Amphitrite's relationship with the Selkies is sooo. they're the same! she can see how they're the same! and Antigone refuses to.
that scene in her quarters in The Unkindest Tide! we get, in back-to-back conversations, 1. Amphitrite explaining that Antigone & the other children of Maeve could have punished her for what her mother did, but because of a bit of luck, they loved her instead:
“Good thing, too,” said Pete, a look of deep melancholy settling over her face. “Maeve’s children were my brothers and sisters, too—most of them, anyway, the ones who didn’t have shipwrecks or stories for fathers—and they were kind to me, and they were dying. If I hadn’t been their little curiosity, I think they might have killed me, just to even the scales a bit.”
— The Unkindest Tide, chapter 6
and 2. Amphitrite arguing with Antigone about punishing the Selkies for what their parents/ancestors did:
“No, their ancestors agreed. We’re not humans, Annie. We don’t live and die by the sins of the father, nor should we, given the amount of mischief our forebears got up to when allowed. You told a bunch of shivering children who’d just killed their own parents to allay your wrath that they weren’t done paying, and they agreed, because they were terrified. You’re terrifying, you know. Sometimes you even frighten me.”
— The Unkindest Tide, chapter 6
she keeps drawing these lines between herself and the Selkies. you terrified them, you terrify me! I am Titania's daughter, they are the children of the murderers! you chose to love me, and you're choosing to hurt them. "So tell me, sister dearest, sister mine, why I should side with you instead of with them?"
she knows (a look of deep melancholy settling over her face), that it was chance that spared her. it was luck, that Maeve's children didn't figure out who she was until they already cared. the Selkies never had any luck. the original Selkies had their parents' blood on their hands, and the certainty that it wouldn't be enough to appease the sea witch. the Selkies in all the centuries since have the sea witch's generational curse on their shoulders.
so for centuries, Amphitrite tries to be kind.
“The air is a favor to them and has been since Amphitrite’s day. Before she left us, she bid us be kind to the Selkies.”
“Really? Are they her descendants?”
“I don’t believe so, no. So far as I’m aware, her only children are the Merrow. I’ve never heard a Firstborn named for the Selkies, but Amphitrite was worried for them, and she asked us to be kind, and while I don’t feel obeying our Firstborn is required with her so long gone and us left to our own devices, I see no cost in kindness.”
— “Shine in Pearl”
and she lets the Selkies and their kin build a home on the Duchy of she ships.
“They claim the protection of the waves, you know. I have Selkie families living here.”
“There are families everywhere,” said the Luidaeg.
“Not like this,” snapped Pete, and for a moment, her scales were darker, like stormlight on the water, and I didn’t want to look at her too closely, for fear I’d somehow drown in her mere presence. “When I say families, I mean families. Human families. Selkies who come here draped in sealskin and then set it aside, and stay, because they’re mortal but they’re not completely human. They’ve been touched by Faerie, and they can’t go back to being what they were before they held their breath and dove. So tell me, sister dearest, sister mine, why I should side with you instead of with them?”
— The Unkindest Tide, chapter 6
and she tries to talk her sister out of causing them more pain.
"Centuries I spent asking you to find a way to talk yourself out of doing this, and these people, these little, temporary people,” her eyes flicked over me and Marcia on the word “temporary,” like it was the kindest way she could find to remind the Luidaeg that we were mortal, “managed to do it in less than a week’s time?
— The Unkindest Tide, chapter 23
and she involves herself in Aldridge's prophecy of a half-Selkie, half-Roane child. a reminder.
"So you understand you're here so you can have a child this man has seen reflected in the future, and even if you come to love him, you won't be able to stay?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then the knot is tied, the anchor cast, and in the eyes of all the sea, I pronounce you married until your child stands beside you and allows you not to be."
— "Drown the Lamenting"
Antigone loves Amphitrite and hates the Selkies. they are all children of someone who committed unspeakable crimes against her & her family. she never lets herself see the hypocrisy, but Amphitrite can never not see it.
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