#mal valori

[queenofmorningstar]

The gang: YOU betrayed us! You sold nia to the dreadlord! Just another SHADOW COURT MINION TO PUT IN A GRAVE!

Aerin: I also killed my brother

Tyril: Understandable -

Nia: Unfortunate, truly...

Imatura: Don't care -

Mal: Deserved, and we stan, but kit, he still -

My mc, high as a kite: all I hear is fuckable and breedable

[bedtimegiraffe]

Here's my little essay about King Arlan (and a little bit about Baldur) and their complicated relationship with ruling effectively.

Arlan, the (overall) very good king

King Arlan is keeping the kingdom running well

In the very first lore tablet, you learn that, "King Arlan Valleros VII currently sits on the throne. Known as the Gentle King, Arlan has reigned over a period of great peace and prosperity."

Periods of great peace and prosperity are not easy! It's a combination of luck, delegating effectively, and putting in a ton of administrative work to make sure the laws and policies work for the unique situation your nation is in at this moment. That stuff does not happen on accident.

Based on Aerin's statements that he never really saw his father, I'm assuming Arlan keeps busy with actually running the country. We never see Arlan show interest in hunting or any vices that would take similar amounts of time. I also don't get the sense that Arlan and Baldur are always like, hanging out. And we don't interact with many administrators, making him seem pretty hands-on.

King Arlan knows how to maintain an image

When you return from the Shadow Realm...

King Arlan is very savvy. Maybe he's sincere, who knows! But publicly honoring the heroes who saved your ass is a great way to get goodwill for yourself and make it so you no longer owe those heroes. Your party puts in quite a lot of work to save Morella and King Arlan just lets you take some weapons and armor no one was using anyway. Doesn't even send a single guard to help. Unlike Book 2...

Before the battle he does a great job making it seem like he's doing you a favor. Like you asked for his help and he's magnanimously granting it, even though the Ash Empire is very much coming to destroy his capital!

Which brings us to his take on Aerin being gone (assuming he was imprisoned previously)...

This is an awful thing to say about your son! But it's actually a pretty cunning move as a king. Arlan was absolutely right- his best move was to let Aerin go and hope he got killed. He gets to eliminate a problem making him look bad to the court (his son who committed murder and treason in a very public manner) and keep his reputation as a nice guy. He's the 'Gentle King,' not the 'Strong King' or 'Decisive King.'

And in the very unlikely (in his estimation) chance Aerin did come back alive and looking heroic, Arlan could keep him imprisoned indefinitely. Or (much less likely) he could say Aerin was corrupted before and use his success as an excuse to get one of his kids back in the line of succession. That's good for your ego and can help prevent a succession crisis if there isn't a super clear heir in place (which seems to be the case currently).

Overall, (and completely separate from him being a horrendous father) it seems to be like Arlan is actually a very good king. But there is one part of the job he sucks at...

Arlan's fatal flaw is that he is terrible at reading people.

'Baldur's great, no concerns!'

Obviously, we know that thinking that Baldur is going to be a good king is stupid.

But why didn't King Arlan know that? Aerin (who does seem to be pretty good at reading people) says he's, "handsome, bold, outgoing." Those things are all great for winning people over!

But not nearly enough to actually run a country. We know Baldur's not really even trying to have any of the practical, administrative skills that requires. And this system does not seem set up to function with a figurehead.

You know that tutor must have clocked that Baldur was asleep! It was probably common knowledge at the palace that Baldur never learned a damn thing. Either Arlan didn't realize his heir was not gaining any practical ruling skills (bad sign) or he didn't care (also a bad sign).

Even monarchs who aren't invested in their kids as people are usually very invested in their education. Because that's how you make sure the wheels don't fall off once you die, ending your glorious bloodline.

Aerin tells us that Baldur would never contradict their father. So Arlan absolutely could have forced him to read a damn book. But for some reason, he didn't.

'My second son sucks...

Arlan truly thinks that Aerin is useless. Which is a wild stance to take after you watched him kill big strong Baldur in a single blow and open a portal to the Shadow Realm.

Arlan got there a little late for Aerin's full villain monologue. But the second your party disappears through the portal, the smart thing would have been to determine if Aerin did any more damage. It didn't feel like it to Aerin, but he had tremendous access to people and resources. For all King Arlan knows, this could have been just one piece of a bigger plot.

