#lady kiara of castelserraillian

[lizzybeth1986]

To Be Not Heard: Kiara, Penelope and the Question of Validation

TW: Discussions about mental health (including anxiety and trauma), minimization of the same, references to bullying, some of the screenshots I put up can be a bit distressing.

Author’s Note: This essay emerged partly out an anonymous ask that about the writing for Madeleine, specifically in relation to her treatment of Hana. In that essay, I spoke about narrative treatment, and how some characters get validation more easily than others. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been itching to talk about this ever since I finished my fail play of the TRR series.

In this essay I was be focusing particularly on Book 3, and the interactions the group have with the ladies of the court during the Unity Tour - with specific focus on Kiara and Penelope. The MC for my failplay is Persephone, and the one for my successful play is Esther.

This essay is going to be a long, long one folks. If that’s not your thing, the tldr is that TRR will not be very fair to you if you’re a woman of colour, that’s for sure.

–

The ladies of the court - specifically Penelope and Kiara - are a constant in the TRR narrative, outside of our closer friend circle (the LIs). They’re the ones who represent the court to us, and they fulfill different roles in different books.

In Book 1 the ladies of the court are competitors - most of whom become potential allies by the end. In Book 2 they do not provide us open support but maintain cordial relations with us regardless. They recede a little more to the background in this book (except for the point where the MC discovers Penelope had betrayed her), but are a constant during our engagement tour.

Book 3 is where the ladies of the court, and their families, finally come to focus. The narrative is centered around the Unity Tour, around earning support from the reluctant nobility, who struggle to see the “bigger picture” that the MC and LIs want them to see, because they’re so besieged by their own personal and professional issues. To do this, the group has to explore the issues plaguing these families, and resolve them. This also involves speaking to the courtly lady, and finding out what personal issues they have.

Why is it important to pay attention to the lady though, and not just pander to her parents? Madeleine tells us in Chapter 4, when highlighting why it is essential to get the ladies involved: Having an entourage at court is not about vanity, it’s about influence. Showing that you have support from the houses around you. (a neat little fact that Madeleine herself had ignored, considering her treatment of the women in her court). In some cases in Book 3 (not all), half of that support comes from the way you treat the daughters of that house.

So, not only are you required to listen to these noble families and figure out how to help them - you also need to address what a courtly lady in that House is facing as well. But does that happen in all cases? That’s a question I’ll answer in a minute.

Before we get into the Book 3 treatment specifically for Kiara and Penelope, we need to examine briefly how the two were written before the third book began. I have, unfortunately, heard people in the fandom justify the bad treatment Kiara does get by creating a false narrative around her, and forgetting the worst parts of Penelope’s story. Therefore, it is essential I go through how they’re built IN the narrative before I move on to how their pain is addressed.

Two Opposites

Kiara and Penelope didn’t have incredibly set personalities in Book 1, to be honest. The initial chapters made mention of Penelope’s illustrious family and Kiara’s love for languages, but for the first couple of chapters, they seemed almost interchangeable. It is around Chapters 8 and 10, perhaps, that you start to really notice Kiara and Penelope independently as characters.

Penelope starts out not having any of the traits we now know her for (except for a one-off mention about poodle statues in Book 1 Chapter 4), and can be seen either reasoning with Olivia, making fun of the MC if she makes a misstep or occasionally talking to Prince Liam. Around Chapter 10 is the first time we catch her alone, upset by her inability to fit in with the court and stressed about staying - and we have a chance to gain her allyship by convincing her that supporting us in the long run would be beneficial for her. Shortly after this, she must have been given the offer to set up the MC by Bastien, yet every other scene we see of her after that involves her being sweet and friendly and ironically supportive if you gained her alliance.

In fact, just minutes before the scene where Tariq enters our room happens, we see Penelope vouching for the MC and stating that “she’ll be a wonderful queen” (or not), even as she has arranged for a man to end up in our room and paid a photographer to take photos of us while we were in our underwear. She congratulates the MC as well on the same night that the scandal ruins her reputation, a scandal Penelope had to be aware would be dropped that very night. But all this are things we can only see in retrospect (and perhaps in Book 1 this twist wasn’t even planned). In Book 1 itself, she barely had a personality in the initial scenes, and was viewed largely as comic relief in the second half. Most of the commentary on her poodles was played for laughs, and the MC’s reactions to it can range from friendly to merely bored.

In Book 2, the reveal that she was responsible for sending Tariq to our room and paying Rosanna for those pictures is dominated instead by the backstory of her anxiety, her struggle to stay in court without it affecting her mental health, Madeleine’s bullying of her and the reveal that her poodles are really her emotional support animals. From comic relief, she is elevated to a sympathetic figure - conveniently at a time when we discover what she has done. Her betrayal is referenced in her presence two times - one when we confront her and the other at the tea party where she apologizes - before it completely disappears from narrative consciousness and is just never spoken of again. Both times, thankfully, the MC is able to choose how she will react to Penelope.

Kiara is one of the first people we can approach to ally - in Book 1 Chapter 8 - and her pragmatism and ambition are the first things that define her outside of her knowledge of ten languages. She is one of the few people taking note of the MC’s progress (at least in one scene), but still is very distant even after we have gained an alliance, and she is pretty clear that they’re not friends. Though a lot of Kiara-haters will claim otherwise, she doesn’t “claim to be our friend and then switch sides”. She merely agrees to an alliance, fulfills the terms of that alliance (that she put in a good word for us), and when she can no longer support the alliance she comes straight to us and tells us so. Depending on how polite or rude we are to her at the time, she delivers that message accordingly.

However, as soon as it’s clear to her that Madeleine won’t have problems with her talking to us (Chapter 4, Applewood), she is on talking terms with us again, and interacts with us the way she always has. A lot of her story either focuses on her affection for Drake, or her friendship with Penelope. In the latter interactions she is shown as being bit abrasive in her approach to Penelope’s problems, but ultimately protective and concerned for her (if you point out to Kiara that her behaviour towards Penelope is wrong, Kiara responds that her words emerge out of worry, that she “just always can’t be here to look out for her”. And “look out” she does, as one can clearly see from her anger towards the MC at Applewood if the latter insults Penelope - “mon dieu, you don’t have to kick her when she’s down”!).

In Book 2, Kiara is largely in the background, as opposed to Madeleine who is an out-and-out rival, and Penelope who gets some space with the reveal of her involvement in the scandal. She comes to the MC, along with Penelope, at the end to apologize to her (after having drunkenly spoken to her in the Beer Garden about the MC “gloating”) and - in a build up to the next book - invite her to their estates. It is only in the beginning of the third book that we realize she is one of the few who had sustained physical injuries the night of the Homecoming Ball.

In Book 1 our interactions with both the courtly ladies are coloured by whether we win their favour or not, in Book 2, the necessity to win their favour is gone and there are no significant variations in the way they interact with you. Well, except for one sequence.

In Book 3, there is a change in the sense that all the ladies we visit, have struggles independent of their families’. Often related to mental health or emotional stress. So a lot of the “correct narrative” should hinge on validating their issues and helping them. Has the TRR team ever established before how one should behave towards a person struggling with a mental health condition? As it turns out - they have.

TRR Book 2 and Mental Health

A marker of how this narrative views ‘validation’ of very serious issues, lies in four things:

1. What buildup is given to the character’s issues?

2. What do you have the prominent characters do and say to said character by default?

2. What chances does the narrative give you to win their trust? Is there at least an initial interest in finding out what the character wants?

3. The kind of consequences we face if the MC chooses options that can make the character in question upset or uncomfortable, and what the MC gets to say in the most positive option(s).

As an example, let’s take TRR Book 2 Chapter 8, where we plan to get the truth out of Penelope about her involvement in the scandal.

The buildup for Penelope’s specific background (of struggling with social anxiety) begins at least two chapters prior in Capri, when she tells the other ladies in the court that she’s never liked parties and “big crowds make [her] nervous”. It’s a small detail, but becomes significant when we reach France. Prior to this we’re shown her generally having feelings of self-doubt and lowered self-confidence, increased tenfold by Madeleine’s bullying behaviour.

Post the reveal, the MC is justifiably angry, and her initial reaction reflects this (even the most sympathetic reaction involves the MC calling Penelope “pathetic”). But we are given the opportunity to change our minds about her over the course of the chapter:

1. Penelope personally confides in the MC and Hana about how much she misses her poodles, which leads to her confessing she has social anxiety.

2. We are given multiple opportunities to validate her and back her up, all optional - the MC and Hana can validate her feelings about her poodles and about her anxiety, telling her that there is nothing wrong with her. The diamond scene to model comes with an option to include her so as to bolster her self-confidence, and the MC and Hana can comfort her after Madeleine calls her a “constant disappointment”. The final set of options, where the MC reveals she knows the truth, can have the MC acknowledge her condition while still maintaining her anger towards Penelope.

Even if you don’t like Penelope at this point and don’t want to comfort her, the 'trust’ points you get from doing so work as an incentive, since it will help in your investigation. If you choose not to comfort her, Hana is made to fulfill this role instead.

So what happens if you don’t win Penelope’s trust, and eventually call her a traitor to her face instead?

Not paying attention to Penelope’s needs comes with serious consequences. She calls you out on not being genuine about your intentions towards her, and in that moment refuses to engage with you. You are not allowed to come and talk to her yourself. Hana will also point out that you are causing more harm than good with your presence, and you are ultimately excluded out of an investigation on something that happened to you.

In this moment of vulnerability and fear, Penelope is allowed to be more worried about not being caught. She is not required to show concern (until two chapters later) for the woman she had hurt nor express unconditional regret for doing what she did (in the “correct” version, Penelope’s willingness to talk to the MC hinges on “since you were so nice to me”).

Hana’s statement here - “Penelope may not tell us everything if she’s being stressed by you” - sends a solid message to an MC who is insensitive and dismissive of this girl’s condition - that while the resentment and anger towards Penelope is justified, ignoring the pain of someone struggling with their mental health never will be.

Since this is the first time the series deals seriously with discussions of mental health, it would help to take this as a rubric for measuring the writing for other women’s struggles in Book 3. As I mentioned earlier, the Unity Tour is about catering to needs, recognizing problems, fixing tensions. But most of all, it’s about the young women through whom we get to know these estates, and what they’ve gone through. Or is it?

The Unity Tour

The Cordonian Monarchy at the beginning of the third book is in a state of crisis, with an assassination attempt that strikes fear in the mind of the Cordonian people. The nobility, especially, are reluctant to support King Liam in the wake of the attacks, so the MC suggests a royal/celebrity wedding, and Liam follows it up with the idea of visiting Cordonia’s most prominent duchies in a Unity Tour. Having the support and presence of these noble families not only lends glamour and prestige to the occasion, but also sends a message to the attackers that Cordonia stands united and strong amidst the chaos.

Quite a noble aim, right? But the catch is, that these estates/families are currently facing crises of their own - some personal, some political, some related to the well-being of their people. A united Cordonia might possibly be the last thing on their minds. The group, then, has to get to the root of these issues, understand the families and pay attention to their needs in order to gain their trust and support in return.

But apart from this, there are the daughters of these families. All of whom have their own struggles and are themselves reluctant to return to court - all for good reasons. Madeleine not only has to go through the humiliation of being rejected by a member of the royal family twice over, she also has to face caustic comments about her failure from her father. Penelope not only is seeing her home in a state of crisis, she also has extremely negative memories of court, and owing to her social anxiety cannot see herself returning. Kiara…well. I’d better talk about that later otherwise I’ll probably begin my angry rant a little too soon.

So, how does the narrative treat the individual issues of these women? Keeping those four points about validation I’d mentioned in mind, here is a potential breakdown:

Madeleine

I don’t exactly want to include Madeleine here, since her issues are so different from either Kiara’s or Penelope’s. But it’s important that we explore her portion of the book as well, since her chapter kickstarts the format for the rest of the Unity Tour.

Parents’ Issues: Marital discord, different approaches and reactions to Madeleine’s broken engagement (Adeleide wants Madeleine to open up to her and doesn’t understand why her methods to comfort her daughter aren’t working. Godfrey, on the other hand, is a distant, negligent father who will take the flimsiest excuses to label his daughter a failure).

Madeleine’s Issues: Has a childhood history of being overlooked and having to deal with failure, which is not made any better by her father rubbing additional salt to her wounds with his caustic remarks. Wishes her mother would simply give her the space to grieve her loss rather than encourage her to ignore it and simply be happy.

