Alright, so I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-Rhysand posts lately, and while everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion when it comes to characters, it is NOT okay to bash people who like a character. If I’m going on the Rhysand or ACOTAR tag, it’s because I’m interested in seeing theories or fan art; instead, I am seeing more and more people attacking Rhysand fans for liking him.
This is not cool, nor is it okay. People go on Tumblr to have fun, create media, and interact with other fans, not get bashed by other Tumblr users.
That aside, it has come to a point where I feel the need to create a Rhysand Defense post, particularly against the accusations that Rhysand is terrible/abusive/how-could-you-like-such-a-character-you-terrible-person?
First off, just because you like a character doesn’t mean that character isn’t problematic in some ways. Rhysand is problematic (but, honestly, so is Tamlin. He’s no angel either, and we don’t know what he will be like when he is no longer trying to break the curse). Rhysand is set up as a villain and later transforms into an anti-hero of sorts. He is SUPPOSED to seem awful, but the whole point of ACOTAR (and the Beauty and the Beast tale it models) is that nothing is as it seems. Everyone wears a mask, and perhaps Rhysand most of all. While Tamlin wears a physical mask and must mask his intentions because of the curse, Rhysand’s mask is much more subtle: he is forced to always play a role, no matter how terrible. He is Amarantha’s whore, the traitor to the courts who revels in taking her commands. In reality, he is a defeated, imprisoned leader who is doing everything in his limited power to protect his people—to the extent that he lets himself be sexually abused/raped for 49 years. He must play the part of submissive villain/lackey, because that is the position that gives him the most power on the chess board. Trapped Under the Mountain, he is better able to work from the shadows as a villain-figure to orchestrate Amarantha’s downfall and show small mercies to her victims.
So yes, if you read Rhysand’s character on a basic level, he seems pretty awful. He forces Feyre into a bargain, forces her to attend Amarantha’s party (where he makes her drink Fairy wine and then dance), and later he kisses her in the hallway. But Rhysand doesn’t have much of a choice; in every single one of those actions he is setting the chess board to help Feyre defeat Amarantha and not get them all killed. Clare Beddor’s death and the deaths of the three High Lords who had already rebelled shows what’s at stake, and only Rhysand is cunning enough to outplay the ultimate queen on this chess board.
As Sarah’s theme of masks indicates, you must look beyond a character’s mask to see his/her true intentions. Rhysand, the High Lord of the Night Court (which not only has a bad reputation according to the Spring Court, but also connotes our own fear of darkness, monsters, and nightmares), is a prime example. With Tamlin out of commission for the last third of the book, Sarah is encouraging us to examine other characters on a deeper level, not just the expected “Beast” character in Tamlin. It’s like its own test, in a sense.
So, an analysis of Rhysand’s actions, based on the limited knowledge we are given in ACOTAR:
-Rhysand is not a flat, evil villain. Actually, we see throughout ACOTAR that he tries to help others.
1. During Fire Night, Rhysand saves Feyre from the other fae who were going to rape her. Though he exudes danger (and sexiness), his first action in regards to Feyre is saving her. This in itself is a signal to pay attention: Rhysand is a power player, and his dangerous/evil appearance does not always match his intentions/actions. (Mind you, I believe there may have been some ulterior motivations during Fire Night, but we can’t be sure about that until ACOMAF.)
2. Rhysand does not tell Amarantha that Clare Beddor wasn’t Feyre. That would have been game over since Feyre would have been captured, tortured, and crucified; no riddles and tasks for her. Rather than exact revenge on the girl that failed to save them, he was going to let the girl he met on Fire Night go. All seven courts were consigned to their fate at this point, and Rhysand tried to spare her life. (There was nothing he could have done for Clare; her life was forfeit the second she was brought Under the Mountain.)
3. Rhysand kills the summer fae rather than shatter his mind, all while protecting the summer court’s secret from Amarantha. Watched by all the fae Under the Mountain and told by Amarantha to shatter the runaway’s mind, this scene’s purpose is to show that Rhysand is constantly being tested. He deals with the pressure with his normal strategy: calm, “shoulders loose”, a saunter in his step, and with “not a stitch out of place.” All tactics that he whispers into Feyre’s mind after the second task. He teaches her his mask, to hide one’s true self and keep oneself together and sane when everyone is waiting for the slightest hint of vulnerability. This scene does more than show Rhys’s method in dealing with his tests; it also reveals his sense of mercy. In the moment he kills the fae, he tries to choose the more merciful route, though there is still a cost. It is the lesser of two evils, however, and that is all Rhysand has to work with. We have already seen what happens when one refuses to play the game; they become Tamlin, whose refusal to make sacrifices sentenced all the courts to an endless tyranny under Amarantha’s rule.
