Pyre Fierceshot: Heroic Revolutionary or Histories Greatest Thief?

Yes I know the meme title is bad and I should feel bad, but it made me giggle.

So I was wandering through Dragonfall collecting lore tidbits here and there, some of them pertaining to Gwen Thackery and her conversations with Rytlock and Logan when I heard the strangest bit of dialogue to me. That was Gwen Thackery saying to Logan that much like his relationship with Rytlock she too once knew a Charr she could trust, this seemed odd to me to say the least, because the only person she could possibly be talking about would be Pyre. I get it to some degree, that Gwen worked extensively beside Pyre for their brief stint together in the Eye of the North and earned a degree of respect for one another, and yet I wouldn't describe Gwen as trusting nor even ever really liking Pyre. From what I recall, Pyre was even the one who taught her that the Charr should be hated rather then feared.

I'v always chalked Pyre's heroic portrayal in Charr society as a bit of carefully cherry picked historical revisionism employed by the Legions, much like their reverence for Bonfaaz Burntfur despite him being a Flame Legion Shaman and his orchestration of the Searing at Stormcallers Monument, he was the primary leader of the fight against the humans and so his legacy had to be spruced up despite the fact he also was what led Charr into slavery under the Titans, in fact there's more then a little dramatic irony in the fact that both Pyre and Bonfaaz would be revered in the same society side by side. Then again, Pyre idolized his father for his role in Searing so perhaps not so much.

Pyre was a competent fighter and the spark that lighted Charr revolution, but his grandcub had more to do with the changing of Charr society then he ever did. As he once said himself he was going to slip away into the shadows, revolutions eat their heroes and he wasn't going to be devoured by his own. I always found that aspect of Pyre fascinating as the person willing to instigate change but unwilling to die for it, his memory embellished as a person who began the process of Charr societies change but who really left the actual change of that society on the backs of everyone to come after him so that he wouldn't suffer the same fate most of those who resist do, his own great granddaughter included in the tally of revolutionaries killed by the Flame Legion.

In fact it seems very strange to me that Gwen would so heavily critique Charr society as we know it(Not that I disagree with her.) when the Charr as we know them now are the product of everything Pyre created. A society that doesn't value honor but won't throw away it's best weapons, one that fights beside and for it's warband but also often discards sentimentality and occasionally throws the members of the closest thing to it's family unit under the bus, and of course a society that finds it hard to forget and forgive anyone because they are all part of their 'petty revenge in whatever form that takes. Pyre embodies some of the virtues that elevated the Charr to a more protagonist status, but he also embodies many of it's vices as well in their most extreme forms.

As Gwen says to Pyre at one point: One good act does not redeem your people murderer, I do not like you, and I do not forgive you. Really why would she? The Charr, Pyre included, relished in the idea of enslaving and murdering humans supposedly to reclaim and ancestral homeland that we know from the Ecology of the Charr isn't really theirs, it has more ground to belong to the Dwarves and Grawl before the Charr took it by right of conquest. Pyre was the catalyst for change, but Pyre was not a good or trustworthy person in the slightest.

What do you all think? is this analysis valid or am I being pedantic?

I think it's largely accurate. There's a reason the revenant legend that represents the spirit of the charr revolution is Kalla rather than Pyre.

In terms of the relationship between Gwen and Pyre - the "I don't like you, I don't forgive you" speech comes well before the end of EOTN, and we don't really know what other interaction they might have had since. It's entirely possible that the entente between the Fierce warband and the Ebon Vanguard continued well afterwards, possibly even playing a part in Adelbern deciding to withdraw the Vanguard. It may even be that Pyre secretly helped the expedition get to Ebonhawke somehow.

This is all speculation, of course, but the gist is that the interaction between Pyre and Gwen may have gone on long after the last scene we saw. And she doesn't necessarily need to like or forgive him to trust him... at least as long as their interests align.

@"draxynnic.3719" said:I think it's largely accurate. There's a reason the revenant legend that represents the spirit of the charr revolution is Kalla rather than Pyre.

In terms of the relationship between Gwen and Pyre - the "I don't like you, I don't forgive you" speech comes well before the end of EOTN, and we don't really know what other interaction they might have had since. It's entirely possible that the entente between the Fierce warband and the Ebon Vanguard continued well afterwards, possibly even playing a part in Adelbern deciding to withdraw the Vanguard. It may even be that Pyre secretly helped the expedition get to Ebonhawke somehow.

This is all speculation, of course, but the gist is that the interaction between Pyre and Gwen may have gone on long after the last scene we saw. And she doesn't necessarily need to like or forgive him to trust him... at least as long as their interests align.

