#he *still* initially tries to manipulate gwyn and take advantage of him

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

After reading your response to the Vane anon, I'm curious to know...

What would have happened if Gwyn had been defeated and captured by Augus instead of the other way round?

What would've Augus done to him? And would Augus still have fallen in love with him eventually?

And how would Ash have reacted to the situation of having a poor 'Seelie' king imprisoned by his unhinged brother?

I know you don't tend to know what happens in your stories until you write them but I'd appreciate some of your hypothetical thoughts :)

Hi anon!

I think I've actually answered this question around 20 times actually, years ago, since it got asked all the time back when I was writing Game Theory! But I can't find any of those responses because Tumblr's search is so incredibly broken, so now that I've spent 30 minutes looking for the old responses, so I'll rewrite them here and hopefully be able to find this one day in the future! (not likely, please fix your search, Tumblr):

If Gwyn had been defeated and captured by Augus, Augus would likely have killed him.

Unlike Gwyn, Augus didn't have any lingering feelings of affection towards Gwyn and he never developed an infatuation after the events of Deeper Into the Woods, he didn't feel like he owed him anything in that regard. He was also like...insane. At most he might have raped him and tried to break his spirit, through mocking and humiliation and degradation and torture (after all, Augus wasn't sane at the time when he was destroying kingdoms and defeating people, he sort of needed 6 months in a dark room to sort himself out, and he would never have gotten it if he defeated Gwyn).

They wouldn't have fallen in love. Gwyn would have died or killed himself or killed Augus. (Gwyn is nearly impossible to defeat, but in the rare instance it happened, Gwyn would still likely kill Augus. He's been captured and tortured before, and his light can kill anyone, I'd say he'd last as long as his lingering feelings of affection remained and then once they they were fully broken, he'd murder Augus and destroy the Unseelie Court and then probably himself, because the only person who ever saw him for who he was loathed and tortured him, lol.)

I love Ash, but he can be a coward. He couldn't directly stop his brother, so he sought to betray him in an underhanded manner (a betrayal that Augus and Ash have only just started to recover from in the canon, around 20 years later). So I don't think Ash would do anything at all if Gwyn was captured, I don't think he'd visit Gwyn (they were never affectionate and Ash doesn't like him for a long time even in the canon), I don't think he'd do anything more than 'Augus, this doesn't seem like a good idea' and then he'd go to the human world and get drunk and use drugs, which is how he mostly coped with Augus' descent into madness in Game Theory as well (Gwyn does, after all, find him extremely drunk in the human world, deeply in denial about his circumstances).

Tbh, even Game Theory was supposed to have a tragic ending. When I first started writing it, I was literally only writing it for the hatefucking in the beginning. I fully expected that Gwyn would in his sentimental way come to love Augus and release him, and Augus would die, and Gwyn would be killed for it, and Augus would never fully return his feelings and manipulate his way out. It was meant to end in about 7-8 chapters. Like, I literally set up so many things to stop them from liking each other and succeeding that the story took an awfully long time to w rite and 'solve' what I'd put in place.

But as a result of that, it means there's almost no other options in this particular universe where they can have a happy future.

If Augus defeated Gwyn, they'd all be dead by now. Or alternatively, we'd have a new incarnation of the Each Uisge and the Glashtyn, and Gwyn would be back in his Kingdom, spirit dead, and Crielle puppeting him for the convenience of everyone.

[bookofmirth]

Az, Gwyn, and power

Something I’ve seen going around a lot lately, in the past couple of months, is that if Azriel and Gwyn were to enter into a relationship, it would be unequal or imbalanced, basically that Azriel has more power than Gwyn and so it would make for a potentially... bad (? definition tbd) relationship.

I’ve already explained why the theory about Elain not knowing how the bond works makes her look like either stupid, or ignorant, or supremely passive. I’m assuming that is not the intention of the stans.

Now lemme explain why this interpretation, of a gwynriel relationship being inherently imbalanced and problematic for being so, would make Azriel look like an asshole.

I keep seeing people saying “because this person has power and this person doesn’t, this thing is bad”. No. That’s not how it works. Power is much more complex and nuanced than that, and it depends on how the individual decides to wield it. There are multiple ways that someone can gain, retain, and use power. Some have more access than others, for different reasons. However, it is not inevitable that those with more power will exploit those with less.

