Queen of Air and Darkness Theory
Hey there! This theory is pretty long so bear with me. It was made with the help of my real life parabatai @nephilim-rule.
What if there used to be only one court? Here is why we think so. The symbol of the unseelie court is a broken crown so it used to be whole. Also, the names Seelie and Unseelie are almost the same. Maybe the court had a totally different name, and when they split up they called their own courts the Seelie and Unseelie courts. We believe there used to be only one court, which the name of was lost to time(but it could also be the Seelie or Unseelie court, which would mean the present courts were inspired by it) because in the name of the novel Queen of Air and Darkness, the air could represent the Seelie court and Darkness for the Unseelie (like the lord of shadows represents the unseelie King).
You may ask who was that Queen? Why would they have split? Well, it’s here that it gets really interesting.
If you look in your Shadowhunter Codex (p.108), you may find the Unseelie Queen (the reason why we think there used to be only the Unseelie court, or unnamed court, but the Shadowhunters probably made a mistake and it was lost to time)
Who is she? We believe it’s the mother of the Unseelie King and the Seelie Queen. Where is the proof? Well, if you look at the drawings of the Seelie and Unseelie Queens, they do look alike and the patterns in the two queens’ dresses resemble each other quite a bit. The fact that the styles match suggest a common history.
The Unseelie Queen is standing, while her daughter is sitting, which shows her superiority over her daughter. But one of the most convincing things is that the Unseelie queen has a bigger crown, while the Seelie Queen has a smaller one, like the tiara of a princess. We all know that the Seelie Queen has red hair, and the snippet of the cover that Cassandra Clare just released has red hair, which is why most of the people assume that it will be the Seelie Queen on the cover. But what if it was her mother, the Queen of the original court? She would probably have the same color of hair as her daughter, especially if it’s red. If you still think our theory is irrelevant now, than explain to us why there is a picture of a queen we’ve never heard of before in the codex, the official shadowhunter guide.
But why did they split?
We believe that when their mother died (maybe from old age, or maybe one of her children murdered her for power), the Seelie Queen and the Unseelie King both wanted the power. So they split up and made their own courts with their own supporters. This is why the Seelie Queen is always trying to gain more power, like she did during the Dark War when she sided with Sebastian. The reason nobody can remember that this all happened is quite simple.This happened a very long time ago, maybe even before the birth of the Nephilim. It would have been easily lost in history if not properly recorded in the shadowhunter books, or if these documents were tampered by faeries. After all, they are an ancient and cunning race that has always been thirsty for power.