dankwraith @ monads.onlineyou ever think about how in one branch of the knight solaire's plot path, he finally obtains the "personal sun" that he has been seeking for his whole life, and the revelation of it drives him into absolute madness, and in another path you can save him from this fate, but he ends up dejected and depressed, condemned to merely assisting the chosen undead in their quest without ever fulfilling his own destiny?
Kai (Seasonal Depression Mode)@thatcosmonaut i will push back on this slightly because after he helps you defeat gwyn, he disappears, which basically is a sign that he did "complete his quest" he may have not found a romanticized concept of his "own personal sun" but by defeating his past he gained what he set out to do. (sorry i think about solaire a lot)
@thatcosmonaut i wll not big league you on the dark souls stuff because i havent played any of the games in a bit but i think about solaire a lot
@tasnyx you know i hadn't considered this, and now that i think about it i think this is a legit take, because solaire doesnt really accomplish anything when he finds the "personal sun", it's basically a false god because the fruits of his actions aren't useful after he finds it... like the point of the sun covenant is to assist others selflessly, so he's really fulfilling the point of the covenant when he helps the chosen undead kill gwyn. damn.
@thatcosmonaut yes and its suggested in the game that he is the disgraced son of gwyn so by assisting in destroying gwyn (the false sun) he is able to find "his own personal sun" that's how i always read it and i like that, because solaire deserves a happy ending
@tasnyx ok yea this is my new favorite interpretation of this character, like i was kind of viewing him through a kierkegaardian lens in the sense that he is on a seemingly unachievable quest that nobody else understands but i forgot that the point of that sort of analysis is not the "lonely madness" itself but the result of what is actually produced from it
@thatcosmonaut yeah i think with his bad ending it's really easy to read him in a kierkegarrdian/nietzschean sort of perspective of the madness he experiences but in the good i think you find more of a redemption, a sort of marxist lens instead (in the sense that he comes from royalty, takes off the shackles that lie there in and cuts the snake's head off). really interesting shit