#and honestly? Thriving. like i'm legitimately delighted for all of it.

[mhaccunoval]

apparently it'll be the summer of doing things

[lizzybeth1986]

I love the code name, and I'll hopefully remember to sign my messages with it from now on. I'm actually quite flattered that I've earned one, so ty for that. I somehow came up with 2 more questions, most likely to turn into essays, for you. 1 should be more lighthearted than the other, so I'm gonna start heavy if ya don't mind xD. You've touched briefly on how families affect the courtly ladies, so I wanted to see your take on how families have shaped the people at court. Have fun!-CL anon :D

You come up with such amazing questions, CL anon! How do you do it! 😁

So...hmm...how families shape the people in court. That's a pretty loaded question! And I mean "loaded" in the sense that when we're talking about "family" in an environment like this, we're also talking about the larger society they inhabit and what values from that society these parents were busy instilling in these children.

Sometimes the struggle I have with theorizing on these things, is that Book 1 starts out with very different ideas of what modern Cordonian society is supposed to be like, but by Book 3 or Book 4 they have developed other ideas that contradict it...or that you have to really work around to make sense of. For instance, the entire idea of open relationships being accepted in Cordonia that crops up conveniently in Book 2 just so the MC can sleep with whoever she wants after she's gotten engaged...yet the same society has such a strong disapproval of PDA that you can lose points with the general public for even joking about being intimate with someone (can these two things happen in the same space? Of course!! But that point from Book 2 does make the overall stuffy atmosphere in Book 1 about displaying affection look a little confusing, you have to admit). So...making sense of these things with the way the books have changed over the series is challenging, but doable.

The one thing that gets clearer and clearer as the story progresses...is that most noble children seem to grow into an awareness from a younger age itself that their public life should not reflect their private ones. Another is that, in the political climate of the time - they may not understand everything that is going on...but their parents have inadvertently taught them to grow up in fear (a legitimate fear, considering the threats at the time). I'll start with the palace, then move to the duchies. (I won't include Drake and Hana much in this, as Drake's family seemed to operate very differently - and honestly we know way more about his American roots than his Cordonian ones - and Hana grew up in another country...though there will be a short paragraph about her towards the end).

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Liam

Liam grew up in the palace, the second son and younger brother to the royal heir, but you can tell there were things he had to learn pretty early on in his childhood. Things like compromise. Things like weighing what was more important to the country at a time when many children should be caring about their own needs.

It's not a very easy life, Liam's. His mother was murdered when he was still a young boy. His father often neglected him (remember the Eiffel Tower sequence where he justifies Constantine breaking a promise to visit the landmark with him, by recognizing that his father had bigger responsibilities as King?) and expected a great deal from him even at an early age (I mean...forcing an eight year old into hours of diplomacy meetings for three whole weeks??). And while race is never really mentioned in the books, the subtext is there that Eleanor and Liam possibly might have had to work harder for approval from the court than, say, Leo.

Added to this is the entry of Regina later on, after Eleanor's death. I feel like some aspects of her are based on Queen Elizabeth II - especially the way she advocates for stoicism in Book 1 (which is why she is so hard on herself after Constantine's death, in Book 3). Every move of hers is consciously planned and measured so that only certain aspects of herself will be visible to the general public, and I do think Liam draws a little bit on that with his own public image as well. This can be advantageous, because that means someone like Regina (and Liam) will be in control of their image. Only what they want to show, is shown. But it does mean that they have to weigh anything and everything they do with particular care.

In the "wedding advice" scene in Book 3, Liam speaks of how - even if they did have a conflict - Constantine and Regina would always show a publicly united front (and we see elements of that in the aftermath of the MC's scandal. Regina doesn't openly disagree with Constantine's actions, but she does adopt countermeasures because she sees a bigger picture that Constantine isn't willing to see). The family as a whole seems to be very image conscious (and they would be! The royals will be subject to way more scrutiny from the press and the public than most children, so parents will do whatever they can to protect those children from the worst aspects of it) and have to keep in mind that even their slightest reactions in public could have consequences. You see this pretty clearly in the way Liam handles the chaos at the Coronation Ball. He does what he has to, to calm the court down even though he is personally in turmoil - and we see how much turmoil he is in right after he has made his way to the MC's room.

This might be more extensive than most of the other characters, most coz he is an LI and some of his arc was supposed to revolve around being a different man from his father (they...dropped the ball on that one in Book 3).

