What if Cassian had a bastard son? Not in the sense that he abandoned his kid or anything like that, but didn't know he existed type of thing. What if he was on the opposite side of the Night Court, ideologies wise? What if he wants to free Illyria?
Imagine:
After Velaris is free, Cassian hooks up with an Illyrian female. And she becomes pregnant. And, upon realizing exactly who Cassian is, she chooses not to tell him, because she believes in the ideology of a free Illyria (they're a glorified colony, there is NO WAY that there's not a movement working to both reform their practices and free themselves) and Cassian is seen as complicit.
She gets married to keep her son from being seen as a bastard, and her husband becomes a leader of the movement and their son is raised the same way (the step-father, for all intents and purposes is the son's father; he loves him and raises him).
What if, twenty years later, Cassian encounters his son for the first time on opposite sides of a negotiating table? What if they meet again on a battlefield? What if his son is willing to give his life for Illyrian freedom?
Cassian has to grapple with the fact that he sired a bastard and wasn't a part of his life and the fact that they're on opposite sides of this war.
If he has to choose between the IC and his son, in the end, who does he choose?
Remus: I don't understand people who get in relationships and call each other cheap pet names. Like sugar or honey. They should raise the bar and call them expensive things.
Realistically, the Night Court is going to have to make some serious changes to the way that they rule the Night Court if they want to keep their power because they may be all powerful, but people outside of Velaris probably resent them at least a little bit. They need a fresh perspective, and I think that Nyx is critical to bringing about change. And in true ACOTAR fashion, it happens because of love.
Imagine:
Nyx visits the Hewn City for the first time when he's 20, and obviously, the nobles that his family deal with treat him horribly.
But he gets bored and sneaks out one night to explore the rest of his court because he takes his duties as heir very seriously.
He ends up in a pub/bar/tavern and gets dragged into a fight that he has no part in starting (sort of like how Gwaine meets Merlin and Arthur in BBC's Merlin)
He meets this male—lets call him Florian—who helps patch him up after the fight. He's the son of a noble who's loyalty isn't to the High Lord or Steward, but to the people themselves, so he's not a fan of Mask!Rhys.
Nyx is intrigued, and he keeps sneaking out to meet Florian.
Eventually, they fall in love. But Florian won't leave the Hewn City because he has family there. And Nyx meets his family for the first time and realizes that Florian isn't the only good person to come out of the Hewn City in the recent past.
Most of them are bitter, and resentful, and pissed, but their steward is a self-serving asshole, they're kept from their High Lord's City of Dreams, and they can't even see the stars that their court is so famous for. They can't leave, they can't exist without being seen as evil by the Inner Circle.
So Nyx, in a grand romantic gesture, mists the top of the mountain that keeps the Hewn City in the dark, and Florian sees the stars for the first time.
And Nyx begins to see the cracks in the story he's been told all his life. (He wasn't lied to by his parents; the Hewn City is truly an awful place sometimes, but every place has good and bad and you can't blame and entire city for Keir's actions, especially when it seems to make up 1/3 of the court. They're also a little blinded by what happened to Mor.)
He wants to change it for the better, and he starts by getting to know the people of Hewn City. Florian helps him; they're a brilliant political duo together: the next gen IC's power couple.
Obviously, Rhys and Feyre find out about what he's doing and they're not thrilled. So he introduces Florian to them, and announces their intentions to get married. It... goes down like a lead balloon.
The IC is pissed. They accuse Florian of manipulating him, and Florian retaliates by calling the IC out on their shitty politics in the Hewn City. Things get heated, and Nyx winds up winnowing the two of them out of Velaris and back to the Hewn City.
Using some of that Archeron Rage he's inherited, he deposes of Keir and makes himself the Steward/Head of the Hewn City because he's seen the potential that it has. And Florian's spearhead some of his more daring initiatives, and by the time Florian and Nyx are ready to get married, Rhys and Feyre see the changes that have been made and realize that Florian isn't manipulating him. (Things get crazy in the Inner Circle after the fight. Feyre is hurt by her son's decision to leave Velaris, Rhys is pissed about being called out, Mor is horrified by the fact that any of her family would actually live in and marry someone in the CoN.)
They reconcile (they have to, Florian won't get married if Nyx doesn't have his parents' blessing; also Feysand are good parents, if a little stuck in their ways and Nyx really does love them) and the wedding happens.
Bonus: Florian and Nyx have a baby named Lysander, and he looks exactly like the son the Bone Carver showed Feyre.
What's it like being a perpetual people pleaser? What's it like remembering everything about everyone else but sometimes wishing they remembered anything at all about you? Or how you pour too much of your own money or time into other people. How you wish you didn't. How you hate change but won't admit it and even though you seem like a leader you're more likely to be a follower. How does it feel to tell yourself you haven't had it bad enough to consider it trauma? How does it feel, to wish you had someone who reciprocated even an ounce of the affection you give to other people. How does it feel to fall in love with people more quickly than you can register? How does it feel to be an ambivert? To have some days where you can't shut up and others where you hate yourself for it. And tell me how it feels to have no greater desire than some sort of group or conformity to reside in? How does it feel to not know who you are when you aren't around other people? How does it feel to be acutely self-aware and more than logical but to still let your emotions get the best of you? How does it feel, to feel unwanted? How does it feel to blame yourself for things entirely out of your control? How does it feel to lay awake at night thinking about your parents and the stray cat in the alley and the man you saw looking awfully down in some passing moment on some sidewalk today? How does it feel to have used every prayer you ever thought you had on the burdens others carried? How does it feel to have been the little kid adults confided their issues in from an early age? How does it feel to give the best advice anyone could ask for but have no sense of direction in your own life? How does it feel to strike a match on yourself to keep others warm? You only seem to set things on fire that way . How does it feel to have an earth-sized hole in your chest? How does it feel to think with your heart not your head?
How does it feel to feel too much?
How does it feel to own things until they are just near broken because you never learned how to let go? How does it feel to be watering dead flowers? Why can't you let things die? You can't love things that don't want to be loved. You can't care enough for the whole word.
The Night Court seems to reflect the British empire. They think that they are better than everyone (but people outside of their Inner circle hate them because they are bad rulers), they drain their colonies (Hewn City and Illyria) of their resources while declaring that they are trying to fix those places and that those places are too backwards to be helped, and they keep portraying themselves as heroic saviors.
Also, someone on reddit pointed out that the map of Prythian looks quite a bit like Britain, so...food for thought.
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