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Ooo 3 of them,,, I think he’s pretty cool

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The Saint and the Soldier. The boy and the girl.

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society if comics remembered that despite their stupid hero/villain dichotomy literally every superhero is 100% a criminal... like. they don’t have permission to do the shit they do.

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i am in love with this man

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“I wonder sometimes how much we really understand our own gifts.” ― Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone

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JESSIE MEI LI via her instagram

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actually speaking of KoS and RoW, how is it that every single country (seemingly) begins to deal with the sudden decimation of square miles of all life (as a result of alina... tearing down the fold? which also doesn’t make sense to me. you’d think that destroying the fold would be her righting the balance of the world, not unbalancing it and causing the world to start unravelling. but. whatever) and NOBODY points fingers at grisha?

like we have one noble family who blames the suli people who are passing through, but outside of that, not one person lays the blame of what’s at ravka’s feet, nor tries to link together the magic wielding population that are almost universally hated and feared, with the magic life-sucking plague that kills everything in its path.

a royal family member in shu han literally dies as a result of this, and makhi, the extremely ruthless and intelligent ruler, who is trying to find a reason to keep shu han from allying with ravka, doesn’t even once think to lay that death at ravka’s feet?

fjerdan diplomats aren’t knocking at their door, claiming that grisha are waging war across all the world? literally everyone knows about the existence of parem by the time KoS rolls around, and we’ve seen grisha cause earthquakes and tidal waves, and nobody goes “huh, maybe pulling the life out of every living thing for miles could be the doing of a couple grisha on parem, the performance enhancing drug”?

not only does no one point a finger at grisha for this, but i’m expected to believe that the opposite, is happening? that this is a time of unrivalled support for grisha rights across several countries? that the townsfolk in fjerda would see a grisha leech poison out of their water, and every single one of them would go “wow, a grisha saved us” and not once think “wow, look at that grisha who appears to have the ability to wield poison” and connect the wrong dots, and assume they’re the ones who put the poison in the water in the first place?

like call me a pessimist, but i personally don’t have much faith in conservative small town populations holding charitable views of a group that they’ve been taught to hate and fear for generations, during an event where all their lives are being threatened while in the presence of said group. like that’s just not how fear works. people see what they’re taught to see, and this is a town that had what was essentially a missionary school in its borders. and they want me to believe that this is a place that is going to start chanting the names of grisha, and claiming them as saints?

like no offense, but tell me you don’t understand how systematic oppression works without telling me you don’t understand how systematic oppression works.

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Okay I wanna ask you this bc I adore your metas/answers and it’s been so long!

So I just can’t imagine that even crowning Zoya as the dragon queen would help with Ravka’s inherent Grisha problem even if everyone clapped their hands when Nikolai abdicated. In the long run, does Zoya have a plan for her country, and the wars specifically against Fjerda, or is it all magically solved bc Zoya is Girlboss Avatar Queen now? Was anything hinted of that at all?

Too long! Rule of Wolves salt used to be my bread and butter, thank you for bringing the energy back!

I'll talk about dragon Queen! Zoya now but the Fjerdan conflict resolution is somewhat of a separate storyline in Rule of Wolves and has more to do with Nina than it does Zoya or Nikolai.

I'll talk about it if you want - let me know in the post box - but the answer would have to contain massive spoilers for Crooked Kingdom and Rule of Wolves.

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A lot has been said about Zoya becoming Queen and how utterly unrealistic it was for the entire Kingdom to rise up and rally behind someone without an ounce of royal blood.

Nikolai declares himself a bastard and is suddenly unfit to rule, but Zoya (Grisha, half-Suli, commoner) gets overwhelming support and is elected Queen by the country's nobility.

We are led to believe it is a decision that the people would full-heartedly stand behind. After all, Zoya is considered a Saint now - Sankta Zoya of the Storm turned into a dragon and led Ravka to victory.

Surely, the people would hail their new Queen?

Ravka is based on Russia therefore Eastern European/Slavic folklore and Orthodox Christianity play a significant part in worldbuilding.

I am not Russian, but I am Eastern European and Orthodox Christian. The patron Saint of my family is often depicted as slaying a dragon and I grew up on fairytales about dragons stealing fair maidens from their families/lovers and brave heroes sent to defeat them.

Sankt Juris, who gives Zoya the power to turn into a dragon, is known in Ravkan fairytales as the warrior who died slaying a dragon. He became a Saint specifically for dealing the mortal blow to the beast and dying in the process - sacrificing himself for the land.

We of course learn that he never died - that he and the dragon became one instead - but the Ravkan people don't have that information.

From his story alone, we can conclude that, in Ravka, dragons were regarded as dangerous creatures. Religious people, who pray to Sankt Juris, would surely be wary of dragons.

Thinking back to local folklore, I don't remember a single story where dragons or serpents of any kind were depicted as anything other than some type of evil.

We know Ravkans are deeply religious. We also know they don't have the best attitudes when it comes to the magical & mystical - if their treatment of Grisha is of any indication.

How am I to believe they would all rejoice in knowing that their Queen is not only Grisha but a shapeshifter on top of it?

When I think of an Eastern European period setting in connection to dragons, I imagine villagers with pitchforks - not a coronation.

To finally answer your question, I don't see why a country with "a Grisha problem", as you've put it, would ever elect a dragon Queen in the first place or how that would put an end to persecution or prejudice.

Alina was entirely different from other Grisha in the sense that her power was to summon literal Sunlight - no matter where you are in the World, the Sun is worshipped as holy. Not to mention her status as Daughter of the People; Her popularity stemmed in part from the fact she hadn't been raised Grisha.

Zoya's new powers are unique as Aleksander's were - people were afraid of the dark and they would be afraid of the dragon.

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Ben Barnes doing song covers on instagram @starberry-08

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Benjamin Greene + robe | for @rainsoakedsam

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Billy Russo in bed / for @breanime

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The Darkling in every episode 1x06 The Heart is an Arrow

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SHADOW AND BONE (2021) | 1.08 “No Mourners”

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The Darkling as Salem Saberhagen 😽🖤

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⠀⠀❝ i'm the sun summoner. it gets dark when i say it does. ❞

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shadow and bone

season 1 episode 1