Maxwell

To me, at least in the beginning, the Beaumonts were supposed to represent two extremes in one House. Propriety is extremely important, and you see this clearly in the way Bertrand speaks and acts and even thinks. But at the same time, their space is also a space for the nobility to let loose and go wild, as one can see from their Beaumont Bashes. These two extremes are represented pretty accurately in both Bertrand and Maxwell, and in a limited way in their parents as well.

Barthelemy expects a great deal out of his sons (even though he isn't exactly the best at meeting expectations himself. In that way he reminds me a little of Sebastian Delacroix's father from The Junior) and requires that they keep the honour of Beaumont House first. But the mother...even though we never actually meet her or even know her name (a pity)...we do know that she made people relaxed and comfortable around her, and wanted her younger boy to be happy with who he was. In Maxwell's wedding advice, he speaks of the importance of laughter - how his mother made his serious-looking father laugh and that was the most enduring image he had of their relationship.

But it's not like the family wasn't prey to the tense political climate that was there in the country when the boys were younger. For instance, Maxwell's fear of carousels is deeply rooted in his own family's fears of their children getting targeted - because he tells us "I was only three, I had no idea what was going on...And because our parents had spent so much time trying to warn us about dangers, I thought I was going to get murdered". I mean...imagine being three and having those thoughts!! I think that kind of insight should give us pause, because it does direct us to how an unstable political climate can bleed its way into the personal life or people, of their families and children.

I do wonder what implications and impact the discussions between Bartie Sr and Godfrey have on the family, though. Because if most of the fandom is right about what those two were planning, I see Bertrand and Madeleine as the people who will correct the wrongs of their parents in their support of the Crown, much in the way Olivia was last book.

Kiara

Kiki's family is actually my favourite of the lot, and we can see how she developed her skills in an environment that was supportive, and vibrant with challenges and creative stimulation. It's clear that she is one of the few people who really thrived in her family environment. Nothing was really forced on her: learning languages, and mock-treaties, and diplomacy were all things she had an aptitude for, so she went for them. And I'm guessing given the speed at which the book had Hakim and Joelle accept Zeke's decision (which could be retconning for all we know, but I do think it doesn't jar with their characterization until that point)...had Zeke opened up to them earlier, they would have figured out a way without the MC or Penelope having to convince him to open up in the first place.

One thing that I loved about Kiara's family arc was that if the MC tried to sass her about whether "everything in your family is a negotiation", or tried to cast Kiara and her family into this bland, staid stereotype of "negotiators who have no personal connection as a family", Kiki would shut that nonsense down. Every single time. She would establish that these are things important and personal to the family, and make it clear that the MC is no one to judge how they interact as a family.

Hakim and Joelle are my favourite older couple in the series, honestly. We're told they met and fell in love in college, and that their political views align more with Liam's than they do with Constantine's. In fact Liam at one point even tells us that Joelle was "the kind of person King Fabian would have approved of", and she speaks the same language about how it isn't merely enough for the country to be safe - it needs to thrive as well.

Hakim and Joelle are very different people, and in her wedding advice Kiara tells us they "delight in their differences". This is especially apparent in a fail play, where Hakim plans to go to the wedding, and Joelle winds up going to Switzerland. There's plenty of banter between them beforehand about their different ways of thinking, but expressing the same delight.

If there is only one flaw, it's in the writers - because in their mad rush to make Kiara's trauma look like it didn't matter in Castelserraillian, everyone was made to look as if they didn't care...including her parents. Which is bizarre coz the entire reason Hakim was going to leave in the first place was the fact that his daughter suffered in that attack! They never let Joelle mention anything about what Kiara went through, up until the end where she asks us if we took care of Kiara during the tour (and we are the fucking lowlifes here who didn't put the effort to, so Kiara ends up having to lie through her teeth that we "had my back").

I do see Kiara having a particular idea of "strength" that she holds everyone up to, including herself. The whole reason she even agrees with us when we manipulate/emotionally blackmail her into coming for the wedding, is because she's ashamed of herself. She wants to handle her trauma the way she handled everything else, and finds it impossible. I don't see anything that proves this is something she picked up from her family, because even while diplomatic, Hakim is open about his feelings when upset (eg. Constantine) and Joelle is expressive as well. It probably might be more of something she has imbibed in court, and in the overall culture of Cordonia itself. But the fact that the writers made sure she had support from no one, not even her family, up until readers raised questions....that is bizarre, and pretty disgusting.

