al3ivingthings

[al3ivingthings]

I ship monperrin, I really do.. but sometimes I just think...couldn't Lud or Tay as least have been female? Why do Mon's THREE canonical love interests all have to be male.

[al3ivingthings]

"no one else knows their story like they do"

please beware of spoilers via excerpts for Mask of Fear if you're planning to read it

Tony Gilroy: I also wanted to explain their marriage… If you get married at 15, and it’s two beautiful people and they’re rich and complicated and sophisticated, they’ve been through all kinds of things. Marriage is not a monolith... a complicated marriage of people that have had all kinds of trouble, but yet no one else knows their story the way that they do. And the affection that comes from that and the comradeship that comes from that is something that the show benefits from.

All of which returned her to her initial task: finding her husband. She continued her circuit of the room until she spotted Perrin entertaining two Rodian women, one whom Mon recognized as the mother of Cydek Noorah of the Judicial Review Board. Perrin was gesturing madly with a glass of wine in one hand. The women appeared spellbound, and Mon would have paused to enjoy her husband in his element if she hadn’t been in urgent need. He really did have his charms.

P. 66

While Zhuna checked the traffic reports, Mon thought of how Perrin, too, had confidence Mon would never ask too much, and how when they were together things could be wonderful, and when they were apart neither thought of the other. Mon looked at Zhuna and thought, Don’t marry too young, because the companionship is glorious and the loneliness is awful.

P. 144

A gloved hand grasped her arm, and she turned to look into the barrel of a pistol. Her assailant had no face, only a white helmet. For a moment she was sure the clone would kill her. Then Perrin yelled, “Let her go!�� and he wasn’t on the gurney but sprinting from the apartment doors. The clone didn’t release her, and Perrin leapt, absurdly, onto the clone’s back. The clone dislodged his attacker with one swift shrug, dropping Perrin onto the landing pad while keeping his own hand on Mon. Now, she thought, the clone might kill them both. Yet at this moment Perrin was alive. She felt joy.

P. 151

She’d warned Perrin she would be gone awhile, and though she doubted he’d been fretting, she didn’t want him to learn of her return from her staff.

P. 340

“I’m—” Say you’re okay, she urged herself, but that was a lie she couldn’t bring herself to tell. Perrin had seen her joyful and curious, and he’d seen her in despair. He’d accompanied her on that last visit to her mother, when the woman had seemed so frail, arguing about her appetite and refusing her medication as she’d withered away in bed. There were many things Mon could hide from Perrin—but not everything.

P. 410

Once she was allowed visitors, Perrin came to her bedside and stayed there. He said—and the medical staff confirmed—he’d been present the entire time, waiting in the lobby and the observation areas. Mon couldn’t quite believe it. It was good to see him.

P. 487

She insisted at last that he go home. He’d found new lodgings, he told her—more comfortable than the temporary housing provided by Senate Security. Mon would like the place, he said, and she said she was sure she would and that he could settle in without her, make certain it felt lived-in by the time she got there. She missed him dearly when he was gone.

P. 488

SHE FELT JOY. no further notes needed.

[al3ivingthings]

Favorite Andor S1 Mon Mothma line:

It's the only thing she shows up on time for

It's from the scene in which Vel and Mon discuss Leida's tendency to only truly be enthusiastic about Chandrilan tradition. It's kinda heart-breaking, and I think this shows Mon's love for Leida more than anything. She knows that her daughter's frequently, perhaps habitually late and disinterested in anything else, but this which Mon hates- Leida loves because it gives one thing Leida truly needs- stability and connection...which she's deprived of because of Mon and Perrin...which happened because of this very tradition. wow they're messed up lol

Anyway I love how you can feel genuine care, regret and that particular brand of cluelessness that appears whenever Mon deals with Leida...but also attention. The way she notices. And love, despite it all.

Favorite Andor S2 Mon line:

well they haven't won yet

, she says this to Bail after the Ghorman Massacre. It's true- the Empire and it's propaganda schemes have not won...yet. She's the one who says it and believes it and she's the one who'll smash the narrative control the Empire is holding dear. This is after the Ghorman Massacre and she saying that the inflictors haven't won yet. I absolutely love how she embrace this as a chance. I love how Mon who lives between and chooses so many things she despises, still wants to be seen and heard and influence people and be a politician.

Favorite Mon line from The Mask of Fear:

and the galaxy would be different,

Mon just lost the thing she loves most in the universe, her purpose of life and her dream, something for which she tossed aside a lot of things. And that was okay, it was to do what she loves...but in the end was it really all for...this? Everything that culminated to the Empire? And she had to truly face all these in a genuinely soul-crushing way.

But in the end she still has to live, she wants to live, so she has to accept this new and changed world and people, however scary they might seem. I love this- I adore this acknowledgement of her misjudgment and acceptance. But still the galaxy is her stage and she'll never not be a senator. She just has to be different in a new way now because the galaxy she loves is different, when everything is the same yet so fundamentally twisted. I love how she thinks about never getting weak about her opposition, even as the world screams at her to be just complicit. I adore how she lets go of all among the broken shards of her own ideals that she deemed absolute but that were never probably really, alone.

