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I hate that the only characters to betray the darkling are women because why can’t women be loyal to the villain because he’s for the greater good for them and will do more for them then literally anyone else but sure it’s better for them side with oppressor cause if you write a story about revolution you need women on side that isn’t the personification of the word reactionary and sure make all of them race/class traitors and yeah the gay one dies
They honestly murdered Nikolai’s character. This character is being the only monarch who cares about his country and his people. The whole reason he created Sturmhond, the whole reason he’s a privateer, the whole reason he works for the Darkling and kidnappings Alina. This entire character is based on his love for his country and him doing anything he can to make it better for his people. It’s the whole reason I fell in love with his character, I love that he was an inventor and a strategist prince with military experience, everything you look for in a leader. And now you’re telling me that he has to be convinced to save Ravka?! It was Alina in the books who need to be convinced to save the country. Don’t ruin his entire character just to make Alina look better. No matter what you do you won’t make me like her and now they made me hate the only protagonist I liked. Fuck you.
He was the perfect balance between Alina and the Darkling. And the only hero I liked. He should be the one ruling Ravka not Zoya, he was the perfect man for it, I can’t believe LB threw away his life goal, the everything he worked for away just to have Zoya “can’t control her anger” Nazyalensky on the throne, it’s fucking ridiculous. Like Nikolai had a whole plan for democracy. 
Shadow and Bone Wokeflakes in a Nutshell
Wokies: We want diversity and simple minded moral code.
Non-Americans: Slavic culture is potrayed disrespectfull and sloppy. Tsardom is romanticized.
Wokies: Shut up. *downvote downvote downvote*
Some oppressed tortured grisha is gonna find out mal and Alina faked their death and kill them in cold blood and may or may not go through the orphanage Darth Vader style
Leigh Bardugo’s weird obsession with Alina’s virginity, only writing bragha "saving" alina from the darkling’s "manipulation" when she was about to give her desires and "innocence" to him. because the sun summoner needs to stay "innocent" and "pure" to mirror the darkling so when she because more and more powerful and and loses her virginity, her "pureness" and "innocence" is gone and so are powers cause the sun summoner needs innocent and pure and she isn’t
Mal? Well He’s allowed bang everything with tits and vaginas
Basing your fictional country of Russia but yet making radicalization something bad, when one of the most important historical and influential figures of Russia/20th Century was radicalized, radicalized by the tsarist state, that killed his anarchist brother for trying to change (assassination of Alexander II), that had the highest infenction, the highest infant mortality, having the worst life quality in all of Europe, getting into Marxism, being so influential there are two ideologicals following him, his dreams of a (Soviet) Socialist Union.
Leigh Bardugo has such an american/liberal view of Russia’s history.
The Majority of people in the russian empire wanted to get rid of the monarchy whenever liberal or bolshevik
The Russian Empire had the highest infant mortality rate, and people were most likely to die from infectious diseases
Serfdom, the enslavement of peasants even after it was abolished in 1861 it didn’t really change much for people cause feudalism (serfdom is still a thing in Ravka)
Wars, all wars under Nicholas II’s resulted in revolutions, and the country had major internal problems and ww1 was the final nail in the coffin and the slow/lack of industrialization, no moral to keep fighting, scorched earth policy
The Russian Empire was one of the most antisemitic countries to exist, especially some of the Romanov emperors were known for their raging antisemitism, Nicholas II had his involvement in the Protocols of Zions (illegal to possess in the USSR and inspired n4z1 germany) which led to the death of thousands of Jewish people in progroms
If the darkling was based on any historical figure/revolutionary or written like an revolutionary, he wouldn’t burned down an orphanage but target actual loyalist and their intuitions, and have to had been imprisoned or exiled a few times, he would’ve well connected, killed Vasily for political reasons, despising monarchist rule as whole and planning to get ride of it, having political depth besides grisha rights, ideologica whether anarchism, communism or socialism