Buildup for these themes in Madeleine’s story have been set up as far back as the Shanghai and NY portions of Book 2, where Adelaide gives us insights into the kind of pressure Madeleine is constantly under. By default, the LIs barely interact with her…however any one of them can be chosen to invite her for a drinking game with their group.

In this diamond scene, Maxwell and Drake are at least cordial in their interactions with her, but Hana is really the one who has to do most of the heavy work. Twice, she praises Madeleine for her charm and patriotism, and even in an option where the MC blames her lack of popularity on “not being nice”, Hana states quite simply that she could “catch more flies with honey”. This despite the fact that Madeleine bullied her mercilessly a mere book ago. To cut a long story short, the MC and LIs have a chance to reach out to Madeleine, listen to her and reassure her before they can (optionally) back her up in front of her parents.

It’s also interesting to note that even though Madeleine doesn’t have the best relationship with her parents, the options to make them agree to come to your wedding all depend on what you say about the way they treat Madeleine, and how to help her. You have to convince Adeleide that she needs to provide support on Madeleine’s terms (“this isn’t about you or your needs. it’s about Madeleine.”). You have to convince Godfrey that Madeleine is more successful and accomplished than he gives her credit for, and that he should be proud of all she has managed to achieve.

If you fail to make Madeleine’s parents see her point of view, they refuse to come to your wedding at all. The resolution of conflict in Fydelia is centered around Madeleine.

I’d like anyone reading this essay to remember what the MC says here to Madeleine, because I’m going to bring this up a few sections later. The “wrong” options either remind her of her failure, or disregard how Madeleine feels for their own benefit. The MC is called out on both. The “correct response” places Madeleine first.

If you screw this up, as a consequence you will lose out on Godfrey and Adeleide’s support and they will refuse to attend your wedding. Madeleine does go with us regardless, but we shouldn’t forget that she demands she get a job/her own department by the end of this tour. So even if her accompanying us is by default, she lays down the conditions under which she will take up this job…and we follow through by default too.

Penelope

Like in Book 2, Book 3 reserves its most extensive variations (among the ladies of the court at least) to Penelope. How does this play out in the books? Let’s take a look:

Parents’ Issues: Landon has a soft spot for Penelope and worries constantly about her mental health, while Emmeline worries about the care for her people in Portavira, as the duchy is still struggling to recover from natural calamities.

Penelope’s Issues: She was always uncomfortable staying in court, has very bitter memories of the treatment Madeleine meted out to her, and is extremely reluctant to leave her emotional support animals - the poodles Merlin and Morgana - behind. She simply does not think she fits in. Her social anxiety, coupled with her experience with Madeleine, makes her not want to return to court.

Penelope’s themes don’t exactly need any prior buildup in Book 3, because she already told us plenty in Book 2. But the reminders that she is ultimately a fragile woman who requires plenty of coddling, are constantly there. Even before we meet her in Portavira, and after we gain her alliance as well, (if you point out she didn’t follow the dress code during our bachelorette, she is instantly reminded of Madeleine’s bullying behaviour), we’re reminded to be very, very careful with our behaviour around Penelope. Madeleine herself - now our press secretary - reminds us that it would be advantageous having her in our court entourage, and winning her favour would ensure her father’s support.

What actions do we see by default from our friends when it comes to Penelope? The group as a whole is mostly kind and rather friendly to her (Maxwell also states she is fun to be around in the non diamond version of the poodle palace diamond scene, mentioning that no one “understands cute dog memes” the way Penelope does), but perhaps the most obvious one is from Drake - who sees Penelope’s growing sadness and fear at the sight of Madeleine, and immediately jumps in to reassure her (“she’s with us, Penelope. We won’t let her bite”). I’d like to remind you…this is purely by default and not at all dialogue-dependent. And it sets the tone for a more positive meeting with her parents.

With Penelope, while one parent is more concerned about the crisis in the duchy and getting enough money to help her people, the attitude of the other one towards us is completely dictated by the way we treat his daughter. Emmeline may not understand Penelope’s condition or appreciate the sacrifices she would be making to adjust to a place like court, but Landon is acutely aware of what being there is doing to his daughter Penelope.

The entire setting of the scene in the restaurant is FILLED with opportunities to show him that she will be safe with us. You can agree with Emmeline that Penelope is your “best friend”, even though she hasn’t done anything exactly to warrant this “friendship”, you can include Penelope in your planning process for the polo match thus giving her opinion importance. When the topic comes to that of whether Penelope is in a condition to return to court we have two options - either we establish that Penelope need not return if she is not comfortable (thus placing her needs first), or we maintain that “Cordonia needs unity right now, and it’s hard to look united when everyone’s back at their duchies”.

The way you treat Penelope has an impact, especially in the way Landon responds to you. Convincing him that you care about her well-being unlocks an entire scene, and not doing so means he will not even want to talk to you afterwards. This is fascinating because Landon’s extra scene features him not only telling us he will come for our wedding, but also promising us that he will work on convincing Emmeline.

IF we fail at convincing Penelope or her parents here, the narrative gives us another chance personally with Penelope through a diamond scene. Spending time with her, meeting her beloved pet poodles, listening to what Penelope has to say about how court made her feel, giving her alternatives and promising her things will be different this time around - all of this contributes to making her more inclined to returning. By default the diamond scene frames the MC and her friends as understanding and wanting to help Penelope, making her receptive to their suggestions. This is possible even without the diamond scene, as long as you choose all the options where you regain her trust.

If you don’t, however, Penelope refuses to return to court with you altogether:

Penelope is firm about her refusal to come with you if you haven’t convinced her she is safe with your group. If you haven’t been understanding, and genuine, and polite, and patient with her, then she refuses completely to be part of your entourage. As with her cooperation for the investigation in Book 2, her agreement hinges on your behaviour towards her and how much you are willing to accommodate for her. The narrative is firm about its stance on this issue: even if you will not take Penelope’s plight seriously, we will.

Another interesting thing to note is that even in the worst possible playthroughs (like my Persephone one), the MC suggests Penelope bring her poodles along with her…by default. Even in the worst possible circumstances the barest minimum involves support.

In Penelope’s estate, we face consequences doublefold if you don’t approach her in the “correct way” (bringing up what she put us through isn’t even an option in the Portavira chapters, and essentially the narrative revolving around her betrayal is erased). Both her father and Penelope withdraw support in Chapter 4 itself based on our treatment of her, and Emmeline’s depends largely on how much money they get at the charity polo match. Essentially, if it doesn’t involve insane amounts of coddling for Penelope, both father and daughter aren’t interested.

However, she will come with us to Kiara’s estate Castelserraillian regardless. A friend who she seems to miss and last saw injured at a ball. Which means Kiara should get the same level of support if not more, right? Right??

Kiara

Wrong.

The irony of Kiara’s segment of the tour is that centering her and her needs in this portion of the narrative would have actually made the most sense - even more sense than it would have for the other two. Kiara’s issues would have been directly related to the attacks at the Homecoming Ball, and would have at least raised important questions about security and the whole question of how events of this nature can affect you. As I will now show you, the difference between the treatment for the other two, and for Kiara, are poles apart.

Family Issues: Hakim is worried about his family’s safety and hurt over Constantine’s multiple snubs as a friend, but the most pressing issue is the food and art festival he is organizing so that Cordonia can be entered into the International Art Association. Ezekiel’s hinges on us giving him the confidence to tell his father that he’d rather be a veterinarian than a diplomat. Joelle’s hinges on whether she thinks you appreciate the importance of art in a thriving kingdom. Kiara’s…well.

Kiara’s Issues: As of Castelserraillian, she seems to have none. I mean, it’s not like anyone - the MC, the LIs, anyone - really bothers to ask her, anyway.

You don’t get through to Kiara by asking her what she wants, sitting with her, talking to her or comforting her. You get it either by emotional blackmail and calling her patriotism and trustworthiness as a diplomat into question (like Persephone does), or by manipulating her (like Esther does). This particular exchange lasts less than a minute, and no matter what, Kiara is forced by the narrative to agree with you and cancel her tickets to Switzerland.

At this juncture I’d like those of you who have read till this point, to think back to the previous two ladies and what we get to tell them. We are allowed to tell the court bully that she needs to put herself first before trying to help the people of Cordonia. We are allowed to tell the woman who betrayed us that her fears are valid and she has our support. In fact, the best option in this scene of Kiara’s (where Esther warns Kiara of the message she will be sending if she leaves Cordonia at this time) is the worst option in Penelope’s (“Cordonia needs unity right now, and it’s hard to look united when everyone’s back at their duchies”).

The group itself, in this chapter, has no interest at all in what Kiara wants or how she is feeling, even though it is at Liam’s event that she was injured. The entire group is silent as the MC either insults or manipulates Kiara into agreeing, after which Liam places the focus immediately on Ezekiel, who doesn’t even care about court. Not only is the entire group complicit in allowing this sort of treatment to Kiara, but so are her brother and so-called best friend Penelope - who made various demands for herself, but stood there and watched as other people got away with shaming her traumatized friend.

When you read Kiara’s scenes in that context, her brother Ezekiel’s attitude seems even more bizarre (especially if you buy his wine scene) considering he actually witnessed the group shame her into complying. He gets to say, unironically, that: “We’ve had a lot of guests here […] They try to impress us with their worldly knowledge. They compliment the wine. But they’re so busy trying to impress us or convince us of something that they don’t take the time to get to know us. But you’re different. I’d heard you would be”.

(<rant>DUDE. DID YOU EVEN SEE THE WAY WE WERE TREATING YOUR SISTER. WERE YOU EVEN FUCKING LISTENING. HOW THE FLYING FUCK ARE WE DIFFERENT</end rant>).

However, perhaps we must keep in mind that Ezekiel as a character wasn’t created at all to support Kiara - he was created as a reward for Penelope (why, I have no idea). So instead of actually showing an iota of concern for the sister who has encouraged and supported him in his pursuits, even though she doesn’t fully understand him - he and Penelope instead spend all of their time and energy focusing on each other.

Joelle is shown to be doubtful about the monarchy, undoubtedly because of a clash with Constantine’s ideals and possibly the treatment her own husband has gotten from him, but the concern for Kiara that she is allowed to show in other scenes (such as the epilogue scene) she never gets to show here. Moreover, if Joelle’s refuses on account of you not impressing her with your view of art, Kiara is disappointed by her rejection on our behalf! (“ugh, that’s my mother for you. I love her, but she can be so frustrating sometimes.”).

Like Kiara, Hakim is a default fixture of our wedding party. He is touched by the group’s unconditional gesture of helping with his exhibition when it seems to be on the verge of ruin (via the attackers flooding the area), and regardless of how we perform or whether Joelle agrees, he will agree to come to the wedding. In a complete failplay, Hakim and Kiara are the only nobles who will make it to our wedding by default, without any conditions or demands or requests for future jobs. The narrative does not give them the option to refuse.

On a level of buildup, it’s disheartening to note that Penelope gets to speak more about watching Kiara get wounded (in an option in her diamond scene), in Portavira, than Kiara gets to talk about her own wounds in Castelserraillian. Her injury is mentioned only once in Castelserraillian: when the MC arrives to the estate, in a very offhand manner after which it is then never spoken about in those chapters again (though it is implied as a reason for why Hakim is taking the entire family to Switzerland). None of her family talks about it either.

By default - as I have now laid out in detail - the group is pretty insensitive to Kiara or her needs and is only too eager to make the shift from pushing her into agreeing, to showering her brother with attention and flattery and listening to his unrelated-to-court problems.

The opportunities to help her are extremely low - in fact you really have none at this point. As soon as we are done with her, Kiara disappears for the rest of the chapter and only shows up just once in the next one.

None of the other family members’ decisions to join the wedding party or not are even remotely related to Kiara. She is treated as the least important person in a narrative that should be centered around her, even on the most basic level of this place being her home. Zeke’s decisions is about his dreams, Hakim’s is about cultural advancement, Joelle’s is about art and her ideals for a thriving kingdom. Hell, not even Kiara’s decisions are based on what she’s going through!

