Imagine one of the most popular authors of our time, someone known for writing about female empowerment and irresistible men, choosing to have her heroine eventually give in to what everyone expects of her: accepting the mate bond she actually doesnt want(ed) herself.
Instead of letting her choose the man who would defy the world for her (going against the high lord, politics, Lucien and basically nature laws) the one who knows she wants him just as much.
Cant wait for the forbidden love!!! 🩷💙
Whay do you think?
“A mating bond can be rejected,” Rhys said mildly, eyes flickering in the mirror as he drank in every inch of bare skin I had on display. “There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some… preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.”
“Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”
"And so like exploring a concept of free will, like what does that look like with a mating bond? Does nature like get it wrong sometimes? Does it get it right sometimes? Like what—. As a writer, I like to find things that make me interested. Like, what if you’re mated to someone and you don’t want to be mated. I’m like look, what do you do? You’re like stuck with this person? Like, what? Like, what do you do? … it’s something that I find to be a really interesting concept, versus Feyre and Nesta where it was so easy for them. Like, nature picked right.”
Nothing she said is new, she's BEEN saying it for years.
I believe Sarah has more than laid out the path ahead, and her most recent interview solidified what we have been saying for almost half a decade now.
Nature did not pick right for Elain, and there are absolute tons of textual foreshadowing laying that out over the course of the series, there are so many I simply cannot include them all. The framing of Elain and Lucien's dynamic has been one of discomfort, betrayal and a lack of alignment between them.
BETRAYAL
“But Elain blinked slowly. “You were in Hybern.” “Yes.” It was all he could say. “You betrayed us.”
-
SJM: "Elain has gone through so much trauma, she was human and then is turned fae. And like surprise, you’ve been like forcibly like essentially married to a stranger who like also was involved in bringing you into this world and betraying and like shoving you into the cauldron."
DISCOMFORT
“She glowed with good health. Except … Her brown eyes were wary. Usually, that look was reserved for Lucien. The male was definitely in the family room,”
“Elain had already departed with Feyre, claiming she had to be up with the dawn to tend to an elderly faerie’s garden. Cassian didn’t exactly know why he suspected this wasn’t true. There had been some tightness in Elain’s face as she’d said it. Normally when she made such excuses, Lucien was around,”
“Elain, the wretch, had taken the seat between Feyre and Varian, about as far from Lucien as she could get.”
"She’d seen him not as a High Lord’s seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. Elain had been … thrown at him.”
“I am not always in this city to see my mate.” The last two words dripped with discomfort. ”
“...to remember that she picked it. Picked me. That it’s not like my parents, shoved together.” (This is about Rhys' parents but the parallel is clear.)
ALIGNEMENT
“I can hear your heart beating through the stone.” She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer. “Can you hear mine?” He wasn’t sure if she truly meant to address him, but he said, “No, lady. I cannot.” Her too-thin shoulders seemed to curve inward. “No one ever does. No one ever looked—not really.” A bramble of words. Her voice strained to a whisper. “He did. He saw me. He will not now.”
“The ancient healer jerked her chin toward Lucien. “See what he can do. If anyone can sense if something is amiss, it’s a mate.” (Queue Azriel figuring it out.)
“Lucien murmured to me, eye still fixed on Elain, “Should we—does she need …?” “She doesn’t need anything,” Azriel answered without so much as looking at Lucien. Elain was staring at the spymaster now—unblinkingly. “We’re the ones who need …” Azriel trailed off. “A seer,” he said, more to himself than us. “The Cauldron made you a seer.”
“It made sense, I supposed, that Azriel alone had listened to her. The male who heard things others could not … Perhaps he, too, had suffered as Elain had before he understood what gift he possessed.”
Throughout the books we get countless occasions where Sarah intentional frames Azriel as the better/more compatible love interest, many occasions she brings him to the forefront with no other motive...
“I said quietly, “We will get her back.” But Lucien was watching me warily. Too warily.”
“From the shadows near the entrance to the tent, Azriel said, as if in answer to some unspoken debate, “I’m getting her back.” Nesta slid her gaze to the shadowsinger. Azriel’s hazel eyes glowed golden in the shadows. Nesta said, “Then you will die.” Azriel only repeated, rage glazing that stare, “I’m getting her back.”
