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.
Am I the only one who stays up at night wondering how the bat boys sleep? Like, they have to be tummy sleepers, right? Unless they lay off the side of their beds so their wings can hang off. There’s no way it’s comfy to sleep on their backs with the bony wings. And wouldn’t Nesta accidentally pin Cassian’s wing to the bed every time she rolled over to snuggle?
And the armchairs. How does that work? Wouldn’t their wings get crumpled? Remember in ACOMAF when they’re all at the Archeron’s estate and Feyre notices that Cassian and Azriel have a hard time with the chairs and thinks about getting them stools?
Are their chairs backless? How is that comfy? How do they recline?
The countdown to the release of A Court of Silver Flames begins and to celebrate the upcoming debut, I will be posting a teaser of each dust jacket design every day leading up to Tuesday and… just as a special treat, you will get to see the full reveal of the ACOSF dust jacket! I will also be officially announcing the preorder date for my limited hand-signed (by me) editions for the dust jacket set. So excited!!!
for fun, i started doing character designs from sarah maas’s a court of thorns and roses series. i love doing book character designs and the descriptions in this series inspired me! i’m working on the other different high lords and their entourages now as well
I don’t like going to parties, I hate public speaking, talking about myself gives me hives, I would throw myself in front of the bullet for those that I love, my family misunderstands me, it’s hard to “get” me, I hide my soft feelings behind a suit if armor made or rude remarks, there is definitely some sexual frustration and tension in my life, I find it hard to start a fire, I never want to go to the gym and train, and yeah I love a good romance novel.
So Feyre starts off thinking about her sister, her thoughts and feelings. But the moment she has any discomfort all thoughts of Nests and her needs go out the window. As long as Feyre is comfortable and as a easy life everything is ok.