In Kiara’s case, you don’t see consequences for any of the things you say to her personally. Kiara doesn’t even allow herself to be upset by your words, but instead agrees with you no matter what. One can explain this away by pointing out that Kiara has very strong ideas of what strength and endurance mean to her, and she’s still trying to apply those principles to herself even while traumatized (this is eventually the explanation they have Kiara give us in Lythikos). But the fact of the matter is that scene wasn’t seen as important enough to write decently, or code properly - so we are stuck with a scene where an attack victim is forced into supporting the people who hosted the event she was attacked in, without even being asked how she feels, without being given the validation she deserves.

However, this won’t be the only time we get the chance to address Kiara’s issues. And perhaps the second time around, we can provide her the validation we failed to provide her in the first. But at what cost?

Another Chance

The lack of Kiara, in Kiara’s own estate, was obvious enough for even people who didn’t like her as a character to take notice. And there were questions about why. Shortly afterwards, Book 3 went on a hiatus so the team could work on changing certain things in the books, that readers had been complaining about (such as the copy-paste nature of some of the LI scenes) and working on the second half. One among those many changes included “making it clearer that Drake does not like Kiara back”, though why this was seen as so important I will never understand.

However, post hiatus things sped up in the narrative - Drake gets involved in a duel that catapults him to fame and glory within the nobility, Constantine dies after an attempt is taken on Liam’s life, we now realize that the traitor was someone amongst us. So the Lythikos leg of the tour, which lasts two chapters, is rife with suspicion and involves the main characters investigating and trying to question other people. One of them is Olivia, whose aunt Lucretia (who has just returned as well, right before Constantine’s death) was mentioned as one of the original suspects, and at whose event Madeleine was poisoned.

The other interesting thing that happens at this point, is that Kiara informs the group that she intends not to stay on in the tour. She will be there for the wedding and her family (at least her father) is already supporting the cause, but she wants to return home. There are three ways the MC can react to this news - either to criticize her for bailing out, comment that she may be afraid, or suspect her.

An interesting point to note is how the choice to suspect Kiara is framed outside of just the MC's dialogue options. No matter what choice we make at the ball, Drake suspects her by default.

If you do suspect her, Drake is the first to jump at the opportunity (“we must suspect everyone”), Hana is conflicted (she looks sad and speaks of “reaching out” to Kiara before she leaves, therefore attempting to soften the harshness of what the MC is suggesting) and Maxwell makes a joke out of it (“a little friendly interrogation”). I find it immensely interesting that a woman who got shot at our event, who we didn’t even listen or ask questions to, who has now witnessed another goddamn attack, is asking us to let her go - and our reaction to her request is not concern, but suspicion.

Of course, one may claim that suspecting her at the Lythikos Ball in Chapter 11 is dialogue-dependent, not the MC’s default - but by Chapter 12, the Winter Festival...suspecting Kiara and hoping to successfully interrogate her definitely is default.

(the first four screenshots are from the scene before they question Kiara, and the last two is from after. Not a single one of these dialogues is dependent on an option from the MC - they all are part of the default dialogue of the chapter)

Let’s evaluate this based on the rubric we established earlier: buildup, default actions from the MC and LIs, opportunities to validate and consequences if you make the wrong choices. Especially since this is supposed to be a sensitive scene where this kind of validation truly counts:

Buildup: Kiara is a brief red herring meant to stall us till the Anton Severus reveal, and on that level the buildup delivers. There is one scene at the Lythikos Ball that shows her excited about the MC’s wedding, depending on who your love interest is, and one tiny scene in the next chapter where she is with Penelope (if Penelope is part of the tour).

But on the level of her true feelings? Her constantly having nightmares? Her wanting to be strong but being extremely affected by her memories? Her being retraumatized by the attack at the Costume Gala, in which she may have witnessed a prominent political figure (as well as her father’s friend) losing his life? Very little, tbh.

Default Dialogue/Actions: No matter what the group agrees upon regarding Kiara’s motives at the Lythikos Ball - by the Winter Festival they’re clearly planning an investigation. It’s called one, she is called “suspicious” and “a suspect” by those involved (mainly the MC, Drake and Maxwell. Liam and Hana are nowhere to be found in this sequence). By default, the MC and Drake show zero remorse for putting Kiara through this hell, or for never caring to ask. Maxwell is allowed to quip about how “another suspect” is “off our list” even after it’s clear that what Kiara went through is no laughing matter. The three then casually move on to finding the next available suspect.

Opportunities for Validation: This does happen, in the one scene where we interrogate her. There are options to show concern or sympathy. It involves asking her if she is okay, remembering that she was stabbed, and eventually telling her that she is struggling from the trauma of the event and needs help, and that if going away is what will help Kiara, they will not stand in her way. If you choose all of these “correct” options…it’s a decent enough scene, though it is still tainted by the fact that they’re conducting an interrogation, that Kiara actually has no clue that that is what they’re really doing, and by the lack of shame or regret from the MC and Drake after they’ve forced her to relive such a horrific experience for their satisfaction.

So…why do I now hate this scene so much? The answer lies in the fourth point:

Consequences??? What Consequences?:

On my Persephone playthrough, this is what my MC is allowed to do:

1. She points out Kiara is uncommonly flustered (fair enough, it could be suspicion but one can also spin it as concern).

2. She forgets that Kiara was stabbed - which is understandable I guess, and which Kiara is understandably angry about. Honestly this is the only thing Kiara is even allowed to get angry about.

3. I personally find this part of the scene gross…and pretty triggering because dismissiveness of trauma is something I’ve been through, and I know that in some ways it can be just as damaging as the traumatic event itself.

That is exactly what happens in the scene I screenshotted above. After Kiara speaks of the shame she feels at being 'weak’, my MC Persephone is allowed to be dismissive of her trauma, and Drake - who speaks a big game about healing one day at a time in another option - agrees with the MC and minimizes Kiara’s trauma right alongside her. Kiara isn’t even allowed to contest this twisted logic. She’s not allowed to even be angry, not allowed to push back, not allowed to give the MC and Drake a piece of her mind and tell them they are garbage. Because, especially in this one option, they are.

The problem isn’t so much that this option exists. The problem is that the MC and Drake are allowed to get away with it, and how.

4. Persephone can finally finish it all off with a “Cordonia needs you”. Which Kiara thanks her for (!!!).

As with our exchange with Kiara in Castelserraillian, her responses at the end are pretty much the same. She thanks the MC and promises to think over what we said (even though she shouldn’t have had to). She is probably surprised the MC and Drake even bothered to talk to her, I suppose.

I was still hopeful that there may be consequences in the long run, so I paid particular attention to the Valtoria (where we see her again) and epilogue (where she praises us to her mother) sections featuring her in my failplay, to see if she’d leave or at least have a negative impression of us. This is what I found:

Zero consequences. Even with the worst options chosen, Kiara will still return to court and call you an inspiration (“There’s something about you. You bring people together. You make things happen”). She will still fight with the assassins at the boutique, even in a moment when she’s experiencing triggers. She will joyfully participate in our wedding. Eventually, when Joelle justifiably asks the MC about whether the MC looked out for her…Kiara will lie through her teeth to make the MC look good. Perhaps the only good thing that comes out of this is that from Valtoria onwards our dialogue options for her are largely positive, but by then it is too little too late.

Even in the best possible playthrough, with all the right options, the scene leaves a bad taste in your mouth because there is so much suspicion going in, and not enough remorse when they’re done questioning her.

Even Madeleine, who was an established bully in the previous book, is praised in Book 3 for “not lying or cheating, just playing smart” (!!!), and is told she needs to take care of herself first before committing to her people. Furthermore, you’re constantly made to praise her skills even though she’s…really not that great of a press secretary to begin with. Though she comes to the tour by default, Madeleine is allowed to make demands on the MC, which the MC also honours by default at the end of the book (Kiara also gets a position, but it was not something she’d asked them for…and it was certainly something Liam had a choice in handing out).

When you measure this up against the treatment for Penelope, especially, the differences are glaring. If Penelope does join us in the tour, her romance with Ezekiel blossoms and she is generally comfortable and cared for and has her dogs brought along. If she forgets to wear muted colours for your bachelorette and you point this out, she immediately panics and becomes reminded of Madeleine, and it is Kiara who has to comfort her. Even now in TRH we are constantly reminded of Penelope’s social anxiety issues, but never once of what she did to us when we were still new to Cordonia. And even now, Kiara comforts her and reassures her and is protective of her, and you never really see anyone - not even Penelope - doing the same for Kiara herself.

Olivia, too, who is an actual suspect in the same investigation, is treated with far more grace. While the MC can raise suspicions about her or her family, Liam constantly views her as innocent and vouches for her. The MC is also given opportunities to be an emotional support to Olivia, going as far as to defend her in front of her aunt Lucretia. In response to a dismissive comment from said aunt, the MC can claim that "there's a strength in allies and friends. Relying on that isn't weakness...it's just common sense." It is indeed ironic that the MC can say this in support of Olivia - who has a specific view of what strength looks like and can look down on people who don't fit into this perception - but can never provide the same empathy for Kiara unless she suspects and interrogates her first.

Think about it this way. No matter what we do, the narrative does not allow Kiara to push back or call the group out on their cavalier treatment of her. Hell, she’s made to believe that these questions emerged from a space of concern, not out of suspicions and an intention to interrogate her.

Both Madeleine and Penelope are allowed to either call the MC out in not saying the right thing, or to completely reject her offers if she has not earned their trust. Despite their own wrongdoings to the MC and her friends, Madeleine and Penelope get validation without ever having to earn it (which is often how it should be). But in Kiara’s case, despite her being the most honest of the three, she only gets this validation after having her concerns go unheard in favour of her older brother in her estate, after her trauma is largely ignored, after she is suspected and interrogated under the guise of 'concern’. She has to relive an extremely painful experience through her words, in front of two people who do not care, to “earn” the validation that Madeleine and Penelope will get without having to even lift a finger.

Understandably, part of these nuances will difficult to understand if all you’re seeing is a “correct playthrough” - the team that made TRR could cleverly hide the lack of consequences behind these optional responses, so that those who didn’t choose those options wouldn’t see entirely how messed up the whole picture is. Up until a friend did a failplay, I had absolutely no clue that Penelope could refuse to come with the group if they didn’t respect her, or that Kiara could return to court no matter what, despite our careless treatment of her.

“Put yourself first”, “your concerns are valid”, “we will be there to support you” - these are words that Kiara should have been hearing without being subjected to the amount of scrutiny and judgement the group put her through, by default. These were things she deserved to hear as much as any of the other ladies did, perhaps even more. She shouldn’t have had to jump through hoops to prove her loyalty to Cordonia to do so.

Kiara’s agreement to tour with the group, hinges on nothing but her beliefs. There is very little that she gets out of this, more that she deserves from them…and she is made to give the MC and the group more credit than they deserve despite their behaviour towards her.

The message from the narrative is clear: even if you take Kiara’s plight seriously, we won’t.

Fandom

It would be remiss of me to talk about the narrative treatment for Kiara, without talking about the overall fandom reaction to her.

The team clearly didn’t care much about Kiara. That much is obvious to everyone who has read the series by now. Despite being the smartest and most skilled, she was often the last courtier to be paid much attention to in the books, and at times even other characters like Madeleine and the MC could question the validity of her skills (Madeleine claims she exaggerates her talents, the MC has the option to ask her what other languages she knows in a sarcastic way at the Coronation Ball, and Maxwell (optionally) gets to say sometime in Book 3 that he thinks she’s making up certain words knowing that the others don’t know French). So for two whole books, not even readers who liked her really expected a lot of spotlight on her…not until the writers made her a survivor of a violent attack. There was already a lack of care involved from those who created this character.

However, we can’t completely deny that a portion of the fandom also reacted with hate when she was showing interest in Drake. There was already a certain amount of annoyance from her behaviour towards the MC in Fydelia, but it took her crush on Drake for it to manifest into full-fledged hate.

A lot of the “justifications” to hate on her (if they can be called that) involved calling her “double faced”, “fake” and “opportunistic”, and implying that Drake deserved better than someone like her. Never mind that Madeleine herself believed the scandal when it suited her, and she didn’t get half the level of hate. Never mind that Penelope pretty much intended to remain friends with the MC without her ever finding out that Penelope helped drag her name through the dirt. However, Kiara has often been penalized or disliked for things found forgivable in other characters.

It’s also interesting to note that while Kiara genuinely liked Drake just as Olivia liked Liam, it was always “Olivia deserves better than being Liam’s sloppy seconds” for Olivia…and “Kiara’s feelings for Drake are one-sided, so what” for her.