Why are we seeing more passion from him, rather than her mate? These are intentional moments of impact, furthering that point in ACOSF we have the second quote reiterating to the audience that he did not hesitate when it came to Elain as opposed to what we saw from Lucien.
“I want to see her. Just once. Just—to know.” “To know what?” He hitched my damp cloak higher around us. “If she is worth fighting for.”
“Azriel stiffened. “I know. I helped rescue Elain, after all.” Az hadn’t so much as hesitated before going into the heart of Hybern’s war-camp.”
-
“Why not make them mates?” I mused. “Why Lucien?”
“You said your mother and father were wrong for each other; Tamlin said his own parents were wrong for each other.” I peeled off my dressing robe. “So it can’t be a perfect system of matching. What if”—I jerked my chin toward the window, to my sister and the shadowsinger in the garden—“that is what she needs? Is there no free will? What if Lucien wishes the union but she doesn’t?”
“You know them better than I do. But I will say that Lucien is loyal—fiercely so.” “So is Azriel.”
I am by no means saying Lucien is bad or evil, he is simply not compatible with her and Sarah has made that known.
“It's kind of like your destined true love in a way, but it's complicated, because there's a biological component to it, where you can be mated to someone that is not actually your true love. So, there's, like, true, true mates, and then there's kind of, like, nature made a mistake, like Rhys's parents did not love each other, like, it was not a great relationship, but they were mates, and it was, like, there's a biological thing where they're, like, we want to be together, but then it's, like, we're fucking miserable with each other,"
I think that the signs for Elriel have been building gradually since ACOMAF, they have remained consistent and constant through the novels that followed and that wasn't for SJM to discard it.
Holding hands, kissing his cheek, gift giving, protectiveness, individual moments (only one to use truth-teller),
It is obvious by the books, and this latest interview was the most blunt and clear assessment we've had of Sarah's mindset for Elain, relating Lucien to her trauma and mating bonds potential for free will.
I would not say it would be against her free will if she did end up falling in love/choosing Lucien, but what I am saying is there is nothing leading up to ACOTAR6 that would lead me to believe she will. She has never been comfortable with him, she has never exhibited any true emotion effort to change that and that is why I am not on board with it and never have been.
I see a lot of "but that will happen in their book" but that would be more realistic if she hadn't spent the last three books building those bonds elsewhere. Even when Nessian 'hated' each other, they had passion, connection. Elain and Lucien have none of that.
...and while we are at it, I will throw out there I fully believe Elriel will have some form of bond, if not a true mating bond.
“TOUCH HER, SMELL HER, TASTE HER– THE INSTINCTS WERE A RUNNING RIVER.” (Lucien in ACOWAR about the mating bond.)
“Letting his scarred fingers touch her immaculate skin. Letting them brush the side of her throat, savoring the velvet-soft texture.”
“Azriel's fingers lingered at her nape, atop the first knob of her spine. Slowly, Elain pivoted into his touch. Until his palm lay flat against her neck.”
“They'd exchanged looks, the occasional brush of their fingers, but never this. Never blatant, unrestricted touching. ”
“He prayed she didn't peer down. Prayed she didn't understand the shift in his scent.”
“Her arousal drifted up to him, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the sweet scent. He'd beg on his knees for a chance to taste it. ”
“He needed to know what the skin of her neck tasted like. What those perfect lips tasted like.”
“This one moment, and maybe a taste, and that would be it.
“Yes" Elain breathed, like she read the decision. Just this taste in the dead of the longest night of the year, where only the Mother might witness them. ”
“Elain and Feyre—that was the new status of things. The bond Elain had chosen.”
"I'd never do such a thing. you must be thinking of your other mate."
interesting phrasingsssssss.
Anyways I could quite literally go on and on, but to summarise; I don't see any version of event's where Elain ends up with Lucien based on what Sarah has written thus far.
Forbidden love is always my favourite so I am beyond excited! I am sorry this was so long winded, it's nothing we haven't all been saying for years but with the added context of what Sarah said in her interview it is even more interesting to articulate the parallels.
If you read all that, thank you!
