Serana's arc makes way more sense if you actually read about the Tyranny of the Sun

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

So I just finished Dawnguard again and I was reading through some of the books in Fort Dawnguard between quests, and I found this text about how sunlight literally weakens vampires over time - not just in combat, but like, existentially. And it suddenly clicked why Serana is so desperate to blot out the sun. It's not just about Harkon's plan being evil, it's that she's been suffering under this constant slow burn her entire existence.

The thing that gets me is how the game never explicitly spells this out in dialogue. You have to piece it together from lore books if you want the full picture. Most players probably just think she wants to help her dad or whatever, but there's this whole layer of desperation underneath it that makes her character way more tragic. She's not just a victim of Harkon's control - she's also a victim of a world that's literally painful for her to exist in.

Makes the choice to side with the Dawnguard hit different too. You're not just stopping some vampire apocalypse, you're condemning her to keep living with that pain. Which I guess is why the Vampire Lord ending exists as an option, even if it's kind of a bummer ending overall.

 

[NordOfSolitude]

yeah this is a really solid reading of it. the Tyranny of the Sun stuff is genuinely well-written lore that the game kind of buries, and you're right that it recontextualizes a lot of what Serana's going through. it's less "daddy issues" and more "I've been in agony for thousands of years and there's one possible escape."

what gets me though is that even with that context, Serana still seems conflicted about the whole thing by the time you're actually playing through Dawnguard. like, she's clearly not fully bought into Harkon's plan the way he is. so I think it's less that the game is hiding her motivation and more that it's showing someone who's desperate enough to consider something terrible, but not actually convinced it's right. the tragedy isn't just that she's suffering - it's that she knows blotting out the sun would cause massive suffering to everyone else, and she's wrestling with that.

the Dawnguard ending does hit different once you realize what you're asking her to accept though. you're basically saying "yeah, keep living in constant pain" which is bleak as hell when you put it that way. but I think that's kind of the point? there's no clean solution here. siding with the vampires doesn't actually help anyone either.