i love that red queen puts family as the chief unit of love even above true romantic love like that for some reason is SO overrated in ya media. i dont think of the characters within friendship or romantic groups first, i unconsciously catergorise them into their family.
cal loves mare but cal will put maven first always and he loves his dad and his image so much he’s willing to sacrifice his character and relationship with her to fulfil the expectations set by his family and its not until realising what his MOTHER wanted for him that he lets go. and mare loves cal but she will always put her siblings and parents first which is why everything started with gisa and shade’s loss and it ended with her sister and the loss of her brother too. maven loves mare but he loves elara more even if she twisted him and elara loves maven more than the entire kingdom and thats why she twisted him. and elara couldn’t enact her plan to make maven king without getting rid of his love for cal first!! when shade gets killed mare HAS to kill elara because that is the only way she can make sure her pain is even with at least one person.
cameron does everything for her brother’s safety, she was willing to abandon her morals and dehumanise anyone standing in her way if thats what needed to happen. and after morrey was safe she quit— nothing was worth losing herself over except him. farley and shade’s love was so pure that it brought life and family to the farleys who were already broken with the grief of being halved. their love brought a daughter named after the death of the woman that destroyed the family, and it was so healing.
and that is what KILLS me about the samos family!!! that compared to all this unconditional loyalty— the samos family is a continuous act of playing at love and loyalty, when in reality volos and larentia could not care less about their children because they dont know how to. silver society never showcases this love and so then you have so many parents fucking up their kid in so many ways but doing it out of love because thats how they see it— all except volo and larentia.
so the samos family is an exception. i cant think of evangeline without thinking of elane and ptolemus and i cant think of ptolemus without thinking of evangeline and wren. thats their family. and at least evangeline and ptolemus experienced real love with each other, even if they were never taught it (evangeline’s fear over shade’s death was proof that she could imagine a world without him and it was one of the few times she was genuinely scared in the series).
It’s all: “you could have been my red queen” this and “thief/obviously” that, but WHEN are we going to talk about: “I thought of you in the end, I saw your face in the water.”????? HMMM?! When? When are we going to talk about this?
I was always intrigued by Elaras character and wanted to know more about her, it's a shame that so little is known about her or Merandus family in general. I believe that just like Maven, she was damaged and controlled by her own family and their ambitions (which she probably didnt want and was forced to achieve, just like she did it to her son).
She was a terrible parent, but here i decided to present her in one of her rare tender moments where she is singing a lullaby to Maven
if you like my work and wanna support me visit my ko-fi
if i had a nickel for every time the main character in a ya book's ex who betrayed them and then married someone else got killed with a letter opener by the first person they got engaged to, i'd have two nickels. which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice
Me, thinking back to this scene in volume 2 of Red Queen, where Mare's best friend, after declaring her one-sided love, also tells her that we don't choose who we love (who we fall in love with in this context of course), then she thinks back to Maven and their kiss from volume 1, when she had just kissed Cale not so long ago.
Me, thinking back to that moment in volume 3 where Mare says she's still clinging to the ghost of the man she thought Maven was and loved. That she wishes to believe that he is still there somewhere.
Mare telling Maven that he broke her heart as much as Cale did in volume 4.
Still in volume 4, Mare wanting to see Maven's body to be sure that he is really dead and that all her suffering is finally over, but at the same time, not wanting to see him and being relieved that his body was not found because seeing the Maven's corpse would have been the equivalent of seeing herself dead too.
Then, Mare, in the last pages, mentioning all the people she misses : Maven being in it.
Mare and Maven had a relationship that was twisted and toxic as hell, but they still loved each other...
Bonus : Maven briefly regaining control of himself, letting Mare kill him so he wouldn't have to kill her / because he didn't want to kill her.
I no nobody will ever understand what the red queen series means to me , I started it straight and ended it very Bi . It was the first book series that I ever read properly and it launched me into this great community that made me feel comfortable being me . I found myself In Evangeline, Maven , Farley and Cal. They were my friends when I didn’t have many .
I don’t know if anyone will ever understand or if anyone’s ever felt this way about a series before but I feel like it needs to be said that I love the red queen series .
Watch this get like 2 notes now that I’ve just poured my heart and soul out .
worst decision aveyard has ever made ever was make maven a man because can you even CONCEIVE how legit fem!maven would be can you even conceive it can you even conceptualise toxic yuri mareven omg omg you guys would never hear from me again
To the illiterate people with 0 reading comprehension that I have seen on tik tok today claiming that Maven deserved Mare, that it was stupid and "unfair" that he didn't get her, and that clearly with his trauma and what his mother did to him he deserved her:
I would just like to issue a sincere Fuck You to you and any future illiterate children you produce.