Near Pure Evil Wiki

To vote for the Near Pure Evil Proposals of the day, see:

  1. Jacob Dawes from Criminal Minds - Ends February 5
  2. Dandy from Bake Night Terror - Ends February 6
  3. Erzsebet Bathory from Castlevania Nocturne - Ends February 6

To vote for the Near Pure Evil Removals of the day, see:

None at the moment.

To vote for the Near Pure Evil Discussions of the day, see:

None at the moment.

READ MORE

Near Pure Evil Wiki
Near Pure Evil Wiki
NPE Approved
Karim wants to burn the world

And this is how a character dies, betraying the people he claim to fight for, refusing redemption for the last time, and trying to aid a near-omnicidal maniac in his plans because he hates the world due to not being the one to rule his people and humans not being where he can't see them.

If the world must burn to be reborn, so be it! Let me be your flame! Together, great one, we can...
~ Imagine dying right after becoming heinous enough and rejecting all types of redemption. If there's last minute Near Pure Evils, Karim may as well be one of, if not the biggest of them.

Since I did my proposal for J, I have to wait to release this proposal, and because of that, I finally got time to do other things outside of this and thus only made the proposal piece by piece with no worries. Helps me too since I am starting classes. In addition to that, the character I'm discussing is a hot topic for me and for people who watch the series, and won't lie that he makes J's character development look tame in comparison, at least in my eyes. He's the epitome of a wasted character, heck 80% of the more interesting parts of his character come from tie-in-material rather than the show itself, in spite of his role as a major antagonist.

I was genuinely suprised he ended up not getting redeemed, because that's what I thought they were going with his character. I will say him being here shows how wasted of a character he is, because I wished his character arc was different. Enough about my rant on Karim's character, because I will say that I felt the need to do him to make sure his proposal would contain all the information around his character since I felt it would ignore the extended material and the more mitigating and nuanced stuff he had there. With that said, let's begin discussing "Viren but an asshole with far less nuance".

What's the work?[]

The Dragon Prince is a Netflix animated series made by Wonderstorm that follows a group as they try to bring peace to the world by bringing the dragon prince back to his mother. After they are able to do so, two years pass and they team up again to defeat a Startouch Elf named Aaravos, who wishes to bring an end to the world's order through eternal night.

On a quest to stop Aaravos, there's also another plotline that follows Queen Janai, the leader of the Sunfire Elves, and her difficulties as queen, mainly due to her brother Karim, who is against her decisions of human and elf alliances, and eventually seeing how her actions would lead to an end to the traditionalism he lived by, decides to go against his sister. We'll be talking about him today.

Who is Karim and what has he done?[]

Prince Karim is the brother of Queen Janai and the late Queen Khessa, and a tradicionalist who follows old Sunfire Elf principles. In his childhood, he used to play a game called Bannersman's Run with his friend Osato, with the latter always protecting Karim while he brought the game's banner to the winning point. Karim would grow up to be a mage, the best among Sunfire Elves, while Osato became a captain of Lux Aurea's military.

One day, the newly crowned human king Viren went to Lux Aurea and with the help of the Startouch Elf Aaravos corrupted the city's sunforge, with Aaravos also killing Khessa. Viren and his army were defeated, and a few weeks later, Karim and Janai would mourn their sister's death and making a cultural Sunfire Elf ceremony to allow her soul to pass into the afterlife, with Janai then deciding to take Khessa's role as queen.

After this, Karim would take part on a mission to take back Lux Aurea, by restoring the sunforge back and lighting off the corruption made by Aaravos through a spell he would use. While getting into the city, a Sunforge corrupted creature nearly killed Karim, but he ended up being saved by Osato, who was leading troops to help Karim, and a human soldier named Tijana.

When he saw Tijana teasingly smiling at Karim, he got angry and lighted his staff, only to end up being calmed down by Osato. After this, they looked at several of Osato's soldiers, whom had turned into mindless creatures corrupted by the Sunforge, no longer themselves. Osato and Karim were horrified, but before the former could get closer to them, Tijana stopped him and affirmed that they were gone.

