Here’s something I don’t get:
Why doesn’t Zoya like Alina? Why is she so mean to her?
I’m not saying everyone has to like the protagonist (I don’t like Alina either), but I don’t really see why Zoya doesn’t. Their mutual dislike makes no sense to me in either show or book.
Maybe it’s because I’m not a fan of overdone and shitty misogynistic tropes (because that’s what their whole “rivalry” ultimately is - a collection of shitty and misogynistic tropes that have been outdated a decade ago).
Especially when, during the “stink” line in both versions, they had zero actual one-on-one interactions.
In the book, Alina hates Zoya because she’s the “pretty and popular girl” that Mal may or may not have banged the night before their Fold trip. It’s 100% based around jealousy on Alina’s side. Jealousy for a guy that, if I remember correctly, she’s mostly over at this point and whom she has a very sibling-like relationship with, mind you.
And Zoya hates Alina in the book because… I don’t actually know. Because Alina takes the spotlight? Because she’s a bully who just enjoys making Alina miserable? There’s no actual reason given for Zoya not liking Alina. Is she jealous or just mean for the sake of being mean?
She hates Alina, because she’s the “Mean Girl” stereotype. That’s probably the real answer.
Unlike in the book, Alina doesn’t really have anything against Zoya until they meet at the Little Palace in the show.
As far as we know, Alina doesn’t know that Zoya was the Grisha who invited Mal to her bed. Their only interactions so far were on the skiff and in the tent after, where Zoya put her head on the line by claiming her to be the Sun Summoner.
(I think I said this before, but I have a headcanon that there have been false “Sun Summoners” before and they haven’t ended well, partly explaining Alina’s reluctance to proclaim herself as such. And it would put Zoya at risk if she was wrong about Alina).
Then, Alina heads off to the Little Palace.
Zoya talks with Mal (and probably realizes he really doesn’t like the Grisha, but that’s a thread for another day). Then, she must head off to the Little Palace shortly after, because she arrives soon after Alina - soon enough to be present at her introduction to the court and not look like she just rode 200+ miles on a horse, anyway.
At which point, she insults Alina.
We’re told it’s because she’s jealous of Alina getting Aleksander’s attention/having the spotlight on her in general, but… is that really enough to call someone a racist slur over?
There’s also the matter of their fight.
In the book, it’s after Alina has been training at the Little Palace for a while and she beat Zoya fair and square, on her third-or-so try doing it, and Zoya blasts her into a wall, because she’s an immature bitch. For all her faults, Alina clearly has the moral highground in the situation. Her reasons for wanting to beat Zoya might have been petty jealousy, but she did it fairly and didn’t injure Zoya.
In the show it’s Alina’s first day of training. Botkin asks her to show of her combat training (because she claims to have some after a flashback to Mal teaching her how not to break her hand when boxing) and she picks Zoya as an opponent, because, you know, Zoya called her a racist slut absolutely unprovoked.
Zoya beats her, repeatedly, then makes an allusion to having slept with Mal (on a sidenote, when did Alina find out Zoya was the one Mal stole from to get her food? Or is this when she finds out). So, Alina gets up and hits her from behind, prompting Zoya to send her into said pile of hay.
After which we get a scene of Alina ranting to Mal about how she feels so alienated at the Little Palace and how being Grisha is so hard.
In this version, both of them come of as kinda awful people. Zoya because she clearly provokes Alina and Alina because she takes the bait and attacks her from behind. Like, Alina still looks a bit better, but the “Woe is me” monologue right after kinda kills that for me.
These are the people I’m supposed to root for? These are the heroes? Like, their entire rivalry went all kind of nowhere in the books and in general kinda sucked. It was one of those things that could have been left out completely or fixed in the show, but instead, they doubled down on it by having Zoya and Aleksander be fuckbuddies and making Zoya into a hypocritical jealous girlfriend.