On the occasions where Kiara could feature in a fanfic, she would often be villainized, or turned into some kind of an obsessive stalker or murderer or shown as being in cahoots with Madeleine or intent on betraying the MC and her friends. Or even just depicted as a “loose woman” foil to the “pure, virtuous” MC. There are exceptions, but the fact that this is the popular portrayal of her on the few occasions she is included, and you don’t see this much with a Penelope who DID try to sabotage us in Book 1…that is very telling of an overall fandom view of her.

Could a part of the insensitive treatment from the narrative be attributed to this hate? I don’t know, maybe. Clearly there were some parts that were a result of fanservice, especially the interactions between Drake and Kiara after Book 3 Chapter 10, where he can be rude to her in his own playthrough at Lythikos, and where his “sympathy” for Kiara’s plight depends completely on what the MC says - therefore making said “sympathy” conditional and fake. It was indicated once before on livestream that Kiara’s feelings were one-sided - just before the hiatus ended - and the coding for her interactions with Drake, post hiatus, (Kiara could be “wistful” at her estate if Drake was engaged but still have her feelings for him if he was single) switched from “lingering crush” to “barely there”.

But eventually…hatred for a character or pair never really stopped the team if they liked the character/pair that much. The writing for Madeleine, and the huuuge amounts of space that Bertrand and Savannah take up - are proof enough of this. The fandom did treat Kiara unfairly (the way they treat many black women especially, and many women of colour, unfairly), but the TRR team could have provided the validation she deserved, if they really, really wanted to. And they clearly didn’t want to.

This is something I’ve said before, and still stand by - the team that encouraged this kind of writing for Kiara did it because they could get away with it. They knew they wouldn’t get away with it so easily for Penelope, but would have an easier time getting away with it for Kiara. And unfortunately…they were right.

–

I’d like to thank the following people for various forms of help in writing this essay:

@callmetippytumbles for her illuminating, razor-sharp insights

@nikkisha16 for allowing me to rant repeatedly about this and being my personal cheerleader

@pixieferry for (literally!) making sure this essay went up, and also for the encouragement

The wonderful anon who asked me to elaborate on this topic in the first place! 😀

–

#the royal romance #long post #trr kiara #lady kiara of castelserraillian #trr penelope #lady penelope of portavira #trr madeleine #countess madeleine of fydelia #anxiety tw #trauma tw #minimization of trauma tw #bullying tw #choices essay #playchoices #choices trr #trr

[lizzybeth1986]

I don't think you play TRR/TRH anymore but you should see what they did to Kiara in the newest chapter. It's so dumb and makes me so angry, especially considering the current climate of events. I've already seen people on Reddit be like "but we helped her overcome her trauma" (we didn't lol) and someone called her the c-word, very classy. Honestly PB's been low key racist in the past but all the stuff right now makes it high key...

(Apologies for the long post and not being able to place this under a cut)

I'm pretty glad I got these anons because truth be told I wasn't sure how many people - besides the few that I already knew were constantly speaking about Kiara's treatment in the books - would care enough to ask any questions about this. Most of the posts I saw expressed a disturbing eagerness to throw her under the bus, without exploring nuance or asking questions, and at this point I'm not very surprised.

I've always maintained that the treatment for Kiara is what happens when both the writers and the fandom are heartless, and these past few weeks have only been proof of that.

There are questions you could raise about this finale re: Kiara - questions almost no one seems to bother asking. I have three:

1. In this Coventus Nobilis...how is it that I see four Heads of House, and only one heir? 

2. If Kiara - who is not head of house - is supposed to represent Castelserraillian instead of her father Hakim (who presides over that estate), why do I not see Madeleine? Why do I not see Penelope? 

3. Why are we suddenly seeing Adeleide  popping up out of practically nowhere to rep Krona/Fydelia, and Landon conveniently rep-ping Portavira?  

Some of the answers to these questions lie in the questions themselves. Why else would Madeleine and Penelope not be present in this meeting - if it weren't to purposely distance them from this awful moment? After all, both of them have inbuilt subplots ready for the next book that would require interactions with the core group. How else do you think the writers could ensure we kept coddling them and pandering to them in Book 3, except by distancing them from this "betrayal"?

Why else would the narrative choose to pit Kiara - the lone woman of colour we'd been shitting on for most of this series - against Olivia - the white woman who has been given innumerable individual PoV scenes and her own mini-book (and whose reputation we had to help rebuild in said mini book whether we cared about her stupid duchy or not). 

Why else would they force Kiara to alert us mere minutes before the meeting begin, if not to distract us with crumbs ("See? At least we wrote her as warning you. Of course we don't hate her!"). 

Why else would you have Olivia and Kiara pitted against each other like this - if not to show these two women side by side, on opposing ends -  and compel us to believe that the white woman we spent 4.5 books propping up and pampering, is the most loyal one.  When in fact we have done absolutely nothing to deserve any fucking loyalty from Kiara or her family to begin with! (Ezekiel and his white bride notwithstanding).

What we finally got as a result, was a narrative that (as @queen-of-effing-everything summed it up when I discussed this with her) in one full sweep "glorifies Olivia, shields Madeleine and Penelope and sets up Kiara". Very few of us even noticed. And even if we did notice, is there any guarantee that we would care??

Remember how I mentioned in my last ask that I wished we expanded the same energy that we did with Aurora, to speak up against the ill-treatment of other black characters? Kiara was undoubtedly one of those.

After this, we as a fandom will speak very easily now of her "betrayal". We will call her the b-word and the c-word. We will boast of how we will "take her down" along with Adeleide and Landon and Bartie Sr. We'll boast about how we "never liked her" to begin with, as if doing so required some...idk exemplary foresight. We will make memes about how Olivia was "the only bitch we ever respected". We will make huge, sweeping claims about how Kiara was our "friend" and how (as you've mentioned, anon) we "helped her overcome her trauma" (!!!!) and claim by that token that  we were entitled to good treatment from her. I'm pretty sure when TRH3 finally comes out, her every word and action will be screenshot, put up on blogs, mocked and torn down just so we can write essays on how awful she is. 

Yet I saw very little of this energy in Book 3, where the MC could first emotionally manipulate her into supporting the Unity Tour, and where we actively suspected her  at a time when she was traumatized. At most there was some lukewarm acknowledgement of how she "deserves better", all while people still continued to write fanfic that positioned her as creepy and obsessed and villainous.  Almost no one had a problem with Savannah not acknowledging Kiara's earlier support of her, and in fact I'd seen posts that clubbed her with the other ladies of the court who likely "treated Savannah badly". Her father Hakim was made to join the tour alongside her by default, without the expectations that Landon/Emmeline and Godfrey/Adeleide were allowed to have, and the fandom was mysteriously silent about Hakim being made to "bow to his knees" in a way the others did not have to. Very few people even bothered to  notice or talk about how often Penelope was allowed to hold the MC's baby, or how Kiara was never really allowed to hold her even once. Which "friend" treats someone like this??

When I finally published this essay on the treatment meted out to Kiara especially in Book 3, what I got was a lot of neat, but ultimately hollow, little platitudes about how Kiara "deserved better" (How and in what way? Who knows, who cares). Out of those many many people who reblogged and responded, only a handful held the MC and Drake in particular (and Maxwell, who thought it appropriate to joke about "one suspect down") accountable for choosing to suspect and interrogate just her, and for showing ZERO remorse in forcing her to reopen those wounds. How is it that we can judge Kiara for this latest "betrayal", yet pretend that the MC and Drake had nothing to do with the pain THEY caused to her? How is it that this fandom was so fired up over her comments, yet would have such a weak, muted, carefully-generalized response to the screenshots where Drake was openly suspecting her and optionally  minimizing her trauma? 

Following that, why should we be entitled to good treatment from Kiara when we never really gave her even half as much?? Why is it so easy to divorce characters from their words and actions in Drake/MC/Maxwell's case, but so hard for a character like Kiara? (One may claim this is because Drake and Maxwell are potential co-protagonists, but the aforementioned essay already proves that you as a main character can get punished for not treating a mere side character with kindness).

Another thing that fascinates and repulses me even further is how the fandom has created myths around this one character, and how PB has constantly leaned into these "characteristics" even though the text itself tells an altogether different story:

1. Kiara is a snob. This is especially hilarious considering that she is established in Book 2 as being the only person who befriended Savannah before her departure and cared about what happened to her when she left. Never once in the books has she looked down on us for class-related issues, or outright mocked people for not knowing the languages she knew. In fact, she was the first person to acknowledge our skills if we showed any before Lythikos in Book 1. On the other hand, Penelope can be uppity and look down on us in Book 1 (there is even a dialogue option in Chapter 10 that leads to her calling us a "commoner wench") if we don't do well, and yet she's a cinnamon roll.  Olivia can engage in snobbish , entitled behaviour without the fandom having a problem just because she's their favourite. Madeleine can look down on us and pretend for 3/4ths of the social season that we're not worth her time yet somehow Kiara is the snob. Okay. Okay. 😐

2. Kiara is "obsessed with" Drake and constantly comes on to him. This is said by the same group of people who saw Olivia fucking Nevrakis plant a WHOLE FUCKING SMACKER on Liam's mouth, and said..nothing. Kiara on the other hand, has admired Drake's abs once, mentioned she'd always liked Drake once, spoken normally to him about his sister once, flirted with him once (Paris tea party), and ordered a wine from him when he was bartending. In the next book she either looks at him wistfully or admires his suit. Yet somehow she's the creepy, annoying, stalkerish. Okay. Ooookay. 😑

(This one was particularly damaging, because post the TRR3 hiatus, all efforts from PB were focused on reversing Kiara's position as an alternative LI. This included "confirming" on livestream that her affections were one-sided, at a time when Olivia was finally allowed to have some romantic moments with a single Liam, pushing forward a buildup scene to Drake's eventual secret wedding that had him acting extremely rude and confrontational to Kiara mere minutes after suspecting her (while she was expressing joy at his upcoming wedding in his playthrough!!!), and involving a subplot where he openly and by default suspected her. Sure, he spends a minute to be nice to her and chat about trauma if the MC chooses. But that's like a drop of sewage water floating in an ocean of shit).

3. Kiara Pretended to Be Our Friend And Then Dropped Us: This is false. Kiara only ever promised to put in a good word for us to the rest of the court, no more, no less. And she fulfilled that promise. Otherwise she never pretended to be friends with us nor made friendly overtures either way. In fact if you're going to accuse anyone of duplicity, you have Penelope and Madeleine. Yet somehow Kiara is the dishonest one. Okay. Okay. 🙃

4. Kiara Was Insensitive To Penelope and Didn't Understand Her. I'm not sure how Kiara is supposed to magically understand something that her friend isn't telling her. Plus this argument deliberately leaves out the fact that she stood up for Penelope when people chose to be mean to her, and even explained to the MC that she employs "tough love" because she can't always be around to protect Penelope. It also leaves out how one-sided this friendship is and how Kiara is made to do most of the heavy work in this friendship. Meanwhile, at Kiara's most difficult time period, in Castelserraillian, Penelope says absolutely nothing as the MC forces Kiara to join the Unity Tour, while making bedroom eyes at Kiara's brother. In fact the only reason Kiara's brother even exists is to give Penelope a love interest. The Kiara-Penelope friendship practically revolves around Penelope. I have never really seen Penelope look out for Kiara or attempt to actually support her in any way, and Kiara was the one who got the knife wounds. Yet somehow I'm supposed to believe that Penelope's the better friend of the two. Suuuuure. 😡

And this steaming pile of crap doesn't just make its way into shitposts and short opinion posts. It creeps into fanfic and fandom opinions. It finds its way in the tags and in other social media. It eventually even finds its way into the books, even though nothing in the earlier narrative ever really supported these extremely stale takes. 

Because PB didn't care for Kiara the way they cared for their white characters, they had no problem framing her narrative the way this fandom so desparately wanted it. Book 3 has the MC claim behind her back that Kiara is stuck-up and acts like knowing ten languages makes her better than everybody else, even though this is not backed up by the text, and in fact you will never see any acknowledgement of how Madeleine forced Kiara to make herself sound "exotic" in Book 2, or of how Madeleine and the MC (optionally) could downplay or question her skills unless they wanted to use her. Also, Penelope is never allowed to be talked about like that no matter what she's done. PB even had a scene (in the Hana playthrough) where they aggressively retconned the events of Madeleine's bachelorette party, where Kiara supposedly shouted at Penelope until the latter cried, and Madeleine was the one "having fun". Kiara was literally being thrown under the bus to make Madeleine look better. Madeleine. Imagine that. Madeleine.

