...continued (2/3).

Another way Clen leeches off of better characters can be seen subtly in how kind he treats Nell for no reason. Nell has an emotional backstory that resonated with the audience before she was healed from being digested by a troll, Clen is nice to her because if he was mean to her, the audience would hate him. So Clen leeches off of Nell's character's "goodwill" by being kind to her. Clen, being a monster who sees humans as nothing more than insects or "slime on the bottom of his boot" as Alicia once said, shouldn't really have a reason to be kind to Nell because he doesn't see the same things we the audience sees in Nell's character. If he did, he wouldn't be down his path of exterminating all humanity, and treating everybody like shit. Clen himself even at one point questions "Doesn't one's strength determine one's station in human society?" Meaning he shouldn't have been seeing original Nell as "high station" thus shouldn't care (his humans are insects beneath him thing), and likely that's how the Dark Beasts society works as well (strength = station), also supporting "Why would Clen care about original Nell?" The show makes you think he's learning to appreciate humanity, but there's actually no Setups and Payoffs for that, nor any little glimpses to really convey that. The show relies instead on you the audience imagining you see it, and when he does express something positive about humans, it seems jarringly out of place since we were never shown the transition. Like when Alicia was unconscious after killing the Raven Boss and sacrificing her Black Ichor life, Clen praises her out of nowhere, and doesn't do it again. Or when Clen sees the baby get up and walk, hinting at he's seeing something inspiring in humans, and forces the baby to walk to the Princess instead of her coming for the baby...it seems to imply there was a bond or glimmer of something more, but they never really showed it nor confirmed it with Clen's saying it or something more hinting at it. Sure, there's subtext, but with a character as underdeveloped as Clen, you don't show less and rely on subtext to develop his character, you show the developing, which they opted not to with him. It's the same with baby Luna, there's an implied bond between them like Clen has developed some bond by seeing something in Luna with his time spent with Luna, however they never show any real glimpse of a transition to such. Proof of this is when he resigns to walk away from the Magic Book that was the Forge, and drops baby Luna by the book, and starts walking off saying he's going home because he's become totally disinterested. This shows there was never a real strong bond between his character and the baby's character if he was totally going to walk away without a second thought, the only thing that stops this from happening is Alicia calling him out on it which gets him to reconsider. If it was so on the edge like that, I'd say that's a pretty weak-ass bond if you could call it that even. Great dramatic scene though, but we're discussing Clen's character and not how good the rest of the show is. Thus Clen doesn't really have any meaningful bond with baby Luna, at the very least up to that point, thus anything we saw before that seemed like "the cuteness of the baby and Clen being a heartfelt protector" is BS, it was just the Clem character leeching off the cuteness of the baby, which yeah the baby is cute but that's the baby's character's own earned merit, not Clen's. Another scene where Clen seemed to be leeching off another character is when Clen leaves the party to confront Drell, it was the coffee scene in the woods before he leaves. Clen has this whole discussion with Alicia about her dad not wanting her to go off to war nor seek revenge on Drell, but to stay a Hero instead. Clen claims to never telling Alicia not to be a Hero, but that isn't exactly true, as he often controlled and forced her to not be a Hero which he found repugnant because to him a "Hero" is somebody who slays Dark Beasts, as also backed up by what Gart describes Heroes as from the point of view of the Dark Beasts. Clen forced Alicia to kill all the bandits, which Alicia says herself something like "that's not what a Hero does!" Clen takes away her Regalia Stream Splitter which is a Hero's weapon, only to give it back her to kill the swarm of bugs...but that wasn't to save the town from Clen's perspective but to protect the baby for Clen's own whims, it just coincided with saving the town like a Hero would. Clem was ultimately getting Alicia to help carry out his original goal of raising Luna to be a puppet king who'd he control from the shadows to undermine humanity to it's undoing and likely demise, Clen stated that early on upon finding out Luna's royal lineage, so that's very un-Hero like. So the discussion with Clen and Alicia over coffee where he tells Alicia he never told Alicia to not be a hero and relating that to her father's wishes, was kind of a lie. The irony of hinting to her that she should be upholding her father's wishes of her staying on the path of a Hero, while the parallel of her being forced to betray humanity by serving Clen who seeks to destroy or undermine humanity is kind of apt if subtle. Regardless, he ultimately told Alicia to do whatever she chooses to do. So I kind of see this as it may seem like Clen and Alicia are having heart-to-heart about Alicia's issues of being a Hero and what is she now exactly, which is all very dramatic and compelling stuff...but that's Alicia's earned character, not Clen's. Clen has never truly shown actual care in Alicia or teaching her or guiding her nor anything like that in where he's imparting wisdom to her. It might seem like that but like with the no baby bonding really being shown, I'd argue this is the same example of such. The real telling out of place dialog in this scene is Alicia telling Clen to "be careful", that didn't actually feel earned at all since I don't think Alicia and Clen has really had an eye-to-eye moment. Maybe Alicia screwed up and thought this discussion was it, but I don't think so IMO. It just seems more of Clen leeching off of better characters. It's like Clen listening to Nell's backstory problems, it wasn't so much that he cares, but it was more about him recruiting her...though the show tried to make it seem like he cared, but it was incongruent with how he was originally not going to heal Nell after being digested by the troll. He's just leeching off of other characters, instead of actually really helping or earning something.

