#I'm going to make an essay at some point explicitly explaining the differences between the two

[macinthecaac]

I will genuinely never understand how people on twitter think Ryland Grace DIDN'T undergo a character arc. Did we even read the same book???

[mdzs-fanon-exposed]

Introductory post: Please read! :)

hi everyone! welcome to my very own MDZS-specific iteration of the unparalleled @svsss-fanon-exposed and @tgcf-fanon-exposed. this blog is designed to find the differences between canon and fanon in the Mo Dao Zu Shi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation fandom.

this blog is NOVEL CANON ONLY. although i may occasionally cite the drama or the donghua as the potential source for any misconceptions, the canons of these adaptations differ too much from the novel canon for my purposes (plus i haven't finished either one. whoops).

how this whole thing works:

send me an ask! is this thing you thought was canon actually fanon? is that fanon idea supported in the books? where? why? how?

i'll answer the ask with a rating, using SVFE's helpful rating system (explained below), and then go into detail. generally a post will include textual evidence supporting my rating, and possibly an analysis of what this means/where an idea came from.

i'll do my best not to introduce my own personal opinions or biases into the posts. if you have any textual evidence that you think disproves or otherwise contradicts one of my posts, i'm always happy to be corrected! HOWEVER. please do not argue with me or anyone else unnecessarily; this blog is not supposed to be a site for or source of discourse. i will block anyone who is repeatedly coming at me with bad faith. i'm doing this project for fun, and i want to keep it that way for everyone :)

posts will probably be sporadic so i don't burn myself out and lose interest. however, i want to try and answer as many questions as i can! submissions will open and close based on demand so i can stay on top of things.

some important things to keep in mind:

i'm not here to dunk on anyone's headcanons, and i am fully supportive of everyone's creative choices in the fandom!! (in fact i have many headcanons myself.) DO NOT harass anyone for their interpretations of the series. my purpose here is just to clarify whether certain ideas are textually supported, NOT to give an opinion on them.

i'm doing this blog for fun, so i'll be treating it as a casual project. i will only be using the official english translation of the novels, with the supplementary exception of the exiled rebels fanlation. i don't speak any chinese, so i will not be using the untranslated raws or any non-english fandom sources in my posts. although i'll be doing research as needed, i also will not be evaluating any headcanons purely based on chinese cultural norms, due to my unfamiliarity with them. if you are more familiar with any of these sources and have more information to add to a post, please let me know!

BECAUSE this is a casual project from someone whose only credentials are being completely obsessed with mo dao zu shi and knowing how to write an essay, anyone is welcome to make a blog that does this but. better. let me know if you start one and i'll point people your way lol.

finally: i will NOT be entertaining any character bashing in or on my blog. i've noticed that a lot of mdzs characters have some very... strong opinions about them across the fandom, and i may evaluate the "canon status" of asks that address specific aspects of these opinions, but as a general rule: i am going to be neutral-to-positive about EVERY mdzs character (yes, even that one. and that one. and-). and again, this is not a personal opinion-based blog, i'm looking at textual support, so honestly i don't think this disclaimer is necessary. but. just in case.

💥💥the rating system:💥💥

CANON: what it says on the tin! this fact is supported by the text. if you're trying to be as canon-compliant as possible, this rating is for you.

RUMOR: this fact is an in-text rumor. although this idea is mentioned in the novel, it's still not explicitly confirmed as canon. the characters themselves don't know if it's true or not!

FANON – SUPPORTED: not directly stated in canon, but it's a very likely interpretation, taking into account factors like cultural norms and occam's razor! this rating might be retroactively added to a post previously rated FANON – NEUTRAL, based on crowdsourced information about the raws or chinese culture.

FANON – NEUTRAL: it's not canon, but it's not NOT canon. the text neither confirms nor denies this interpretation, so it's up to you whether you want to consider it true to canon or not. the world is your oyster.

FANON – UNSUPPORTED: not directly stated in canon, but it's a very unlikely interpretation, taking into account factors like cultural norms and occam's razor. this rating might be retroactively added to a post previously rated FANON – NEUTRAL, based on crowdsourced information about the raws or chinese culture.

