Dark Knights and positive emotion

[Nesta]

So I love the DRK quests, I consider myself pretty decent at DRK lore but I often hear people talking about how there can be dark knights that use positive emotions to fuel their power, rather than the negative edgeyness we've come to know and love.

 

I know a lot of the lore we have isn't exactly reliable, considering the source, but from my understanding the whole topic of love, or finding a cause to fight for is specifically to balance out the fact that you're using negative emotions. It's not the love itself that fuels them, but it's knowing that they can die knowing their are giving in to the badness inside knowing that they can go home at the end of the day and it was all worth it, balancing them out. If they don't have something to fight for then it's easier to just continue to fall into the darkness with no light to guide you.

 

What do you think? Am I totally off with this reasoning, or can a DRK literally be so happy that their powers manifest?

[Nevivi Nevi]

Lorewise, DRK is about loving someone(s) else more than yourself and being willing to do just about anything to protect them. The love fuels the anger at injustices perpetrated upon the object of the love, and the anger fuels the dark knight's powers, but without the love to ground them, a dark knight would rapidly fall to their dark side and be consumed. But on the flip side, it would be hard to have that much rage without having love to empower it, also; directionless, groundless anger isn't really that powerful, just self-destructive. Selfless love of others is the lens that focuses it from impotent anger into a real instrument of change.

 

Anger can manifest in a lot of ways, so it doesn't strictly have to be edgy in its presentation. As long as it's a motivated anger that results in action and propels the dark knight to right wrongs and protect the innocent and injured, it would still work the same for the purposes of the class and lore. There's a lot to be said about 'positive' anger in the dark knight quests; it's a very uncomfortable emotion and it can very easily and quickly become negative anger (represented by the constant risk of surrendering to one's dark side), but ultimately it's presented as a useful and even good emotion, as long as it's put to work improving the situations that caused it instead of letting it fester. Anger without a positive goal would in fact lead the wielder to fall into the darkness, you're totally right.

 

So you could kind of have a dark knight who is happy and not-edgy, but somewhere in their emotional makeup, they'd still need love for someone(s) who are at risk of, or actually being harmed by injustice, and the resulting anger at that harm to empower them. Having that love could well make them really, truly happy though. As an addendum, to be clear it doesn't have to be romantic love...the general DRK lore focuses mostly on an agape sort of universal love for your fellow people.