You’re meta is so on point because I always side eye the whole "Alina should’ve ended alone or Mal should’ve remained death” because like - are you reading the same books? Mal is literally her soulmate. Alina is not weak for loving Mal which is often the implication that I dislike. A woman can be a heroine while also being madly in love. As you said, Mal kept Alina together all those years - he was the physical reminder of humanity, and not person on earth gave Alina the feeling of safety and confort other than Mal.
Alina killed with the cut for the first time ever to save Mal. And literally Genya says on the books, not even Misha could be able to help Alina if Mal is dead because she would literally go insane. Every single person of the ravka crew knew Alina would’ve gone ballistic without him. I’m not here for people wishing Alina a life of misery and ultimately becoming Darkles 2.0 for the sake of claiming it’s "badass" and "feminist"- it’s actually terrible how much more suffering they want her to experience.
No, exactly. And I truly do stand by the fact that had Mal remained dead, Alina would have soon followed - by her own hand - which is a fucking tragedy. But the five minutes we see Mal actually dead is the only time in the entire trilogy that we see Alina lose her grip on reality. She doesn't care about anything as soon as Mal is dead. She's just screaming for someone to help her, for someone to bring him back, nothing matters if she doesn't have Mal.
I think fundamentally dislike/misunderstanding of Alina's ending comes from people blurring the line between Alina and their own self-insert, because of how the story is written in first person. It's very very simple to me.
You can read the books and think to yourself "If I was Alina, I would've gone for the immortal all powerful dude." That's fine to think that and think that that's what you would want to do. You can think that in her place you would hate an ending of peace and obscurity. Once again, that's fine! You're not Alina, you're under no obligation to want what she wants.
However. When you read the books, and remove your own desires from what you would want in that world, it is clear as day that there is only one thing Alina wants and one thing Alina chooses over and over again - and that something is Mal. This isn't even subtly written. It's explicit. And it goes the other way too; the only thing Mal wants, and what Mal will choose over and over again is Alina. When the two of them are forced into situations where they cannot choose each other, they are downright miserable. (Cut to S&S where both of them are miserable and struggling because they want each other but the circumstances won't let them).
And you can say that in your position you wouldn't choose that! OK! But you are not Alina. And Alina always will choose Mal. They are each others' homes, they are orphans "with no home but each other", they are the only family each other has, they are their rocks, their safe place, a part of each others' souls. Any ending which did not give the two of them a peaceful life together would not be true to Alina as a character whatsoever. And I also agree with you that it doesn’t make her weak in the slightest to love Mal. God, the fact that she goes through all she goes through and gets a life of peace, surrounded by love from Mal every single day? How many heroines of fantasy literature get that ending with the one they love?! Mal makes her stronger, not weaker. He’s her anchor. She loves her. It’s as simple as that.
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