Why Cardan likes Jude and why he hates it.
Cardan lacks in everything Jude has;
Cardan had given up trying to please his father, given up being good and given up trying in a general way. Cardan is a quitter.
But Jude is not. She is unstoppable. The more he challenges her, the more she reacts. The tournament is probably the first time Jude shows who she really is for Cardan. She could be grumpy, put salt in his food and make a brave face when thrown into the river. But those are the actions is an angry teenager. None of these actions really showed the true face of Jude, her determination and hatred.
Jude not only does not fit into the social values that were taught to Cardan. She challenges them.
Jude is admirable. Cardan’s love/passion comes from the admiration he (did not want to) have for her. That’s it, I said. This is not twilight, he is not a werewolf and there has not been an ‘imprinting’. Cardan admires Jude deeply and that is where his feelings come from.
How could he not fall in love with her?
And Jude challenges the world that, at the same time, hurt Cardan and give him security.
Cardan lived a life that made him believe that he only had value because he was a prince. Not in himself.
His mother ignored him, his father did not care when Dain threw him out of the palace. Balekin humiliated and injured him. Nicasia traded him for Locke. Locke seduced Nicasia. Valerian liked pain, even Cardan’s pain.
But the folk respected him. Why? Because they had to do it. He was a prince, he had the power to punish them, to hurt them. To go against him, to fight back, that was to go against Elfhame.
Even though in his personal relations Cardan was treated as worthless, as a prince he was almost at the top of the pyramid of social value.
Then there is Jude. She does not sigh for him, she is not afraid of him. She does not do anything a human should do in the presence of a faerie prince.
She treats Cardan as if being a prince does not define his value. And if he has no value as a prince, what value does he have?
Jude takes away from Cardan of the only security he knows. It takes away from him all the value he believes he has. Jude throws in his face that the only thing that can define him is himself. The very things that he admires Jude are a constant reminder of his own faults, his desistance and his weaknesses.
P.S.: Is not it interesting that Cardan falls in love with the only person he knows who refuses to value him as a prince? Any value that Jude attributed to him would be for himself. For me, this shows a strong desire to be truly valued.
P.S: For this and other reasons, currently, I believe he fell in love with her after the tournament, when she threatened him.
janainaart
baratheonpilled
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