CANON DIVERGENCE / HEADCANON: SORANO AS A CELESTIAL MAGE.
most people don’t consider this, but sorano did care about her celestial spirits, and she was a great celestial wizard. however, she had a very skewed perspective of them as entities, that many soft-hearted people would frown upon. they were spirits when manifesting in the human world and being spirits, she did not view them as being burdened by the same manner of physical pain as humans.
while that’s not necessarily the most popular opinion in terms of handling and respecting celestial spirits, she did believe she respected them. she respected their time, their abilities, and their loyalty. she knew better than to call them for petty / demeaning tasks or entertainment. as a celestial wizard, you provide your own magic to essentially feed them to materialize into the human world. so if they were to fall in battle, she understood that it affected her as well. so in her mind, she was giving and losing just like them. for spirits, she was well aware that they were mostly immortal and able to heal in the spirit world.
also considering sorano’s personality, let’s get real: she is smart. she is manipulative. she is very capable of winning love when it suits her. while she’s not going to call her spirits her ‘best friends’, she is not going to give them incentive to perform poorly during battles or do anything that’ll deter their motivation.
so some important points regarding her as a celestial wizard:
i. ) sorano’s spirits did not betray her for lucy. i cannot stress this enough. i don’t like this narrative because it contradicts the fact that spirits can’t just betray their wizards without universal consequences. while in my canon, sherry is the one who ultimately defeats sorano, this can be flexible with lucy role players. at the very least, let lucy defeat her by skills and cleverness, not with cheap ‘friendship power’ plot armor.
ii. ) sorano’s keys were confiscated by the rune knights following her arrest. her spirits did not break their contracts with her just because they were unhappy. canon has shown time and again that they are incapable of doing that. the confiscation and her arrest were the reason for the contract being broken, as such circumstances were listed in the terms.
iii. ) most of sorano’s spirits did like working for her. while this concept can be flexible depending on spirit roleplayers, canon definitely shows this for some. gemini is mischievous, playful with her, and appeared to enjoy completing tasks. scorpio seemed perfectly chill with asking her to leave the battle with aquarius, demonstrating that he was comfortable around her and understood when she needed him. also, sorano was extremely knowledgable about the interpersonal relationships between her spirits and ones she didn’t actually have. so in my canon, they’ve communicated about one another in casual settings.
iv. ) aries did fear sorano as shown in canon, but not for the reasons you think. while i can’t go into much details of her feelings for her, unless i were to plot with an aries role-player, i can say that sorano’s treatment was nothing compared to karen’s. aries was traumatized at the hands of karen, and then she witnessed sorano killing her previous wizard ( most likely ) so of course she would be very intimidated by her and assume she wasn’t one to care about her spirits. but aries had been one of sorano’s newest spirits, and thus she barely had the opportunity to connect with her. and yes, while in canon it alludes to the fact that sorano willingly let caelum take her down in order to get to leo, in my canon she did not plan to attack aries. just use her as a distraction.
v. ) sorano did not stop being a celestial wizard. angel magic ( which i will write about in a later headcanon ) is a less conventional variation of the celestial spirit summoning magic. it’s not exactly popular or accepted among the celestial wizard community, given the horrific affects it has on the summoner. following her departure from prison, sorano practices angel magic at first, as she did not have any keys. later she does revive her contract with caelum, and began collecting new keys.