Karim denied it, saying that they could still be saved, only for Osato to say that they need to survive, and that they should retreat to fight another day. They would then escape from Lux Aurea. After this, Tijana noticed Osato bleeding in his arm. While Osato initially dismissed it and instead worried about the soldiers that could still be alive in Lux Aurea, this all changed when he started to vomit dark blood.

Understanding how badly the corruption infected him, Osato asked Tijana to kill off his arm before it spread. Karim was too shocked to move, but Tijana did what her friend had asked. While Tijana tried to wrap a letter strap around what remained of the higher part of the arm and Osato's shoulder, Osato quickly turned into a corrupted creature. It quickly attacked Tijana, and Karim, begining to lose himself over what was happening, launched a spell to remove the corruption out of Osato to no avail.

Tijana then dodged the corrupted Osato and escaped to grab his fallen sword, but it did not go after her, and instead looked directly into Karim. The prince made another attempt at the spell, but before he could finish it, Tijana stabbed Osato from behind, putting him down. Karim fell to his knees, with Tijana then going next to him after she stopped sobbing. A few hours passed with none of two saying a word, until Tijana decided to break the silence and say that Osato was a good captain.

This infuriated Karim, who told her that he could have saved Osato, before denying her explaining that Osato was already dead, and saying not to act as if she was truly mourning him, claiming that he was his friend, that they were fighting in his city and that he would save it, and that Tijana didn't belong there. Karim then pushed Tijana, with the human soldier preparing to fight him, but seeing as how there was no fight to be had, she started crawling back until she turned away and ran, sobbing.

Karim then waited until he could not hear Tijana's boots before starting to weep. He then buried Osato's body under a circle of stone, before promising that Lux Aurea would not die with Osato, and taking off his friend's red glove and wearing it in his right hand. Sometime after this, a group of heroes went to Lux Aurea and prevented the sunforge from exploding and destroying the continent, with Karim going to thank them, saying that they needed people like them.

For the next two years, Janai would begin to fall in love with Amaya, a human general and the aunt of king Ezran and prince Callum, something which grew doubts on Janai and made him want to make sure they would never get married. Karim himself also entered a relationship with Miyana, one of the members of the Six Horns, a group that served as judges of the Sunfire Elves, although they kept their relationship hidden as it wouldn't be allowed.

When Janai announced her engagement to Amaya, Karim would go meet her, and convinced Janai to go on a walk with him where he expressed his concerns about her marrying Amaya, saying that it would solidify the fall of their people as Karim would not tolerate the idea of humans becoming a permanent addition amongst Sunfire Elves. Janai is disgusted by Karim's thoughts and leaves, but before that, he tells Janai that he should not make it official and instead be with Amaya as if they were married without the "symbolism".

After an incident where a human architect named Lucia put out a flame that represented the spirit of an elf's mother whom he was trying to pass to the afterlife per Sunfire Elf culture, which lead to him burning her arms in anger, Karim tried to convince Janai to have Lucia killed through judged upon the Six Horns, with Janai eventually agreeing. At the tribunal, Karim used his relationship with Miyana to try to rig the judgement and have her executed.

As Karim smiled when Janai prepared to seemingly kill Lucia, his sister actually chose to spare her and instead have her be put in community service to help build a place where they can do the rituals with the candles without having to worry about the fire potentially spreading. After seeing Karim leave with his sister's announcment, Janai went to see him, and brought him to a place where there was a sun seed which Janai had found.

There, Janai explained that the sun seed, centuries from then, will grow and become similar to the sun orb in Lux Aurea, which she hopes will be used to bring their people to prosperity. At that moment, Karim realises that he will never get to see the sun orb in its full form, comes to see what Janai is doing as her bringing an end to their people's history, so he goes to Miyana and expresses his plans to usurp her through a duel of Blood and Ash, a ritual that started when two brothers fought each other for the throne during a civil war, something that was forbidden by Karim's great-grandmother Queen Aditi, although he denied what Aditi had ruled by claiming no one could forbid the duel.

