Deep dive thread into Childe Tartaglia’s character and backstory.
Childe is a very multifaceted character who seems to always be reduced into something one dimensional in this fandom so I’m here to mansplain his entire lore *with screenshots*

Disclaimer: You’re allowed to portray characters however you’d like in fanwork and obviously people are going to have different interpretations from eachother.
But it’s annoying to see stuff that blatantly goes against what’s shown in the story being pushed as canon

This is just my analysis on his /canon/ character based off his quest, character stories and voicelines. I’ll also be addressing a some mistranslations from CN>EN.

Anyway let’s get into Childe’s mischaracterizations. It seems people either dumb him down to just soft baby big brother who can do absolutely no wrong and was played- or a completely unhinged, arrogant and uncaring asshole who was fine with destroying Liyue.

It’s always one or the other and it completely erases any character depth that was shown to us and portrays him as either strictly good or bad when he’s actually a rather morally ambiguous character.

I’m gonna address his “bad guy” side first since usually when I see people talk about Childe being mischaracterized they never address this side of him: One of my biggest pet peeves is when people purposely neglect his more “villain” like traits.

First and foremost: He isn’t being forced to fight. He lives for battle and is always working to make himself stronger.

He got this battle lust from the abyss but to say that his genuine love for fighting (that’s embedded into literally all his character stories and voice lines) is all just some sort of trauma coping mechanism is just false.

Does he have trauma from the abyss that isn’t shown to us in his story and voice lines? Ya, it’s very likely, his experiences there are hinted at and he’s mentioned meeting a monster there that shook him to his core that he wishes to slay one day.

I can’t get into that though because there isn’t enough canon material describing his time in the abyss or his memories of it since he’s never told anyone. All we know is that he went into it timid and hesitant and came out of it bold and confident.

In fact, it’s eluded that the abyss didn’t instill the love of battle into childe- instead all that potential and “burning ambition” was already there inside him and the abyss simply awakened it

But anyway, the desire to become stronger through battle that he developed in there is genuine. Even in his story quest he’s constantly putting emphasis on how he’s always challenging himself which is why he’s always getting stronger.

He’s not a “bad person” but he certainly isn’t all good like some people wanna view him (ps: it’s ok to like morally gray characters. It’s fiction. No one’s gonna arrest you for falling in love with a hot anime war criminal)

He’s not supposed to be the perfect good guy who was just forced into his role in the fatui- LITERALLY NO ONES FORCING HIM, HE LIKES HIS JOB!!

Teucers English line in Childe’s story quest said “he’d quit his job to go travel with you” but that was a mistranslation. In the CN version teucer said “he’d take time off his job to go travel with you”. https://twitter.com/tudou_mi/status/1375576226920681482

He was enlisted into the fatui by his dad who was worried that his violent tendencies would get out of hand and thought the fatui would be the only way to calm him down- it’s like sending your son to boot camp when they act up too much.

But unfortunately that plan backfired on him because Childe tHRIVED in the Fatui. He reveled in the battle opportunities provided to him. He’s a fighter and his potential was recognized and he quickly rose in their ranks.

In his last character story it even says that his delusion is his badge of honor. He’s a warrior who takes pride in his achievements but despite all his taunts during his boss fight, isn’t very arrogant or against losing because he knows in the end it’ll only make him stronger

But aside from that, Childe is very ambitious. He has big goals of conquering the world and faith in his ability to achieve them. But his overconfidence ends up in him pushing himself a little too hard sometimes *stares accusingly at his story quest*

He’s in the fatui because he enjoys the power and the battle opportunities that being a harbinger grants him and because he’s loyal to the Tsaritsa. He looks upon her in reverence and is grateful for the opportunities she gave him.

He’s just not as manipulative and cruel as the other harbingers and fatui recruits we’ve seen. It’s shown in his character stories how that his disagreements with their methods puts him at odds with other harbingers and makes him a bit of lone wolf in their ranks.

But he’s also aware that some of his own actions can be viewed as bad and knows the Fatui’s reputation.

In the end, despite saying he dislikes treachery and deceit because he’d prefer to get things done in a simple and direct way (meaning fighting), he’s ok with doing those things to achieve his and ultimately the Tsaritsa’s goals.

He even says he’s “kind of a bad guy” when we first meet him. He was ok with using the typical fatui styled “manipulative diplomacy” on the traveler during the Liyue arc even though he would prefer not to.

Why? Because his loyalty to the tsarista runs that deep- and that makes him a more interesting character.