FANON – CONFLICTING: this idea directly contradicts something stated in the text. if you want to stay as canon-compliant as possible, this rating is not for you.

[soundsfaebutokay]

So I've recc'd this video before, but it deserves its own post because it's one of my favorite things on youtube. It's a Tedx Talk by comics writer, editor, and journalist Jay Edidin, and I really think that it will connect with a lot of people here.

If you live and breathe stories of all kinds, you might like this.

If you care about media representation, you might like this.

If you're neurodivergent, you might like this.

If you're interested in a gender transition story that veers from the norm, you might like this.

If you love the original Leverage and especially Parker, and understand how important it is that a character like her exists, you will definitely like this.

Transcript below the cut:

You Are Here: The Cartography of Stories

by Jay Edidin

I am autistic. And what this means in practice is that there are some things that are easier for me than they are for most people, and a great many things that are somewhat harder, and these affect my life in more or less overt ways. As it goes, I'm pretty lucky. I've been able to build a career around special interests and granular obsession. My main gig at the moment is explaining superhero comics continuity and publishing history for which work I am somehow paid in actual legal currency—which is both a triumph of the frivolous in an era of the frantically pragmatic, and a job that's really singularly suited to my strengths and also to my idiosyncrasies.

I like comics. I like stories in general, because they make sense to me in ways that the rest of the world and my own mind often don't. Self-knowledge is not an intuitive thing for me. What sense of self I have, I've built gradually and laboriously and mostly through long-term pattern recognition. For decades, I didn't even really have a self-image. If you'd asked me to draw myself, I would eventually have given you a pair of glasses and maybe a very messy scribble of hair, and that would've been about it. But what I do know—backwards, forwards, and in pretty much every way that matters—are stories. I know how they work. I understand their language, their complex inner clockwork, and I can use those things to extrapolate a sort of external compass that picks up where my internal one falls short. Stories—their forms, their structure, the sense of order inherent to them—give me the means to navigate what otherwise, at least for me, would be an impassable storm of unparsable data. Or stories are a periscope, angled to access the parts of myself I can't intuitively see. Or stories are a series of mirrors by which I can assemble a composite sketch of an identity I rarely recognize whole...which is how I worked out that I was transgender, in my early thirties, by way of a television show.

This is my story. And it's about narrative cartography, and representation, and why those things matter. It's about autism and it's about gender and it's about how they intersect. And it's about the kinds of people we know how to see, and the kinds of people we don't. It's not the kind of story that gets told a lot, you might hear a lot, because the narrative around gender transition and dysphoria in our culture is really, really prescriptive. It's basically the story of the kid who has known for their whole life that they're this and not that, and that story demands the kind of intuitive self-knowledge that I can't really do, and a kind of relationship to gender that I don't really have—which is part of why it took me so long to figure my own stuff out.

So, to what extent this story, my story has a beginning, it begins early in 2014 when I published an essay titled, "I See Your Value Now: Asperger's and the Art of Allegory." And it explored, among other things, the ways that I use narrative and narrative structures to navigate real life. And it got picked up in a number of fairly prominent places that got linked, and I casually followed the ensuing discussion. And I was surprised to discover that readers were fairly consistently assuming I was a man. Now, that in itself wasn't a new experience for me, even though at the time I was writing under a very unambiguously female byline. It had happened in the letter columns of comics I'd edited. It had happened when a parody Twitter account I'd created went viral. When I was on staff at Wired, I budgeted for fancy scotch by putting a dollar in a box every time a reader responded in a way that made it clear they were assuming I was a man in response to an article where my name was clearly visible, and then I had to stop doing that because it happened so often I couldn't afford to keep it up. But in all of those cases, the context, you know, the reasons were pretty obvious. The fields I'd worked in, the beats I covered, they were places where women had had to fight disproportionally hard for visibility and recognition. We live in a culture that assumes a male default, so given a neutral voice and a character limit, most readers will assume a male author.