When Janai went to face her brother, Karim gave her a final chance to leave with Amaya and step aside, which she refused. The two would then fight, with Janai winning. Karim then ordered Janai to finish him off, which she refused, causing Karim to tell the Six Horns to arrest her. However, most of the horns instead grab him and banish him from the camp, with Miyana staying silent as it happened.

Karim was stripped of his titles and belongings, including a ring that belonged to his mother, with him leaving after being made clear he would be punished by death if he ever went back to the camp. Walking in the middle of the desert, Karim sees a mysterious figure, whom he assumed to be an assassin sent by his sister, so he decides to sneak up on him. After doing so, he finds out it was actually the former high priest of Lux Aurea Pharos, who swore loyalty to Karim in order to have him lead their kind back to their former glory.

Karim alongside Pharos would go to the cave where Sol Regem was in, and explained to him that humans had came to Xadia and had "corrupted" their lands, and that they needed his help to bring the lands back to how they used to be. Sol Regem, however, had lost hope, and explained that he wanted to die in his cave as he could no longer live after losing everything, and ordered Karim and Pharos to leave. While Pharos was despairing over their plan failing, Karim didn't change his mind and instead made a plan to bring the sight of the former King of the Dragons through the Sun Seed Janai had.

To do so, he went to meet with the Bloodmoon Huntress Kim'dael, and had her go get the Sun Seed after promising to free her from the mercy debt she had to Karim's family in return. However, she did not find the Sun Seed, and instead kidnapped Janai to try to find where it was. After this happened, Karim had Pharos go to meet Amaya and the Six Horns, telling them that if Miyana wasn't allowed to give Karim the Sun Seed, they would kill Janai.

Amaya, however, refused, and disguised herself as Miyana and go face Karim. With the disguise lowering the Sun prince's guard, Amaya comes close to finishing him, but is stopped by Kim'dael, who held Janai hostage. Karim told Kim'dael to kill Janai, but she refused as it would endanger her life and potentially get her killed due to her binding preventing her from killing anyone from the Sunfire elf royal family, so instead asks Karim to free her from her debt.

Despite his attempts, the binding didn't fall off, as Janai was officially the queen of the sunfire elves and he wasn't the official ruler of their people, so instead Karim tried to kill Janai himself to become king, only to be stopped by Amaya. Kim'dael, seeing that killing Janai would end the bloodline and cause her death in the process, decides to leave, with Pharos, taking advantage of the distraction of Amaya and Janai hugging, leaving on a horse with Karim.

That night on a cave, the two are met with Miayana, who revealed to have stolen the Sun Seed from Janai, betrayed her, and brought an army that would follow Karim's orders. Sometime later, Karim would give a speech to his army about how he would bring them to a new era where their history would be respected, and after this, would go to Sol Regem and offer to heal his vision.

However, the dragon refused, saying he won't be able to fix Xadia and instead needs his wings to bring down fire opon their enemies, with Karim agreeing, and he and Pharos heal his wings with the sun seed. Karim then made a plan to go near his sister's camp and try to provoke her into attacking his army, and as she prepared to do so, he would have Sol Regem, guided by Pharos, burn down Janai and her army.

When Karim started his plan, Ezran, who was there to see the wedding between his aunt and Janai, went to Karim and tried to convince him to stop what he was trying to achieve. Meeting him with Corvus on his tent, Karim mocks Ezran for being a human child, before explaining his demands to have his sister surrender and give him the title as high king so he can rule a Sunfire Empire, and have all humans back to the other side of the continent border "where they belong".

Ezran, however, tries to bring up how they can build a future through love, and asks if Karim loves his sister, to which Karim says he does, because she's still his sister even if she lead his people down what he thought was the wrong path. This leads to Ezran telling Karim that he can choose love, only for Karim to bring up how Sol Regem was once faced with a choice and chose fire, and he wants to "honor" the dragon by choosing violence as well, and blames Janai for refusing to do that.

Corvus and then Ezran come to realize Karim's plan to have Sol Regem wipe out Janai and her army, but before they can leave, they are captured by Karim's soldiers, with the latter then going to the center of his army to prepare to lead in killing his sister's. While that was happening, though, Ezran escaped and tried to warn Janai to no avail, as she had already ordered to attack. At that moment, Karim ordered Miyana to call Sol Regem, but as Janai's army grew closer, they came to realize Sol Regem wasn't coming, as he had been brought to Katolis by Pharos, who was possessed by Aaravos, and used to burn the castle down and kill Viren.