Given how desparate the fandom was to nitpick and overdramatize everything Kiara said and did, is it any wonder that the team got away with the writing they gave her in Book 3? Considering that all the false arguments I stated above have made a resurgence in the past few weeks or days...is it any wonder that the only "support" this fandom is capable of re: Kiara, is lukewarm platitudes, cold takes and rank hypocrisy??

Yes, we can hold PB solely/largely  accountable for the treatment meted out to Kiara now. They made these choices over and over, and continue to do so, while tossing us occasional crumbs of faux-sweet behaviour from the MC. And they did this in insidious ways, which were so hard to catch that even a Kiara stan like me had to observe multiple playthroughs just to unravel even half of what they'd done.

But let's not pretend a huge chunk of the fandom was just as responsible for this - with their unfounded opinions, their disgusting bias, their favouritism of white characters, their refusal to observe anything besides their favourites, and their godawful fanfiction where Kiara is a creep or evil or killing the virtuous main character. Out of the huge body of fanwork that I've seen for TRR that features Kiara - at least 90% of it features her stalking Drake, or harming the MC (particularly the Drake MC), or in cahoots with the villains, or generally being referred to as a creep (why Olivia, who kissed Liam without his consent in Book 1 and was entitled enough to be angry about him not returning her feelings in TRH1, never got this sort of writing - I fail to understand). There is a tremendous gap between the vitriol dumped on her when she does something the MC doesn't like, and the milquetoast response when harm is done to her. There have been times when I've had to comb through pages and pages of hate just to read even one positive post on Kiara in her own goddamn tag.

When the next book arrives, I know you folks will continue to gas up the white women in this book every chance you get, and mask your racist vitriol for characters like Kiara (and Hana, let's not forget the way y'all treat Hana) behind the same self-righteous judgements and the same tired, stale takes. I know that PB - despite what I will still believe is their hollow promises today - will write every single one of those stale takes into existence. All because it will be "justified", because Kiara is a "bad person" or "untrustworthy" or "fake". Whatever. Y'all can stick to Olivia The Black Hole and babysit Madeleine and Penelope, I guess. Kiara always deserved better than these writers and most of this fandom anyway.

#long post #kiara theron #the royal romance #the royal heir #trr kiara #lady kiara #i'm sorry kiki we didn't deserve you #i chose not to play trh2 and that's because this is EXACTLY what i felt would happen after they tossed us those crumbs in the book 1 finale

[lizzybeth1986]

Reblog from this post (I didn't want to clog dashes more, so I thought I'd shift this response here)

@jovialyouthmusic While I appreciate the response, I do want to request you to ask yourself where the misconception that Kiara "participated in bullying Penelope" came from, when...that actually didn't happen. Here are all the scenes where the two do interact in Book 2.

1. In Chapter 1, both Penelope and Kiara talk to the MC about their shift in alliance, and Kiara angrily reminds Penelope that she can't be openly affectionate to the MC.

2. In Chapter 4, you have a default interaction between the two where Penelope mentions that she has her poodles even if she's unable to get a husband, and Kiara's only response is "yeah, your poodles..." with a neutral face. Idk about you but if I had to be constantly around a person who spoke about that for over a month and little else, I'd be pretty fed up too.

3. More interestingly, in the same scene, if the MC chooses to insult Penelope when she speaks about not being as good as the others ("that's sad...and accurate"), Kiara becomes angry and says "mon dieu, you don't have to kick her when she's down!". Sounds just the opposite of "participating in bullying" to me.

4. Even more interestingly, this scene happens in Chapter 6:

Sure... it's not the best way to handle Penelope's problem, and Kiara clearly doesn't understand the core issue that's making it so hard for her. But if you call her out on it, Penelope steps in and defends her reasoning, and this is what Kiara tells you:

"I just can't always be here to look out for her". Canon pretty much gives you a lens by which you can look at Kiara's overall behaviour towards Penelope. She's trying to ensure Penelope does well - perhaps in not the most effective ways - and often gets irritated when Penelope seems to do the thing Kiara said she shouldn't be doing, anyway.

Kiara doesn't even need to be going out of her way to advise Penelope like this. That's not her job. There's nothing Kiara gains from being friends with Penelope, no one in that court would fault her if she ignored Penelope or pretended she didn't exist. But most of the times when you do see her, you see her with Penelope, and the scenes are very much her telling Penelope how to act in court. As it is Madeleine has already made her a target and as lady-in-waiting herself there's very little Kiara can do about that.

5. This is a sweet one, at the runway show in Paris if you include Penelope:

6. They don't interact at the Parisian tea party together, but you do see them conversing at the one in Shanghai:

Penelope: The tea pots are so pretty! The colour reminds me of one of my favourite outfits

Kiara (smiling): You should have worn it today

Penelope: Oh, no one of my outfits. One I made for my poodle, Galahad.

Kiara (sad): Penelope...

Post this, you have scenes more focussed on either reacting to Tariq's statement, or the one in the Beer Garden and the Homecoming Ball where they converse with the MC. Kiara, annoyed, informs Penelope at the Beer Garden that the cocktail she thinks she is drinking is beer, and at Homecoming Ball she tries to converse with Drake by following up his dissing of cocktails with something about wine, which Drake promptly mocks her for.

There's very little itself in the assumption that she "didn't listen to Penelope" or "wasn't sensitive to Penelope's issues" - but even those arguments place very little responsibility on Penelope's shoulders to be equally supportive, as she clearly doesn't bother to support Kiara in Castelserraillian when the group emotionally blackmails/manipulate her into agreeing, which apparently no one has an issue with. It also ignores that in her own way Kiara was taking Penelope under her wing and actually trying to help her, however unsuccessfully.

But bullying? Given the evidence I've provided, I'd be kind if I called it a stretch in logic.

As for "advances" on Drake, well...there's only one sequence in Book 2 that even qualifies as flirting, tbh - the Paris tea party where she speaks about French being a romantic language. Every other time she's either merely looking at him or conversing honestly with him.

I highlighted this not to call you out, but to emphasize on what I'd originally said - that these were assumptions that had little to no basis in canon, yet they're used to define Kiara's personality, and PB cared so little about her that they actually ran with these unfounded assumptions and made those canon as well. It's been over 2-3 years and 3 books since then, yet somehow these assumptions (which were made by a majority of Drake stans who were only too willing to throw vitriol on her just for being interested in "their man") are the ones people keep falling back on whenever they do talk about her. That has some...very, very disturbing consequences.

#kiara theron #long post #the royal romance

[lizzybeth1986]

Quick Thoughts on TRFTP Book 1 Chapter 17

• I'm...not even sure what's happening anymore or whether this team is trolling us for expecting better from them. This chapter was shit. As has been this book.

• If you don't want to see these posts, here are the tags to block: #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs, #long post.

• I spent three days doing literally anything else but replaying it coz the writing for this one was so poor from the get-go, focuses on anything but the important stuff when we're two chapters away from the finale and uses Maxwell to retcon two moments from last book that they'd already bungled up in the grossest way possible.

• Ngl they also made Maxwell sound like a self-centered jerk this chapter. The one time they actually made him the focus, they make him into a narcissistic individual who thinks that just because he's friends with all these influential people he gets creative liberty over personal stuff that happened to them, without even fucking consulting them on it. I'm sure the book reading was meant to be funny but there was so much cringe going on that I wound up thoroughly disliking him this chapter (sorry Maxwell stans). Like this was me the entire time:

• Screenshots:

Hana: The Abhirio YouTube channel

Drake: @thefirstcourtesan and the HIMEME YouTube channel

Maxwell: The rash rec YouTube channel

• Title: Hot Off the Press

Alternative Title: High on All Existing Levels of Cringe.

• The first few dialogues obviously change slightly if you're married to Maxwell. He's a little more contrite about not telling the MC earlier about the book tour:

• My MC is as surprised as I am that we didn't go to Castelserraillian instead, since that place is a hotbed of art and culture (I'm also noticing that the writers have been avoiding mentioning Kiara's estate by name since this book began. It's always called "Kiara's estate" now). But no apparently it's because the Lythikos people have no taste, as we're soon about to find out.

• The MC can't stay too long, since the Last Apple Ball, which is supposed to be the final appearance a mother of the royal heir makes before they deliver, is coming soon.

• Maxwell promised the bookstore...that his friends - who are actual people he has written about in this book and who haven't read it yet - will do a live-reading alongside him...again, without consulting them. O boy. This is going to be fun.

•

I have three points to make about this one:

1. If this book wouldn't exist without any of us then why the hell is YOUR face on the cover of MY goddamned story?

2. LMAO @ Maxwell acting like Liam's only strength is his title when:

a. He's the only one among you all who has a job (not applicable for Hana since she doesn't have a paying job but still works her butt off more than the other two do)

b. Liam threw an entire human being over his fucking shoulder. Like if that's not "actual strength" I don't know what is.

• It's more fun to make Olivia guess when you reach her estate. She either guesses that you're having your baby, that Liam is declaring Lythikos the capital of Cordonia, Drake fell into a vat of whiskey or Hana wants her to lead a self-defence seminar for the noblewomen. Maxwell for some reason isn't even mentioned.

• In any case, we arrive at Olivia's keep/lodge, where she's busy fussing over us.

• I liked the fact that you could do a callback to our first Lythikos Ball in Book 1, mentioning "cold lobsterless bisque". And Olivia doesn't pretend to forget it either, reiterating that she enjoyed besting the MC at her first visit there.

• First Kiara, now Hana. Both ladies make sure Olivia doesn't go ahead with giving us gifts related to "self-defense" 😅

• She does, however, have a special gift in store, this time for our nursery. Paintings for the walls. The royal options mostly showcase golden crowns and a castle, while the rustic options display forest animals. You don't get a free option here, pretty much like you don't get one for the crib mobiles. I think there's one element left in the nursery - the soft toy (one of which is a lion).

• Maxwell then offers to have Olivia there for the reading as well, considering the book's popularity in Lythikos and the fact that she is their Duchess. Olivia tries to get out of it, telling us that she has "duchess things" to do.

• I love whatever little we get of Liam and Olivia's friendship in this series. When the writing actually bothers to acknowledge them as childhood pals it shines. Like the bit where Olivia tries to get out of the reading by citing "duchess things" and Liam grins and tells her that he "can always tell when [she's] lying". Or this little bit right here:

• The MC gets to ask about Liam's investigation on what happened to his mother, which he cites as 'ongoing'. Yknow, we would have had more time to investigate that if the writers didn't shoehorn so many chapters into the Texas section. I can understand a mystery spilling over to the next book, but the reason for that spillover being the writers spending too much time on irrelevant bullshit? Can't relate.

• Following this, Olivia agrees to come for the reading, tells the group which rooms are allowed to them and leaves, and the LI tells the MC about their plans to take her out on a final-date-before-childbirth to a resort in the mountains. This is supposed to be our last LI scene for this book.

• It's a short and fairly meh scene, mostly rehashing the LI parenting issues they currently have and filled with some of the same imbalances we spotted way back in Chapter 4 (the LI scene where the couple sneaked off from the ball where we were hosting Auvernal and Monterisso). It's on a smaller scale here, but the imbalances still exist.

• The scene has two sections, the helicopter scene and the resort scene. The helicopter sequence deals with (except in Drake's case) the LI and their worries over how good a spouse and parent they will be, and the resort sequence is mostly a sex scene with no lingerie of the MC's in sight because they felt too lazy to code a pregnant MC minus clothes. In Drake's case, the serious issues revolving around family get spoken about at the resort rather than the helicopter.

Liam: Is extremely protective, maybe even obsessively so. Discovering his mother was pregnant when she died plays a huge part in his worries about the MC and his child now, as does the fact that growing up without her was hard on him, and that's an experience he doesn't want their child to go through.

Hana: Comes with a sweet story about her mother. The helicopter sequence begins with their child having a "kick party" in the womb, and Hana singing a lullaby that her mother used to sing while they spent time on the piano. Hana speaks of this as being a bedtime routine that her mother made, and how nighttime was the only time of day when Lorelai would pay any attention to Hana. Hana wants to be more involved, more present for her child, essentially the mother Lorelai never truly was to her - while still maintaining that there were moments she was happy with Lorelai.