And it was! Aerin admitted to corrupting dozens of people, usually very connected people. That's a ticking time bomb just waiting to cause more damage. One it doesn't seem like King Arlan ever looks into.

Arlan seems to just assume that Aerin can't cause damage because he's... not physically imposing? Because knowledge and connections are never a threat to power?

Pre-crisis, Aerin also talks about trying to smooth over Baldur's brash decisions. Having someone to soften the blow of harsh or unpopular decisions is absolutely crucial for any ruler, but especially one like Baldur. Yet Arlan doesn't seem to have any awareness of that either.

So Arlan at least picked up some vibes from Aerin that he was... something. Troubled could be 'miserable,' but this statement makes it feel more 'he creeps me out.'

-and I'm not worried about that.'

Even if Aerin was incompetent or messed up, King Arlan should have been concerned about that! Baldur is very strong and presumably good at not dying. But he throws himself into dangerous situations all the time for fun! There is a very good reason most monarchs don't stop at one kid if they can help it.

History is absolutely littered with examples of people who inherited a throne and ran things into the ground because they didn't have the ability to manage the amount of power they had effectively. If Arlan thought Aerin could fall into that category, he should have had people working around the clock to get him up to standard just in case.

Instead, King Arlan fully ignored Aerin, letting him just haunt the archives like a depressed ghost.

'The Heroes of Morella obviously agree with me, they're important!'

King Arlan makes the assumption, based on your party's status, that you'll agree with him on the 'complicated politics' of executing your own kid. Because you're not 'commoners.' Your party includes one elven noble, one orcish (until like 2 days ago) princess, and one human with a very prominent position in the Temple. Mal is more under the radar, but he was still proclaimed a hero. And your character is the most Hero of all.

So Arlan basically does that thing some people do where they trash talk a marginalized group, because everyone in the room looks like they belong to the majority group, so why would they object? (Never a good look.)

But Mal and Nia are both, at least to you, visibly angry with Arlan for being excited his son is (presumably) dead.

Still, no effort to backtrack or soften the blow from King Arlan. Just sails right over the dude's head that Mal looks pissed and Nia is using her damn customer service voice.

Seriously, King Arlan should probably keep an eye out for Mal... Not a big monarchist, that one.

Bonus Baldur, the tremendous idiot

The fact that Baldur thinks he's the first of his name, when "Baldur Valleros" literally founded his dynasty, is incredibly funny to me. Such ignorance. Such hubris.

I am not about to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe Baldur I went straight to being king, so our dumbass is the first "Prince Baldur Valleros." His father is Arlan VII, there's no way no other king has named their heir after the founder of the dynasty. More evidence that he has never once learned a thing.

(Don't worry about Kade- he took a shadow lance to the face but he's fine. He's mostly fine. Feel free to look at my older posts if you're curious how that went down.)

Baldur seems to make the same assumptions about people based on their status as his father. I don't think it's an accident that when Baldur wants to tell gross stories (including the phrase "slum girls"), he immediately grabs Mal, the human man. Mal isn't all that subtle about his disdain for the nobility, but he still looks like the best one for Baldur to win over. Mal is also the one who steps up and negotiates for the group, making him look like the leader- even more Baldur catnip.

[playchoicesconfessions]

Sent by anonymous

‘i am really really enjoying blades 2 and it's making me realize how much i missed having multiple lis in a book. i've literally been romancing all five lis and hope we get valax too.’

POST/CONFESSIONS DO NOT REFLECT THE MOD’S PERSONAL OPINIONS!

[malthemagnifisent]

Time to be an absolute fucking whore

[weetlebeetle]

Commissions I did for @storyofmychoices recently <33

[sophie-summer]

Mal keeping track of Imtura after she went on her own, was the sweetest thing and it demonstrates the bond they have beyond MC.

We know Tyril loves Nia, and of course will keep in to touch with her. He denies he likes Mal, but we all know it all lies. But I feel his relationship with Imtura was more like "she's a friend of a friend of mine".