Karim's army was quickly defeated, with him being arrested while everyone else was given amnesty by the queens. In spite of forgiving Karim's army, Janai had difficulty in forgiving her brother, due to him leading a force that would have taken everything from her. During this, Janai discovered that Miyana was pregnant with Karim's child, so she went to his dungeon and offered him a chance to avoid his punishment by reliquishing his name.

Karim quickly realizes what had happened with Miyana, and assumes that Janai only wants to have him reliquish his name so he won't be turned to a martyr and later have his child get revenge in Karim's name. Janai shuts this down, saying that she's doing it to save him because he is her brother. Seeing as how he was again refusing her offers to stop and change, Janai reluctantly tells the Five Horns to prepare Karim's execution.

Finding out about this, Amaya decides to try to break Karim free, as she did not want Janai to go through the pain of having to kill her brother. Amaya then tries to relate to Karim as both hated the other's kind due to past experiences that were thaught to them from a young age, but Karim shuts Amaya down, saying that his hatred of humans didn't come from fear, but from knowledge, and that he knows he's facing a living creature rather than a shadow, before affirming that humans are a plage that take from others until their history and culture is nothing but dust.

Miyana would then appear, and tells Karim that their dreams of an empire have failed, but they can build a new dream where they can live happily, seeing their child grow and play with other kids. While Karim initially thinks Miyana is asking him to give up, she denies it, and instead tells him that she wants him to fight so he can live for her and their child. This leads to Karim lowering his knees to hear their baby.

After this, Janai and Amaya hear from the Celestial Elf Astrid, sent by Callum to talk to them, about how Aaravos was going to go to Lux Aurea and use the sun orb to bring about eternal night, so they needed to destroy it before Aaravos could get to it. This leads to Janai going to Karim and asking for his help. While Karim is initially against it, he agrees once Janai tells him that he's the only one who can save the Sun itself.

Going to Lux Aurea, Karim tells the group to fight off the sunforge corrupted creatures so he can have time to launch a spell to destroy the Sun Orb before Aaravos appeared, which they did. As he was finishing the spell, however, Karim decided that it would be better to negotiate with Aaravos, betraying his sister and everyone there. Meeting Aaravos, he threatens the Startouch Elf that he would destroy the Sun Orb if he tries to go against his demands, so he seemingly agreed.

Karim then explained that he wants to restablish order after so much chaos happened, and wanted to avoid destroying the Sun Orb. Aaravos then shows him the palm of his hand, with Karim deciding to get on it. He then offers Aaravos that he would help him in remaking the world, and if it needed to burn for it to be reborn, then so be it. At that moment, though, Aaravos crushes Karim under his hand, crushing him until there was only blood oozing from the tip of his fingers.

Mitigating Factors?[]

Will bring up some things worth talking about here. First will bring up his biggest potential issue that may change how he ends here, him being a well-intentioned extremist or not. Now, let's get this out of the way, Karim genuinely wants his people to thrive, he hates how his people's former traditions were fading and has promised to want to bring back the Sunfire Elves to their former glory. This is something that over time grew corrupted. He came to see union between humans and elves as the destruction of Xadia, and went against Janai because he knew that if he allow her to rule, he would never be able to see his people's return to glory as he would already be dead when that happened.

This here shows selfishness to his character, his main reason for going against Janai isn't because he thinks she will bring an end to his people's culture, it's because he won't be able to see the Sunfire Elves thrive himself. As time went on, his ego and bigotry grew, up to the point that one of the big reasons why he goes against Ezran's offer to give up and build his kingdom somewhere else is because doing so would only amount to "a scrap of what is rightfully [his]", and one of his biggest things he plans to do once he achieve his goal of an empire was to force humans to return to the other side of the border, simply because he believes they belong there.

