I often see people depict Elias as the snobby, prim rich boy between Elias and Peter and here’s my argument for the opposite: Peter canonically talks about being an aristocrat and scion of a powerful household, casually mentions dropping unfathomable amounts of money on personal projects, acts like a spoilt child when he doesn’t get his way, spends all his time on his yacht ship chilling in his cabin and having meals delivered to him, insults Jon by calling him ‘grubby Jesus’ which is just so fucking snobby oh my god, has a family that clearly values appearances, and then there’s his ritual. God, his ritual. I mean:
“I still remember seeing the headline, there in black and white: “The Loneliest Building in Britain.” Trouble is, everyone I picked was white middle-class, so people actually cared, falling over themselves to declare it “emblematic of the problems of the modern world.”
He’s such critical levels of snobby rich boy that his ritual failed specifically because he’s so short-sighted about privilege (he also, like an arrogant little rich boy, insisted on picking people himself despite being surrounded by more qualified people, because of course he did).
Elias, meanwhile, is like a 200 years old man who is referred to as a ‘waste of a suit’, loves paperwork, wears the same haircuts for so long that other people notice how old fashioned they are, and is happy to let his vessels reach middle age and older. He’s an old man who likes paperwork and was able to pretend to be a well-meaning, but somewhat incompetent boss for years. Like, this guy isn’t the snobby rich boy between them; he actively uses Peter’s snobby rich boy status to benefit himself.
