#his backstory especially is. damn. look have your entire family killed by a military apparatus and say that wouldnt' radicalise you too?

[rotzaprachim]

digging my teeth into the really dark fascinating fucked-upness of helnik. they’re fascinating in being a wartime love story about an intentional victim of genocidal violence and an unintentional fuck-around-and-find-out victim of “collateral damage,” both of which are different forms of wartime violence. 

nina is targeted as a grisha, she’s almost killed by the druskelle and fjerda in the books not for being a ravkan spy or agent but simply for being grisha. they will kill her for being grisha. and how will they kill her? they will burn her. and it’s fascinating when she tells matthias in a very justified moment of rage (i mean. they’re looking at the dying burned corpses of her people whom jesper, also a grisha, had to physically shoot) and says i want your family to burn i want them all to be burnt in the way my people were. and matthias says, they already have been. they already burned. and how that changes the entire dynamic between them, everything leading up to that, becuase FUCK. yeah. his whole family has already been burnt. he’s a lone survivor of something in much the same way she is, and his family was burnt not on purpose for being grisha but as a “justified accident,” the casual civilian side-damage of war. and it was her people. unlike the intentional, systemic violence that destroyed her people and left nina a shaken, traumatised survivor of a purposeful genocide, we have matthias as this destroyed survivor of one of those little sorts of accidents that’s swallowed and justified by the shape of the war and what Must Be Done to succeed. (also he serves as like, one of the only times i think it’s really faced that the first army is, you known, a national army that does national-army-during-a-war things.) one does not cancel out the other. 

their relationship is difficult and fucked and that’s why it’s fascinating and has so much potential to explore. it’s so much more complicated than the tiktok “enemies to lovers” trope because they dig right at the base of what it is to be an enemy to someone else. from the ship nina is an almost-lone survivor of the damage his people did. from his village being burnt by inferni matthias is a lone survivor of the damage her people did. from the consequences of war on his people and violent prejudice against her own, nina is raised a child soldier and in many ways reduced to weaponry, something that absolutely is a form of child abuse. from the consequences of war on her people matthias is inducted into a cult and subjected to spiritual abuse. they’ve been hurt by each other’s nations, but also by their own. there’s something so brutal but also tender in the way they knock each other off the orbits they’ve been living in and force them out of the home that is burning. love may make you free, but not without drowning first. 

#nina zenik #matthias helvar #helnik #they're so. they're SO. look i will gilroyfy this there's almost unlimited material #six of crows #symmetry and mirrors and the mirror hurts #but yeah the fact they're both absolutely victims not only of each other country's war crimes BUT THEIR OWN COUNTRIES WAR CRIMES IS LIKE #well that's a lot to unpack. the violence that comes inside and outside the house #they cannot go home! as a consequence of meeting each other they cannot go home #tw genocide #obviously none of this is to let matty off the hook but i think he is a FAR more complex character and his deradicalisation from military #violence is far far more complicated than often given credit too #his backstory especially is. damn. look have your entire family killed by a military apparatus and say that wouldnt' radicalise you too? #i love them for being a fantasy and (sighssss to use this phrase) enemies-to-lovers couple that ISN'T royalty #and that #for all their induction into nationalism hates each other not only along national lines but the violence of lived experiences like #nina may filter her hatred of him and his people through Ravka Good Fjerda Bad but it's also the fact they very much did kill her people #she very much /is/ a survivor of a whole shipload of drowned people #meanwhile matthias may filter his code through Fjerda Good Drusje Very Very Very Bad but like... also they very much did kill his people #it makes their relationship so much messier #but yeah they aren't royalty (matthias even in the one time he describes his background calls his family paupers) #they're ordinary people who have by structures of war been pulled into semi-priviledged positions of elite soldierdom and servitude #and that is fascinating. two kings set their fighting dogs against each other and they fall in love #that love can be liberatory it can be radical it can be real it can also just be. not enough to break the cycle of violence #ANYWAY!!! i love them forever. i have thoughts