Malefor and Morality

Welcome again folks for today’s blog! Short or medium sized as it may be, today’s topic shall be a bit on morality, and to be precise, some morality discussions on a certain Video Game character, Malefor the Purple Dragon AKA the Dark Master.

First off, you may think, “Malefor? Well he must be evil by looking at this name, and surname and knowing that he is a dragon.” Technically, it is true looking at this past deeds and actions. Besides, his name is close to the word malevolent, and the word “mal” is bad in Spanish. Heck, even his name, the Dark Master, is a cliché used for antagonists for decades in medieval stories now. But, there have been discussions of whether he is a Complete Monster or not or something else. As we all know, he committed many atrocities such as genocide against many species, without pity or remorse and tortured others. He even killed most of the next generation of dragons by smashing the eggs in the Temple. Moreover, he enslaved someone as a child (Cynder) to the evil side and forced her to commit many atrocious things to free him from his prison. He basically tarnished her reputation and caused many people to look down on her. It took many years and Spyro for her to be forgiven and still is less than trustworthy to others in other locales.

However, the main point here is whether Malefor is a Complete Monster or not. His goal was that he basically wanted to “cleanse” the world by blowing up and reforming the planet and gain a huge amount of power. However, he was thankfully stopped by a certain team of two (lovers). By looking at his lack of remorse and so many sins and crimes committed – most of us viewers will think that he is truly a complete monster. But, we need to take into account why he wanted to enact “The Great Cleansing”. No villain takes all these actions without reason or cause or just for fun - well… except for those truly heartless people. Malefor must have had a reason to take this path in his life. Otherwise, he was just a being of pure death and destruction – something that most of us avid readers won’t believe without more concrete evidence.

He could have (as stated beforehand) done it for fun as he could have been dissatisfied with his life. But, that has some contradictions as he worked so hard to gain the elements. Then again, he could been overworked by the previous guardians. They could have overburdened him with WAY too many tasks (as he is a purple dragon, only one born every 10 generations to lead the populace into a new age or something) without an appropriate amount of respect which led to him falling to the path of evil for revenge. Or, a serious part of his emotions broke down – AKA he lost someone he cared about a lot. It could be a parent, a child, a friend, or more likely a lost love. As we have learned from many stories, with great power comes great responsibility and with great power comes insanity of sorts. Thus, the loss of a loved one (or more) could have thrown him severely off the path of sanity. All of these things or part of these things could have begun his path of darkness which led him to become a genocidal tyrant.

No matter what, the path of actions he took was completely wrong and immoral. If Malefor were to atone for his sins, should be punished appropriately but, in a constructive manner. However, we should all consider this in a neutral perspective and not go crazy in this. Morality is a complex thing to observe, thus, we will come up with our own theories and whatnot. This is why fanfiction is so wonderful - so many options on both spectrums especially considering that Activison hasn’t given us any answers yet.

Thanks for staying all this time folks for reading through this wall of text! I will delve a bit more into these theories on why Malefor came what he became and how in some cases, he became good again – all of these possible in the realm of fandom! I hope to see you all tomorrow and have a great day! This is Delvarian, signing off!