But other than that, the family is interesting for their political views, and their openmindedness, which is rare in the noble family dynamics we have seen so far.

Olivia

Besides her love for knives and weapons, Olivia's determination to make the Nevrakis name one to look up to...is her entire story arc. Her story revolves around doing the exact opposite of what her parents did, of what her aunt and Anton Severus wanted to do.

Olivia is the rare person in the books who is shown without her family at all, and that is because she lost hers at the age of five. Her aunt (great-aunt in Book 1, but they made Lucretia her mother's sister in Book 3) left her and hid in the French Riviera, insisting that "the Nevrakis heir shouldn't have needed me to hold her hand and wipe away her little tears". This is something Olivia is angry about, but accepts because she has equally high standards of her own resilience.

There is plenty in the culture of Lythikos that contributes to Olivia's character as well. These people pride in their ability to survive, their determination to power through the most challenging, exacting situations. They're a militaristic society, and Olivia takes to that mindset like a fish to water. She believes in self-reliance because it's a hard bitter lesson she has had to grow up with (though one must not discount the value of Liam as a support) and because it's part of her culture, and it's become so much a part of her thinking that when the MC insists to Lucretia that relying on friends and allies is not weakness, just common sense - Olivia is equal parts grateful and shocked by the logic of that statement. It has literally never occurred to her that she can voluntarily reach out for help!

Olivia grew up in circumstances no child should have to grow up in, and manages to embody the best of her culture in contrast to her family. She adopts her father's moniker "if you can breathe you can stand, if you can stand you can fight", but reinterprets it to mean she can fight for her beliefs, fight for more than just her family and duchy. She adopts all the good in the Nevrakis clan while working to obliterate the parts that can place her loved ones in danger.

Penelope

I've actually mentioned this before, but one of the best examples of "winging it" you can see from the books, is Penelope. The writing for her just bounces from one gaffe to another so that when you look at her overall story, nothing adds up. You have to literally stretch logic to connect the dots in her story! (I know, because I've tried).

In Book 1 she suffers from seasickness, but somehow in Book 3 she has grown up by the seaside and there is practically no mention of aforementioned seasickness. In Book 2 her family insist that she not return to court without a suitor (both her parents!) yet somehow in Book 3 when we actually meet her family you'd wonder how Landon would have allowed such things to be said to his daughter. There's a no-pets-allowed rule among the royals that Liam somehow changed when he became King, so how the hell did Penelope's parents think she was going to manage court without her emotional support animals? That too a social season and an entire world tour after that?? A lot about the writing for this family doesn't even make sense, and in some ways you can tell that the writers realized they hit a goldmine with the arc about Penelope's anxiety only when they published it, and then milked it for all it was worth (I know that sounds awful, and it is. But if they'd really, genuinely planned this properly, Penelope wouldn't appear so poorly developed as a character).

Landon and Emmeline are meant to serve as an inspiration to Drake, for their commitment to their people is something he wants to emulate (either as a Duke, or as someone who will do...something in court, I guess). The writing splits the major concerns between them: Emmeline is the Duchess who inherited this estate, and who will work through any condition or situation she is in to do her best for them. Emmeline particularly, seems to have a similar drive to power through - as Olivia, Regina and Madeleine show - the worst situations in the name of "stand up for Portavira".

Landon on the other hand, is more concerned about Penelope's well-being (not that Emmeline isn't, it's more like she doesn't fully understand how difficult it all is for Penelope), and reluctant to place her in situations where she is not comfortable (which is why the hints about them in Book 2 sound so jarring on rereads).

What stands out to me, especially in Penelope's characterization is how much coddling she has come to expect, from everyone. There is very little effort - or even inclination - to right her wrongs. Part of this is the writers seriously retconning the narrative on what Penelope did to the MC, so that NO ONE ever brings it up again. But it's partly also because, as I said, they were fully ready to commit to her story in a way they didn't for Kiara. Often I wonder what it would be like if Landon and Emmeline did get to know about Penelope's involvement. I think they'd focus their anger on the Crown for placing her in that situation in the first place, and going by this characterization they may also make Penelope out to be the victim in this situation (which isn't too far off the mark - but we also mustn't ignore how coddled Penelope is most of the time and how entitled she often sounds). But even this wouldn't be so bad if we saw Penelope take responsibility for her actions, which she never does in Book 3.