Maxwell: I honestly expected this scene to have Maxwell speak about Bartie Sr or his mother in some capacity...but they didn't even bother to go that route. Instead they show Maxwell initially overthinking and fretting in his care for the MC, before the MC calms him down by quizzing him over his childcare knowledge so he can see for himself just how prepared he is. Like the pregnancy announcement before it, this scene seems to have been the perfect place to come up with something poignant for Maxwell, except they didn't even bother.

Drake: The helicopter sequence is shorter, but features Drake suggesting to the MC that they could "camp in the mountains". However, his resort scene post sex is the more detailed one, and tackles two issues: his need to be constantly tough and protective, and his memories of his father. In the first the MC tells him it's okay if he's not tough all the time, and he reiterates that especially with the MC and their child he feels like he needs to be...and he speaks about how his father - amazing though he was - often had to toe a thin line between his job (guarding the royal family) and his family (he mentions Jackson guarding Constantine, Liam and Regina...which means that he was around when Constantine had his third marriage as well??).

It's not AS bad as the Chapter 4 "sneaking away" scene during the ball in Valtoria...but as you can see, the same problem still exists. They're trying not to be too obvious about it, but the problem still exists.

• Okay so now it's time for this book reading...and Bastien is our driver and our security detail today. O boy.

• Maxwell is nervous, but the group (specifically Hana) reassure him that the crowd can't be too large considering the venue is a bookstore. Turns out...they're wrong. There's hundreds.

• Everyone except Olivia got nicknames (Liam the Benevolent, Hana the Just, Maxwell the Glorious, Drake the Bold). We get to choose ours (Unstoppable, Magnificent, Sexy). In addition, Drake has become a meme, considering people are holding up "THINGS ARE GREAT" signs close to 8-9 months after he was quoted on that (the ultimate irony, that this quote gains popularity among the actual commoners who have to face tax problems, so very unlike Drake who lives griping and moaning in a fucking palace).

• (also didn't Drake read the book earlier. I recall he mentioned as much in Chapter 5. Why didn't he warn his other friends or mention how terribly written this story was?)

• The rest of it...is ridiculous. I mean sure this can be read as a joke, as funny, as entertaining, but even that is a bit of a stretch and sounds more like we're making excuses for Maxwell's writing of his own friends.

• So the reading itself is divided into sections where the group takes turns to read the bits they were a part of, and where Maxwell aggressively rewrote what they said and did without once bothering to consult them. This includes very personal stuff, and he had no way of knowing if they would like the revisions he made. Like this is something I would expect of a trashy, money-grabbing biographer, not someone who is supposed to be a close friend of these people.

• Olivia hasn't read this book yet and she has no qualms saying that to people, which is kinda cool. I'm guessing Lythikos people normally don't like reading.

• Maxwell begins with the masquerade ball:

Yeah dude you knew I was in over my head yet didn't bother to guide me properly all of the social season. Hana Lee had to save your ass a couple times. The other LIs were running around doing your goddamn job. That you will not mention in this fancy-schmancy book of yours!

• In this revised version of the Masque, Drake thirsts over the MC immediately (damn, Lady MC cleans up good) and Hana is made to sound like a pompous ass (at last, someone who can match my beauty) and Liam is, well, ridiculous. Revised Liam name-drops House Beaumont and Maxwell when complimenting the MC. None of the LIs are very happy with this book as they proceed reading, and the MC can choose to either agree and they plan to have some words with him later (which will never happen) or pretend it's okay.

I don't mind the revision in this particular scene really. Like the masque itself and Liam's turning down of Madeleine later are not that serious, so exploring it lightheartedly is okay. It's when he gives the same treatment to serious shit that happened to his friends that bothers me.

• The next section to be read is Liam dumping "Madeleine the Mean" (LMAO). Nothing much really.

• The best part is of course the LIs repeating their marriage proposals from memory:

This right here is probably the reason why that book sold at all. Or possibly because Cordonians don't have a lot of good taste in books. Who knows.

• The other best part is the MC refusing to give the assassins proper "assassin noises" during her reading.

• So...up until now you've gotten only tiny glimpses of how self-centered Maxwell's book is. It has his goddamn face on the cover. This guy gave the actual protagonist's origin story nothing more than a page while dedicating an entire chapter to a "playlist" for saving the kingdom. But this...this is on another level. He has Liam name-drop House Beaumont and himself during the Masque. In Drake's playthrough he has Drake worry only about him. During Drake's duel he has both Drake and Liam say this shit:

...did Barthelemy Beaumont ghostwrite this book. Coz he sounds more like Bartie Sr here than he does the old Maxwell. The old Maxwell was often clueless but not really THIS obnoxiously self-centered!

• Like first of all, Drake was doing that duel for himself? He did it because Neville was constantly insulting him? This had very little to do with the MC (unless she was marrying Drake) and definitely nothing to do with Maxwell yet somehow his book is written as if he is the be-all and end-all of this group?

• Also, bringing the MC to Cordonia as a suitor because Liam had feelings for her was perhaps the only thing that indicates Maxwell even considers Liam a good friend? (and even then his House needing to sponsor someone was a big factor too) Liam barely features as a "BFF" otherwise, Maxwell keeps placing Drake in that role more?? I heard Liam speak more about Maxwell (and in terms that acknowledge his unique gifts too, like the hotel room scene in Shanghai and the scene where he talks about his friends before the proposal - both are in Book 2).

Like Maxwell doesn't even once worry or ask after Liam once the MC turns him down for Maxwell in his playthrough (not even when he overhears Madeleine baiting Liam in his playthrough. Even then there's no reaction) and just in this chapter he apparently found no other strength in Liam besides the man's title...and somehow I'm supposed to suddenly believe that Maxwell had trouble choosing between the two of them as BFFs, which got resolved over fake dialogues??

• Then of course comes the worst part of this whole trainwreck:

I'm pretty certain a lot of people will excuse this as Maxwell rewriting these events out of kindness...but the truth is, both of these things are extremely personal, in some ways painful experiences for both Liam and Hana, and Maxwell shouldn't have been assuming what they would be comfortable with without even speaking to them first. He's lucky the two took it as positively as they did, but they shouldn't have been required to.

• What really stings about the use of these two sequences is that these were exactly both things the writers themselves never bothered to explore properly. The Lorelai confrontational was the weakest possible end to her arc...and having Maxwell shoehorn Drake and Liam into this moment in his book doesn't exactly make that any better, PB. And then...to have Maxwell put words in Constantine's mouth when he probably knows jackshit about the man? For something the writers never allowed Liam himself to talk much about? Fuck off.

• Also, I notice that Drake's duel is a default passage for the reading, but you're made to choose between Liam's and Hana's important crisis points. And Maxwell doesn't even have one obviously because TRR Book 3 spent too much time on BertVannah. Plus he doesn't deserve his own passage if he's so busy inserting himself in everyone else's story.

• Olivia's passage about defeating Anton is also a default passage, and perhaps the only thing written accurately in that entire trashfire.

• I will happily never want to hear about this book again, and I would rather Maxwell never wrote another book again either.

• There is a diamond option that features a Q&A, which Maxwell didn't prepare for (obviously). If we convince him, these are the questions the public will ask:

- Is the MC comfortable being Olivia's sidekick. The MC has options ranging from gushing about her, to dubbing them both equals, to calling Olivia her sidekick - and in all three cases she cuts off your mic 😂

- For Olivia, little Valerie asks what she should do to become like our resident Scarlet Duchess. Suffice to say Olivia's answers are...concerning to the girl's mother 😅

- For the MC, Cordonian Woman asks how she got to courage to escape Anton. The MC can either mention she had Olivia with her, mention the LI or take all the credit.

- The next question is to Maxwell, about a possible sequel for the book. This is when the writers of TRH have to admit how full of shit their book is: uh, let's see. There was a honeymoon. We went to a ranch for a long time. Er...baby shower?

- For the MC, if there is anything she would change about her wedding. (they didn't include "I deserved better lingerie earlier" as an option and that's a travesty).

- Peter Graves is now a Cordonian dude who is curious about how Olivia fell for Anton's trap, and she mentions his guard baiting her by mentioning that Liam was in trouble, so the book still wants Olivia to have her lingering feelings towards Liam. I can't imagine why the writers would keep drilling this point in if they're not going to do a damn thing about it.

- All in all, not exactly worth the money.

• Once we finish signing a few books, we're on our way back when we're nearly-trampled by the paparazzi.

• Samir of Them Magazine esp outs himself as an asshole and so does the dude in sunglasses.

• Ana de Luca is nowhere to be found here, and Donnie seems to be the only respectable journalist, asking the rest to give the MC some space. I'm guessing they're mostly making the distinction between "respectable, trustworthy press" (CBC and Trend), and tabloid press like Them and the other paps.

• Dude in sunglasses mentions that his source is paying triple rates for any photos of the MC...which is another in a huuuge pile of really suspicious paparazzi stuff that's been happening this chapter that EVERYONE has been too stupid to explore further so far.

• I can see why the ensuing car chase reminds people so much of Diana. The paparazzi don't give up chasing the MC, there's an overall sense of panic about this sequence and the crash does hark back a little to that devastating news. Except in this case, it's going to be a temporary scare, seeing as we are still in our pregnant sprite for the finale Apple Ball gown which I think means we won't be going into labour until that is over.

• @thefirstcourtesan also mentioned to me that the crash reminded her of an episode from Gossip Girl.

• What I think might happen is that the baby, MC and LIs may make it out of this fairly okay, but there will be widespread condemnation of the tabloid press and possibly laws implemented to limit this scale and level of access. Orrr everyone will simply glower and do nothing since the writers don't allow any of these people to possess any common sense anymore 🙄

• So possibly, there may be some focus on the safety of the mother and child, and on the fallout the press has to face as a result of this incident. We still have one last item (the toy) to feature in our nursery so I think that might happen this chapter too.

• 2 chapters until the finale, and Hana still hasn't gotten her own scenes. Neither flashback nor individual. Somehow they deemed it appropriate to give Olivia those by midpoint!

• Also, interesting how the one time Maxwell gets much attention in this book, they decide to do him badly. First they don't put any effort into his diamond scene, then they write him so. damn. badly. Does Maxwell have his flaws? Sure he does. But they did him so dirty this chapter and made him so ridiculously self-centered that it stopped becoming funny after a point, at least for me.

• This book has been such a load of nothing I can't even tell you. Like at least in the previous books threads would either begin to be tied up or they would give you a clear idea of what would be up next. TRH 1 is getting over in two weeks and the most important thing was dealt with only once and spoken of in an offhand manner only twice. At this rate there are all these threads that haven't even begun to be tied up. And sure, this stuff could get more in the forefront in Book 2...but it's been poorly written and poorly paced so far. That's what you get for forcing us all to play some version or other of the Drake route, unfortunately.

• I'll be off to Kerala until November, guys, so the last two chapters may not get a QT anytime soon (range is pretty awful there), and the same goes for TRM, unfortunately. If I'm able to, I'll try doing chapter reviews for TRM, but I'm not sure how that will pan out, or if I'll be able to catch up enough. I'll try.

• As for TRH...I honestly don't know. Writing for this one hasn't been a very pleasant experience, and I don't have high hopes at all for the next book in the series.

Perhaps by the time the second book or the holiday feature is out I might change my mind but for now...I don't know.

• Until November (or hopefully before that, if a miracle happens and I get good range in my parents' place) then, guys!

#long post #trh quick thoughts #trh qts #king liam #hana lee #drake walker #maxwell beaumont #olivia nevrakis

[lizzybeth1986]

Quick Thoughts on The Royal Retcon Book 1 Chapter 11

• You've gotta admit, guys. This series spends more time retconning various aspects of their original story than they do on the actual premise.

• The food fight was wild and chaotic, the background history is always welcome, seeing Jess and Blake was nice and the moonlit hot springs scene was a nice change from everything...but my head is spinning from the constant shifts, okay?

• To avoid seeing my QTs in your dash, blacklist the following tags: #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs, #long post.