Zhongli hid his identity from Childe but he had no say in Childe’s decision to use the traveler for intel or his decision to unleash Osial, Childe did that on his own to achieve his goals.

Granted he did say he didn’t want to unleash Osial, which I’ll get into later, but he was ok with it in the end

But moving on from those aspects of his character- just because he has a “bad guy” side to him doesn’t mean he’s malicious. He has his motives and will do whatever it takes to achieve them for the Tsaritsa; but it’s shown that he’s actually super caring.

He’s willing to put his life on the line to protect his family and he’s dedicated himself to protecting their dreams and being Tonia’s “knight”. He knows how fragile childhood dreams are which is probably tied to smth from his past that hasn’t been revealed yet.

All we know of right now is that he used to dream of being the hero of the tales his father used to tell him of, and that his “youth” ended very early which may account for why he still has a rather childish nature.

Perhaps he thinks that because he’s in the fatui, he can no longer be a “hero”, and while as he likes his job- it would technically render his previous dreams crushed. But that’s just my speculation, we don’t know exactly how he developed this mindset

But bottom line is he wants to protect those close to him. I see people get on Childe’s case a lot for unleashing Osial but in Childe’s mind he had no other choice

Was it reckless and dangerous? Yes. Did he know this? Yes- but like I said. He’s not supposed to be a solely good or bad guy. He was acting as he saw fit and it was justified in his mind.

However, the EN translation really screwed up on this line after you beat him in the archon quest but in CN he actually says “I didn’t want to use this plan because it’d harm the vulnerable”. Although the line afterwards is translated correctly

He clearly didn’t want to endanger the people of Liyue. It’s not as if he’s neglectful of others around him or wishes harm on the innocent.

The whole reason unleashing Osial was his backup plan and not his go-to was because he was aware of the destruction and harm it’d cause and he was against that

(also I stg if I see anyone try to blame the Osial situation on Zhongli. Childe unleashed Osial cuz of circumstances Zhongli set up but Zhongli 1. Didn’t have a say in Childe’s actions and 2. Might not have even known that was Childe’s plan)

Childe tells the traveler after the Liyue quest that his actions towards us weren’t personal and that he thought we’d actually been getting along pretty well aside from that which shows that the friendlier side of himself he displayed was genuine

He told traveler that we can take things how he want but that he himself doesn’t take any of the things that happened during the Liyue arc personally because it’s all business essentially.

He’s understanding of circumstance and even made up with Zhongli after everything went down (it happened off screen apparently, in Zhongli’s voiceline about Childe it’s mentioned that they still go out for drinks together regularly)

His entire story quest was made to show that other more down to earth and softer side of his character that wasn’t displayed in the main story.

But that doesn’t mean that the side he showed to us in the Archon quest was all fake. He is battle hungry. He is unhinged. He is cocky. He is willing to do bad things to achieve his and the Tsaritsa’s goals and yes he will laugh at you for believing in cocogoats.

But he’s also kind, considerate, protective of those he loves and extremely loyal. In Zhongli’s chinese voiceline about Childe he refers to him as “that warrior from Snezhnaya” and I think the title of warrior suits him well.

Tl;dr: Childe’s not evil but he’s also not completely innocent. Stop dumbing him down to one or the other smh. Ya’ll go on and on about character depth but then completely ignore it when it’s put right in front of you.

Anyway onto my personal opinions and interpretations if anyone’s interested: Childe is one of my favorite characters, I wouldn’t have spent hours writing and researching this whole thread if I didn’t genuinely care about him.

And while as its annoying when people vilify Childe’s entire character when his story quest is RIGHT THERE- it’s also equally as annoying when he gets babied. He’s morally gray, you don’t need to try and justify everything he does with a sob story.

There’s a reason why Mhy didn’t give him a super sad backstory. Yes, he was a victim of being tricked by Zhongli, Signora and the Tsaritsa but it’s weird when people forget that he was tricking others for his own plan too

He was using the traveler and Zhongli for info about the exuvia, he just wasn’t aware he was being used as well.

I’m pretty sure the whole reason he made up with Zhongli afterwards is because he realized that they were essentially playing the same game on eachother but Zhongli was a couple steps ahead.

In the end he probably realizes that it was nothing personal, just like he told the traveler after almost killing us.

Last note: I made this thread last month and didn’t wanna post it since I felt like it was too long and I was over analyzing stuff that should have been obvious. But after being subjected to yet another case of genshin twt illiteracy I decided to unleash this beast of a thread