There’s not enough content in the manga but I just finished watching the anime. Arnold is a strange character too, feels like he has a deep hatred towards his fathers empire and that makes him two faced. There’s a specific scene with Rishe that better explains why Arnold sucks, just apply that to this moment and it makes more sense in my opinion.
Spoiler next
Arnold is not in love with Rishe, (yet) but she is no doubt his favourite person. He admires her and wants to respect her, and wants her to do whatever she pleases. The spoiler is this- when she asked him to put the ring (his gift) on her ring finger he said no.
he doesn’t expect her to choose him, he didn’t want/expect to be important to her, he basically tells her to treat him as part of the background.
The purveying theme of this particular series I think is self-worth. The brother wanted to be acknowledged, the alchemist believed himself to be evil, and Arnold….we’ll it’s not super clear yet, but All of them are foils to Rishe’s ability to see possibilities, or something along those lines lol
and the way they just swept under the rug that little bit about his sisters??? where are they and what happened to them? honestly the entire thing made absolutely no sense. the whole situation was supposed to do something for the ML but it rly just showed that his brother is in the right lol.
i guess we can't expect much from the guy who starts like a continental war for some (still!!!) inexplicable reason lmao. it still rly bothers me tho, like what exactly was the point ML makes zero sense.
Theodore was 100% in the right in his plan especially because Arnold was such a god awful brother. Like he just wants to do anything he can for his brother and his brother is both neglecting him and being rude to him and acting like he is at leech. So it makes sense that’s a natural progression of that is suicide. And so he tries to do that. His brother stops him, then slaps him. Tells him to value his life because apparently Arnold values his brother life and then when he starts crying and apologizing, he tells him to calm down and then leave him there. Like he’s still not a good brother I feel like I’m being gaslit. And then Theodore disappears into the background cast like what the hell!?!? Was he literally just used as background fodder for Arnold’s development. To show what that Arnold is a good big brother when in fact he is not. Like I actually really enjoy this however, this is the one part that just is yikes like you can show him being a good person, but this does not help