• Screenshots:

Hana: The Abhirio YouTube channel

Maxwell: @thethots-plicken and @itsbrindleybinch

Drake: The HIMEME YouTube channel

• Title: The Prodigal Father

Alternative: Most Parents in TRR Shouldn't Have Even Been Parents To Begin With

• The last chapter ended with a surprise twist: the return of Barthelemy Beaumont, father of Bertrand and Maxwell Beaumont. We had a lot of questions. Did Bertrand know he wasn't dead? Did Maxwell not know he wasn't dead? What the hell was he doing all these years and why had he left his sons in such a horrible position?

• Turns out the writers may have taken a leaf out from a Hindi serial or something coz - drumrolls - he was in a coma!

• Why do we never hear much about this so-called illness or even have a name put to it. What mysterious illness caused Barthelemy to deteriorate so much that he was trying out miracle cures from quacks and that he ended up in a coma for years? Why were his next of kin not informed when he came out of it or while he was rehabilitating? Why the heck wasn't Maxwell telling his wife this, or Bertrand his girlfriend? There is so much about this plot that doesn't even make sense.

• How does Barthelemy remember Drake from the court days but not Savannah ("Liam and Drake, you're so grown up now! Miss Savannah, you're lovelier than your reputation..."). Somehow he knows what's been said about Savannah and about Hana's accomplishments - wait if he'd been mostly getting his body back in order, how would he know this stuff? Who is telling him this? (Godfrey?? Is that why he's so faux-patriotic around us now??? Is that his real reason for visiting Cordonia only once a year or something?)

•

In Liam and Drake's cases, Barthelemy says the same thing about how Maxwell outdid himself by bringing the MC to the House, and that she has brought prestige to the Beaumonts. It's in Hana's and Maxwell's cases that the dialogue is different. In Maxwell's it's obviously as his daughter-in-law that he greets you, and in Hana's he speaks of now having two "daughters" in his house.

• Barthelemy then gets to the more serious part of his departure - the fact that Bertrand had to shoulder the responsibilities of being Duke earlier because of Barthelemy's condition, and that now Bertrand can relax while his father takes care of things at the estate. Is that care for his son talking...or his desire for control? I'm leaning towards the second.

• I'm pretty sure Bertrand is leaning towards the second because he's looking pretty resistant about this sudden change. His bride-to-be, Savannah, in the meantime, is super happy to meet her father-in-law and son's namesake. Hah. That'll change.

• Maxwell is nervous. Because he wants his father to see how different he is now, and how responsible he has become, but doesn't know what his old man will think. Don't worry, Esther says, plan this smartly and you'll get a new Pictagram follower!

• In any case, Maxwell's friends promise to help him get through this and support him, except for Drake who thinks he can impose limits (like "no singing"), because, yknow. The universe has to revolve around his comfort zone. Must be a Walker trait.

• More Jess and Blake nuggets! You get an option to ask them how they met, and they tell you about the cruise they first worked in (and presumably where Jess' sister met Liam's brother and (optionally) married him) and how they used to butt heads often. Nice RoE nugget, too bad the writers have so far barely even remembered Liam's brother who is from that series!

•

Yeah yeah I know that Kiara is probably back in Castelserraillian like the other courtly ladies (or chilling in a hotel somewhere in Texas), but if they're all supposed to be there for the wedding Savannah might as well have included her. Not only is Savannah a stinky fiancée and a stinky person in general (not a surprise considering her family), she is also a stinky friend.

• I repeat: my MC Esther has done practically nothing for Savannah. Nor has Hana. Why are we such a huge part of her ceremony again when she already had a long-time friend from court who had actually helped her and actually cared?? Only because we're the ones on an extended holiday in her ranch? Then say that - why do you need to make such a long speech about friendship while snubbing the one woman who made a damned effort to help you? (oh...right. I keep forgetting. Kiara is only remembered when people want to use her 😒).

• At the start of the rehearsals, Savannah tells Jess about the horse-riding-to-the-altar tradition, complete with a saddle that's been a family heirloom. Bianca and Leona, apologetically, inform Savannah that they had to sell it. Savannah tries to mask her disappointment, but fails. Barthelemy in the meantime, jumps in, in what he assumes would be "saving the day" (it's not, Bartie Sr. It really isn't)

Bartie...dude...you just got here. You can't already know what'll make your daughter-in-law happy when you've only spoken to her for all of five seconds. Plant your ass at the back of the congregation where it belongs!

• The girl really really wanted that saddle, okay Bartie Sr? Allow her to grieve that lost dream ffs.

• This scene I guess is helpful because while it still places Bartie Sr rather awkwardly in the "father trying to make amends and be caring" category, it gives you an inkling of why that persona doesn't sit so well on him. Bartie Sr may assume that this is something a caring parent does, except that what he's really doing is taking over, making all the attention revolve around him, believing he knows best and not listening to anyone. Even when he's being "nice".

• That saddle is going to come back some way or other, and it's probably going to be a diamond option, for which the free option is Savannah walking down the aisle with Bartie Sr. Eh. She threw a tantrum at my reception so her boyfriend could marry her, I'm not about to get her her dilapidated saddle. She can make do with her crusty father-in-law.

(The other possibility is that [at the end of the chapter] Bertrand left the house to get it or something idk, and it might be free after all. Is it too late to ask for the entire WEDDING to be a diamond option?)

• So this exchange leads us all to the Beaumont brothers remembering their childhood. Maxwell views it all through rose-coloured spectacles, Bertrand has very different memories of that time. Which is such a change from the previous series! I mean, wasn't Bertrand the one who kept going "my father's legacy, my father's legacy", while Maxwell was the one who didn't have very good memories of that time?

I can always imagine that Bertrand's views on his father must have changed when he started taking on the responsibilities of a father himself (thus making him view his childhood as 'not normal'). And Maxwell may well have come to appreciate Bartie Sr once he began taking House responsibilities. But guess who is breaking their heads to make these "connections". Us. Not the writers. Not the team in charge of this story.

• There are two PoVs to this scene: Maxwell's and Bertrand's. Maxwell's is the one that is lighter, funnier, showing us a wilder side of his brother, Bertrand is given the meatier one, with intrigue and a hint of plot.

- We're taken back to when Bertrand's motorbike was just purchased, and the boys choose to take it for a test ride. The Bertrand shown here is kinda similar to the one in the 6-years-ago flashback in Book 1, just...younger and cuter. Apparently in the time that Bertrand was living alone in a house with Maxwell, he aged like an avocado.

- What's with using this team and using the Waverley kids' faces for the Beaumont brothers??

- Young Bertrand and Maxwell don't mind living on the wild side - taking the Cavilieri Novanta 9S on a test drive through different areas in the estate, planning how they'll debut this beauty at the Beaumont Bash and generally making a racket. Bartie Sr scolds them from the window of his office, then asks them to come up and see him there. Bertrand opts to protect little Maxwell from his father's ire by going there alone, and then telling his brother that their father is "very proud" of them. Maxwell doesn't question this (the writers have forgotten that Young Maxwell was perceptive even as a little boy, so I'm not quite buying that he simply accepted what Bertrand said at face value), and jumps instead into planning a logo for their biker jackets (he suggests a kraken and a tiger). They can also opt to have a special kraken-related handshake.

- Bertrand, however, fills in the blanks, speaking to us about what he witnessed at the office, and what actually transpired.

-

This conversation is the point of the whole scene, and is connected to the Young! Drake scene in the sense that Bartie Sr and Godfrey are from the Great Houses that Constantine mentions are opposing the alliance with Auvernal. While they don't tell us what has disappointed these two so much, we do get the idea that they are displeased esp with the Queen because she has somehow convinced Constantine to not agree with what the two are planning so quickly. It's very possible that their frustration with Eleanor might have gotten them involved in some way with her death, but it's also possible that there are other players involved.

- Bertrand does not focus much on this bit because Bertrand is young and his priorities are different. The interesting thing about using these childhood flashbacks for the characters is that we will always get an incomplete picture, if only because the kids' priorities are different, and for them these side discussions will always count as "adult stuff". Big, scary, too complicated to understand.

- We do get a mention of Maxwell's weight (finally!). The writers frame it as Maxwell losing his weight after his mother's death and getting his regular exercise with his brother. This we get to know by Bartie Sr's fat-shaming comment about not wanted to see Maxwell get back to his "wide suits" (Seriously. Fuck this guy).

• Hypocrite alert! Godfrey who treats his perfectionist daughter as a failure just for existing and being a girl, now thinks he can yap about "being too hard" on one's children. Go fuck yourself Godfrey Not Gao (this nickname was brought to you by @callmetippytumbles).

• The bit that's most important to Bertrand is that he tries to pass an overdue bill to his dad, and his father ignores it to concentrate on "bigger" things. Which kinda leads you to believe that the problem existed waaaaay before Bartie Sr started believing in miracle cures for his mysterious illness. In fact I'm pretty sure both those things might be fabricated.

• So that's what Bertrand is trying to tell us. That Bartie Sr expected his sons to understand responsibility when he was not exactly ready to live up to that example himself. It still doesn't make sense though, considering every time Bertrand spoke about Bartie Sr it was as if he had to uphold the same legacy, and everytime Maxwell spoke about him it was to highlight what a disappointment he was to his father...and funny enough they've now switched roles.

• Anyway, Maxwell is now more inclined to believe Bartie Sr has turned a new leaf, while Bertrand is wary. He is not wrong about the controlling aspect though, even when his dad is trying to be nice he's being a controlling ass.

• Hana comes in and comforts Bertrand, in a scene I found pretty touching. She knows plenty about controlling, overbearing parents who expect plenty from her but fail to measure up to the little that she asks of them. I love how she makes the point that, having support or company of any form, works to lessen the pain of that kind of upbringing...and she knows this because she never had it.

• The bonding that takes place between Hana and Bertrand is lovely, although it's marred by the fact that were we going by the original idea of the Beaumont brothers' lives, Maxwell would be the one she'd be comforting.

• Two bits that stood out to me were where Bertrand offered to make up for all those years of disappointment and pain that Hana suffered, by being a sort of stand-in older brother now - and Hana's response to the whole idea of mending bridges:

I love the fact that she says this even as she still maintains her complicated relationship with her mother. It's small but a lot more than she was allowed to say earlier. In Book 3, a lot of what they had Hana say to Lorelai was more for Lorelai's benefit than her own (constantly educating her and telling the family that the most important thing was that they be happy together). Her responses were centered around Lorelai's comfort, not Hana's conflict. At least here, she gets to state (while safely away from her parents) how complicated her relationship with her parents is. I just hope this is not the last time we hear about it.

• It's now time for the rehearsal dinner! Everyone's seated at a pop-up restaurant Blake and Jess have made for the wedding, and includes the courses for the special day. It's bruschetta, a quiche and the wedding cake for dessert.

•

Auntie Bitch I hope you realize that the biggest freeloaders in this house are your own nephew and niece! Drake doesn't have a job until his wedding is over (unless one counts moaning and griping while enjoying shit that his BFF has paid for, his job (oh...wait...maybe that's why "Constantly Complaining Freeloader" was listed as a job description in his Italian Restaurant scene lmao)). The other biggest freeloader is your niece, who didn't mind accepting money from Maxwell and then turned around and acted towards Bertrand like she didn't need his damn money that she was already using.

• Also for the amount of complaining Leona has been doing for her own niece's wedding she might as well have not hosted them at all. You took the responsibility, you made all the guests you were hosting do work for you and spent all your time mocking them for not having the kind of specific skillsets you grew up with. If you wanted to stay alone with your sister in this crusty dilapidated ranch where you probably don't even pay people fairly, you could have told Savannah to go somewhere else. Like Applewood. Or Ramsford idk. You couldn't even save the saddle your niece would have wanted for the wedding, and if that's not a pointer to what a failure you are, Leona, IDK what is. So maybe stop acting like you're better than the nobles and keep quiet.

• Bianca states that she has never depended on the Crown yet somehow left behind both her children whose well-being was largely being maintained from the Crown coffers???

• But also given the response to Liam I have a feeling we might have a flashback from her next chapter. While she doesn't appear as angry as her sister, there is definitely an underlying bitterness there that I think the narrative might explore before we leave Texas. Idk.

• Bartie Sr focuses his attention on us again, insisting that he is like a father figure to us. You can either firmly refuse (my favourite option), express pride in House Beaumont (which pleases Bartie Sr no end) or be polite (in which case Liam lets out a cryptic "how generous of you" aimed at Bartie Sr it one point, showing us that he's not very impressed. Hmm. Hmm.)

