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.
If I won’t be able to stand in the edge of a cliff waiting for the dawn beside my fey mate to march with our army for a war while Harry Potter Lilly’s theme song plays in the background and the cold wind blows my hair…
I NEED acosf theories! Please post them! Comment with them! Or Shout then from the roof tops!
I’ll start off with one of mine - Nesta originally met Eris during one of the nights that the Keir and the Hewn City are allowed into the city. They hit it off because our boy Eris recognizes her strength and power without any back history
So in ACOFAS Nesta is still clinging to her character of being clean, holding herself up, and having pride.
Yet
In the flash forward to ACOSF She is apparently filthy. Has dirty clothes, dirty apartment, never changes her sheets, show up to the IC summoning looking and smelling gross.
WTF either something major happened (probably the same thing that broke up her friendship with Amren) or SJMaas forgot her characterizations and book cannons.
I ship it so harddddd the side characters were all so supreme in HOSAB I looked forward to Ruhn’s chapters so much, I like being in his head ngl Also, Einar aka the Autumn king needs to die can I get some knives in the chat pls
—So since everyone has been posted such amazing pieces of gwyn and azriel for the gwynriel week, I decided to whip something out as well! I love these two so much ahhhhh.
So I knowwwwww the situation with Tamlin in the situation, but hey, im drawing all high lords and their NSFW versions so I need to include Tamlin in it! Plus, I do have a soft spot for him
‼️ YOU CAN FIND THE NSFW VERSION ON MY PATREON, NEXT HIGH LORD IS RHYSAND ‼️
—Since I drew the Helion x LOA family portrait, I’ve been wanting to draw a Feysand one but with Rhys’s mum and sister! What has happened to those two is traumatic, and I know for a fact Feyre would paint these two for Rhys as a present!
—Anywho, this was supposed to post last night but IG hates me
So I saw that @court_of_sketches made this beautiful drawing of Rhys from the Fallen Angel painting challenge that’s been going round, and I had to ALSO do it
But the original painting was giving me massive Azriel vibes so I drew him instead
