Thoughts on Emma and Islington. (There are many.)
Although I enjoy it as a stalwart friendship, I’m undecided about this relationship.
Emma and Islington have always read as siblings to me, and this dynamic has been emphasized even more in the later volumes. Both she and Islington have immediate visceral reactions to any suggestion of marrying one another.
But...perhaps they doth protest too much? Not so much about their feelings now, I do believe they feel much more like siblings than anything else at present, but maybe it’s a really long burn?
There’s a likeness in them to Emma’s parents, one high born and the other low. And her mother’s first impression of Declan being irritation that grew into affection. (I think, however, in the comparison to her parents, Emma is Declan and Islington is her mother. The former less stuffy with a wicked sense of humor; the latter attempting some semblance of attending to social norms despite the other. Emma is the artist and Islington is the aristocrat.)
They have so much in common! Much more than she and Pierce. The journaling. The awful aunts. St. Crispian's. Stonecrop is to Henry what Lapis Lazuli is to Emma. Losing one's parents, grief and a broken heart at a young age. They both know how to navigate the upper echelons of society, but neither one has any love of the game. Both are fairly unserious about marriage at present, but they're both open to the idea of it and to children in the future. (Emma said two...as in twins? Perhaps?)
And Emma's father, Declan.
So in this volume (8) we learned that Declan and Islington met when he was 20 - the same year that Hannah died - and that Declan meant a lot to Islington at that time, in a paternal way. And we still don't know why. Or how. Other than that bit of advice he shared. I agree with Mariana, even though Henry denied it, that his care of/for Emma has something to do with that. He feels a certain amount of duty or responsibility towards her. So I’m circling back around to believe that Henry's feelings towards Emma are familial.
Speaking of that conversation with Mariana, though, I had thought for a while that Henry was, in a way, making up for "failing" with Maggie by being a Good Big Brother to Emma, and that may still be the case, given Maggie's history and temperament. Is Emma supposed to be her polar opposite, housed in the south tower while Mariana has claimed the north? And yet her equal somehow?
However, after we learned of Henry's original Alchemy group, the sister he's making up for didn't appear to be Maggie at all but Hannah. So I had the same question that Mariana asked, Who is Henry replacing? The Lover or the Sister? And Henry's answer, that he wouldn't replace either one but add Emma to that group instead, baffled me. Is she something of both, then? Is he having a difficult time knowing where indeed to place her? Or his feelings for/about her? He was certainly very sweet about wanting to introduce her to all things Stonecrop.
What about the negative images of Emma and her all-male friend group and Islington and his all-female friend group? Is she the Pierce or the Hawkes or the Islington to Islington?
And who does Hawkes believe that Emma is similar to? Or at least has a similar good effect on Henry?!
Sigh. Now that I’ve talked around it, I’m still undecided about the future of this relationship. It makes sense to me, it’s a good match on paper, but there just aren’t any feelings there right now.
Overall, Emma and Islington are a kind of matched set but in a way that right now trends more toward siblings, towards a familial relationship. Having a lot in common is necessary for intimate friendships, too, and the two of them both not seeming to exhibit any attraction towards one another indicates that this relationship may not be changing any time soon. But I guess we have time with how many books are planned.