• Bartie Sr is being controlling again, complaining that the quiche is not an elegant main course and insisting to Savannah that she try whatever he is demanding for the wedding. He keeps saying "trust me Savannah, you'll love it!" as if he knows her tastes better than she herself does.

• Chuck tries to offer cake, and Bartie Sr in his eagerness to refuse accidentally tosses it over on Leona's clothes.

• That's kiiind of a breaking point with Leona, and to sum it all up, THIS happens:

Jess has seen and participated in utter chaos, okay. So for her to appear all flummoxed and say "it was...a lot", it really, really has to be a lot.

• My favourite parts have to be Hana and Liam thoroughly enjoying the food fight and finding it cathartic, because they're the two who most need to channel their repressed energies into that kind of catharsis. Drake and Maxwell don't feel this need as much as they do because they already have ways and opportunities to channel it.

• The fight allows both the nobles and the Walkers to meet on common ground - common enough ground that Bertrand can (if we choose) finally tell his father that he and Savannah can manage their own wedding, thank you very much.

• Funny how Bertrand is expected to stand up to his father and ensure that what Savannah wants is not ignored, yet Savannah herself never makes even a quarter of the effort that he does, in making Bertrand comfortable in her home. Why does Bertrand have to do all the work in this relationship? Why do I only see Savannah complaining when Bertrand is not doing things exactly as she wants them to be done, yet not even lifting a finger when he's the one who needs the help and reassurance? Perhaps the best option is if he becomes runaway groom.

• We get to give one (1) solitary fuck about the country we're leading when we're back in the bedroom after this whole skirmish has gone down.

• LI diamond scene! At a moonlit hot spring nearby. The scenes mostly include the mandatory admiration for the lingerie, awe at the scenery and once the sex is done, an exploration into family and children from the would-be parents.

Liam: Calls the MC a "twilight goddess fit for worship" as soon as he sees her with her lacy lingerie in the moonlight. If you've done those scenes, there's a mention of the Forgotten Falls and the Blue Grotto and how Liam has a penchant for whisking the MC away to secluded watery places. (Liam also mentions finding a matching pearl to the first one they got at the Blue Grotto, even though the writers have practically forgotten what has happened to that first one 🙄).

The MC can choose to either go fast or slow in the love scene, and afterwards, Liam wonders aloud whether all families are complicated. The MC can counter this, by telling Liam they can ensure their child never gets to the point that Bertrand or Hana have by ensuring the child has their space to be open about how they feel.

Caption: Spring Fling

Hana: The two women mostly admire each other in silence (Hana tells the MC she would simply like to look at her as the MC gives a twirl) and the MC suggests expanding the "sample size" of Hana's lingerie because Hana in the moonlight is a vision. Hana offers to massage the MC's shoulders, and speaks about wanting to get away from the chaos and check in on her. Hana wants to take as much of their alone time as possible to check if the MC is doing okay, which IMO is her way of maintaining a relationship - by giving her partner space to talk about how they feel, something she rarely had the opportunity to do. She also admits to how exhilarating the food fight was. Hana is playful and teasing in her love scene, and brings the MC to the point where she will beg for more.

Once they are done, the two speak about how being in this place is like being in a fairytale, and there's a particularly lovely line nestled in this bit:

I wished for storybooks with scenes just like this as a kid. Not ones where the princess got rescued by the prince or the knight...but where she found love and happiness on her own...and the freedom to embrace them.

It's...it's so beautiful 😭

Caption: Woodland Nymphs

Maxwell: Now obviously Maxwell has the most personal experience among the four this time, since it's his father that returned home, and it's his family that is now dealing with some tough, complicated questions. Some of that shows in this scene. It begins with Maxwell seeing the MC in her lingerie and confession he almost forgot she had them...which is a good thing otherwise he would never be able to concentrate on anything else. He speaks to her about all the things he loves about her and about their relationship - especially how much they make each other laugh. Underwater, the two let go of their restraint and make love with abandon.

The conversation that follows is the most important, exploring Maxwell's feelings about his father's return. He doesn't have a lot of memories of his father - most of it was from when he was very young, or from Bertrand's eyes. Maxwell is very happy that Bartie Sr has returned, and wants him to see how happy he is with the MC. He speaks of wanting to tell him about the social season, about marrying the MC, about his bestseller book. There is a cute bit where the MC asks whether he would tell Bartie Sr about the hippo tattoo and Maxwell seems almost terrified by that option. But overall, there is nervousness in his scene, and also hope. He definitely is invested in making his old man proud. Proving himself has always been a theme with Maxwell, and that need possibly will increase with the arrival of his father.

Caption: Blue Lagoon

Drake: Calls the MC in her lingerie in the moonlight, "art that should be in a museum". The two admire each other in their new lingerie, and then admire the scenery. Drake has brought the MC to the hot spring mostly because it was rumoured to be called "Makeout Point", and he's always been curious to see what the big deal was. The MC can point out the beauty and romantic potential of the area, mentioning that she can imagine a sixteen year old swooning if her high school sweetheart brought her there, "or a duchess, if her marshmallow brought her here". During the love scene, Drake likens her to a siren, the sex can either be rough or gentle and the MC can either take control or allow him to.

Towards the end, the two talk wonder how their child might be, who they would resemble. There's a bit of banter back and forth about how the world is not ready for their collective sass 😄 I think because Drake is the most comfortable with his own family now, that his conversations with the MC about family focus largely on his memories of good times, and on what their child will be like.

Caption: Spring Fever

• Why the hell are you guys ruining all that nice lingerie in water!!!

• After a few days, and presumably on the day of the wedding, Savannah comes to us, shocked and worried, telling us that Bertrand is gone. This could be either a fakeout leading to him trying to get something nice and romantic done for her, or his insecurities cropping up IDK.

• General Thoughts:

- As much as I'd LOVE for the twist to be that Bertrand has realized this marriage will never work and has called it all off, I know for a fact they won't let that happen. Either his insecurities have come to a head with Bartholemy's return and he needs time to clear his head, or he's gone all heroic and tried to get Savannah's saddle for her, which we then have to pay diamonds to retrieve.

- Some way or the other that saddle is going to feature.

- They'll have Bertrand do something heroic I guess so that Leona will FINALLY stop being a whiny asshole. And Savannah as usual? Will not even lift her little finger.

- I'm more worried about what Bartie Sr will be upto once he's back at Ramsford estate! Esp given that his controlling has already begun at an event as innocuous as a wedding. ALSO given that this man will be back in Cordonia!!

- We're obviously going to get more hints about our pregnancy in the coming chapter, that I'm sure we'll ignore coz we don't want to jump into conclusions like the last time.

- Hana's bonding scene with Bertrand reminds me a little of a scene in Book 2, where she speaks of how Bertrand reminds her a little of her father...in, like, a good way.

- If it turns out that Godfrey and Barthelemy were indeed involved in Eleanor's death, it will be the ultimate irony. It would mean that the present occupants of the duchies that were once undermining the Crown...are now their stanchest allies. Lucretia and Olivia's parents vs Olivia, Godfrey vs Madeleine, and Bartie Sr vs Bertrand and Maxwell. It would be a nice contrast.

- Istg if they try and make HAKIM AND JOELLE suspicious too I will literally throw hands 😡

- Jesus, the amount of retconning going on in this book. That scene would have lost nothing by making Bertrand the guy who was desperate to prove himself to his father and Maxwell the one who had mixed feelings. Having both of them overhear that conversation rather than one would have been fine too. But this is one in a looooooong list of things that the team is shifting around, believing no one will notice. Maybe I should just call this series The Royal Retcon from now on because there is more of that happening than actual babymaking!!

- I'm pretty intrigued by Liam's lukewarm reaction to Bartie Sr personally. What does he know. Why doesn't Liam tell me and why doesn't the MC ask!!

- Bartie Sr spends surprisingly little time with his own namesake, but perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised since Junior's own parents are hardly seen with him either.

- Next chapter is the wedding (if we can find the groom, that is), Savannah getting her dream entry (possibly if we pay the diamonds) and hints that we may be pregnant that will culminate in the big reveal at the end. Yay?

- I know I haven't gotten out a QT for Book 1 in two weeks but those past two weeks have been filled with lots of IRL stuff. Hopefully I'll get back to that soon.

- Until next week, folks!

#long post #trh quick thoughts #the royal heir #trh qts #king liam #hana lee #drake walker #maxwell beaumont #bertrand beaumont #savannah walker

[lizzybeth1986]

Sigh I can't with TRH,they really had Savannah be again the center of MC's story??? Like they had her be the first one to know sigh 😔

Aaaaaand there is a chance we might have to spend another day in Yeehaw Hell (there is also a chance we might be flying back and giving them the news in Cordonia...but let's see). But I feel they're going to tie up more loose ends next chapter and have the MC announce it to her friends and ladies of court in Texas first.

But yeah, somehow I'm always going to feel sore that the writers maneuvered for Savannah to be the first to hear it from us and not our actual LIs.

(I'm mostly more offended that Savannah chose us as bridesmaids when Lady Kiara of Castelserraillian was right there. Stinky friend and stinky person from a stinky family indeed)

#ask me #ask lizzy #the royal heir #anonymous

[lizzybeth1986]

Oh wow, I'll be sure to keep those in mind as I play through! I've never replayed these books before, so it'll be interesting to go through them knowing everything we know now. I did see that you have ideas even if you're not going to start writing, and I was wondering if you'd share them 👀 also, I feel like I should end these with a special signature so that you'll know it's me xD

Oooh I have a suggestion for the code name! Since this lovely exchange began with talking about Madeleine (and largely spoke of Hana's treatment), then we ended up exploring more about Kiara and Penelope...maybe we should call you the Courtly Ladies Anon!! 😁 What say?

Replays are amazing! So much jumps out at you that you miss the first time around, and even though PB did Hana so dirty, I honestly found her such a delight to romance!

Okay so...I have two fic series ideas I'm seriously planning for - both revolving around Kiara x Hana because I developed a new appreciation for that pair once the series ended.

The first idea is actually a continuation of a 4 part series I'd been working on last year! It's called That Old Grape Juice - supposed to feature two pairs of people in two different kinds of relationships, and the common thread between them all would be wine. So every chapter would feature, and be named after, different wines.

The first two chapters of it I'd written last year (they were centered around Liam and Olivia's friendship, and were set during the Lythikos leg of the social season. You can read them here: Part 1, Part 2). The third and fourth were going to be in Castelserraillian, during the time the group visits Kiara's estate. I seriously wanted to highlight there what she must have been going through when the group was just swooping in on her to get support, and have someone from the group at least get an insight into what was happening to her. Originally it was going to be Drake, but once the Book 3 Lythikos sections happened I could never quite look at that pair the same way again.

Eventually a friend of mine (@pixieferry! Who is awesome 😀) suggested Hana! And while initially I was afraid of how much of the story I'd need to change, I realized that it was in fact a way, way better idea. Hana is naturally a more empathetic person, and has had struggles of her own in that estate. So an exchange between them wouldn't simply revolve around just her, but also aim to give Kiara some measure of comfort as well.

The second idea...mostly...came out of this one, because once I started making my notes I found myself imagining other aspects of their story! In terms of the timeline of their romance (in this fic universe), That Old Grape Juice really happens at the midpoint of their story. So I wanted to do a whole series on them falling in love with each other! The plan is to set it in the beginning around the time of the Engagement Tour (so I can address/chamge around some of the bullshit that happened there too), and then move towards them realizing their feelings, then each other's feelings, then tentatively navigating that romance through the second half of the Unity Tour (I've only conceptualized till that point haha I'm still doing my reading up 😅). So that is going to be a whole series! Not just two chapters like That Old Grape Juice.

Some other ideas I have...hmmm....I did have an idea for a rewrite of Sloane's scene in her mom's house in Washington, featuring only her and her MC. I also wanted to do a short series maybe about Hayden's first days staying with Sloane. There were also a couple Liam x MC and Hayden x MC one-shots I had in mind, and a Scarlett x Kate (VoS) series. But rn the Kiara x Hana one is on the top of my mind and I really want to take the time to sit down and write it!!

#ask me #ask lizzy #fic ideas #courtly ladies anon #i'm at this point where i'm in two minds about continuing the trh qts #or just dropping them and doing this fic series #coz gosh do i love those girls and want to see them living their best lives #and i want to write them front and center not as footnotes to someone else's story