#EMPRESS Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

impossiblesuitcase · 4 months

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thoughts on cinder changing her legal name to Cinder Blackburn/Linh Selene/Some other combination?

I don't think she would. She doesn't dislike her name being Selene, she just prefers being known as Cinder. Plus the entire world has branded her as Princess/Queen Selene, so she would never truly shake it off even if she tried.

Another reason is outlined by Torin: "To the world, Linh Cinder is a dangerous felon who kidnapped a world leader and instigated a war, while Princess Selene could be the solution to all our problems with Luna." For the first few years where her reputation is still murky, it's in her best interest to lean into the Selene identity.

I think there's three possibilities: 1) she leaves her birth name as is, 2) she adds Linh, or 3) she adds Kai's last name.

(1) It would be simpler to go by Empress Selene but be called Cinder by friends. And she may enjoy this separation of identity; as Selene, she has the fate of the world in her hands to protect, but when she goes home at the end of the day, she's just Cinder, and can give herself a break from that responsibility.

(2) She does go by 'Ambassador Linh-Blackburn' so perhaps she would legalise it as a part of her name. However, Adri makes it pretty clear that she does not acknowledge Cinder as her family and with Cinder never associating with them after Peony's death, the usage of it would wane, eclipsed by 'Empress Selene' brand. So I'm not sure about this one.

(3) I do like that idea that Cinder adopts Kai's last name into her own. Let's say that it's Huang just for argument's sake (because Marissa cruelly denied us this knowledge). So then it could be Selene Channary Jannali Huang-Blackburn. I wouldn't say dogmatically that she would do this, but I don't think she'd be opposed to it. Maybe people even start calling her Huang Cinder in more casual settings--in some Asian cultures women take their husband's last names and in some they don't, so it's fair game.

Obviously if Cinder were to do this it wouldn't be born from the pressure of our current gender roles and patriarchal marital systems. They are apparently obsolete in this future, and women like Linh Adri and Solstice Hayle share a last name with their husbands without any implication that it was enforced upon them as a 'branding of ownership'. Cinder loves Kai; he's her family, and their children would likely have that hyphenation as well, so I think she could be interested in it. But I can also see her just leaving it as Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn--moon moon moon river

#the lunar chronicles #tlc #lunar chronicles #linh cinder

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