agatha is villainized any time she decides to do something herself or even to try and help tedros accomplish his missions. other characters berate her when she tries to help him because a princess should stay back, and sometimes a prince has to do what he has to do. agatha was berated because she told rhian to kill the snake when tedros would have DIED doing it. why was she villainized in the story for that? it was the RIGHT CALL!
other characters take incredible measures to be sure that agatha is out of the game, including tedros, who literally locked her in her room so she wouldnāt have to fight. for a book series that loves to champion its girl power, the amount of times it sidelines one of its main characters in favor of her (in my opinion) less interesting love interest is ridiculous.
nicola: portrayed as kind of an annoying smartass (at least at first) and is completely forgotten about later in the books
ravan: literally evil
,,,and i cant think of any others. the massive lack of poc representation is an issue in and of itself and the very few (only two i think??) characters of color aren't portrayed very well
(maybe theres more than just ravan and nicola but i literally cant remember lmao)
exactly!!! what i meant by racial stereotypes!
nicola is a big example of this. soman even admitted he wrote her to be disliked by the fandom for getting in between sophie and hort which is offensive since sheās like,,, the only black female character with a noticeable role in the story.
he writes her to always speak her mind which is a good attribute but is perceived as annoying and bossy and even tedros makes a comment about nicola acting like a know-it-all. sheās clearly not meant to be liked and i donāt know why soman would write her this way. iām glad she speaks her mind but this should be portrayed in a positive and empowering light not as an annoying trait.
her whole character in the story revolved around hort (a white boy) who ended up with a white girl anyways :/ and this is brushed off asĀ āoh donāt worry nicola youāre pretty too hort would never judge your appearance youāre still beautiful girl <3ā³ she gets reassured by AGATHA a white girl who completely misses the point and prattles on about her own life story and being seen as inferior for not being pretty which is uh... weāll get to that another time.
this whole part of the story came off as so racist to me because here we have nicola wondering if sheās not good enough because her ex emotionally cheated on her through their entire relationship for a white girl who treated him terribly when nicola treated him well. sheās doubting her self worth because of her skin color and smarts and also not being blonde, white, airheaded (well we know sheās actually not dumb but letās be honest she comes off that way and even tries to). this is clearly a racial matter but gets dumbed down to appearance and vanity. sit down soman chainani. you as a poc should know better than this.
yeah and she gets thrown off to the side with a rebound so fans donāt get mad. after being hinted at that she had a huge part to play in this arc and really was just there to bring hort and sophie the white couple closer by being a disruption. okay then very amazing.
besides that, yeah the poc evers i see are nicholas and nicola (same name! ahahahaha very funny soman), reena, and kiko and nicola is villainized and kiko is just... written terribly. i will get to her another time.
ravan is okay imo cause soman wanted a character based off ravana, his favorite villain from the ramayana - hindu mythology. and heās balanced out by reena being a south asian ever.
gosh the whole nicola thing riles me up so much a post on her will definitely be coming soon.
āI never wanted a prince or a fairytale. I never wanted a big life. Iām just a girl struggling to be ordinaryā - The Last Ever After, Soman Chainani
[Image ID: The āDid you fuck my mom, Santa Claus?ā meme. The man is labeled āTedrosā and Santa Claus is labeled āLady Gremlaineā. The text has been edited to read āDid you fuck my dad, Gremlaine?ā End ID]