Liking Grayson does not mean we support or romanticize every harmful thing he did. That’s the part some people are misunderstanding.
Most Grayson fans are not saying: “what he did was good.” We’re saying: “now we understand why he became like that.”
There’s a difference between excusing someone and understanding them.
After reading DMIYC, many of us stopped seeing Grayson as “a cruel evil man” and started seeing him as someone who was psychologically abnormal from childhood, raised in a damaging environment, and never taught how to process emotions or relationships normally in the first place.
People with severe emotional/psychological disorders exist in real life too. Some genuinely struggle with empathy, attachment, emotional regulation, or understanding social behavior properly. That doesn’t automatically make them monsters beyond understanding. It also doesn’t mean society simply allows harmful behavior. Both things can coexist:
- accountability, - and empathy.
That’s exactly how many of us view Grayson.
We understand that he was dangerous. We understand Chase was hurt. We understand why some readers may never forgive him — and that’s completely valid.
But we also recognize that Grayson himself was not mentally “normal” like the rest of the family. The novels repeatedly show:
- his abnormal manifestation, - the therapies, - the emotional detachment, - the mimicry-based social learning, - and how the adults around him already knew something was fundamentally wrong from childhood.
And despite all that, he was still capable of attachment, care, and even saving people. Which is why many readers ended up feeling sympathy toward his true personality once they understood him better.
Understanding how someone became dangerous is not the same thing as glorifying the damage they caused.
Different readers react differently to morally complex characters. Some forgive him, some don’t. Neither side has to be “inhuman” for the other to be right.
Liking Grayson does not mean we support or romanticize every harmful thing he did. That’s the part some people are misunderstanding.
Most Grayson fans are not saying:
“what he did was good.”
We’re saying:
“now we understand why he became like that.”
There’s a difference between excusing someone and understanding them.
After reading DMIYC, many of us stopped seeing Grayson as “a cruel evil man” and started seeing him as someone who was psychologically abnormal from childhood, raised in a damaging environment, and never taught how to process emotions or relationships normally in the first place.
People with severe emotional/psychological disorders exist in real life too. Some genuinely struggle with empathy, attachment, emotional regulation, or understanding social behavior properly. That doesn’t automatically make them monsters beyond understanding. It also doesn’t mean society simply allows harmful behavior. Both things can coexist:
- accountability,
- and empathy.
That’s exactly how many of us view Grayson.
We understand that he was dangerous. We understand Chase was hurt. We understand why some readers may never forgive him — and that’s completely valid.
But we also recognize that Grayson himself was not mentally “normal” like the rest of the family. The novels repeatedly show:
- his abnormal manifestation,
- the therapies,
- the emotional detachment,
- the mimicry-based social learning,
- and how the adults around him already knew something was fundamentally wrong from childhood.
And despite all that, he was still capable of attachment, care, and even saving people. Which is why many readers ended up feeling sympathy toward his true personality once they understood him better.
Understanding how someone became dangerous is not the same thing as glorifying the damage they caused.
Different readers react differently to morally complex characters. Some forgive him, some don’t. Neither side has to be “inhuman” for the other to be right.