Karim is so self-deluded that he believes he should win because he is right and everyone that is against him is wrong. In spite of all his claims of fighting for the good of his people, he seems more interested in building a future for himself to the point that Miyana has to remind him of the existence of his supporters for him to even mention them, and despite having been proved wrong on that front, one of the last things Karim says is announce himself to Aaravos as the true and rightful ruler of the Sunfire Elves, in spite of what he was doing being against the wishes of his people and his own family.

Karim dies wanting to become powerful and remaking the world how he sees fit, uncaring about having to set the entire continent on fire to do so. Related from this, Karim used to be a heroic individual as he once fought to save Lux Aurea and was humble enough to thank strangers for helping them. This traits ended up being lost over time, and he put more focus on his traditionalist views and desire for power over everything else.

His traditionalism is why I don't believe his respect for Sol Regem is mitigating, he claims that he is choosing violence as a way of "honoring" Sol Regem, but this comes off as fanaticism as Sol Regem is the literal representation of his views, being a Xadian supremacist who looks down on humans as lesser beings. It doesn't help that he does the same with Aaravos, complementing him so he could convince him into giving him power.

Another thing that I want to bring up is his relationship with Janai. He was shown to comfort Janai during Khessa's ritual and even initially respected her as the ruler of their people, but this slowly changed once she started supporting the union between elves and humans and began dating Amaya, to the point of going against her. While he claims that he still loves her, he still has no issues with trying to kill her and at one point blames her for the situation they are in. One of the biggest reasons for why I believe this doesn't hold up is one of their final interactions, in which Janai tells him to his face that she wants to save his life because he is her brother, but while she still cares for him and wants to avoid having to execute him, Karim never stopped looking at Janai with contempt.

Finally, I'll bring up a genuine prevention of Karim that I want to explain why it isn't too much here, that being his tragedy. Karim lost his home city, his sister, and saw his childhood friend die in front of him by slowly turning into a zombie-like creature before getting stabbed in front of him. Karim watched several of the people he knew die, and he couldn't bear it happening. It's clear that some of his hatred for humans and traditionalist beliefs are motivated by the lost of his home.

In spite of this, I don't think it holds up too much as Karim ends up becoming more and more unsympathetic as the show goes on, ending up as a supremacist who betrays his own people to maintain his traditionalist beliefs and for power, with no one expect Janai mourning him, and that's due to her being his sister than feeling bad for Karim himself. It says a lot when his own lover doesn't have any scenes feeling bad for his demise and everyone else doesn't have any sympathy for him.

Heinous Standards[]

Will say, the heinous standards of this series is notably high, as when it wants to get dark, it will get dark. The main villains have kill counts in the hundreds alongside acts that will result in worldwide death, the minor villains in the show have a mass murderer who has been killing for centuries and a mass torturer, and a guy who has a pit where he drops people to be eaten fails the heinous standards. Will expand all the more heinous characters here:

