Alright I got a little too into it and hyper analyzed the last episode of TTS lol, spoilers ahead for those of you who haven’t gotten there yet! It’s a fun time //jazz hands
The thing that really breaks my heart in this episode is that everyone still cares deeply about Varian even after all he’s done to them. And he isn’t necessarily a full-on villain at this point either, he’s just driven by desperation to save his father and is blinded by his own view of what happened on the day he was betrayed by Rapunzel--if he knew the other side of the story, if he knew specifically what she was going through, that being her parents missing, her sending out the love of her life into a storm with the chance of him never returning, her entire kingdom at risk and the decision resting on her shoulders about what to do about the crisis she was in, I’m sure he’d have acted differently. But for all he knows and thinks, she could have left the kingdom in charge with somebody else and kept her promise to him, and after that she didn’t even come to see how he was doing, so that probably fueled his anger and longing for revenge even more.
Even so, even though he kidnapped Arianna and hurt Rapunzel (not on purpose, he had no idea using her hair in the drill would physically harm her), Rapunzel and everyone else still care. And they’re all so, so concerned for him, Rapunzel especially, and you can see it clearly on her face--
She is just. She’s so upset and her heart aches for him and she knows she’s partially to blame for how he’s been driven to this point, and she can relate to him more than anyone else, since she went 18 years of her life without knowing her real family--hell, scratch that, Arianna and Frederic know exactly what he’s going through, they know what it’s like to lose a family member and how desperate that can make someone to get them back.
Varian’s such an impressionable person, especially at this age, too, so his morals aren’t exactly right because he hasn’t been fully exposed to being an adult. He’s just a kid, losing his only family member literally broke him, and without any other choice or help he resorted to becoming a villain in order to save the only person who hasn’t fully betrayed him yet. The only other people who ever took care of him and were his friends have all become enemies in his eyes. The fact that he has literally nobody left to help him or take care of him probably made the situation that much more terrifying. He’s just a 14-year old kid, he isn’t liked much in his village and anybody who ever accepted him are either out of reach or untrustworthy;;
He was pushed, pushed into that position, he clearly doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he has no other choice. He deludes himself into thinking it isn’t his fault so he can escape the guilt he feels, and blames everything on Rapunzel in order to give himself enough conviction to go through with all of the bad things he’s done. He sorta backs himself into a corner and truly thinks that he has to do things his way to save his dad, and that compromise doesn’t exist because the person who could help him didn’t when he needed her the most.
He just wanted to save his dad, he probably didn’t expect things to get so far out of hand, but once he reached that point he was like “Well I’ve come this far, might as well go all the way” (he even said something similar in Ready As I’ll Ever Be, too). And once he reaches the point where he’s used every last resort he could think of, he breaks again--so we get to watch him emotionally crash and burn several times, and. Gosh my poor little heart
(Oof this is gettin long so under the cut the rest of it goes)