[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[Alardem]

That is made rather clear by the narrative. But where did it come from? Why does he hate the world? Why is he obsessed? I still haven't been able to find the answer to those questions.

Class warfare, sure, but that alone doesn't spawn irrationality of such magnitude. Otherwise humanity would have long destroyed itself.

Mandus lived in the East End of London, which at the time was an extremely overcrowded, impoverished slum. The industrial revolution only exacerbated the misery, cramming in hundreds of people living in the streets, resorting to crime or prostitution to survive. So I wouldn't be surprised that Mandus' perspective would be quite warped by where he lived - he pities and hates the impoverished 'whores, beggars, orphans, filthy degenerates' who he literally sees rutting on the streets, yet as an industrialist is forced to exploit them if he hopes to retain his status.

Knowing all this makes the lack of people on the streets all the more unsettling.

We get to understand the motivations, but not the cause. These "motivations" are just a rationalization created by Mandus himself.

And what exactly is the difference between motivation and cause? Mandus commits horrible atrocities under the guidance of his murderous alter-ego, is wracked with doubt throughout the entire process, and eventually can't handle his own madness. His rationalizations are ultimately unconvincing.

There is a cold yet absurd rationale for each atrocity Mandus commits, although listing them all might take a while. I'll give a few anyway:

-He kills his sons in the immediate aftermath of his vision of their death, justifying it afterwards by claiming it preserved their innocence.
-He uses orphans as child labor because they will not be missed, and kills them if they discover his secrets. He does not care about them because they are not his creations.
-He turns the mentally challenged and poor into pigs as a means of reducing them to a pure, animal state - and to create 'children' to care for once more. They also provide manual labor.
-He turns rich guests into food for other rich guests to devour, as a form of poetic justice and in order to get more funding.
-He takes advantage of the church to bring more people over to his own idea of salvation

So first they say that he's driven by love, then they try to claim that he doesn't care about torturing humans because he's an alien and can't empathize?

I, personally, don't believe that he lacks empathy. If he did, he would not have been disturbed to witness Daniel's growing sadism.

It's just that Alexander is selfish enough to prioritize HIS needs over anyone else's. Just as Daniel was led to believe that human sacrifice was necessary to protect himself, Alexander was aware that members among the Prussian council were anxious to kill him. The baron thus does horrific things and rationalizes his actions as necessary to get what he is entitled to.

I'm ultimately not sure how 'rational' evil acts need to be. I usually hate to invoke Godwin's Law, but as Mandus is quite literally a genocidal maniac it's fair here to consider how Nazi ideology and its perversion of 'science' (eugenics) works. Or, hell, just how the prevailing social attitudes of the time could be taken to their "logical" extreme.