  • Starting with Aaravos, the guy ate Queen Aditi and almost started a war between elves and dragons by framing the latter for Aditi's death, with it being implied he was also behind the death of Luna Tenebris, has been manipulating humans for centuries, aided Viren in his attempt to kill the leaders of the Human Kingdoms to start a war against Xadia, succeeding in two of them, corrupted Lux Aurea's sunforge, turning hundreds to thousands into zombies, aided Viren in trying to extract the life force of a young Azymondias, msnipulated Claudia for over two years and had her commit atrocities so awful that she herself can't even mention without crying, had Claudia kill her half-brother (who was Aaravos' son as well) when Viren refused, destroyed Katolis' castle and nearly killed hundreds of people before Viren prevented it by sacrificing himself, killed many of Ezran's soldiers to break himself free, had Akiyu murdered to prevent her from creating another prison for him, deliberately caused the deaths of the archdragons, and his overall goal is to bring eternal night which as shown by the one night the creatures from the In-Between were freed, would have killed countless people and endangered the world.
  • Claudia played a pivotal role in getting her father and his army to Xadia in his goals to take it over and wipe out everyone there, launched a spell that killed many soldiers during the battle of the Storm Spire, committed atrocities so awful that she can't even think about without crying, was willing to break Ezran's bones to find out where Aaravos was imprisoned, broke Aaravos free and helped him in his attempt to bring about eternal night despite knowing how the world would be endangered if she did so, killed Akiyu, and even after Aaravos defeated she is still planning on aiding him once he returns in 7 years.
  • Viren trapped his mentor Kpp'Ar in a cursed coin for over a decade, which was a Fate Worse Than Death, doing the same to Rayla's parents for 3 years with the same intent even if it ended up not happening due to something Viren was unaware of, killed Avizandum and tries to kill Azymondias' egg before just deciding to kidnap it so he could use the egg for his emperiments, which is what lead to Xadia nearly waging war against the Human Kingdoms in the begining of the series, trapped Runaan in a cursed coin that lasted for 2 years, tried to have the leaders of the other Human Kingdoms killed when they refused to wage war on Xadia, succeding in two of them, which managed to convince the armies of three of the kingdoms into doing what he wanted, took part in causing the destruction of Lux Aurea by bringing Aaravos so he could corrupt the sunforge, started the battle of the Storm Spire which killed hundreds, planned on trapping Rayla, a 15-year-old, in a cursed coin, and tried to extract the life force out of Azymondias.
  • Anak Arow, later changing his name to Sol Regem, was a xadian supremacist since his youth and despised humans, to the point of causing the death of the child Startouch Elf Leola for trying to teach humans magic. After becoming king, he destroyed the city of Ellarion, killing hundreds of thousands, when they refused to stop doing dark magic simply because he couldn't tolerate humans having a chance of becoming just as powerful as elves and dragons. In the show itself, he's willing to kill Rayla and Azymondias, a teenage elf and a baby dragon, simply for defending a human, and destroyed Katolis being willing to kill the hundreds that were there with no remorse, and would have done it had it not been for Viren.
  • Kasef, in a desire to avenge his father who was seemingly nearly killed by elven assassins, was planning to wipe out the elves, and when Ezran refused to aid him and instead proposed peace, Kasef threatened to wage war on Katolis, forcing the king to abdicate and allowing Viren to take over. After being turned into a Sunfire monster, Kasef retained some of his emotions such as sadism, and went against Viren's orders and straight up went to attack Janai's army in the battle of the Storm Spire, and during it killed several soldiers. Kasef's actions caused the deaths of hundreds of people, and one of the last things he dies is try to kill the teenager Callum with a smile on his face.
  • Kim'dael is a sadistic killer who has been surviving for centuries by murdering people and consuming their blood, having previously been the leader of a cult who did that. She planned on commiting a massacre throught the Silvergrove, with children not being the exception as shown by her attempts to kill the child Rayla and Suroh. In the present, Kim kills many human and elf soldiers to get to the Sun Seed for Karim in order to free herself from her debt, later holding Janai hostage to aid Karim in his demands.
  • Finnegrin is a merciless pirate who was known for drowning or torturing people at a flip of a coin, being the leader of the town of Scumport, which supported criminal activity, and ring matches, where one day someone chalanged him and he had his bodyguard Elmer beat him to a pulp. Finnegrin has a crew made of people whom he tortured and enslaved, and by his own admission keeps his crew in chains to entertain himself. Finnegrin tortured Callum to find out a spell capable of allowing him to kill Domina Profundis and rule the ocean, and was also willing to cut the hands of Callum's friends and brother to make him tell the spell. When Rayla tried to break free, Finnegrin tortured Rayla before trying to have her eaten by a sea leviatan when Callum punched him in anger for what he had done, trying to do the latter even when told how to do the spell. When Callum broke free and saved Rayla, Finnegrin tried to tortured Callum, and then tried to have Elmer choke him to death when it didn't work.

While ths standards are something as shown by... all that is written here, I still think Karim passes the standards with the new season. Previously, he was willing to kill his sister and tried to murder her entire army which consistent of thousands, but at that point he wasn't bad enough. In the seventh season, though, Karim betrayed his people and offered to help Aaravos in his goals of eternal night, not caring that it would destroy the world as it was so long as he would be able to make it to how he wanted it to be.

