosexual because love slapped him across the face and he fell on his ass. as his whole story is about finding his own path and learning to cope with doing things that might not be approved of him and living with choices that are of love regardless it's truly just like. learn to cope FAST. you have way more problems. + as i think the herb brides Know i think he's not given too much grief by his community and doesn't have the religious trauma background of dankovsky. also since his parents are. well dead. he doesn't have to respond to them + his dad textually is like You're gonna have to do something boy. (and that something might displease him but that's out of his hands. and into burakh's).

Yulia knew early too like 12-13. she always was a tomboy as a kid and almost just like… naturally blossomed into a masc lesbian. i think from early on she was like. ok well we're coping with that. she already was going against social conventions by being an educated woman a woman in ""typically"" male professions a masculine-dressed woman so at this point the fact that she liked women that was like. well if you don't like it tough luck buddy. she always had a relatively distant (if loving) relationship with her parents so she didn't feel the need to justify herself to them + won't lie they saw it coming. they had it comin… she was not in any relationships for a while because she's kinda like Dry of a person/passionate about things most people just don't see/don't fuck with so while she is charismatic and handsome and knew she could be desired she didn't have any long-term relationship before eva because you truly need a girl who's a lil bit crazy to handle her. and vice versa. so love wins. i think that while she might not have frequented lesbian spaces like bars because her ass does not do well with crowds i think she never felt like she was So Alone like Only Lesbian on Earth. i think she did feel a sense of loneliness about it but it was also mixed with a deep sense of Well I'm Here and I'm One So Someone Like Me Exists.

Stakh for a little while was also that "well i'm kinda too fucked up for love" and he was also fighting for his life to be seen as a good student a good protégé a good foster son so romantic love was Far from his mind. i think he realized he was gay around age like 15-16 when it all starts to Dawn on you y'know everything Dawns on you. he was very quickly like. well that's how the cookie crumbles. i think there was a sort of immediate acceptance about the Being Gay factor but more of a restraint about acting on it because he too was like Married to The Student Behavior and didn't want to risk losing his place by isidor's side, especially since he didn't know how isidor would react to him being gay (i know what isidor did to that old man so i know he wouldn't have cared but rubin is not a mind-reader). it was truly like. well i am and i can't do much about it but i'm soo focused rn. as 18-20 came around the corner and his relationship with isidor truly felt like he was fighting for his life trying to be seen as a good student he was like I'm either going to war or becoming a monk. he was fully willing to commit to lifelong monkish celibacy because he's always been. kinda dry. kinda with issues. + i think subconsciously he was trying to not let Desire creep up on him because it would distract him from the menkhu way (nice dichotomy idiot what lies outside of it etc). he went to war [p1 lore which i abide by] and. well when you put a bunch of fit young men together away from the women of course something like this would happen. anyways he comes home having acted on his homosexuality which he is fine with + feels kinda like a weight being lifted off his shoulders but he stil hasn't tasted Desire ykwim. Want. Hunger in the lover sense. but he's like. shrugs. whatever. monk it is. he doesn't become a monk. he clings to being isidor's foster son until his knuckles go white. it ends up being for nothing. grief and anger scythe him right. and in what follows he bonds with someone who's Fucked up and who Knows Hunger and Desire and omg flushed emoji etc. (+ my belief when dankovsky comes to peter's loft to talk about god-knows-what they kinda realize pretty fast He's Just Like Me Fr and dankovsky appreciates his + peter's company kinda like he appreciated Just Sitting There surrounded by gay and bi men even if they barely talk. just knowing you're like. Not Alone. etc)

bit long. sorrey.

#dankovsky lore #burakh lore #yulia lore #rubin lore #there are others i see as homosexuals. because it's a beautiful world out there #some of the older kids mostly because they're literally just at the age i came out to my parence...#i don't have like Deep Thoughts about most of them because is just how it is innit. they have other problems rn #the two i could add are notkin and khan mostly because 1) funny to me. mostly. 2) drawing capella Knowing currently so #notkin knew quite young (like 11) he Didn't Like Girls but didn't know how he felt about boys until 15 (spoilers: oooooh sonny)#he doesn't have parents to answer to so he's just like. well it is how it is. who care.#when he gets teased by others like ''u think girls have cooties??'' he's like motherfucker it's not about cooties #[then the kids realize and they're like. omg i so sorry... i didn't mean to be homophobic i just thought you were weird]#khan knew quite young he liked boys (also like 11-12) but didn't know how he felt about girls until 15 (spoilers: it's a no from him dawg #& when he realizes what that means for the kains' future he's both like. oh the agonies. and also it's not my problem i'm going to college

38 notes · View notes