welcome to ivy rants abt regulus: regulus is such a complicated character and he’s over misrepresented in fan spaces which sucks!! he’s not a master manipulator who can see through lies and had no empathy, his main canonical character trait is how empathetic he is.

he’s also described as “soft” by sirius, which can have many meanings, but with context it’s likely he directly meant regulus was easily manipulated. he probably wasn’t good at telling when someone was lying to him. from that i believe he wouldn’t be too good at lying himself.

regulus also has a close bond to kreacher, and he’s probably the only friend regulus truely has. i mean, in the months leading up to his death it was just him and walburga since orion passed. his life must have been so shitty at that point, it’s saddening.

regulus has so much trauma from living in grimmauld, but also so much repressed rage. all his life he’s had to keep in all his feelings of anger abt what’s happening to him and his brother in fear. he represses a lot of his emotions, but i think anger is the main one.

also: believe it or not: i don’t think regulus was the favorite child. sirius was the HEIR. he would be the face of the family. i think walburga and orion hated his actions, but they preferred him to regulus bc sirius was worth more to them. reg was the spare kid, nothing else.

regulus never would have mattered to them if sirius never rebelled. he would forever be in his shadow. regulus was never as good at things as sirius. regulus would have to work hard to accomplish his goals and sirius could just do it all naturally. it made regulus feel inferior.

so when sirius left? i don’t think regulus was happy about it, no, but i do think he was happy he might get love now. he was finally important, so his parents might care. but they didn’t. because he wasn’t who they wanted to be heir. him being the heir was a let down.

so he tried to be better in his parents eyes. and the only way to do that was join the deatheaters. he was more than willing to, because well, than he’d be a good heir. and they would care. and it worked at first.

they boasted about how young he was to be serving the dark lord, and teverhone congratulated him and they were proud. they never had been before. so regulus didn’t regret it. not at first.

but eventually, he saw the deatheaters and the whole thing for what it was and he was disgusted. mainly at himself, for being foolish enough to believe it all. but he did the right thing in the end. and that’s why he’s the best character in like any media.