4. On this note, Rhysand is constantly being tested. Even Feyre notes it when she is forced to clean out his fireplace. Since Rhysand bet on her in the first test, Amarantha’s chore was testing Rhysand to see if he had a soft spot for Feyre. Rhysand knows this, and he stares at Feyre before evading her comments. He knows Feyre can see through his mask, and he respects her for it (to the point of admiration, really). It seems he can’t help letting his mask slip around her, which is why he shows her his wings, a huge vulnerability he tells very few about. He then helps her finish the task and mind controls the guards into not forcing anymore deadly chores on her.
-Rhysand helps Feyre repeatedly throughout the trials, though some of the ways he must help her are unsavory.
1. So, we of course have the infamous bargain scene when Rhysand heals Feyre’s arm in return for a week a month in the Night Court. This is a very complicated scene, so I’ll try to keep it short. The bargain does a number of things. First, it allows Rhys to telepathically communicate with Feyre. This is instrumental since it is not only the sole reason why Feyre survives the second task (since she can’t read), but it also enables Rhys to lend Feyre the mental strength she needs to remain strong in front of Amarantha after the task was over. Second, the bargain’s mark is an excellent way to make Tamlin want to kill Amarantha even more (for their bargain is really a result of the whole Amarantha situation anyway). Third—well, I don’t think we’ll really know the third reason until ACOMAF. We know that book two is a Hades/Persephone retelling, and the original 2 week (later reduced to 1 week) time length correlates with the 6 months (or 3 months in some retellings) that Persephone must spend with her husband in the underworld. I think there is another reason why Rhys really wants Feyre at his court. Sarah said that Rhys will be hard-put to hold onto his secrets once Feyre starts visiting, and I can’t help but think that his secrets are tied to the bargain somehow.
Whatever his reasons, Rhys is desperate for this bargain, though he can’t let Feyre know that and blow his cover. He tries to persuade her with logic, and when she refuses, his frustration breaks through and he twists the bone splinter in her arm. Which is super gross, of course, but I think this moment demonstrates a number of things about Rhysand. First, it shows the slipping of his calm mask; he is truly desperate in this moment. Second, it shows that he will do whatever he needs to in order to save his court (and the other courts’ whose fates are now lumped with his). Do I approve of his actions? No, definitely not, but I can understand why he would act that way in the situation. He is morally gray in this scene.
2. The wine/dancing scene. This is probably the argument I see the most often, but when you look at it strategically, Rhysand’s actions are understandable. Are they morally correct? Not really. But most of the characters in ACOTAR are forced to make morally gray choices. Tamlin must consign multiple sentries to get murdered in order to move the curse along (and his eventual refusal to do so would have sealed everyone’s doom had Feyre not come back); Feyre must kill two innocent faeries in the last task, an action that haunts her at the end of book 1 and is sure to still affect her in book 2. In ACOTAR, Rhys is the one who is constantly forced to make gray choices. He doesn’t have much of a choice; the game must be played, and if he didn’t act the way he did Under the Mountain, Feyre would have had a much worse fate in store for her.
So, Rhysand is faced with a problem. With Amarantha’s suspicions raised after his betting on Feyre in the first task and his subsequent inaction when she is set up to fail the chore in his room, Rhys has to reaffirm his position as Amarantha’s lackey, protect Feyre from further awfulness, and move his plan along by getting Tamlin to see the bargain’s mark. Amarantha’s nightly parties are the best way to kill three birds with one stone. By dressing up Feyre in skimpy clothes, marking her with his tattoo, and making her get drunk/dance for him, he sets up the courts, Amarantha, and us as readers for the reaction he wants: disgust and horror—lo, the villain! Feyre appears to be his property, the whore for Amarantha’s whore. Not only is Amarantha now appeased (since she sees human love as fickle already), but the situation also enrages Tamlin, who has to watch this happen every night. He gets angrier every night, while Amarantha—seeing the humiliation that Feyre is supposedly going through—doesn’t see any reason to come up with worse terrors to force on her. The parties also gets Feyre out of her prison cell, which was slowly driving her crazy.
