🙋+ forgiveness
It doesn’tcome as easy to her as people think. She is not vengeful, but each slight iscarefully remembered, carefully categorized as intentional or not. It shamesher, this ability to evoke such trivial details in what is bound to be a verylong lifetime, and pushes them aside as best as she is able.
She finds excusesfor others, justifies their behavior and puts herself in their shoes until thefables she creates in her head are watertight and perfectly logical. She mighteven be able to defend someone’s actions better than they can do it themselves.No one asks this of her, but to her forgiveness is not a natural inclination; shehas to work at it.
She’s set in herways, and while the person she’s the hardest on is and will always be herself,these high expectations bleed into her interactions with others. When she feelslet down, first and foremost, it is herself she’s angry with. It’s thedisappointment in herself she feels most keenly. Her inability to take othersas they come, her constant, critical gaze that makes the world seem a dimmer,meaner, smaller place than it should. Who’d heard of an elf that holds agrudge? The future queen herself, no less. So she fights her impulses untilthey’re beaten into submission. Until her behavior is precisely as it should.
Until she forgives them: her brother for leaving (dragon raiders must remainimpartial), her mother for pushing her so hard as well as pushing her away(Amaryllis will be queen, the elven people deserve someone who will fill therole flawlessly), her aunt whose placeholder she was made to become (her familyhad abandoned her, it was her right to do the same). She forgives them, andtheir flaws and knows she is not perfect herself, no matter how hard she tries.She forgives, but she doesn’t forget and to be queen is to be alone.