#I also headcanon that Varka is one of the few people who are aware of Jean’s feelings towards Alice.

[followfire]

I’m rather disappointed that Genshin has a tendency to go for the friendship is magic trope where everyone gets on well and become friends after spending two minutes together… I want to see tensions subside between the different nations… I want to see people have conflicts and never manage to resolve them… And I don’t mean just relationships like Kaeya and Diluc who hate each other as much as they love each other for very plot relevant reasons, I mean also very petty reasons, people who dislike each other from afar just ‘cause.

I’m pretty sure Genshin will never take this direction because everyone is love and sunshine, but I headcanon that Jean and Alice don’t really get on well…

Jean would never admit it to anyone, not even herself because come on, Jean cannot dislike someone in Mondstadt, she wasn’t raised like that. But still. Alice is chaos and havoc and everything that Jean isn’t and is working her ass off to avoid. Alice is supposed to be this old and wise mage yet Jean had to punish her once for playing with a wind current she created with anemoblobs. Alice raised Klee to be as carefree as her and even encourages her to play with bombs, and then Alice disappears and leaves little chaotic Klee to the understaffed Knights. Jean has to be the one to step in and try to teach Klee to not be so destructive but she doesn’t have time for this. Also I don’t think Jean likes having to punish Klee, she’d rather see her enjoying herself but Klee’s enjoyment tends to go out of control because her mother never taught her to mind the consequences of her actions. It’s like those relationships between parents where you have one parent who is the fun one, who never scolds the children, is always playing with them, while the other always has to be the one stepping in to set limits and be the responsible one and the joy killer because the fun parent is actually irresponsible and cannot be trusted to act as a reliable coparent. Jean is the no fun parent because Alice never acts responsibly. Jean is presently doing more to take care of Klee than her own mother, meanwhile Klee adores her absent mom to bits but thinks Jean is scary. And I like to add the fact that Alice was the one who encouraged Diluc to travel after his father’s death while Jean wished he wouldn’t leave and even wanted to persuade him to stay. So… I don’t think Jean allows herself to dislike Alice, but she probably sees her and know it means trouble. She sees her and wonders “why do you always have to put a spoke in my wheel?”. Alice is not mean and Jean knows that but she’s like a headache: you have to work with it because it’s not going away.

And Alice doesn’t care enough to actually dislike Jean, but that’s exactly the problem! She’s not bothered enough to see Jean as an obstacle! Actually, she’s probably rather fond of Jean and doesn’t even realize the turmoil that she causes in her.