Nia likes everyone. Besides MC, her strongest bond is with Tyril (although after last chapter I'm a little hesitant, now it could be Mal) because they have a lot in common in the way the were raised, and I feel like Tyril sees her as a little sister who needs to be protected at all cost (basically as anyone sees her). She obviously likes Mal, and as we saw in the previous chapter they've been doing the greatest work in Whitetower together, which must have strengthen their bond. But with Imy, I felt like, since they have very opposed personalities, they didn't have time to create a bond beyond that dimond escene in Whitetower. And this is a personal opinion, but since Nia is portraited as someone who needs resurance constantly in the things she does (because all her life she's been told what is right or wrong, and what she must do), I feel like she would be kind afraid or intimated by Imtura's behavior (because that exuberant and loud way of hers).

But Maaaaal, he got along with everybody (on his own way at least). Even better than the Mal and Tyril's combo, we had Mal and Imtura's combo. They were the two little rascals of the group who always had the worst ideas and were always fighting with each other all the time. And of all of them, they're my favorite pair really. Mal keeping track of Imy when everyone else seems to give up on her really touched my heart.

[moonlightgem7]

With Blades back and now a Bloodbound special coming next week… It’s safe to say that I’m truly back! 🥹🥹

It’s been too long old friend 🫶🏼

[cratercowboy]

This chapter was so good???!!!

The duality of light vs shadow was really explored and I absolutely was not expecting to get a chance to become allies with the shadow court.

+ info on Tyril’s family!

+ Aerin’s interesting dynamic with the group (AND HIS GUILT FOR ENJOYING THE PARTY OMG)

+ some kind of explanation for whatever was going on with mal.

+ and him getting cut???? It being nothing*

Hmm.

[everlasting-choices]

So wait… Did anyone who is romancing Mal get a scene with him in the final chapter or nah? Because I didn’t get so much as a wink from him the entire chapter. Not even cute dialogue. I even got the bonus ending. So did we really get robbed, (we’ve already been getting crumbs the entire book), or was a Mal scene included with a particular ending? I chose to combine the realms.

[thebeatles211]

Alright, one chapter left of this book.

*Desire and Decorum spoilers in first paragraph*

I think back to in Desire and Decorum 2, if you buy the diamond scene in the park with the fair and enter with your LI and ask for a fortune about family, the fortune teller says that you’ll marry your love and have a family if you can defeat a bad man, which was fun but a plot we obviously saw coming, BUT then ALSO hints at Harry (MCs believed to be dead half brother) returning. Which is the plot of book 3.

*Spoilers Over*

My point being that choices does use these fortune teller scenes as hints, so I hope that there is an actual payoff to this similar to what we got in D&D2-3.

I know we all assumed the watcher, but it seems like in reality he wasn’t deceiving us per say, but a construct like Valax made by a creator who perhaps believed they were doing the right thing. It’s not really deceiving if you’re not hiding your motivations and you think you’re the moral high ground, even if what we discovered is it’s all far more complicated than light = good , shadow = evil. That being said, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that this was just vague writing that meant we were being deceived about what the watcher WAS, but that wasn’t exactly the jaw-dropping moment that dramatic italicized text implies.

I don’t have any answers, my most interesting guess is Mal at the moment (if anyone cares I’ll explain in the comments, but it’s not a strong hunch/theory lol) but something big is definitely coming, Chapter 18 is 21 minutes and we already know there are no dirty 30s padding that run time from the “last time this book” message we got last week. I’m thinking it’s going to end with a cliff hanger that sets the tone for book three.

Assuming this fortune teller scene plays a role in the finale:

[bayleedraws-sometimesx]

Mal

[bedtimegiraffe]

If you've never lost to the drakna queen, I kind of recommend it. You get to see Baldur have a tantrum like the big dumb baby he is.

[rusty-clockworks]

Mal: doesn’t want owl bear

Party: gets owl bear anyways

Mal and the owl bear:

[malthemagnifisent]

That something should have been wallowing in grief and desperately trying to find me, but this works too

[violentinecrl]

TRICK OR TREAT GIFT EXCHANGE @storyofmychoices 🎃

First, a huge thank you to @choicesfandomappreciation for hosting this event! This really was the sweetest thing.

Now and most importantly, Heyyyy @storyofmychoices ! Here is your treat for this Halloween!! Blades is also one of my favourite books, so I couldn't help but pick it for this! I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed drawing it (don't judge it too harshly please I know I have a long way to go 😂😂 like squint your eyes while looking at it, that might do the trick). Well anyway, Happy Halloween!! 🧡🖤

[kinda-iconic]

The squad are back together! 🎉🎉