Hi! I'd like to know about your thoughts on that scene in acowar where ta/m whipping a sentry and fri/ed set them up. Was fri/ed at fault there? Because some stans saying that frier did it and ta/m only put it around his neck and completely ruined his forces. Thank you!
I always get frazzled at the way people defend this. Because even before I was anti, it made certain my dislike for F/eyre. It was unnecessary and cruel, and it was justified by the text to an alarming degree.
For one, it made absolutely no sense for F/eyre to pretend to love T/amlin again. None. T/amlin didn't only make the bargain for her, he also made it for the safety of his people. H/ybern was already going to invade the Spring Court -- a court, which much like Summer, is still rebuilding. From a technical standpoint, T/amlin made the best decision of behalf of the entirety of his court. This, is also, exactly what R/hysand did for fifty years, and he wasn't even protecting the entirety of his court.
Do I blame T/amlin -- hell yes. But, is F/eyre equally to blame, hell yes. Here's why:
F/eyre manufactures the situations, to begin with. It's already established in canon that T/amlin was a good leader. It's one of the first pieces of information we get towards his character development in TAR, so it's not like T/amlin is consistently even like this, but for context I think I have to spell it out. It's not like these situations are naturally happening, and T/amlin is fucking around, F/eyre is purposely manufacturing situations, without knowing T/amlin's endgoal, and not bothering to ask. She withholds the information she knows about I/anthe and H/ybern and insinuates that R/hysand r*ped and abused her. So now T/amlin is essentially dealing with H/ybern, R/hysand, and a his own mental state, which is unhealthy. Instead of just actually telling T/amlin, F/eyre implements an innocent party, while the people who are occupying the Spring Court witness -- the people who are actively looking to find a weakness to distort in the court. It's established that T/amlin always planned to play spy in the first place, so this makes F/eyre's plotting even more of a stupid idea.
But importantly, we could argue if F/eyre had not manufactured these situations, the Court would have been in a much better position. F/eyre has T/amlin in the dark about information that directly affects the decisions he's making. Like if this were real life, and F/eyre behaved the way she did, she'd go straight to jail. That is how you disable a country. But even more to the point, F/eyre herself admits to be culpable in destroying the Spring Court. Her narration is literally gloating about it every five minutes.
Even more, what F/eyre does is exactly what I/anthe does. Why do people hate I/anthe? (ofc, because she's a s*abuser, but more than that) Because she manipulated and schemed, using people's weaknesses against them. F/eyre even resorts to the same kind of s*xual coercion that I/anthe does. So what's the difference between when F/eyre does it, or when I/anthe does?
In perspective, if F/eyre (when she was super depressed) was being gaslighted and coerced into doing something promised certain death or political instability, people would see it as bad. That's literally the plot of the beginning of MAF. T/amlin tells F/eyre that if she leaves the manor, she faces death or worse, there's little to no choice on whether she's able to go outside.
But the same goes for T/amlin, in his perspective:
R/hysand -- the man who abused and s*assaulted his Fiancee stole her away. Vaguely he probably got the report of her dancing on said man, in the same manner as she did UTM. She sends a letter, out of the blue, after two months saying she's okay and not to come looking for her. But's she's literally in the custody of a man who did all of what I mentioned of above, the man who can literally rip into people's mind, and even did to her in front of him. Your emissary tracks her down and she sprouts wings with R/hysand standing there, totally different from how you left her. You make a deal with this mad king to get her back and protect your people and she literally confirms the worst, telling you she was r*ped and controlled by this man.
He's unstable, so obviously unsable. If people can defend R/hysand's behavior in SF using the rhetoric that "he's been through a lot" how do people not understand the political and emotional turmoil T/amlin is in. R/hysand had the luxury of his court remaing relatively unscathed during A/marantha's reign -- The Spring and Summer Courts did not. Is T/amlin wrong and responsible for his court failings: yes. But was F/eyre just as responsible for manipulating and plotting against a very obvious mentally unstable guy: yes.
At the beginning of MAF, F/eyre is depressed. I/anthe preys on F/eyre's mental state to manipulate her, to make F/eyre become dependent on her. But F/eyre isn't the only victim in that. T/amlin is too, and while F/eyre is given sympathy, T/amlin is not. It's not taking away T/amlin's shittiness to acknowledge the brevity of what he's forced to do. I find it disgusting that F/eyre belittles him for doing the exact same thing her mate did.
Someone once said that T/amlin is completely in the dark about the events of MAF, the way everything looks to him is very different from the way it looks to F/eyre. He's doing exactly what R/hysand did to protect his four friends in his already-hidden city.
Listen, I honestly think a good revenge scene would have been great. I think it should have just been F/eyre telling T/amlin off, or beating his ass, or something that involves her getting revenge on him. All she did was displace a whole country of people she claimed to care about while on the verge of war.
And her actions led to people of two courts being at the mercy of H/ybern. T/amlin held his end of helping P/rythian, and the summer court also put their ire aside for the greater good. But F/eyre -- self-declared High Lady -- could not put her problems aside for two seconds to help the very people she claimed to protect.
She wanted to be High Lady, understood the maturity and decision-making that went into it, and still went into the Spring Court with the intention to wreck it and displace people. Sounds pretty ugly to me.
edit: I also just read a part where F/eyre literally mins planted false information into a sentries mind. Here it is:
And perhaps a day or two after that, one of these sentries would reveal the news, a carefully sprung trap that I’d coiled into his mind like one of my snares.
I’d fled for my life—after being nearly killed by the Hybern prince and princess. I’d planted images in his head of my brutalized body, the markings consistent with what Dagdan and Brannagh had already revealed to be their style. He’d describe them in detail —describe how he helped me get away before it was too late. How I ran for my life when Tamlin and Ianthe refused to intervene, to risk their alliance with Hybern.
And when the sentry revealed the truth, no longer able to stomach keeping quiet when he saw how my sorry fate was concealed by Tamlin and Ianthe, just as Tamlin had sided with Ianthe the day he’d flogged that sentry ...
When he described what Hybern had done to me, their Cursebreaker, their newly anointed Cauldron-blessed, before I’d fled for my life ...
There would be no further alliance. For there would be no sentry or denizen of this court who would stand with Tamlin or Ianthe after this. After me.
That’s F/eyre literally lying. This is so ugly. That’s her actively influencing the mind of people, lying.
Well, that’s the High Lady of the Night Court for you. If you all think that’s totally fine, then we completely undermine pretty much all of the villains of this series. What’s the different between A//marantha killing on behalf of her sister? Enslaving and displacing because she felt justified by her sisters death? Big Yikes.
T//amlin is a little less complicit (still, somewhat responsible) than I initially thought when i first wrote this.
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