#because mora goes through the whole thing of signing a contract with you so that you can trust him

[nightingaletrash]

y’know what, I think Mora’s definitely being manipulative with the Vestige. I think he’s framing this solely as a ‘fate of the world’ thing because he knows that they care about that, but in reality, I think this is actually about a rivalry between Princes and he wanted someone powerful and effective in his corner to stop Ithelia from making her comeback. And if she does show up, mad as hell and ready to tear apart reality just to spite Mora, then that works out in his favour because it makes him right.

Ithelia is Mora’s antithesis. What little we know of her sphere seems to stand in direct contradication to Mora. He’s the Prince of Knowledger and Fate, the Gardener of Men. He can nudge and push and manipulate people in certain directions, but he cannot outright change the outcome. Once a path is set, he cannot change it. There will be no other outcomes. No variables. He can tend the soil, water the roots and align the trellis, but its up to his pawns to do the rest.

Ithelia meanwhile is the Prince of Paths, the Mistress of the Untraveled Road, and the Fate-Changer. Based on her titles and Mora’s own apparent fear of her, it seems that she can change the outcome to suit her liking. Like how Azandar and Martina both tried to manipulate and use their own fatelines - the ones that could have been but never were - Ithelia may have been a Prince capable of bringing these fatelines to life, destroying them entirely, or even creating entirely new ones.

Ithelia is What If and What Could Be, whereas Mora is What Is and What Will Be. To him, Ithelia could be a seedbomb or an inferno, rendering his work obsolete and his garden overgrown, or destroying it entirely. So he gets a flash of a vision where she becomes a threat to everyone and everything? Ofc he’s going to pounce on that and turn the rest of the Princes against her. He can be rid of his rival and continue to mold the narrative to suit his needs without drawing the ire of those who disagreed with the decision...