I’ve said it before but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea: a lot of Raynes’s obsessiveness and antagonism come from the fact that he has a bleeding infected eyeball that’s giving him trouble. He must have been unhinged to begin with if he tried to burn it out of his own head with poison, but now he’s sort of on a fever-addled meteoric path to destruction and taking a lot of people with him. This can’t be sustainable and it can’t have been going on very long.
I also think he doesn’t remember some of his own past, due to something really horrible that turned him into who he is. He might remember what it was like to be a small child, and it was simple and happy — he definitely respects the innocence of children and doesn’t want to destroy it, so maybe it’s because he remembers it a little. But the memory is hazy, and there’s a big black gap between that and his adulthood. He knows he’s an orphan but he doesn’t know what happened to his parents (his line is something about “bandits, or Falmer, or maybe just the cold”).
I can’t get a straight answer from anywhere about how long Dunmer are supposed to live, so I don’t know how long ago all this happened or just how much of his memory is missing. But I think he was orphaned as an older kid or young teen, and then the really bad stuff happened, possibly something involving slavers, and he doesn’t have any memory of it, just a lot of seething hatred.
He’ll either die when the illness slows him down enough that a bandit can stick a blade into him, or he’ll get better and probably be a bit more cautious and subdued, and maybe sadder as some of the anger cools off.
Why yes, all Dunmer are my sad woobie elves and I want to wrap them all in warm blankets. Raynes is really not cooperating with this plan.