But this was different, because this wasn't just a book I'd edited, it wasn't a story I'd reported—it was me, it was my story. And it made me uncomfortable, got under my skin in ways that the other stuff really hadn't. And so I did what I do when that happens, and I tried to sort of reverse-engineer it to look at the conclusions and peel them back to see the narratives behind them and the stories that made them tick. And I started this, I started this by going back to the text of the essay, and you know, examining it every way I could think of: looking at craft, looking at content. And in doing so, I was surprised to realize that while I had written about a number of characters with whom I identified closely, that every single one of those characters I'd written about was male. And that surprised me even more than the responses to the essay had, because I've spent my career writing and talking and thinking about gender and representation in popular media. In 2014, I'd been the feminist gadfly of an editorial department and multiple mastheads. I'd been a founding board member of an organization that existed to advocate for more and better representation of women and girls in comics characters and creators. And most of my favorite characters, the ones I'd actively seek out and follow, were women. Just not, apparently, the characters I saw myself in.

Now I still didn't realize it was me at this point. Remember: self-knowledge, not very intuitive for me. And while I had spent a lot of time thinking about gender, I'd never really bothered to think much about my own. I knew academically that the way other people read and interpreted my gender affected and had influenced a lifetime of social and professional interactions, and that those in turn had informed the person I'd grown up into during that time. But I really believed, like I just sort of had in the back of my head, that if you peeled away all of that social conditioning, you'd basically end up with what I got when I tried to draw a self-portrait. So: a pair of glasses, messy scribble of hair, and in this case, maybe also some very strong opinions about the X-Men. I mean, I knew something was off. I'd always known something was off, that my relationship to gender was messy and uncomfortable, but gender itself struck me as messy and uncomfortable, and it had never been a large enough part of how I defined myself to really feel like something that merited further study, and I had deadlines, and...so it was always on the back burner. So, I looked, I looked at what I had, at this improbable group of exclusively male characters. And I looked and I figured that if this wasn't me, then it had to be a result of the stories I had access to, to choose from, and the entertainment landscape I was looking at. And the funny thing is, I wasn't wrong, exactly. I just wasn't right either.

See, the characters I'd written about had one other significant trait in common aside from their gender, which is that they were all more or less explicitly, more or less heavily coded as autistic. And I thought, "Ah, yes. This explains it. This is under representation in fiction echoing under representation in life and vice versa." Because the characteristics that I'd honed in on, that I particularly identified with in these guys, were things like emotional unavailability and social awkwardness and granular obsession, and all of those are characteristics that are seen as unsympathetic and therefore unmarketable in female characters. Which is also why readers were assuming that I was a man.

Because, you see, here's the thing. I'm not the only one who uses stories to navigate the world. I'm just a little more deliberate about it. For humans, stories formed the bridge between data and understanding. They're where we look when we need to contextualize something new, or to recognize something we're pretty sure we've seen before. They're how we identify ourselves; they're how we locate ourselves and each other in the larger world. There were no fictional women like me; there weren't representations of women like me in media, and so readers were primed not to recognize women like me in real life either.

Now by this point, I had started writing a follow-up essay, and this one was also about autism and narratives, but specifically focused on how they intersected with gender and representation in media. And in context of this essay, I went about looking to see if I could find even one female character who had that cluster of traits I'd been looking for, and I was asking around in autistic communities. And I got a few more or less useful one-off suggestions, and some really, really splendid arguments about semantics and standards, and um...then I got one answer over and over and over in community after community after community. "Leverage," people told me. "You have to watch Leverage."

So I watched Leverage. Leverage is five seasons of ensemble heist drama. It's about a team of very skilled con artists who take down corrupt and powerful plutocrats and the like, and it's a lot of fun, and it's very clever, and it's clever enough that it doesn't really matter that it's pretty formulaic, and I enjoyed it a lot. But what's most important, what Leverage has is Parker.

