The Night Court is a hotbed of cronyism and definitely to its detriment. Cassian has been a “general” for hundreds of years and yet remains admittedly inept at political manoeuvring and socialising with anyone outside of his family; Azriel is repeatedly fed bad information and is so terrible at spying that he resorts to butchering people for information instead, and is extraordinarily racist against the Illyrians; Mor can’t interact with anyone from the Court of Nightmares without having PTSD flashbacks, and yet it’s seen as appropriate for keep sending her there as an ambassador; Feyre is 22, clueless of Prythian’s history, totally reliant on Rhys for biased information about their political neighbours, and after learning how to write 1 year ago I imagine her written communication is abysmal—I don’t even want to know how she manages anything related to maths—and yet “her word is law”; and Amren repeatedly displays a desire to blow up entire cities or engage in conquest and that’s just tolerated.
All of these lawmakers, these all-powerful members of his political Inner Circle, wrestle daily with unresolved trauma. Rhys does not have a single emotionally healthy person in charge. And when all of this untreated mental turmoil comes out as some atrocity or violation of the rights of others, it’s just ~shrugs~. Their own people, and in fact a lot of other people across Prythian, are accepted as collateral for their squabbles with other rulers, or as meaningless casualties of their temper tantrums. Because of the positions of power they hold, their trauma becomes everyone else’s problem, with 0 accountability—and boy do they make the most out of that. Unreal that they haven’t been invaded or overthrown at this point.
Rhys encourages the Velaris locals to ostracise the citizens of the Court of Nightmares—to refuse them goods and services, as a punishment because he dislikes their leader, as if this isn’t a powder keg of social unrest waiting to blow. He steals from and attacks their neighbours with his daemati powers, not to mention openly orchestrating a plot to destabilise a neighbour. He allows (his idea or no, it happened on his watch) low-income housing to be destroyed in Velaris just to make a point to his sister-in-law. He cooks up this image of himself as a villain for 500 years and then expects his contemporaries to just blithely believe him when he says “oh i’m a good guy actually”. He lies through his teeth about everything, even to his wife, and rather than make any attempt to bring Keir’s army onside, he instead actively makes personal enemies of the Court of Nightmares’ leaders and civilians. The law against wing-clipping in Illyria is not enforced (why was Emerie’s father not prosecuted? How can Rhys be powerless to stop the men clipping the women’s wings, yet maintain enough control over the Darkbringer army, even when the CoN locals actively hate him, to send them out to fight on his behalf? He is the most powerful High Lord in history, and yet the wing-clipping is completely beyond him?) and he hoards an obscene amount of wealth, far too much for it to be believable that he is not economically exploiting his people outside of Velaris. In order for one person to be that rich, other people have to be poor.
It’s kind of shocking that Velaris hasn’t yet been besieged. Although it’s explicitly stated that the Illyrians are disenfranchised enough to want to rebel—only they are terrorised out of doing so by threats from Cassian.
i’ll say this once and once only (who am i kidding i’ll repeat this to my grave and it’ll possibly be engraved on my gravestone):
NESTA ARCHERON IS TOO GOOD FOR EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN RHYSANDS HYPOCRITICAL INNER CIRCLE (MORE LIKE INNER CULT)
i’m sorry but i’m getting the craziest deja vu between how tamlin treated feyre after UTM and how feysand treated nesta in this book (legit same abuse just in different fonts). this is not to excuse nesta’s previous behaviour but like sis was traumatised??? and they wanted her to jump into work as part of their happy little court like her father didn’t jus die in front of her and she didn’t behead a guy?
alcoholism and sex are common ways people deal with trauma… are they the healthiest? no, ofc not but locking her in the House of Wind (idc how pretty her prison is it’s still a prison) is legit equal to tamlin locking up feyre in his manor. she should have been given interventions, of course, and been offered more help but like to force her to train which may have been triggering so soon after the war is fucking evil. and the audacity of mor and amren to suggest even worse locations (the prison and the court of nightmares) like what the fuckkkkkkkk.
everyone in this book showed their true colours and the entire inner cult SUCKS. don’t even get me started on the lack of reading the mf room when feysand built their palace right after a war. moreover why tf does their so called high lord care about nothing else in the night court but velaris ??? they really said fuck illyria and everything else y’all fend for yourselves. and they want him as high king ?? colonising is not the solution for prythian babes and even if a high king was needed rhys would legit be the worst kind ever since he’s so heavily biased towards his little twinkle city. i would take beron over him as high king fr.
anyways rant over but acosf PISSED ME TF OFF. i literally got so mad i had to put it down multiple times. i don’t think i can handle much more of this. since azriel didn’t annoy me as much as the rest i think i’ll be able to handle a book from his POV as long as i don’t have to deal with the rest of his merry men much.
i’m so tired of characters acting like amren is the most terrifying thing. like, ricedick threatens to lock lucien in a room with amren if he breaks any of their rules, and i’m like??? tf??? what’s amren gonna do?? she’s just an annoying, bland dipshit.
i love how she was so hyped up just to do nothing. sj/m has the characters tell scary legends about her, like when rice mentioned that she used to be part of the “Prison” (another super ScArY ePiC part of the acotar universe), or how she used to have some terrifying physical form, but you never see her doing anything actually interesting or cool in action. like yeah in acowar she turned into…. a ball of light… but the way the characters talk about it you’d think she was a god or something.
So tired of the “Nesta has hurt and wronged somany people” narrative because who are they talking about?
A case can be made for both Feyre and Cassian, sure. While a similar case can be made for their treatment towards her. But that’s literally it.
Rhysand? Please
Morrigan? Get over yourself
Elain? Out of the question
Azriel? Of course not
Amren? I. Wish.
Nesta isn’t the monster you all have made her out to be and she always delivers what she has been served. Treat her with respect and she will treat you accordingly.