This is her vowing to not be blind but also to still be herself-all the messy complicated and conflicted parts of her.

This isn't an announcement for the rebellion, and she's still lightyears away from leaving the Senate both mentally and physically, but this acceptance inside her as she looks toward the new day and world that she's embracing as they are will sustain her and stay with her. ahhhhhhhh love her so much.

[al3ivingthings]

It took years and disasters for Mon and Bail to truly understand, accept and love eachother(and then he died), Mon and Perrin never really tried to challenge the wall between them as the pendulum swings for decades, Mon's parenting skills are very questionable and Mon and Leida are a trainwreck, Mon and Leia's relationship must have been in the shadow of Leida and Bail/Breha(it's a bit implied in the PatS iirc).. Really I think the only person she loves without any buts is Vel.

But overall Mon is like... strangely not very partial about the people she loves or cares about. Like I get the feeling that individuals or her feelings for them can never truly be her motivation or purpose or world. She's perpetually lonely and she does crave partnerships and connection(with Perrin and Vel) but she's like... so nonchalant sometimes. Like... she looks like she mastered force sensitive's kind of no attachment thing to an extreme amount lol. Don't really know how to really explain this feel I get from her. Perhaps thinking that Mon loves Leida the most in the world and seeing her ultimately just abandoning her motherhood pretty easily(it's different from it's her sacrifice for the rebellion or the show didn't have time to address it) didn't mesh well together in my mind subconsciously..

[al3ivingthings]

"all the unhealthy patterns their relationship has developed"

please beware of spoilers for Mask of Fear if you're planning to read it

Alexander Freed: They are, like many couples who marry young, struggling with how to change together as they change separately; and they're struggling, too, from the burden of all their past struggles, all the unhealthy patterns their relationship has developed. But Perrin isn't a monster and there's still hope for the marriage.

She invited Perrin anyway, and he told her he had other plans but offered to change them if she needed him to work the gala. She didn’t, she said, and that was that. He didn’t push, he didn’t offer to come anyway, and she didn’t tell him she could use a friend.

P. 143

While Zhuna checked the traffic reports, Mon thought of how Perrin, too, had confidence Mon would never ask too much, and how when they were together things could be wonderful, and when they were apart neither thought of the other. Mon looked at Zhuna and thought, Don’t marry too young, because the companionship is glorious and the loneliness is awful.

P. 144

Perrin drank heavily, snapped at her for endangering herself when she left for public appearances, and eventually went quiet. He had his own trauma to confront and his own perfectly valid fears, but she was in no place to help him. She doubted they’d talk for a while.

P. 180

She wished, for a moment, that she’d called Perrin when she’d first landed. That instead of racing from Nulvolio’s yacht back into the fray of politics, she’d taken a moment to speak to her husband, hear his voice, and remember what she’d once loved about him or still did. Then she scolded herself for the wish.

P. 371

For the third time since her release from interrogation, she retrieved her comlink and prepared to call Perrin. She’d yet to speak to him since her return to Coruscant, though surely he’d heard she was onworld. Surely one of her staffers had mentioned it, or he’d called her office or been approached by the security bureau himself? But each of the previous times she’d begun to call, she’d remembered some other, more urgent problem to tackle first—and now she simply didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t delay any longer. Talk to your husband, Mon. It shouldn’t be so hard.

P. 409

She kissed him as he slept, knowing he wouldn’t wake. Or if he did wake, Mon supposed, he would pretend he hadn’t and lie still until she left the bed. Perrin wouldn’t ask questions she didn’t want to answer, and that, in its way, was what held their relationship together. She slipped out from under the covers, feeling their thousand-credit caress on her bare skin. She couldn’t explain to herself what had driven her to intimacy with her husband that night. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

P. 526

Perrin loved her, in his way, but she hadn’t told him about the vizier or about Bail and Saw Gerrera. She could cling to her husband awhile, but he didn’t live in her world, and he would never know all her secrets.

P. 527

They second guess eachother and their relationship is terrible and unhealthy and they both avoid facing their issues. They'll never be true love and they resent their shared cage BUT they care about the other and know eachother so well and is and will be eachother's only constants(like to even as late as 3bby in Andor 206) but they'll also never truly understand the other's world and it's insane.

[al3ivingthings]

The Senator of Cerberon: You know I’ve always admired you? The way you believe in the greasy, noisy machinery of democracy. Even if the Emperor cheated at the game, knocked the board off the table in the end, you stayed true to an ideal. The Senator of Ghorman: I came here to thank you, Mon. Your constant courage. The brave face you put to the world. I've done a poor job letting you know how much I admire your grace... and energy.

I love that Mon Mothma's idealism is her fuel and her weapon, I love how it makes the others want to believe in it despite it all. I love how everyone recognizes she means it.

I love how she then maneuvers to convert that to her power, to political capital, to the tangible influence that can move and shape the world.

Really one of the most interesting and complex characters in Star Wars.