Parker is a master thief, and she is the best of the best of the best in ways that all of Leverage's characters are the best of the best. And superficially, she looks like the kind of woman you see on TV. So she's young, and she's slender, and she's blonde, and she's attractive but in a sort of approachable way. And all of that familiarity is brilliant misdirection, because the thing is, there are no other women like Parker on TV. Because Parker—even if it's never explicitly stated in the show—Parker is coded incredibly clearly as autistic. Parker is socially awkward. Her speech tends to have limited inflection; what inflection it does have is repetitive and sounds rehearsed a lot of the time. She's not emotionally literate; she struggles with it, and the social skills she develops over the series, she learns by rote, like they're just another grift. When she's not scaling skyscrapers or cartwheeling through laser grids, she wears her body like an ill-fitting suit. Parker moves like me. And Parker, Parker was a revelation—she was a revolution unto herself. In a media landscape where unempathetic women usually exist to either be punished or "loved whole," Parker got to play the crabby savant. And she wasn't emotionally intuitive but it was never ever played as the product of abuse or trauma even though she had survived both of those—it was just part of her, as much as were her hands or her eyes. And she had a genuine character arc. My god, she had a genuine romantic arc, even. And none of that required her to turn into anything other than what she was. And in Parker I recognized a thousand tics and details of my life and my personality...but. I didn't recognize myself.

Why? What difference was there in Parker, you know, between Parker and the other characters I'd written about? Those characters, they'd spanned ethnicities and backgrounds and different media and appearances and the only other characteristic they all had in common was their gender. So that was where I started to look next, and I thought, "Well, okay, maybe, maybe it's masculinity. Maybe if Parker were less feminine, she'd click with me the way those other characters had." So then I tried to imagine a Parker with short hair, who's explicitly butch, and...nothing. So okay, I extended it in what seems like the only logical direction to extend it. I said, "Well, if it's not masculinity, what if it's actual maleness? What if Parker were a man?" Ah. Yeah.

In the end, everything changed, and nothing changed, which is often the way that it goes for me. Add a landmark, no matter how slight, and the map is irrevocably altered. Add a landmark, and paths that were invisible before open wide. Add a landmark, and you may not have moved, but suddenly you know where you are and where you can go.

I wasn't going to tell this story when I started planning this talk. I was gonna tell a similar story, it was about stories, like this is, about narratives and the ways that they influence our culture and vice versa. And it centered around a group of women at NASA who had basically rewritten the narrative around space exploration, and it was a lot more fun, and I still think it was more interesting. But it's also a story you can probably work out for yourselves. In fact it's a story some of you probably have, if you follow that kind of thing, which you probably do given that you're here. And this is a story, my story is not a story that I like to tell. It's not a fun story to talk about because it's very personal and I am a very private person. And it's not universal. And it's not always relatable, and it's definitely not aspirational. And it's not the kind of story that you tend to encounter unless you're already part of it...which is why I'm telling it now. Because the thing is, I'm not the only person who uses stories to parse the world and navigate it. I'm just a little more deliberate. Because I'm tired of having to rely on composite sketches.

Open your maps. Add a landmark. Reroute accordingly.

[creampievampire]

Could you go into the difference between the subtext and queerbaiting in it, I'm still kind of -well it's obviously gay but nothing was really ever said or shown that says that expect for people talking about it- Like are the characters and their relationship just queer-coded (positivly ofc lol) but the baitiness comes from them sort of confirming it off the show?

of course! im assuming by ‘it’ you mean merlin, but rather than explaining the reasons why i think bbc merlin is a matter of subtext (or queer coding) and not queerbaiting, i think it would be easier and more productive to explain the difference between the two in general. they are very similar - which is why i think a lot of people are unable to tell the difference between them - but they have important differences

just a warning, this is going to be a LONG post lmao ive bolded exactly what each term means below, after which i go into more detail on the whole issue. this is something im passionate about so,,, ♥

queerbaiting specifically refers to a marketing technique in which creators hint at but dont actually depict a queer character or relationship. They do this in order to attract a queer audience with the suggestion of a character or relationship they can relate to, while also avoiding alienating their queerphobic audiences

queer coding is the subtextual coding of a character as queer through the use of things like metaphor, allegory, hinting, recognisable traits/stereotypes/experiences, etc. This is done to build believable characters and create more complex plot lines, and it is also regularly used by people who want to tell queer stories but are unable to do so explicitly. it CAN be used negatively to enforce damaging stereotypes, but that is just a small part of its usage

both of these things utilise subtext in order to work. subtext is not only a crucial part of the creation of any piece of media, but is impossible to avoid.

