I wrote this kind of thing before, but...
And Alexander's cheerfulness has always defied logic -- he was enslaved by an evil wizard. He's obviously been through *some* trauma!
Eh, if you think about it most of the royal family would be majorly effed up by the time MoE comes around. I mean, look at them...
Valanice: Spent an undetermined amount of time in complete isolation in an utterly alien realm. Now, if you lock someone in a room and completely deprive them of contact, it'll start getting to them eventually, but if you want to mess them up further, fill the room with all sorts of funky lights and colors. Eventually they'll start wondering if what they're seeing is real or if it's all in their mind. Making someone question their own sense of reality is fun for all the family. It's a miracle Valanice can stand sleeping in a room with the door closed.
Rosella: When she was young, her twin brother was abducted and it seems her parents spent a great deal of time grieving over him and searching for him. If that kind of thing happens to a kid in real life, he can develop some serious inferiority issues. The kid feels the disappeared sibling is always on the parents' minds and becomes either resentful towards the sibling or (more commonly) become starved for attention. Yes, becoming the willing sacrifice for the dragon in KQ3 was in fact the ideal way for Rosella to finally stop living in her brother's shadow. She'd die, but she'd be remembered on equal terms with him. Oh, she also grew up in a smouldering cinder of a realm, which probably does wonders to one's disposition towards life. With the troubles of the kidnapped Alexander and the destruction of Daventry on their minds, I wouldn't be surprised if Graham and Valanice neglected Rosella at least part of the time.
Edgar: Was kidnapped as an infant and grew up in a dark castle with an utterly evil fairy as his sole parent and role model. Lolotte was so twisted the positive energy from Cupid's arrow killed her. You know what a domestic situation like that looks like, don't you?
- Edgar: Mommy, I feel under the weather. Can I get a hug?
- Lolotte: Edgar, you know mommy's allergic to love. She gets a bad rash from hugs. Why don't we go and mutilate some peasants on that device in the dungeon?
- Edgar: Sniff, okay.
Anyway, we all know what happens to kids who grow up with distant parents who refuse to give them affection whatsoever. There's no way Edgar could ever function in a normal, loving family. It'd feel threatening and alien to him. Genesta's statement "You have a beautiful soul, Edgar" is kinda hogwash. We all know that how people turn out has less to do with what kind of genes they're born with and a lot to do with how they're raised in the first 1.5 decade of their life. Nevertheless, Edgar has issues. Unavoidably so. This is the guy Rosella's gonna start a family with. Hooboy.
Cassima: Was kidnapped by an evil wizard, treated like a slave (double whammy after being used to the life of royalty), when she came back she found out her parents both died and then she spent another undetermined amount of time in total isolation. Since she probably had a fairly normal childhood (compared to the rest), the local shrinks probably consider her only a mildly interesting case compared to the rest, if the undoubtedly massive post-traumatic stress-syndrome is disregarded. (no doubt her homecoming cranked said shell shock up to eleven)
Alexander: Edgar could already be considered a basket case, but at least Lolotte acknowledged him as her son. Manannan wouldn't even relate to Alex in that way. Complete denial of any affection whatsoever, severe physical and emotional abuse and total neglect to the kid's needs. They did this kind of thing as an experiment with monkeys and said monkey became either unstable and prone to bouts of extreme aggression or completely catatonic. Of course, Manannan didn't really have to worry about what kind of people his slaves became since he killed them on their 18th birthday anyhow, but it's really questionable whether Alex will ever have something like a life. Kids in real life with Alexander's upbringing tend to be extremely messed up. Obviously Alex isn't catatonic, so chances are high he's a very unstable person whose extreme mental conditioning prevents him from letting out his angst in front of others, so he wears a stepford smile during the day, and he secretly tortures puppies in the basement at night. (this is probably why you can't enter there in episode 1 yet) Due to his upbringing, Alexander would be even less capable of functioning in a normal domestic situation than Edgar and it's doubtful his marriage to Cassima would last long. And they put this guy in charge of the Green Isles. Zounds indeed.
With this in mind, it begs the question why KQ is still so cheerful, colorful and happy-go-lucky, even though its main cast is disfunction junction personified. The answer is, for the same reason fairy tales are the happy-go-lucky stories we tell our children in the evening. Let's take a quick look:
Parental Abandonment: Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel and Tom Thumb too.
Domestic Abuse: Cinderella, Rapunzel and probably Snow White as well.
Stockholm Syndrome: Sheherazad. For 1001 nights, she prolongs her life by telling stories to a sultan who planned to kill her. (insert Dread Pirate Roberts joke here) After that, the sultan ditches the idea of having her killed and proposes to her instead. She accepts. Similar story to the female protagonist of Rumplestiltskin.
Self-mutilation: Cinderella's stepsister cuts off her toe in an attempt to have her foot fit in the glass slipper.
Yeah, fairy tales tend to have some extremely disturbing sides and no doubt if we'd look at these tales through a more realistic scoop, we'd deduce that a lot of those protagonists probably have some pretty severe trauma underneath. No doubt we could create a more realistic version of Cinderella, whose traumatic domestic situation causes her to spend the biggest part of the day angsting, instead of singing happy-go-lucky songs with mice and birds. It'd be more logical, for sure. The reason why fairy tales seem happy-go-lucky despite their extremely disturbing subthemes is because the mental results of those traumatic experiences are handwaved away as detracting from the overall story and therefore unimportant. This effect is what makes fairy tales fairy tales and this effect is carried over to KQ as well... this is why Alex is a functioning human being in the KQ games instead of an angst-ridden mental wreck. I'm not certain what'd happen if you'd take this effect away. The fairy tales would probably stop being fairy tales. Instead, you'd have a medieval version of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
So yeah, Alex' cheerfulness (and overall personality and functioning) defy logic, but this very defiance of logic is an integral part of the fairy tales that form the base of the KQ series.