Aaravos' goal of eternal night is the most heinous final plan in the show so far since it isn't just going for Xadia or the Human Kingdoms, but the entire world. We see just by a night of it that many people would die, as again, just one night killed dozens of people. Being the only one who thought of aiding Aaravos in his goals outside of Claudia, who is much more powerful than him so it's not a fair comparison, I feel Karim does enough to pass it.

What Prevents Him From Being Pure Evil?[]

After Darkness so people remember

One of the main reasons I took this proposal was because of this, didn't want people to forget this existed. One of the best short stories in the show and I'm genuinely sad this is left to tie-in material only.

For as much as Karim rejected redemption and ended up subverting several of his redeeming features, he wasn't able to subvert two mitigating traits of his. First being that, while I mentioned how it wasn't too mitigating for his status as Near Pure Evil, he is still tragic. He lost his home, his sister, many of the people he knew, and saw his best friend turned into a monster before dying in front of him. This is played for sympathy and motivates some of his actions.

However, this doesn't change the fact that he, over the course of the seasons, became more and more unsympathetic to the point that there are no pathos for Karim in the sixth and seventh seasons, with more focus being made on his desire for xadian supremacy and hunger for power, which was something he always had, but ended up elevating to eleven here. It doesn't help that the show goes out of his way to have Karim reject all opportunities to change and Word of God revealing that they ended up discarding plans for redemption because they felt him dying desiring for power and wanting to remake the world how he saw fit and getting killed for it was a satisfying end to his character.

Outside of that, Karim has several people he cares about. Will begin with family, his love for Janai doesn't hold up and he obviously has no respect for his great-grandmother's memory, but he still loves his mother, his sister Khessa, his lover Miyana and eventually, his child. Will start with Miyana and say that he does genuinely love her and wanted to build an empire with her. His love for her even messes up one of his plans as seemingly seeing Miyana get him the Sun Seed has him go straight running for her happy she didn't abandon him, which doesn't end well as "Miyana" was actually Amaya in disguise. When he meets the real Miyana who betrays Janai for him, he's in tears as he goes to hug and kiss her.

With his mother, he kept a ring given to him by her and was saddened when it was taken from him by Janai's guards, and with Khessa, he mourned her death by making a candle memorial so her soul could pass into the afterlife. Additionally, while he initially only saw his child with Miyana as an heir, he ends up growing attached to it to the point of lowering himself to his knees so he could hear the child inside Miyana's belly. He does go against Miyana's wishes and refuse to change his ways and help someone who would bring the world to ruin and kill countless people, he never subverted his care for either Miyana nor his child.

Lastly, will bring up two of his friendships, one being a minor prevention and the other holds up strongly, those being Pharos and Osato. Pharos, while he mostly sees as a servant and even refers to him as such when ordered Kim'dael not to kill him, he does still get along with him and trust him enough to put pretty much the most important role of his plan on Pharos' hands. This can be debatable as he does normally treat him as just a servant, but I personally had a hard time seeing his trust in Pharos as anything other than mitigating.

One friendship that definetely isn't lost, though, is Osato's. As children, they would happily play together in a game of Bannerman's Run and trusted each other, which Karim still remembered fondly in adulthood. In the present shown in the "After Darkness" short story, Karim tried to save Osato when he was turned into a zombie-like creature due to the Sunforge's corruption, was in complete shock when he died, mourned his death, buried him, and promised him to not allow Lux Aurea to die with him, even putting Osato's glove on his right hand which he keeps even by the time of his debut in the show itself.

Overall, a tragic past that due to lack of sympathy in his final seasons doesn't hold strongly imo, and care for 5/6 people. Personally think the amount of people he cares about isn't too much of an issue since we have characters like Eggman who care for and respect more people than him (Karim has no enemies or foes he respects), and Karim overall is treated as a bastard unwilling to change despite having many chances to do so and dies with no sympathy. In a suprising turn of events, even his sister, someone who throught her appearances was nothing more than a racist woman, ended up dying in a more sympathetic light. Karim goes the other way.

Final Verdict?[]

Am open to thoughts but given the writing of the show going for him dying as iredeemable trying to aid the most heinous character in the show, I think he fits enough to be here. Definetely the one character with the most preventions out of any qualifier, though.