One can imagine a younger Vladik—perhaps a failed marriage to a woman who couldn’t abide the lies and the danger, or a lost love from his own training days. His obsession with protecting those he cares for (Villanelle, the memory of Konstantin’s loyalty) is a textbook response to past failure. He is trying to redeem a previous romantic defeat by succeeding in these quasi-familial bonds. The tragedy is that he is doomed to fail, precisely because he chooses to invest his heart in people who are fundamentally incapable of reciprocating healthy attachment.
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