Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-39332473-20190808194309/@comment-28893060-20200329123759

In a nutshell, my idea is that purity and lust, the way they're used by Alonon, are a misnomer. The world of TLS may well rest on the bedrock of two fundamental opposite forces that give rise to reality through their interaction, but the relationship they have with the act of sex might be just a passing one. Everyone assumes that the two opposite forces are purity and lust because for eons, the lust shards have given rise to Incubus Kings moved by the desire to sexually dominate, and goddesses moved by the desire to repress Incubus Kings. But that is only one of the ways the interaction between those two fundamental forces might express itself.

One of the major themes of the game is breaking down preconceptions. The whole plot was started because Riala, a powerful sexual mage, managed to understand that a world not shaped by sexual domination or repression was possible, and desirable - and therefore, that a shard in the hands of someone with a vision could be used for more than that. Then, Simon had to learn that the powers he considered "of the enemy" could actually be used to achieve something other than evil, and that to truly change the world the solution wasn't to drive a sword through the big bad causing problems, but to change the paradigm.

It comes back very often as a theme, even explicitly in dialogue. During the talk with Sarai, Janine and Riala, the latter criticizes Simon for always being confined by the thought of what is instead of thinking of what could be and how to achieve it. And she's right - the Arsehole of Arclent and the Fucklord lose precisely for the same reason Lady Entila does: they're too tied to their own paradigm, and don't understand how someone who operates outside of it could work. They both think that raw magical power is all they need to rule, and neglect economics and politics, and it comes back to bite them in the ass.

All this to say: how do we know that the characters are making the same mistake in assuming things about the fundamental nature of reality? What if the two forces could be anything, and it was just in this last cycle that, due to the use the first bearers of the shards did of them, now those forces were associated with lust and purity? It would fit well with the very unsubtle foreshadowing we're getting this last chapter, with Simon responding to Tertia's dismissal that yeah, maybe he might be able to make things slightly better in his generation that this only solidifies his conviction that fundamental change is needed.

And the dude has been learning to use his shard's power for ascended sexual magic. And the biggest theme in the game is how assuming that because something has always been a certain way, it will always stay that way is wrong. And Wendis came back from the abyss with the very idea that shit's got to change, and she's still convinced of that.

All I'm saying is, I think I see where this all is going.

Hell, if you want to get very specific, Tanurak represents the dark side of that idea, which is that even things that we assume to be immutable can change... but that change can also be for the worse.