Gwyn was in Azriel’s bonus chapter for a reason, and some of you are doing stupid-level mental gymnastics to avoid the very obvious narrative implications. Instead of accepting what’s on the page, they decided to gaslight themselves..
She’s a red herring. (Mind you, Elucien’s mating bond already existed. That alone is a built-in romance obstacle. In literally any SJM series, that would’ve BEEN the conflict, more on this below)
She’s not even straight (Yet, she spoke about wanting to lay with a MALE)
At some point y’all need to ask yourselves why every single explanation requires twisting the text into a something so negative instead of just… reading the story that was actually written…. another thing too SJM already confirmed The Valkyries are based on real friends, and while that has nothing to do with the romance with Azriel, it does prove (beyond the fucking obvious understanding of character archetype) that Gwyn is a good character.
So. sorry, Gwyn is not evil, stop being delusonal, Sarah did not spend an entire bonus chapter shifting Azriel’s emotional focus, paralleling language, carrying symbolic objects between scenes, ending on Gwyn’s image and her joy, just for some of you to decide none of it matters because it hurts your ship feelings.
The same people screaming “reading comprehension” are the ones insisting a character only exists as a plot device, they have to degrade, villainize or erase her entirely to make their theories and proving to US who lacks true reading comprehension.
And while on this top , for them red herring has truly become fandom code for:
I nderstand the implication perfectly, I just don’t like it, so I’ll make up bad faith theories to gaslight myself and others.
Let me save everyone the conspiracy theories and mental gymnastic
Gwyn’s inclusion was intentional
The emotional contrast was intentional.
The ending on Gwyn was intentional.
You don’t have to like it, but pretending SJM accidentally wrote romantic narrative structure into a romance series is genuinely embarrassing at this point.
But apparently Elriel is such a once-in-a-generation special romance that it requires
Gwyn somehow secretly evil/manipulative
Lucien needing to disappear or their bond being fake
Meanwhile Feysand, Rowaelin, and Quinlar all managed to become canon without needing 102919343 separate obstacles.
If a ship only functions when every narrative obstacle, thematic setup, side character, established lore point and trope, and alternate love interest is removed or demonized… maybe the story is trying to tell you something.
Because SJM does not usually write romances where the audience has to spend 5+ years arguing why the text “doesn’t actually mean what it says.”
And calling Gwyn a “red herring” after an entire bonus chapter deliberately shifts Azriel’s emotional focus onto her is especially funny because that’s not how red herrings work in romance.
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