SPOILER Lari Doesn't Really Make Sense (Spoilers for ROL and Fruma)

Lari doesn't make sense.

So, there was a debate in a thread on here a few days ago about the relative power of Bak'al and Lari. The debate itself and isn't really important to this, but what is important is that the main argument for her power comes from her being the Scion of the Light and having access to some amount of the power of the Light or of Orphion, however you want to phrase that. Except, this got me wondering, why is she?

Lari is, to put it politely, absolutely useless and terrible at her job. Like, if she was a firefighter, she's the one who arrives to your flaming house, then spends the rest of the time saying that she's against spraying water while everything you own is burnt to ash. I'm going to be frank; the is portrayed as incompetent at what she is supposed to do, after a thousand years of doing it. To call her an idiot would seem generous at this point. This isn't to judge her morality or to say it's stupid that she's a pacifist or anything of the sort; that's beyond the scope of this conversation and a nuanced topic that I have no real issue with or interest in discussing here. But she is entirely incapable of doing anything productive, has been, and in fact the parasite issue seems to be basically entirely because of her ineptitude here. I'm not meaning this as some giant takedown of Lari, but from a practical, amoral standpoint, she is beyond useless; she is a genuine liability who is largely responsible for the biggest arguably problem in the world being as bad as it is (or even really being), and who has utterly failed the entity she serves at every turn.

Remember how I said I have no issue with her morality leading her to be a pacifist? You know who probably would have an issue with it? Orphion. He is very, very explicitly amoral, and quite literally is introduced with him claiming that Dr. Urelix is right for kidnapping, mutilating, and brainwashing people in service for the greater good. He very plainly does not think that having moral reservations about doing bad things for the greater good is a beneficial thing in his service, and makes it plain that he doesn't want to you serving him if you are going to be tethered by these things.

Now, you could argue that being stuck with Lari for a thousand years is why he's so dead set on making sure his next servant is less useless in that regard, but like... why is he still working with Lari? Being far more generous than I think anyone could argue she deserves, she has, from his perspective, absolutely failed him to the highest degree possible, leading to a millennium of being infected by a parasite and having his power wane while his rival grows stronger in his place, quite possibly the worst thing that could happen. She has done nothing in any of that time to make it better, doing, what from his perspective must be effectively the same as twiddling her thumbs for, I remind you, a thousand years. Quick reminder: it is explicitly stated that he doesn't deeply care for human (or villager, elf, etc.) struggles, and even stated that he would even act in much the same way as the Dark in covering everything in a blanket of Light that smothers the world. This is told to us by Two, who is, admittedly, extremely biased and has every reason to lie about this -at this point she thinks that we'd be a valuable ally if we were won over- so it should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it definitely fits with everything we do know about him. He would not hesitate to break an egg to make an omelette, and humanity certainly seems like one such egg for the Light omelette it's stated he wants to cook up. At best, the lesser of two evils. He would not care for her doing her best to benefit the lives of these people, while actively leaving the Light to rot.

With all of that in mind, why on earth would he keep Lari as his seemingly primary representative and servant. She displays the one quality he explicitly doesn't want above all others, shows no signs of changing this, and has utterly failed him in every regard, so there isn't even a history of "has pulled through time and time again" to give her some leeway for. This is the equivalent of that firefighter doing that to every house on the block, and being told to do a better job next time instead of being fired.

And I can't think of a reason. Let's look at a few possibilities and I'll explain why I don't think they make sense.

Is she extremely powerful? She isn't displayed as such. She's weaker than we are, and presumably, not significantly stronger than most other elves without his power. I find it incredibly hard to believe that in a thousand years no one as powerful as she is has existed in such a way that
Orphion could make use of them. This also doesn't hold water for me because she refuses to use any of that power to ends that are constructive for him. All the power in the world won't help if she isn't using it, and after a thousand years, I find it really hard to believe he thinks she can be convinced to do so or that it's worth the risk to him to keep rolling those dice. Hell, what about Dullahan? He seems powerful. I bet with Orphion's power (pre-decapitation) he would've been at least comparable to Lari, and he actually seems like he would've got the job done.

Does Orphion have the future sight to know that Lari would eventually be provoked by us into being not-useless? It doesn't sound like he does. It's certainly never mentioned or really hinted at. And there's one massive gaping flaw with this; the only reason he is so desperate for help and in need of her to not be useless would never have been an issue if she wasn't the Scion. Anyone else would have killed the parasite. It's made pretty clear she had the power to do so, and any other similarly powerful individual would have. It is purely on her moral inhibitions against killing that it lived. "She'll be powerful enough to solve the problem she causes" is really dumb reasoning, which I assume Orphion is smarter than. Also, she doesn't even solve it; as soon as we make her not useless, she goes and gets herself killed. Immediately. We solve the issue. She doesn't. If Orphion has plot-convenient foresight to know she would be both powerful enough and would lose her inhibitions about killing, but specifically didn't know that she 1) wouldn't kill it at the start and would lead to a thousand years of infection during which she is effectively useless to him, and 2) wouldn't actually be the one to fix the problem in the end. I guess if Orphion has plot-convenient foresight that shows him the exact (and only the exact) things needed to shepherd the plot forwards in this direction, it kinda makes sense. Otherwise, not so much.

Is she making progress in other areas? Uh, no. This one we can pretty much just reject outright. 1) I doubt Orphion would even be interested; he seems pretty much to just care about the Light and the fact that the world is being overtaken by Darkness because he's being drained of his power by a parasite. Which, honestly, is pretty fair. Even from a "cares about mortals" standpoint, the Darkness overtaking the world is a pretty big issue. But I don't think he does, for the reasons outlined earlier. But, let's say I'm wrong, Two lied to us, and Orphion does care about the mortals. Lari is very clearly demonstrated to have made little if any progress. The Decay is getting worse, she is not actually making an impact. It's possible -possible- that she is doing more than anyone else could during this time. But it's been clearly demonstrated she is incapable of fixing the actual root of the problem; she cannot or will not kill the parasite. This is a downhill battle. The most she will do is slow the rate at which it gets worse, she cannot make it better. There is no win condition for Orphion here, only losing sooner or later. He has no hope of getting better. So no, this one doesn't seem correct either.

So where does that leave us? There is no reason that I can think of that makes sense for Lari to not have been replaced literally centuries ago. I'm sure someone will come here and try to argue that it's because of <x> or <y> or <z> and I look forward to it, but I'm gonna be really hard to convince that it's not totally out of character for Orphion to be so tolerant of what is effectively the massive incompetence of his most valuable chess piece.

 

I have always found this puzzling and the best that I could come up with to justify this is that Orphion has warped perception of time. Perhaps since he is so old, a thousand years is just enough time to see the error that he made and start to look for a new person who could cleanse the decay. A theory I've always had always had on Lari's extreme pacifism is that the cutting down of the Guardian of the Forest scared her. She saw the disastrous effects across the provinces when the elves interpreted Orphion's prophecies with violence and therefore did not want to repeat that mistake.