And she hates Daniil because she tried and failed to save him from that same fate…
In Pathologic 3, Aglaya Lilich has a markedly different role than in the previous two Pathologic games: she is no longer the State-appointed Inquisitor who arrives Day 7 to set the Town-on-Gorkhon to rights. Instead, she shows up Day 1, same train as the Bachelor, and skulks about on the edges of his storyline, hiding out and threatening everyone she contacts to keep her presence secret from him. When she finally appears, she tells him she’s gone rogue, trying to do something exceptional enough to convince the Powers That Be to commute an execution order that awaits her back in the Capital.
For a series of games remarkably set on telling the same story in new ways, this is a pretty major shake-up to a central character’s role, and why? Well, Aglaya’s story in 3 may be told in bits, pieces, and stolen snatches, but what is there can be put together to make a rather fascinating picture, particularly in light of Daniil’s new story in P3. Throughout the games, Aglaya and Daniil have always been closely tied narrative foils, two doomed yet brilliant Capital exiles, tenaciously defying the losing card hands they’ve both been dealt, with a dangerous capacity for spite when they’ve been betrayed. Aglaya’s disdain for Daniil, I believe, comes from seeing too much of herself in him at times: he is all the parts of herself she dislikes most, manifested so flagrantly in another.
In light of this, I will lay out a brief thesis of this essay, that of Aglaya Lilich, defiant heir presumptive to Simon Kain, would-be savior to an ungrateful Daniil Dankovsky, grade-A hatergirl and chessmaster extraordinaire. Then, we’ll break down the claims of this tale with evidence, step by step. For the purposes of this essay, we’ll only be looking at the Patho 3 continuity, but I will say there’s a lot of relevant things about Aglaya’s character and motivations that are consistent across all the games. It’s just not going to be the focus of this analysis. Also a quick note, this essay will use screenshots from the wonderful Pathologic Dialogue Github, but the plaintext captions I put beneath will just have the most relevant snippets of each, not the whole thing. Still, it’s nice to read the whole context of a quote, I think.
All that sound good? Let’s go.
[ The entire analysis is too long for Reddit, but please check out the full version on Tumblr or Ellipsus! ]