In the post about power I mentioned Rhys, and he is a great example of why having power isn’t necessarily a bad thing for everyone around him. The only thing that keeps Rhys from literally every sort of privilege is that he is half Illyrian. Other than that, he has everything going for him. However, he rarely, if ever, takes advantage of his power to the detriment of others. We could probably argue about why this is or isn’t true and to what extent, but the point is that we have other examples of similar fae - Beron - who wield the same types of power and do not gaf about anyone else. Rhys intentionally allows the IC to have a voice in what happens in the NC, he listens to them, he takes their advice, and sometimes he does a shitty job but he tries to avoid ruling with an iron fist.

Back to gwynriel.

So the idea that Gwyn and Azriel cannot be equals in a relationship initially came from the idea that Gwyn is, somehow, at 28 years old, mentally and emotionally a child. We know that this is NOT true. It has been confirmed by the writer, who did hear explanation of the different rates at which fae age. So her denial that Gwyn is a child was not out of context. She knew what people were thinking.

However, there are still issues that people bring up regarding Gwyn being a priestess and Azriel being the spymaster. But let’s be clear about who Gwyn and Azriel are:

Gwyn is a priestesses. She is not a nun. She spends her time learning and aiding others in that pursuit.

She protected children when her temple was under attack.

Gwyn is Carynthian. One of the only two women in history to earn that distinction. That accomplishment took intelligence, cunning, cooperation, and strength.

Gwyn is mostly High Fae.

Gwyn is a SA survivor.

Azriel rescued her.

Azriel is a spymaster.

Azriel is also Carynthian.

He is part Illyrian.

Azriel’s role in the library is not “supervisor”. He is not their camp counselor. He is not their authority figure. He brings women to the library who have been victimized, and then he leaves. 

The two people who are actually in charge of the library and its citizens safety are Morrigan and Rhysand.

Combining all those facts with Gwyn’s age, Gwyn is not Azriel’s inferior in any way. No matter which way you look at it, there is nothing about Azriel that inherently puts him in a position to abuse his power.

She is also not his inferior in terms of maturity (while I can see that being an argument, it would need to be equally applied to nessian, feysand, elucien, e*riel, etc.... and it’s not. Unless an sjm anti is reading this, then yeah, I can see them making that argument.)

So let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Azriel does hold a position of authority over Gwyn. He doesn’t, but let’s just pretend that these arguments are actually valid.  If - if - Gwyn and Azriel were problematic as a relationship because of some power imbalance, then it stands to reason that that ship is problematic because Azriel is the type of person to exploit that imbalance.

Is that what y’all were going for when you try to say that gwynriel makes you feel uncomfortable??? Doubt it.

One last point about my list above - if y’all think that the fact that Azriel rescued Gwyn means that he can only see her that way, that he can only see her as an SA survivor and can never see beyond that, fails to recognize her growth and strength, even though he helped her to complete the Blood Rite Qualifier... again, that doesn’t say great things about Azriel (and maybe doesn’t say great things about people who would make that argument, since people are not defined by their trauma!)

I have seen (maybe? maybe I imagined this) a comparison between Azriel and Gwyn that he’s like... a teacher, and she’s the student, to explain why they are not an appropriate ship. The big problem with a teacher/student relationship is that the student in the scenario feels like they cannot say no. Your teacher is an authority, they are more mature, more knowledgeable, they have influence over whether you pass a class and get a good grade, they can tell your parents if you have been behaved or completing your work, etc. There are a lot of ways that a teacher can punish a student for not doing what they want. This is why those relationships are always frowned upon - it’s big dubcon territory, if not straight up noncon. 

However, again, Gwyn is participating in the Valkyrie training voluntarily. She lives at the library voluntarily. She is a priestess voluntarily. There is nothing that Azriel can do to Gwyn that would force her to comply with what he wants. Gwyn can tell Azriel to fuck off, to go choke, to eat dust, to go jerk off, and... nothing would happen. He would probably stop hanging around as much, but that’s... it. He has no actual power over her in the sense of being an authority figure or being in control of her life in any way.

Something that I almost put in that original post but didn’t because it was besides the point at the time, was that there are always power differences. People will always have differing levels of access to privilege and power. That does NOT mean that people can and must only ever be in relationships with people of similar levels or power/privilege. In that post I mentioned how feylin didn’t work out because Tamlin had so much access and Feyre had none - to compound this problem, he allowed her access to none. He did nothing to try to even the playing field, to educate or empower her. That’s what made it a problem. 

So do y’all think that Azriel would be like Beron? Someone willing to take the privilege he has and wield it over someone else like a cudgel? Or is he more like Rhys? Aware of his position and working to support - not manipulate - others? Because even if we were to accept the premise that there is a problematic power imbalance between Azriel and Gwyn, the only reason we should be uncomfortable with that is if we think that Azriel is the type of person who would exploit that imbalance.