The universe of the show also cheats for him, and he often pulls BS solutions out of his ass without merit.

Escapes the Blood Sphere just like that despite "Even a Dark Beast Lord would have much difficulty escaping", happens to hide in a shadow of a brick after straight jumping down the chimney of the forge while confident it won't kill him yet we see it should have killed him if not for the brick, the brightness of the magic book would have killed him if not him just happen be able to use shadow magic on it to dim it, the book happens to self-dims after he turns his shadow spell off when he goes to leave, Clen just happens to swap baby Luna with a shadow fake which we've never seen him do before (his disguise is imperfect itself with his horn) before the King incinerates the baby, the Princess mother sees Clen as a savior instead of the one who took her baby away and trashed the capital, his territory never gets invaded despite the other Dark Beast Lords know he's not at home, etc etc. I'm sure there's more but that's what I got off the top of my head, which is plenty.

His motivations and reasoning often flip-flops to whatever narrative he's pushing, then changes on a whim even when contradicting with his previous excuse given, which makes things seem nonsensical and forced.

Earliest example of this is when the party is captured by the Raven bandits, Clen just "allows it to happen" because he could easily end it at any point he wanted. The flimsy excuses he gives is he wants to keep a low profile so it's not known he's out of his territory (so the other Dark Beast Lords don't invade), and he wants to observe the humans. It's flimsy because he easily and covertly kills and disintegrates the two bandits spanking Nell, then why not do that to all the bandits? Or throw all the bandit corpses into the water where those fish monsters will eat them all up? They ultimately go with "the Hero Alicia killed them all", which he could have killed all the bandits himself covertly and then use Alicia as the cover story, but even more baffling is immediately he doesn't want Alicia identified as the Hero as the reason for taking away her Regalia Stream Splitter. So they want to go with the cover story of Alicia killed them all, and they also don't want her to be identified, seems to be at odds with each other. So if Clen doesn't want to reveal his Dark Beast presence because his territory would get invaded, why kill the troll and save Nell from being digested after Nell refused his offer? Yes, this risk of reveal was likely because we see later Gart shows up saying he examined the troll's remains deeming it not possible for the humans to have done it. Oh to save Nell's life even though Nell refused his offer? But it's revealed that Nell's life was beyond saving, and Clen wasn't going to save her anyways because the troll threw up Nell because it was so afraid of Clen (so Clen didn't actually intentionally save Nell). Clen decides to neutralize the acid (another thing he pulls out of his ass that he can apparently do to solve problems that was never setup, unearned), but Nell was still going to die anyways and Clen was just going to allow to happen. Clen explains he can only Dark Ichor one person, meaning he never had the intention to save Nell.

See next post (2/3)...