But what about the drunk dancing? Again, Rhys is all about appearances. He knows that the skimpy clothes, the marks, and the dancing would be humiliating for Feyre, but it is a necessary evil. The clothes and the black ink mark her as his “property” of sorts; no one would dare touch her anywhere when her entire body is marked with that paint. As for the humiliation and dancing? It is part of the act, a necessity to pull off the ruse. So what does he do? He makes her drink so she can forget. It’s an escape, a fact that Feyre recognizes: “After I drank the wine, though, I was mercifully unaware of what was happening.” Rhysand, again, is trying to show mercy. Feyre, who can’t keep up a mask as well as Rhysand, is spared from having to do so; he tries to make her forget, and in doing so, he’s trying to protect her, as much as he can in that situation. In fact, we see that Rhys also drinks the wine to forget when he needs to as well. After he is forced to kill the summer fae, Rhys downs a goblet of wine with Feyre. He is not as cool about his actions as he tries to appear. As for the dancing, Rhys points out to Feyre that in all the nights she danced for him, he never touched her beyond her waist and arms. He doesn’t feel her up or take advantage of her, nor does he pass her to any other fae who could have hurt her. As someone who has been sexually abused himself, Rhys does not violate Feyre in this way.
3. This leads to the next key scene, when Rhysand kisses Feyre in the hallway. Again, context is so important to this scene. Rhys hears Amarantha approaching and knows what she’s about to see: Feyre’s paint smudged pretty much everywhere and none of it on Rhys. Who else would do that, if not Rhys? Why, a certain high lord who enjoys springtime. Amarantha isn’t dumb; she’d figure that out, and it would be game over. So, Rhys kisses Feyre and covers himself in paint while doing so. An unfaithful human? Amarantha would expect nothing less. Her whore whoring out another person? Well, she would let him have his fun, though he will pay for it later. (Rhysand visits Feyre in her cell later that night, his tunic “unbuttoned at the top” as he talks about his hatred for Amarantha and his role serving in her bedroom. It’s insinuated that he was just sexually abused/raped again.) Feyre recognizes that Rhys saved both her and Tamlin by kissing her. Without his intercession, Tamlin’s and Feyre’s lust for each other would have doomed all the courts.
The kissing scene also emphasizes another important point about Rhys—perhaps the most important point for his character. It is his main drive as a character, the one that spurs him to take terrible actions. When Rhys berates Feyre for being a fool for going off with Tamlin when anyone could have been watching, she asks him “What do you care?” Rhys’s response is incredibly important. His cool mask finally slips. He is so insulted, so frustrated, that his wings and talons appear. The “baser” side of him that he so rarely shows—the “wrath” that twists his features [OOOHHHH, is this the Fury that has to do with A Court of Mist and Fury????]—comes to the fore when he whispers, “What do I care? […] What do I care?” Why does he care? Because he is just like Feyre in that he will do whatever it takes to protect those who are important to him. For Feyre, it was her family (and later Tamlin and the courts); for Rhysand, it is his court. All of his actions are because of his court, because of the people he is responsible for—his people who are enslaved to a sadistic tyrant who would kill them all if the whim took her. He cares because he has sacrificed so much—his body, his freedom—and he has planned so long. He has worked so hard to set Feyre up to succeed, all for it to almost fail because Feyre and Tamlin couldn’t hold on for one more day.
This scene is meant to reinforce Rhys’s similarities to Feyre. As Sarah said in an interview, Feyre and Rhys are both Slytherins. They are cunning, ambitious, and protective of a select group of people (as opposed to say, Gryffindors like Harry who have a bit of a hero complex and want to save everyone). So yes, while Rhys does bad things in ACOTAR, he is a complex anti-hero. Night is not all evil; it is also beautiful, with both light and shadow. Rhys is a leader and a victim, locked between a rock and a hard place, and he acts accordingly. In times of war, people rarely act in black or white; it is a whole pallet of grays and shadows.
And finally, Sarah really brings out the lighter colors in Rhys’s shadowy character at the end of ACOTAR, both in the cell before the third task and during the final battle against Amarantha.
1. In the cell, Rhys finally throws away his mask when he talks to Feyre. Feyre notes that Rhys is being more candid than he has ever been before. He is no longer perfectly neat, he rubs at his face, and his voice is no longer smooth and mocking. He “snaps” that he only wants some peace and quiet, and Feyre thinks about how “the swagger and nastiness were gone.” He even jokes playfully with her before talking to her about the fate they would be facing in the third task the next day.
