the ending of ruin & rising is staggeringly staggeringly good. it is the only conclusion that could ever happen from the story leigh was trying to tell. and if you don’t see that, if you still believe there was an ending which didn’t result in alina losing her powers, then we read entirely different books.
the whole central theme of the trilogy is that of power corruption, and how even if it is sought after with good intention, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. no grisha is meant to have more than one amplifier. it is a level of power a human cannot withstand. by seeking out a third amplifier, alina has so so much power that it’s completely unbearable. she describes herself like an exploding sun. it has bent the laws and rules of the world, and so to balance itself out again, that power leaves alina and redistributes itself amongst hundreds of others. this is also why alina was always going to end up with mal, there was never any debate there, because he is the only person who actually challenges her on whether she should be seeking out this level of power and twisting the laws of reality in quite the way she does
alina keeping hold of that much power would not be a badass ‘girlboss’ moment. the whole point leigh is making is that all actions have consequences, and a price has to be paid for that level of power. it isn’t misogynistic for alina to lose her powers. it’s realistic. it is the only possible conclusion to the story leigh has been telling all along, and the only way you can’t see that is if you have been playing a self-insert game with alina instead of actually grasping the story leigh is telling. alina’s story is a line between wanting that power, and wanting the peaceful life of love and calm. but the more she seeks the amplifiers, the more it eats away at her mind, the more she has to anchor herself time and time again to remember who she truly is, and the culmination of all of this is she loses her powers. having our heroes pay real prices for actions they make, and facing consequences, is not being misogynistic and it’s not being ‘against power’. it’s about reality, it’s about balance. the introduction of merzost by leigh should be an obvious sign of this point she is making, that power corrupts! power is not necessarily bad, but becoming entirely power hungry does corrupt you, and there are very real consequences for it.
and at the end of the story… alina is happy. she ends the trilogy happy. it is bittersweet. but she has the life she actually wanted all along. and it’s also important to bear in mind that mal’s ending is just as bittersweet. he too has the life he wanted all along, with alina. but, like alina, he has lost his powers too - and arguably for mal, this is even worse, because he has had these tracking abilities for his whole life. both of them paid the price for in alina’s case taking more power than one person can physically have, and in mal’s case enabling that power to be taken. once again, that theme of ‘everything has a cost’ comes back - just as power can be sought, but it has a cost, so alina and mal have the life they wanted and chose. but that too came at a cost.
if your complaint of the ending of ruin & rising is that you think it’s sad alina lost her powers (which, same! we all do! it doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense for her to lose them) and that she should have kept her powers and ended up alone, then we read entirely different books and you self-inserted too much. the framing of the grisha trilogy is crystal clear. it is a story of power and power corruption, framed by the unbreakable love between alina and mal. that is the story leigh bardugo told. if you didn’t see it that way, that’s on you.
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