One thing I do remember from her "wedding advice" was how she spoke a lot about the need to relax in their relationship, and how in-tune they are as a couple. So in a lot of ways their success with their duchy lies in how they balance their work and family (which apparently Landon seems more comfortable doing? Because he doesn't keep as much pressure on himself for Portavira in the way Emmeline does).

Penelope's family honestly...is a mixed bag. But I can say that for the most part they're supposed to represent a supportive family that deals with a child's diagnosis of their mental health by providing support, and a couple that is dedicated to their people.

Madeleine

The characterization for Madeleine also bounces from one concept to another, tbh. They started out with writing her as merely power-hungry, manipulative, duplicitous....before retconning completely and putting all of this under the label "patriotic". There is a huge, huge disconnect between the Madeleine that rejoiced in almost breaking her lady-in-waiting, and the one who places too much pressure on herself "for the sake of Cordonia". A North Pole to South Pole sized gap, really.

If it weren't for the fact that they wrote her family storyline only because they were really that desperate to make us sympathize with Madeleine, I would have found it interesting. The seeds of it begin in the second half of Book 2, when we notice Adeleide worrying about the pressure becoming Queen is going to place on Madeleine.

In Book 3, we're faced with her father who constantly dubs her a failure and doesn't see her as worthy of attention unless he can benefit from it. And with her mother, who wants to show her support, but can't in a way her daughter is comfortable with. There is a constant emphasis in Madeleine's storyline on expectations, dealing with constant failure, and resilience. She doesn't have the kind of support system she wants from either of her parents, so she has to find her own way to make lemonade out of those lemons. So each time she has to convince herself that each failure is only another step towards the biggest success possible (marrying into the royal family), and when she is robbed of that, twice, she is left having nothing else to muster up the motivation for. Which is why, then, they promote the Cordonia angle so aggressively.

Only problem is, you don't exactly get this impression from Book 2. A person with Book 3 Madeleine's bent of mind, whose main aim was to do her best for Cordonia and who spoke of the importance of an entourage...wouldn't be so short sighted as to think that just because she was engaged she won everything, esp when her last fiancé fell in love and broke off his engagement to her as well. She wouldn't be so careless in her treatment of her own ladies-in-waiting, all of whom (except Hana, and even her family has immense influence even though her mother is from a minor noble house) are from powerful Houses and families, whose support she would need in the future.

Even if one brushes off her bullying of Hana and Penelope as no big deal (as I'm very sure some of her fans do), the fact remains that at the very least such behaviour is short-sighted and in a better story would reveal that she doesn't exactly have Cordonia's best interests in mind after all, if she jumps at the slightest excuse to burn bridges with these powerful families before she even becomes Queen.

In any case...Madeleine's family ranks as one of the messiest of the lot - her father is uninterested/feigns disinterest in the country unless it involves being involved in some elaborate plot against the monarchy, and her mother shows disinterest in her duchy overall, but is clearly invested in what makes her daughter happy. Her mother is supportive, just not in the way Madeleine wants support.

Regina also hails from Krona, and Madeleine is in some ways a reflection of her values and beliefs - which is why the two get along so well. So even though Adeleide is the Duchess of Krona, I'm pretty sure she's an anomaly in a family full of women who practice stoicism and diplomacy in their regular lives.

Hana

This note is going to be small, because as I explained earlier she was brought up in a completely different environment. Hana was brought up in a manner meant to make her flexible to whichever family she would marry into - so she learns different styles of horse riding, learns diplomacy over a toy tea set, is expected to know all the 26 important dance varieties in Cordonia by the time she is an adult, grows up learning about the countries neighbouring Cordonia as well. I have a whole other essay that speaks about her upbringing alone, so I won't speak much about that here, but you definitely get the feeling that her parents spent so much time trying to cultivate an asset for themselves that they rarely ever stopped to think about her as a person.

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The overall impression I do get from modern Cordonian nobility in the books (not just from these guys, but also interactions with other nobles like Rashad and Neville, and palace staff like Bastien) is that Cordonia is a culturally diverse place, and people in different estates have different dynamics that are influenced by their family situation and by the culture they were born into, but overall there is more of an inclination to show resilience and power, than to confess to weakness. Which makes sense, because many of them are public figures under immense scrutiny, who are aware of the kind of message they could send if they show the slightest signs of weakness. That's my overall impression of this.

I hope you enjoyed that, CL anon! Now I'm curious about what the next question is 😀