#cleolind and galian worked together but kalyba (canonically posessive and jealous and willing to do horrible things to keep galian w/ her)

[themoonking]

finally finished the priory of the orange tree after putting it off for like a year, and putting aside the fact that it's insanely boring, way too long, and the romance is lackluster, it certainly was a choice to, in a book at least in part about finding common ground and coming together, basically go "religion a is correct and good and its believers can continue on their merry lives, but religion b is a 100% incorrect wrong bad lie founded by a wrong bad misogynistic lying liar, and everyone who believes in it should convert and in fact we're going to end the book by heavily implying that the recently-converted queen is going to slowly but surely pressure the entire country to convert because their faith is wrong and bad". like that was certainly a decision that samantha shannon made.

#idk i don't love an entire religion being painted as objectively inherently bad and wrong #especially since none of the six virtue's actual teachings are that bad like #and also esp since the only other thing we learn about galian berethnet is that he was fucking r/ped by his own mother #and was so distraught upon learning this that he killed himself #the fact that aside from that its just like 'he was a lying liar who lies and hated women' just didn't sit right with me... #the priory of the orange tree #priory of the orange tree #the roots of chaos #anti booktok #samantha shannon #like the entire time before this was revealed i was like #'ah its so obvious - both faiths are going to end up being a little bit wrong and a little bit right' #'of course it will be revealed that cleolind and galian actually worked together to defeat the nameless one' #'and learning this will really press into the characters that they themselves need to work together to defeat him again' #but instead like???? #and like even with the kalyba stuff it would have been so easy you can say like: #cleolind and galian worked together but kalyba (canonically posessive and jealous and willing to do horrible things to keep galian w/ her) #uses her magic to make cleolind believe that galian betrayed her which she then goes and tells her priory #+ in an effort to keep as low a profile as possible for herself while disguised as cleolind she makes galian believe that he did everything #and when her disguise falls he's so distraught that he kills himself and so the only one who knows the truth is kalyba #who certainly has no motivation to reveal the truth