an example of the most basic types of subtext is when a character tells someone that everything is going to be okay, but you can tell they dont believe it. or when youre watching a story unfold and you suddenly connect the dots and realise whats going to happen before its explicitly stated - you used subtext and the hidden meanings and hints to figure it out!

the people involved w a piece of media create their story with a specific purpose or meaning in mind, and they construct the subtext of the story to reflect that purpose/meaning. HOWEVER, the viewers dont always see things the same!

your experiences and personality shape the way you view and interpret every piece of media you consume. if you hate cops youll see the insidious undertones in cop shows - if you grew up with an abusive parent youll see the biting implications in a characters dialogue that others find innocent - if youre queer you will search for and fine queer characters everywhere, regardless of the creators intentions

now, both queerbaiting and queer coding use subtext to function, right? so how do you know which is being used and whether or not its a bad thing? its all about intention

to give a specific explanation of the difference im going to use two examples that are (arguably) very similar in the way their queer characters became canon

example 1: adventure time featured the characters marceline and princess bubblegum, who have been forever depicted as a couple in fan content. their interactions in the show were read into and latched onto bc we saw ourselves in them and we saw it as positive queer rep. but their relationship was never explicitly discussed during the course of the show and was only confirmed at the end of the final episode.

that makes 10 seasons in which their relationship existed only in subtext, and when it did finally exist in canon it was only for a few minutes, if that.

example 2: supernatural featured the characters dean and castiel (lol) who have been depicted as a queer couple pretty much since the first episode cas appeared in. i personally hung on their every interaction, analysed every glance between them, bc i interpreted deans character as a parallel to my own childhood trauma.

cas joined the show in season 4, so that makes 11 seasons in which him being gay existed only in subtext, and when it was confirmed he was immediately cut out of the show. the exact nature of dean and castiels relationship still remains in subtext.

so why is it that adventure time is widely considered perfectly fine but supernatural is dunked on as being the poster boy for queerbaiting?

its bc adventure time involved queer creators and was an earnest representation of queer characters, but they were boxed in by their publisher, Cartoon Network and thus the only way for the relationship to exist in the show was through subtext.

supernatural, however, consistently neglected their queer character and employed transparent tropes and stereotypes - bringing him in just sparingly enough to keep queer audiences interested while never being gay enough to alienate their macho manly man queerphobe audiences. they would have dean and cas stare into each other eyes for a full 30 seconds and then almost immediately follow it up with an episode about dean banging a disposable female character.

so imho adventure time falls under queer subtext, and supernatural falls under queerbaiting

when it comes to a show like bbc merlin i see a lot of debate about whether or not its queer coding or queerbaiting, and my intention is not to convince you of either. merlin was very much a product of its time, and i have argued the same about seasons 4-6 of supernatural as well, before the queerbaiting escalated and became exhausting to me

the purpose of this post is to start giving you the information you need to analyse any piece of media and come to your OWN opinion as to whether or not its queerbaiting or whatever else

people will ALWAYS have differing opinions about this shit yall. i have debated so many times w so many people about where the line is and whats okay and what should be ‘cancelled’ and if consuming something deemed problematic makes you a bad person or not

and my conclusion?

