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"The Dragon Prince" nailed several of Vladimir's key tropes

Blood Magicks·3/14/2019, 12:03:30 AM·11 votes·10,347 views

The Dragon Prince is a recent high fantasy cartoon from the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Fans of the latter will remember it as the well-known textbook of magic and worldbuiliding it is. Dragon Prince is good in similar ways and even better in others.

Namely, it absolutely nails the mysterious evil ancient magus trope. The elven archimage Aaravos gets very little screen time, mainly because a lot of the show is spent hyping up and preparing the viewer for his arrival. When he does appear, it takes another three episodes for him to speak... And when he finally does, the gravity of the moment is almost unbearable.

It's worth noting that at this point fans know very little about this guy, because the very attempt to research him results in reality-bending-magicks... But we still get a glimpse of his character and his methods of asserting his will through brute magical force, and by instilling fear.

EDIT Thinking about it Aaravos has really heavy Black Rose vibes, with the secrecy, "smoke and mirrors", immortality, blood rituals, seductiveness, and knowledge of powerful magicks... I love it.

Oh, and that subset of the fandom~~ the fangirls~~ are absolutely losing it right now.

Frankly I'm swooning too hard to write more, but it seems to me the overlap with League's ancient mysterious evil sorcerer is fairly large, and it's worth drawing some Vlad inspiration from Aaravos... Who by the way kind of looks like if Vlad got a Celestial/Darkstar skin.

https://i.ibb.co/8NgrBc3/5f1658cf-5fdc-48e5-ae51-c05b24461a87.jpg

18 Comments

ModCaptainMårvelous3/14/2019, 2:45:26 AM13 votes

Then you realize some of the writers for TDP are ex-Rioters. :P

Pale Mask3/14/2019, 6:50:11 AM3 votes

Should I watch the show for Aaravos? He seems like a powerful definitely not evil pretty cool guy.

Shandrake3/14/2019, 4:28:03 AM1 votes

TFW Aaravos is also voiced by the guy who voices Nasus.

The Trent3/14/2019, 3:55:13 AM1 votes

Wait... I seriously thought that the mysterious mirror elf was a female and the bug speaking produced a deep voice... this is a twist for me...

Jerry SeinfeId3/14/2019, 5:37:24 PM1 votes

I wanna start of by saying i absolutely despise vlad (gameplay) and have not seen this show and thus might have a warped view on this.

I think the character is just in a much better position to be explored. If i understand this correctly he seems to be the main villain and thus the strongest foe the heroes will have to face. A person with a certain goal that i assume affects the whole world or atleast the country our heroes hail from. (as it's most often the case in fantasy)

Vlad just doesn't seem to be in that position. Riot has been painting the void as the ultimate evil to runeterra, alongside the shadow isles (and veigar). Vlad surely seems to do certain questionable things, seems to have plenty of poltical influence and most likely isn't immortal by any "good" means. BUT he isn't a threat to a community/society. honestly i see vlad as a less rogueish Reaver from the fable series. With the whole selfportrets and eternal youth thing.

But when vlad is at best going to get a short story while also having to be written outside of a main character position (as a main antagonist) the writers just aren't gonna have as much to work with as those on the show.

mrmeddyman3/14/2019, 9:13:03 PM1 votes

You bastard I had no idea Season 2 was up and nearly spoiled some shit. Will return after binging all the episodes tomorrow loved the shows first season

Warwick Main3/15/2019, 10:13:20 PM1 votes

I love the Dragon Prince. Harrow and his putz of a wizard damn near perfectly mirrored a friendship I held with a friend/former friend of mine. It was ironically the last show we ever watched together.