Headcanon
Elim Garak is Enabran Tain’s youngest and favourite child. He had five or six other children with his wife, but none of them showed the promise in the ‘family business’ that the late-in-life mistake with the housekeeper did.
And he absolutely should have killed Mila before Elim was born. Not because he’s Enabran Tain, head of the Obsidian Order, but because it was disrespectful to his wife and children not to. That’s just Cardassian society, and any powerful man would do the same.
But he didn’t because he had a sentimental attachment to Mila. He felt a great deal of guilt about not killing her when he should have (it was detrimental to Cardassia because if the scandal had got out it might have shaken the very foundations of power and put Cardassia at risk).
He saw the spark of sentimentality in Elim and did his best to extinguish it. As well as the sentiment he himself felt for his son.
His wife was a political match, high-ranking, well-connected, a good woman, but quite dull. Their children all take after her. They have good jobs in the military or the civil service. They all know about their half-brother but it has never been acknowledged that he’s anything other than the housekeeper’s son.
Mila, on the other hand, was a love match. She was as bright and devious as he was, and despite her lack of education bested him many times. It was a shame she was born into the service class, because she would have been excellent in a leadership role in the Obsidian Order.
Elim showed promise early on, when he demonstrated the ability to lie at the age of three, and lie well by three and a half. He is Tain’s favourite child by far.