if youre capable of acknowledging the flaws and issues w a piece of media without trying to defend it as a shining beacon of purity simply bc you like it, then you do you. enjoy whatever you want to enjoy - if i think its reprehensible i simply will never interact with you lol

at some point everyone has to stop regurgitating these generic woke speak cancel culture speeches and buzzwords and formulate their own opinions

my advice to anyone reading this is to learn how to do close reading (ill provide a link to a wonderful short guide on it in a reblog bc tumblr hates links) and start really considering where you draw the lines with all types of content. decide for yourself whether merlin or supernatural or adventure time crosses the line into content you cant stomach, but respect other people whose interpretations differ from yours

i know a HUGE amount of people think supernaturals confession scene was homophobic and toxic - a slap in the face - but when i watched it i saw myself reflected in dean. a repressed bisexual whose emotions had been stunted by lifelong trauma, who wasnt ready to face his feelings for cas but quickly realising that his chronic avoidance and fear was about to tear them apart possibly forever. to me it was tragic and beautiful, and i loved it

i also think merlin is a tragic and beautiful love story, and to me its a pivotal piece of queer media that changed the way i viewed love and made me believe that it was a possibility for me bc i related so deeply to arthur

i hope that you can draw a satisfying answer from this, anon, and i apologise for this post being a full essay lol but i believe it needed to be said  - i dont think there is a right or wrong answer here

[lizzybeth1986]

Part 2 - His Flame

Introduction

Part 1

Part 3

Disclaimer: This post is the second in a trio of essays on the events of the Finale of The Royal Romance, in which I place Prince Liam's final decision to marry Countess Madeleine in the context of his role as king, the current state of his country Cordonia and how he will move forward from the events of his Coronation. The first essay looks at Cordonia is a nation and how Liam's role is defined by the events that have taken place there over the past few decades. Part 2 will explore the Liam x MC relationship and look at how Liam's interactions with the MC change his beliefs over time.

Disclaimer 2: For the purposes of this essay, I have included only the Liam-centric diamond options and romance-point-responses as part of the plot.

Do read Part 1 before you proceed to this point.

--

MC: Our relationship is so strange. It's not like he [Liam] can sweep me off my feet and carry me out of here...

Maxwell: When you're royalty, the rules are different.

- TRR Chapter 8, "A Waltz to Remember".

Liam comes to New York with one fervent wish: to see the Statue of Liberty - the ultimate symbol of freedom - right before he goes back to Cordonia to fulfill his duties and choose a bride. He refrains from asking his friends to include it in their schedule for fear of sounding ungrateful. So when an adventurous, fiesty young waitress jumps on the chance to make his dream come true, he is more than intrigued. Almost instantly, he confesses his deepest desires to her as he would an old friend.

For most of their boat trip to Liberty, Liam seems to admire the MC for being precisely what he can't be: gutsy, adventurous, the kind of person who constantly follows her heart. He recognizes in her the freedom he lacks.

For both Liam and the MC, this romantic interlude seems special because they don't expect to see each other again.

The MC, at the beginning of the game, is given three options that reveal to Liam what her ultimate dream is: to see the world, to fall in love or to live every moment to the fullest. Each of these goals, in some way, propel her to take that giant leap to Cordonia once Maxwell makes her the offer.

The Liam she finally meets at the Masquerade Ball is in many ways different from the tourist she had met in New York. In Cordonia, he is the Crown Prince, constantly aware of who he is and what his duties are, and the consequences of his actions. When the MC asks him what he thinks of the social season, he says, "I know it's silly...but it is tradition. I know how important it is to Cordonia to find the right queen." (TRR Chapter 4). He tells her that his feelings do not exactly count in the face of Cordonia's stability, citing the example of his brother Leo's mother. The MC will have to build her reputation in court and gain public approval if she is to be considered a fit candidate for his hand.

It's easy to forget sometimes what a personal leap it is for the MC (especially if Liam is her LI in the playthrough) to settle into courtly life. She has to use her limited funds to impress the royal family, the press and the public, quickly learn the new things that all the other suitors seem to know already and say all the right things to the right people, all while being able to snatch only a few minutes with Liam here and there.

Liam seems aware of how difficult her transition is, and strives to make it easier on her from behind the scenes. He persuades Drake to keep an eye on her to see if she is lost (something that actually does occur at the Derby), ensures that Drake gets the room next to hers at Applewood Manor, arranges for American barbecue to be given at the beach party so she will get a taste of home. He is aware that among all the ladies vying for his hand, the MC is at a disadvantage because everything about this experience is new to her.