I suppose that's fair, at the same time I suppose it also seems a bit odd in the sense that both Gwen and Pyre didn't seem like they would be helping each other anytime soon based on their dialogue. Gwen let him live largely to spring her friends and Pyre would of probably tried to kill them outright if they weren't so useful. I keep thinking back to Doomlore Shrine where the PC states the Charr do have honor, and Pyre promptly states that honor be damned, and that kind of colors every interaction from then on out for me.

It also definitely seems like a conflict of interests, while Pyre does want to overthrow the Shaman Caste, i'm not sure he or his Warband would be willing to help so much with the whole ordeal. The general impression I got from each one is they view humanity as a collection of slaves and lunchmeat with little space inbetween, for them it would probably be more beneficial to go their own way and try to uproot the Shamans rather then potentially give humanity the key to turning the war around. At the end of EOTN Pyre basically states that he would still be fighting humanity, but if you're in the sights of his bow he'll turn it away for now, that's the extent of his lenience in my eyes.

Though as you say, it's largely speculation.

Conflicts of interest are certainly something that can happen in complex, well, conflicts.

The impression I get from Pyre is that beyond not dying himself, his priorities essentially go: warband, revolution, war. I also take a somewhat more generous interpretation of what Pyre says at the end of EOTN - he's recognising that charr and humans are still at war and they might meet on opposite sides of the battlefield some day, but he doesn't want to see the people who helped rescue him and his warband dead. Charr might not care about honour (at least, not at his time), but they do care about loyalty.

In the meantime, having an... arrangement with the Ebon Vanguard allows him to embarrass and undermine the Flame Legion. Ebonhawke remaining defiant is an embarrassment for the Flame Legion, while otherwise being functionally a win for the charr. Essentially, for as long as the Flame Legion remained in control (which was probably the rest of his life), helping the Ebon Vanguard under the proverbial table served his interests.

And it's possible that Gwen knew that any such entente remained primarily an alliance of convenience, but she doesn't have to like Pyre to realise that he wouldn't betray her if it wasn't in his interests to do so. So that could represent trust... of a sort.

I don't think Pyre saying "honor be damned" in response to the PC saying charr do have honor is him proclaiming he doesn't have or doesn't care for honor, just that it takes a backseat to reasonable and strategic choices.

During the Epilogue of EotN, Gwen and Pyre are actually getting along, and I agree with Drax's interpretation of Pyre's words to the PC there about not aiming at the PC should they meet on the battlefield (that Pyre wouldn't want to see those who helped him dead, or at the very least, wouldn't want to be the killer). The Epilogue is the last time we hear of Pyre, so it's unclear just what relationship he held with the Ebon Vanguard, or even just Gwen, afterwards. He did say he'd be spending some time away since "revolutions eat their heroes", but we also know he eventually went back to his warband in the northern lands per Ogden's Benediction cinematic.

But I think the most important thing is: Gwen doesn't say she likes Pyre. She just says she could trust him. Pyre showed himself to be useful, keeping to his words, and most importantly, a reasonable and realistic figure. Worst case interpretation (which I don't adhere to): Gwen trusts Pyre because logical thinkers like Pyre are easier to figure out, thus she could trust her predictions of how he'd act. But ultimately, I think it's just a continuation of the dialogue during the Epilogue, where they were able to stop fighting, even if just a moment, showing that there's some level of camaraderie between the two, even if she hates all other charr still.

All of those are fair points to be quite honest, I didn't think of it in terms of being mutually beneficial as comrades, but not strictly as friends. I suppose my gut instinct was that way in part because of the Mist fatigue i'd been having with so many characters coming back, I was wary of them potentially doing something with Gwen that was out of line with the original character. But you're right, it's very likely that while Gwen trusted Pyre, it was unlikely to mean an actual friendship. I was confused especially because it was in the frame of Rytlock and Logans friendship, which is MUCH more cordial as of the latest episode.

Two things I forgot to mention in my previous post:

ArenaNet wrote a couple plots during GW1 where Gwen mellowed out (more or less). Namely the Hearts of the North quest, but I remember John Stumme mentioning that she was originally meant to have fully mellowed out with EotN itself, until the Live Team had made the Wintersday picnic sidequest that preluded into War in Kryta where she was angsty again.

Basically, it was intended while writing EotN that the scene where Gwen tortured Pyre, or said "I do not fear you, I hate you" were not her final form during the time of EotN. This makes sense to me since there were two side quests - Then and Now, Here and There and Fire and Pain - which require completing Assault the Stronghold, and then there's the conversations with Sarah in the UW if you take Gwen (which arguably could happen post-Assault the Stronghold). Especially with Then and Now, Here and There, she seems a lot more overall mellowed out once returning home for a bit, even if she still loathes charr.