CONTENT WARNING: familial issues, and death of family members, mentions of violence and illness.
Also SPOILER WARNING, this will cover most of the story so don't read unless you are caught up to at least Act 3:9.
I realise I forgot to do a post for Mother's Day this year, which I was meant to...Well, there's next year for that I guess!
Sunday is Fathers' Day, so I figured I'd do a little exploration of fatherhood in Divided when it comes to the main cast...
(Don't worry, they're only playing : P )
First up is the Reyes family, and Gideon loves his two sons, Daniel and Josiah, to pieces. His longterm partner, Ruth, died giving birth to them both, and Gideon promised her that he would do anything he could to protect them- and he meant anything. Gideon is far from a perfect man, and far from a perfect father. To him, nothing and no-one matter more than his sons. So when things got tight with finding work, he became a witchfinder. Whilst he used to genuinely distrust magic, worrying if magic would end up gettings his boys hurt, Gideon mainly did it for the paycheck, keeping them fed with a roof over their heads.
Eventually, he realised after a horrific dream where Ruth berated him, that what he was doing was not good for his sons. He was leading them down a path of bloodshed, and so he quits being a witchfinder and tries to get them to unlearn what they'd learned from their father. Now they're fishermen, and their catches sell pretty well. Only Act 3's harsh winter prevents them from making enough money off of it, and Dan and Josiah's job search leads Dan down a potentially-dark path that Gideon has just found out about. Gideon, being Gideon, wants to do anything to get his son out of that situation, but slaughtering Volpe isn't an option when he's constantly surrounded by the young men he's brainwashed into doing his bidding.
Whilst Gideon is one of the much more morally ambiguous characters, almost everything he does, he does for his sons. There's nothing that matters more to him now than Daniel and Josiah, and it's been that way since the day he found out Ruth was pregnant. Though nothing much has come up about Gideon's own family, I imagine that Gideon had mostly a good relationship with his father.
And of course, if we're talking fathers, we can't leave out the one character who makes it his apparent mission to become everyone's father eventually. XD
The events of the story have led to a fun little found family, and the (ex) vampire Oskar now taking both Eli and Áine under his wing as his children. It's unknown exactly how many people have ended up in this situation, but it all started way back in Oskar's vampiric infancy, where he took in a homeless girl named Ilse who he found during a Winterfest festival and raised as his own until her death from old age. As well as this, he's also been something similar to Reynold when he needed it, as well as to Reynold's own father, Alistair.
It seems to come pretty naturally to him, such as when Oskar 'led' a group of werewolves during the Bloodmoon (and maybe the odd vampire). Many looked up to him in such a way. It's not entirely clear to anyone why he does this, but there's a few possible reasons. A) Oskar absolutely despises bad parenting, B) he wants to emulate the kindness of his own father, C) a subconscious attempt at redemption after the innocent people that died to his inability to control his bloodlust in the early days.
On top of that, vampirism left him with dulled emotions, and his time in the Bloodmoon had led him down a dark path, becoming incredibly ruthless. I like to think a part of it (and by extension, his letting people stay in his home in Nebelstadt when they were lost) is also a part of reminding himself of his humanity despite his loss of it. Something he does because he still wants to do what he thinks is good for good people, even if he cannot emotionally feel that. Something that keeps him grounded, and that likely helped him 'come down from' his days as a feared soldier of the Bloodmoon war.
As we know from chapter 3:9 and 3:10, Oskar has recently received some pretty awful news about his health, and it's safe to say he is aboslutely dreading having to tell either of his children...Just how much time does Oskar have left, and most importantly, will Owen be able to find a cure in time with his combined medicinal and alchemical skill?
Looking more like a 2003 album cover than an awkward family picture, we have the Morgan family- Clementia, Reynold, and new to Act 3, Alistair. Alistair has not been a brilliant father to either of these two. He showed almost no interest in Clem growing up. She thinks it's because she's a woman, and subconsciously that might have had something to do with it, but mainly it was because she didn't have magic. However, despite this, he also didn't bother to teach Reynold one of the most important parts of his magic- his transformation into a werewolf.
Not wanting him to repeat his violent acts during the Bloodmoon, and wanting him to be a genuine man of peace, he thought not teaching him anything about it would solve that. It didn't. At all. And it almost led to Clementia's bloody death. Whilst the two siblings have come to reconcile with one another, and whilst Reynold is making efforts to not make the same mistakes with his own daughter, Alistair now has a lot he must try and sort out now that he knows his children are not dead like he thought.
In the following chapter (3:11) we will see Alistair try to teach both Reynold and Róisín more about their Lunvinchenaîné blood and their history. Reynold is willing to give him a second chance, in true Peteran style. Clem, not so much. He's going to have to live with the fact that she may never forgive him for what he's done. As for Reynold and Róisín, he'll have to definitely not screw it up this time. Inward, he's thinking, 'well, I'm a much better person now than I was back then' but now is not the time for soothing his own feelings- it's a time to make it up to his son and to be a good grandfather to little Róisín.
Then lastly we have Reynold himself, the father of eight-year-old Róisín, born from a romance-filled moment outside in the woods on a Beltane night, which he'll never live down, probably. Reynold worries for the future, but he tries to be hopeful that it will be a more open and accepting environment for witches. That Róisín, when she is his age, can be open and confident and proud about her power. She's very anxious and worrisome, and Reynold finds himself trying to calm her a lot. He doesn't want to further her anxiety by telling her all about the witch-hunts, but he also doesn't feel right lying to her and pretending it's a Utopia out there. As a parent, how much do you stretch the truth for your child's sake, and how little?
Whilst he's raising her Peteran, he's tentative about it and lets her ask questions. She isn't sure if she believes in the Watcher, and he's fine with that. He doesn't want to make the mistakes his own father made, and aims to teach her as much about the magic in her blood as he can.
Then there's Reynold's other position as the other kind of father, the father of the Peteran church. The responsibility is a massive weight on his shoulders, but he does what he can, even if it means shutting early some days and not opening at all on others. Much like with his daughter, he always struggles to balance speaking honestly, or speaking hopefully to his people. There's also the issue of- how will they react when they find out the truth about his identity?
For the characters, it's a rough path to walk at times. Balancing the length you'd go for your children with your morals, wanting to be a good role model but also wanting to do anything to look after them. Screwing up immensely and then wondering if it's too late to mend what was broken in the past. Let's see where things go for them...