The MC, on the other hand, attempts to give him opportunities to let loose, relive his childhood and forget for a while that he has the responsibility of an entire nation on his shoulders. At the Masque, she convinces him to play maze-tag with her after the ball, confiding in him later that "you laughed more in this maze than you did all night at that Masquerade". The hedge maze, from there on, becomes symbolic of their relationship - a reminder of Liam's mother, and his past, and a promise that he can relive happier memories with a woman who is willing to see him as merely human.

Another example of the MC encouraging Liam to take risks and try out new experiences is the "cronut run" (although, to be fair, the cronut run is really for ALL her Cordonian friends). It is here that Liam reveals to her exactly how sheltered his life is: "It's strange. I'm the potential leader of my country, and there's still so much of it I haven't experienced". He realises this needs to change, but isn't sure how to go about it yet.

Their relationship in Cordonia begins on slightly shaky footing, both aware that Liam is expected to make time for all the ladies participating in the social season, and that they cannot give in to their need for each other no matter how tempting the prospect is. While the MC is willing to go further in her relationship with him, Liam reluctantly exercises control over his desire for her, for different reasons over the course of the social season.

From the Masquerade to the hot tub scene at the Nevrakis Chateau, Liam is aware that anything can happen over the next few months and isn't willing to take chances with her. At this point the MC has only begun to prove herself to the King, Queen and the Press, and her reputation as an American vying for the Prince's hand makes her an unconventional choice. By the time they slip into the hot tub at Lythikos, Liam is already starting to feel the strain of repressing his feelings for the MC in favor of being fair to everyone. It's probably at this point that he starts to question exactly how useful the social season is, given that during the Coronation he doesn't hesitate to call it a "damned process".

The Royal Regatta, which follows this sequence, is a turning point that raises questions both for Liam's future and his relationship with the MC. King Constantine's announcement about retiring and handing over the throne to Liam complicates things even further. Had Constantine's rule continued, and the MC succeeded in winning Liam's hand, she would have had plenty of time to fit into her role, so that by the time she was Queen she could prove she could handle the pressure. With this announcement, however, there are chances that whoever Liam will marry will be pushed headlong into the role of Queen.

By this time Liam is already sure he wants to marry the MC (he takes her to Forgotten Falls - a favourite childhood spot - and almost confesses his love to her there), but has no idea how she will fare as Queen. It is a question he asks her often over the next few days, warning her of the expectations she will be asked to fulfill, trying each time to gauge whether this is something she will be okay with.

It is during the Apple Blossom festival that the MC truly gets her moment to shine. Here (if the player clicks the correct options) she not only shows a keen enthusiasm for Cordonian traditions, and manages to charm both the Queen and the Press (again), but has also formed alliances with the suitors who were out of the running already. Where earlier the Queen's questions tested her opinions on governing the nation, here their discussion centres around delegation and the need for allies. Her answers prove to the public that she is serious about becoming Liam's Queen.

This also explains Liam's own change of behaviour. In Applewood, the MC notices that he is happier and more carefree, and definitely more ready to talk about the future. We are never explicitly shown why, but over the course of the book we discover that the MC's reputation has grown in Applewood, making the Prince's decision to select her easier on him. At the ruins close to the village where they rode horses, Liam asks her what kind of king he will make. Her encouragement makes it clear to him that he is not alone.

In the same diamond sequence, Maxwell tells the MC that he saw "something in [MC] that Cordonia needed: hope". It is at this moment we can pinpoint when exactly Liam started becoming confident in his choice of queen. By the time Liam sneaks her into Applewood hedge maze for private time, he has begun talking about spending an eternity with her, asked her what kind of legacy she will want to leave behind and what causes she will champion. At this point he has stopped considering anyone else for his hand in marriage.

It is during their stay is Applewood that their kisses become more frenzied and desperate, and where their need for each other is starting to reach its peak - by the Beaumont chapters Liam is literally biting her neck.

