Okay. I know I literally never post here (I'm planning on working on that) but I have a lot of feelings right now and I have literally no RQ fan friends so I'm taking my rantings to Tumblr!
I make a lot of jokes about being in love with Maven Calore, and I am not afraid to admit that Maven is my favorite character in the series. There's generally two types or reactions this gets me. There's always the logical "Ew, what the fuck have you even read the books?" and the "OMG IKR HE'S LITERALLY SO SEXY!"
Maven Calore is a very complex character and there is absolutely no black and white with him.
Yes, he is incredibly toxic and manipulative and abusive. And yes, that's only because of how badly he had been manipulated and abused himself. Both are true and one does not outweigh the other. I see a lot of people jumping to extremes, either demonizing or fetishizing him and everything he's done, and I just- No. His actions are not entirely his fault, but they are in no way justifiable. You have to look at the coin from both sides.
From a very young age, Maven had been both abused and neglected and used as a puppet. His father was consistently emotionally unavailable, and always treated Maven as less than his brother, and everything his mother did always had some sort of ulterior motive. Because of her mind-altering ability, she was able to shape and mold Maven to be exactly what she wanted and needed.
Just pulling from his wiki page and my own memory since I am currently not at home and do not have access to the books for reference, I can recall several occasions mentioned of Elara's mental abuse. She took away his love for both his father and his brother because it was getting in the way, took away his ability to dream because his nightmares were an inconvenience to her, and added and subtracted so many aspects of his personality to the point where Maven could no longer tell what was his and what was hers. All while he was still a child. Because of this abuse and manipulation, Maven in his later years was what I would consider extremely mentally ill, having no sense of self and being unable to fully experience emotions and such as most people would.
Another thing she did was change his definition of love. After the death of his former lover, Thomas (which I can say with certainty was incredibly traumatic for Maven, seeing as he was there and the one to cause it), Elara learned that she could not erase that type of love from his memory. She tried anyway, of course, but that only fucked him up more. After Mare, however, she realized that she still couldn't erase it, but she could change it into something that could be more useful to her. Obsession.
Now, like I said, there are two types of people here. There are the ones that refuse to acknowledge any of his past, and there are the ones that romanticize all of the trauma he's been through.
Maven is not a good person, no matter how you try to paint him. But that is partly because he never got the chance to be one. We don't know anything about how he would've turned out without Elara's additions and subtractions. All we know is what her handiwork turned him into. And that person. That person. Is, as was stated before, toxic and manipulative and abusive. Which should not at all be treated as hot or sexy.
His story isn't some romantic tragedy, and it isn't about a true and total monster either. It's a story of repeated mental and emotional abuse and the consequences that can have on someone.
Anyway, rant over. Thank you for sticking through this, I hope it was slightly coherent enough to read through. I'm a little tired lmao.