To this day I still think arc 2 is one of the best deconstructions of a traditional fantasy's "happily ever after" I've ever seen.
By the end of the arc, the queen you spent all of arc 1 travelling to is dead and leaves her beloved son an orphan; the main couple who exchanged heartfelt "I love you"s has to rebuild their relationship back stronger after major cultural/interpersonal clashes; the different groups who came together to win the day likewise have cultural differences and integration can be a bitter, beautiful, bloody process, culminating in a civil war; the father dubbed a villain by his son saved his life and hundreds of others, and the sister he clung to / tried to save and excuse is now someone he believes he has to kill / the certainty he'd found is now in shambles; the mysterious big bad is still mysterious but shattered, and will return to haunt you again and again; the child king cracks and crumbles under the weight of his crown and his losses and, like everyone else, just manages to come back from the brink; no amount of love can save someone who doesn't want to change, and sometimes you can't save people precisely because they have; you cannot save everyone, and sometimes you won't even try to.