The Beaumont chapters mark an important transition in the way their relationship functions: so far, the MC has been the one who, in Liam's words, has been "jet-setting around Cordonia, attending grand formal events...", and Liam already feels the need to give more to the relationship than he has so far, by having his first ever date with her.

Midway through the date, he tells her that he has never dated before, answers awkward, silly first-date questions, and confesses to her his dream of having a family. This experience is the closest Liam has ever gotten, in his adult life, to being normal around someone.

His efforts to meet the MC halfway don't just stop there. He takes the risk of wearing a suit to match the MC's gown, aware that the symmetry between the couple will cause a stir. He offers her a massage at the Beaumont spa, hoping to help her relax a bit before the craziness of the Coronation ball begins. Having hosted a wildly successful party for the first time, her chances with Liam are now higher.

But because this is a relationship with strange beginnings, Liam and the MC are able to move forward quite quickly in some aspects of their relationship, while tiptoeing around others. For instance, they tend to be open to each other about happier times, but do not always share troubling information with each other, such as the truth behind Constantine's retirement (though Liam does tell her that she would have been the first to hear it if he ever was ready to talk), the Tariq fiasco and the damaged lock on her door at Applewood. Part of this, of course, was because the MC convinced herself that there was nothing to worry about.

Liam and the MC finally confess their love to each other at the hedge maze in the Coronation ball - the first place Liam had ever taken her to in Cordonia. By bringing her here to confess his love, Liam comes full circle. This was the place where he pulled away for the first time, afraid to go further. This is the one place he treasured for the memories it held. In this moment he is confident now that she will become his queen, and nothing - or no one - can stop him from choosing her. In this place, he now wants to make new memories, with her.

Over the course of their relationship, the MC has never failed to turn everything Liam knew to be true, on its head. The social season was about getting him a bride and a fitting queen for Cordonia, but the MC managed to get him to think beyond it. This is never more evident than in these lines:

When Liam eventually makes love to the MC, he doesn't just ask her consent for the sex. He also asks her how she wants it. Both options yield different scenarios, with Liam moulding himself to fit into the MC's needs for that night. This may seem like a small thing, but the fact that he wants her to enjoy sex the way she wants it, not the way he assumes it should be, shows us that as soon as he is done with this social-season-facade, he plans to place her needs first.

There is an element of tragedy to this love scene, given that it happens just minutes before they are denied a chance to ever be a couple in public. We know what took Liam this long, what it took for him to rein himself in everytime things threatened to go a little too far. We know that he was waiting for approval from all sides, hoping against hope that he would be able to both fulfill his duty to his country and be with the woman he loves. He was confident enough in the fact that they'd be together that he stopped waiting and gave in to what they'd both wanted all along. And right after this he finds the same woman being openly humiliated in court, thrown out without being given a chance to clear her name.

When the scandal finally breaks out in court, Liam's first reaction is to ask for her, and then yell out to her so she can hear him. When he doesn't get a response (because her screams are too far away to hear) he turns to Regina, angrily insisting on talking to the MC before she pulls him aside and whispers instructions in his ear. By the time he announces Madeleine's name, he is furious. He is actively resisting in the only way he knows how.

Liam, stickler for rules, demanded an audience with the suitor he loved just as the night was drawing to a close, just minutes after being crowned. He insisted on it. He called out her name in public. Not in anger, not in suspicion, but in shock. All this in front of his family, in front of the court and other suitors and the press. At that point it almost didn't matter that his mask of self-composure was slipping in front of a crowd. He didn't stop insisting and trying to buy time until his parents forced him to follow the Coronation rule. That might not seem like such a risk, but with the background he comes from, it is.

We must realise that his love for the MC develops over time, and so do the changes that love has brought in him. From being resigned to choosing someone he could just hope to be fond of and slightly compatible with, his experience with the MC proves to him that any bond lesser than love will be detrimental to his marriage and detrimental to Cordonia.

At the end, Liam finds himself living out the words he said, mere months ago, while visiting Lady Liberty.