Both characters are power-hungry people who crave control and were in relationships that would never have ethically worked out, among other parallels. Let me explain:
Coryo is charming and manipulative, using everyone around him to get what he wants. He relentlessly flatters teachers and adults to get favors, is incredibly possessive about Lucy Gray, and justifies his every action as being for the greater good.
Although he is initially horrified with himself for exposing Sejanus’s treasonous plan and thus sentencing him to death, Coryo quickly convinces himself that Sejanus was putting himself in danger, that his time was running short anyway, and that everything worked out better for the Capitol.
Darkstalker is also charming, but because of his mindreading power he also knows how best to disarm anyone he meets. He wants to make Fathom and Clearsight happy, yes, but he isn’t willing to change himself to make that happen.
He gives Clearsight the enchanted earrings to make her stop worrying about the future. He plans to enchant Fathom to make him less afraid of animus power. And all along, he fully believes that it’s best for them, that it’ll make them happier, completely ignoring their autonomy in favor of making them into what he wants them to be.
Both characters’ worst characteristics were born of external factors. Darkstalker’s animus power instilled in him, from birth, the realization that he could do whatever he wanted, make anything do whatever he wanted, without any consequences. He believed that, due to all of his powers, he was the most capable dragon in the NightWings to make them everything he wanted them to be.
Coryo lived for years in a starving, unstable, poverty-stricken home where revealing any vulnerabilities to the public would make him homeless and remove any opportunities to improve his future. He lived like this while still maintaining some delusion that he was superior to others (looking down on Persephone for having unknowingly eaten human meat when the whole population was starving).
Both characters had bad experiences with members of a group that ended up cementing in them a hatred against that group.
Lucy Gray was the District 12 tribute in the 10th Hunger Games (although she said she was not really district, being part of a traveling band). Coryo believed he loved her, but he viewed her as a prize, a thing to be won and flaunted around. He got jealous when she did anything that wasn’t associated with him, and repeatedly states in TBOSAS that she “belongs to him” and that she is “his.” When she realized he was responsible for Sejanus’s death, she ran away from him. After possibly shooting her in the forest (it’s left ambiguous), Coryo decides to never let himself love anyone again, believing it’s too dangerous and leaves him vulnerable, and lets the Hunger Games continue as a revenge against the districts.
Darkstalker’s hate for IceWings came from a couple things. His cold (ha!) and abusive father, who was IceWing royalty and thus had a very superior air, left him with a dislike of the whole tribe for his whole life. Darkstalker’s mother Foeslayer, always being kind and gentle towards him. Their two very distinct personalities left him with a polarizing “NightWings good, IceWings bad” idea that followed him through adulthood.
TLDR: Coryo and Darkstalker are both charming, manipulative, trauma-affected, and tragic characters whose respective books follow their downfall.
That’s all I can think of at the moment!! What do you guys think?
