y'all I got bored and decided to reread the red scrolls of magic again for the first time since like 2020, and I fear my malec obsession is not as dead as a thought it was 😭
There is something I really want to talk about Matthew and all this fairstairs moments that has been happening since CoI (we could even say since ChoG, but that is not necessarily true).
Before I start, I must say that I do enjoy the appealing of the couple. Matthew is my favorite character in TLH together with Cordelia, so having them as a couple would be really endearing, but I personally would prefer them to never happen at all.
Hear me out here:
Cassandra loves to do some foreshadowing, being it on the extra books or on her personal accounts as twitter or tumblr. She often answers questions about characters that won’t make an appearance for the next 3 or 4 years, promising gold and fireworks at the end of the rainbow. And, sometimes, we end up forgetting some of those sweet promises.
I saw a post here on tumblr about Cassandra’s comment on Matthew future and why it is so imprevisible or “not clean”. The original post is here, take a look if you can. On this interview, she says that we won’t be able to guess Matthew’s journey at all, only because she prevented us to get to close of him, depriving us from his povs and moments too deeply focused on him.
For once, I want to say that we might know how things are going to end.
During this same interview, she says that the love triangle will have a twist in CoI (which we are all well aware that such twist never truly happened), but maybe it kinda of did?
Do you remember when The Shadowhunters Academy book came out and everyone freaked out about James and Matthew and the possibility of a parabatai relationship? She was really fast on denying it, saying that she would not repeat the same plot of parabatai in love (the main plot of TDA). But, what if they are not in love?
HEAR ME OUT!
She said that she wouldn’t make them in love, but unrequired love is totally different.
Since the beginning of ChoG, Matthew talked about unrequired love as if he was experiencing one. And no, I don’t mean Kellington, I mean one that truly hurts him, that take his mind apart for just thinking about it. He talks about love with James in a way that demands experience, demands broken hearts and sulking feelings.
After what happened to Matthew in the Ghosts of the Shadow Market book, what’s more painful and fated to fail than being in love with your parabatai? We saw what happened with Julian and Emma in QoAaD, we saw why the parabatai bond should be exclusive for platonic love and family love only. But what happened to Emma and Julian wasn’t a first and only event. It’s more recurrent then we are told. It’s easy to love your parabatai romantically. Michael did, Alec did, Emma and Julian did (even Will and Jem, if we take Cassandra’s encouragement on the heronstairs ship on count). So, why not Matthew?
He hates himself and wants punishment, but is not brave enough to confess his crimes to people who could judge him and stop loving him. He is afraid of losing people he loves. That’s why he never told James, or his parents and brother; or even Thomas and Christopher. But he told Cordelia. Why? Is he not afraid of her stop loving him, considering that he loves her?
I found it curious.
Matthew is always so worried about James, considering if he truly loved him, if he really enjoy being Matthew’s parabatai, and many others insecurities. And, even not truly believing that James loves him, Matthew always offer to James a 100% of himself.
His angry towards James and Grace relationship is not just a friendship thing. Yes, we do hate our friend’s significant others when they are assholes, but the hate is not so massive, it’s just “If you want me to cease their existence just say the word” and we all know it is just for drama. The hate is not that deep.
Matthew’s is. We only hate what really hurt us, and friendship is not enough for such hate as his. He loves James, and love makes people jealous, a really ugly feeling; one that make you rage and yell and say harsh things.
He doesn’t hold the same reaction with Cordelia and James. He is note jealous of James, not at all. He is really supportive, because he believes that James doesn’t love Cordelia back. He just come to terms with them [James and Cordelia] as a couple when he and Cordelia start a friendship of their own, and he learns that she is in love with James. It’s obvious, everyone knows (except if you are as oblivious as James Herondale) and that gives him all the reasons to feel comfortable with their marriage.
There is no initial love (that he knows from James side), but there could be one. One that is good for both of them and that wouldn’t hurt him so much, and with both of them being his dear friends he would accept that more easily (but he was still planning to run away to Paris. Even is Cordelia was not Grace, he was still heartbroken).
So, all the time we see him talking with James about him mistreating Cordelia is not for his love for her, but for wrong and right, for his selfish desire for James to stop loving Grace who never loved him back. For James stop loving someone that hurts Matthew’s heart.
I believe that triangle love is not necessary one like James, Will and Tessa or Kieran, Mark and Cristina. It’s is the classic one, where two out of the three loves the same person that romantic way, while the other feelings are purely platonic. James is in love with Cordelia who is in love with him back, while Matthew is in love with James and loves Cordelia platonically.
Unrequired love that hurts because will never happen.
That screams Matthew Fairchild.
He pretends to be in love with her because it’s easy to fall for others, to give yourself for passion, but never truly receiving the love or giving it. He “loves” to not be loved back, because he cannot love others back, and so all his relationships are meant to fail immediately.
That said, I believe that ChoT will show us what is really happening on his head and see the reaction of everyone that loves Matthew finding out about his sin. I don’t think it will be pretty, not at all, but I don’t believe that he would be sentenced to exile as he believes that Charlotte would do to him. But, even if exile is not the way, he might lose to many thinks and people he loves.
For that reason I think that he will die.
There is no happy ending for him, none that we are aware till know and we are only a few months from the last book. He is meant to suffer, and death would be a mercy.
If we are lucky will be a good death. If we are not, there goes a character that is so deep that me might never be able to see what truly is under his skin.
-------------
That got really big, right? But it was a thought that I had to share.
Anyway, tell me if you agree or not! We have to many months to make theories about him, and Sobh is really making me worried about that ghost. I don’t think it’s Matthew because that would be really obvious, but what if she is playing by the obvious path of thinking and it’s truly him?
Heels boots stalked into a perfectly arranged office, the owner flopping down onto the plush couch opposite a magnificent desk. “Okay, spill. Jace said you were going to propose, so why do the two of you look like death warmed over?” Mal knew Magnus, if there was a ring on his finger there was no way he’d be flouncing about trying to act like he wasn’t completely shattered inside. She knew losing his magic had taken a toll on the warlock but this was more than that. It didn’t help that Alec had returned to the institute looking like his world had completely disintegrated. She knew she should be out with Jace hunting the demons plaguing the city, but right now her dad and his partner came first.