Importantly, Feyre addresses the ultimate question surrounding Rhys’s character in this scene. When he asks her why she thinks he does what he does, Feyre says, “because you’re a monster.” But that is the basic answer, and ignores many of the cues about Rhys’s character that she has picked up on during the trials. Rhys’s response? “True, but I’m also a pragmatist.” He explains his reasoning and logic then, and it is definitely that of a strategist (or a Slytherin). He cares for his “territory,” for his “remaining people, enslaved to a tyrant queen who can end their lives with a single word.” Selected to be Amarantha’s whore, he is uniquely able to bring her downfall. And Feyre understands. She feels sympathy for him. Understanding what Rhys has gone through, she “might have reached a hand toward him, might have offered [her] apologies—but every thought had dried up in [her] head. What Amarantha had done to him…” Rather than wound him with her words like she knows she could, she realizes that Rhysand alone has been keeping her alive; he is the one who has stopped her from “shattering” (particularly after the second task. He licked her tears, knowing it would annoy her and snap her out of her mood). She feels a bond with him. And their bond is recognized when Feyre acknowledges that Rhys could have asked for everyday of her life in their bargain and she would have said yes. He didn’t have to show her mercy and let her barter down to a week. Having taken off his proverbial mask in this scene, Rhys acknowledges that Feyre has once more seen through him, and merely allows a “half-smile […] on his sensuous lips” before he answers “‘I know’” and vanishes.
2. Rhysand’s public display as a hero-in-disguise is finalized in the battle scene, when Amarantha is trying to kill Feyre and all hope is essentially lost. Rather than stay in the shadows, Rhys throws himself into the fight to not only save his court, but to fight beside Feyre. As he later tells Feyre at their parting, “I didn’t want you to fight alone. Or die alone.” This line mirrors Feyre’s from earlier at the Spring Court, when she tells Tamlin that she wouldn’t want to fight or die alone. Rhys no longer only cares about his court; he cares about Feyre as well. Rhys is not an evil character; he is a character who is forced to do bad things, both for his survival and for the survival of his court and those he cares about. When Feyre is being beaten by Amarantha, it is not Tamlin who screams Feyre’s name, but Rhysand.
So, in summary, when I’m asked why I like Rhysand’s character, it is because he is arguably the most complex and interesting character in the entire story. His actions are not always morally upright, but they do shed light on the human condition and what people—especially leaders—are forced to do in times of war and defeat. Unlike Tamlin, Rhys never takes his fate lying down; he never gives up fighting. He fights tooth and nail, and with his greatest asset—his mind. Beyond that, I feel like the moments and conversations between Rhysand and Feyre carry much more meaning and poignancy than those between Tamlin and Feyre. Though I love Tamlin (I just want him to be happy >.<), to me the relationship between Feyre and Rhysand is packed with more chemistry, tension (both character tension and sexual tension), and understanding—even though they have less page time together. Feyre and Rhysand are very much alike on a deeper level. Feyre can’t help but speak her mind around him, while Rhys lets his mask drop and his vulnerabilities show around her. They fight for each other, and when they part at the end of ACOTAR, Feyre talks to Rhys about how she feels about her transformation and her murders, where she couldn’t bring herself to tell Tam. Looking into Rhys’s eyes, she sees that the shadows in his eyes—not entirely of his own making—are just like hers. (In this open conversation, their relationship reminds me of Aelin and Rowan’s, where they feel they can tell each other things others wouldn’t understand/would judge them for.) They have bonded while Under the Mountain, and now have a deeper understanding of each other as a result. I can’t wait to see how their relationship continues to develop in book 2, as well as everyone else’s relationships. How will Feyre’s guilt factor in to events? Her harrowing powers? Why did Rhys stumble and flee at the end of ACOTAR? What did it mean when Feyre saw out of Rhys’s eyes? Are we going to see more of Lucien’s brothers? How will Rhys, Lucien, and Tam act now that they no longer have to wear masks? How is Feyre’s time at the Night Court going to be, and where is the King of Hybern in all of this?
All in all, I love the characters in ACOTAR, Rhysand included. He is wonderfully complex, and his ability to polarize people speaks to Sarah’s ability to create characters that inspire reactions in her readers. Please don’t bash him or the fans who do like him just because you don’t. All you do is hurt people’s feelings, and that is no way to celebrate Sarah’s writing or world. If you have problems with a character, you are of course free to critique/criticize, but use reasons/textual support and respect others’ opinions. I’ve seen people bashing character/ship fans on both the ACOTAR and TOG tags (especially with the release of Queen of Shadows), and mostly it just makes me sad. Simply bashing people, calling them terrible, and insinuating that there is something wrong with them mentally for liking a character is utterly wrong.
Yes, I like Rhysand as a character, and there is nothing wrong with me (or any other Tumblr-user) for liking him. He is problematic (hooray, problematic faves), but many characters are problematic. Just because you like a character doesn’t mean you approve of all of his/her actions. I honestly believe that Rhys’s character arc in book 2 is probably gonna blow us all away because Sarah is just awesome like that. Until then, I hope this post will open more positive conversations on the Rhysand/ACOTAR/TOG/QOS tags.
If you made it to the bottom of this post, you honestly deserve an award. Sorry this is so long, but this has really been bothering me, so I had to rant/spiel. :)
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