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aegonbeingfakeisracist · 2 years

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@severelyuniquebarbarian I’m going to take this as an opportunity to discuss the ways all the tie in books connect with the main series in depth. 😂 Forgive me.

The tie in books fall into two categories, really: the Megamorphs and the Chronicles. The Megamorphs are very similar to the main series, with the same characters, but they’re longer and told from alternating perspectives, rather than the single PoV of each main series book - so basically an adventure-of-the-week with some body horror and trauma thrown in. The first two I don’t really have strong feelings about - one’s a standard “Visser Three has come up with a plan to trap us, and we must find a solution” with some convenient amnesia thrown in, and the other involves them going back in time to the Cretaceous period and running away from dinosaurs because the series was written by a pair of Star Trek nerds. I enjoy them, but if I’m being totally honest, a lot of that is childhood fondness carried through to adulthood, so someone reading for the first time as an adult probably wouldn’t miss it if they were to skip them, especially because the ending of MM 2 should be important in a character arc way but isn’t. The third and fourth Megamorphs are awesome, though - one’s time travelling to stop another time traveller from screwing with history and the other is a for-want-of-a-nail story about what would have happened if they never cut through the construction site. I really love them and would recommend them, but not nearly as strongly as I would the Chronicles.

Now onto the Chronicles! Those are basically the prequels. They provide a lot of the context of the war to explain the Yeerk war with the Andalites, what went down on the Hork Bajir homeworld, how the Yeerks ended up on Earth, and so on. These are what I’m really talking about when I say that a lot of my favourite material comes from the side stories. These are a lot more relevant than the Megamorphs, even though they don’t feature the main characters of the core series beyond just framing devices, for a couple reasons. The first is just for thematic reasons - Animorphs is fundamentally a story about war, and the contextualization that the Chronicles provide is essential to conveying the scope of that theme. But also, they’re plot relevant, which is true in many ways. There’s a reveal in book 23 of the main series that comes out of absolutely nowhere if you haven’t read the Andalite Chronicles first (I will refrain from going on a tangent about 90s childrens publishing), plus the plot is driven by a character that you’ll know nothing about if you haven’t read THBC. In 34, a different character shows up that was introduced in the Hork Bajir Chronicles, and the entire book revolves around what went down in that prequel. The Ellimist Chronicles takes place in the middle of book 54. More broadly, character actions and motivations have a great deal to do with these past events.

Visser is kind of the odd book out. I used to think it should have been categorized as a Chronicles, but I no longer think it’s as like the others as I once thought. The Andalite and Hork Bajir Chronicles fit very naturally as part of a set. The Ellimist Chronicles is different, but it’s also very much a young alien coming of age standalone story. Visser is...not that. And even from a plot level, it doesn’t match - the Chronicles are essentially whole book flashbacks that don’t involve the actual Animorphs as characters. Visser shifts back and forth between the past and the present. It’s a really great book, but the more I think about it, the stranger it is that it exists as something so different from the rest of the series. It’s biggest similarity to the Ellimist Chronicles is a very specific storytelling choice - they’re both technicallly side stories that don’t impact the main plot, but the framing devices are such that they fit in very specific places in the main series, which TAC and THBC do not - you just have to read those before 23 and you’ll be fine. But TEC, like I said, takes place within 54, and 35 leads directly into Visser.

A while ago, I wrote a spreadsheet for a friend containing which books I insist she read and which she can skip, plus a little info about each one. Here is a snippet:

Anyway. None of this is relevant. You just gave me an opening and I pounced. 😂 TL;DR: they’re great, read them.

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aegonbeingfakeisracist · 3 years

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Sorry to bother you yet again! 😂 I wanted to ask you: do you also take issue with the way Grrm associates beauty ans being heighborn or having highborn blood? This quote esp irks me: "she had all the beauty that her elder sister lacked… but Obara’s mother had been an Oldtown whore, whilst Nym was born from thenoblest blood of old Volantis." I mean you can say that's Areo's classism seeping through but Grrm does have a tendancy to make highborn ladies be otherworldly beautiful.. 🙄

You’re never bothering me, nothing I love more than babbling at people!

For sure. It’s rooted in something that makes sense, but taken to such an extreme that it feels silly - people with good nutrition, lower stress, etc. have better skin, sure, and things like clothing and context play a huge role in how good looking people are perceived to be, but the heavy fixation on how beautiful highborn people are is...weird.

One of the things that sticks out to me is the teeth thing. The characters whose teeth are notably crooked or yellowed or whatever are usually either a) non highborn characters, b) somehow immoral characters or characters from a family that is mostly portrayed negatively, or c) both a and b. There are a few exceptions, like Brienne (for whom there’s a lot of other stuff going on pertaining to these weird beauty standard things, but I digress), but not all that many. In today’s world, that would make sense - cosmetic orthodontics are extremely, extremely expensive. People with money have better looking teeth than those without. But having that same pattern exist in this medieval Europe fantasy setting is absurd, given that history of orthodontics and the dietary patterns that may result in yellowed teeth and cavities.

Martin talks about food a lot. The highborn eat cakes and custards and desserts with practically every meal. At least some of them should be getting cavities, but we don’t see that. Take Robert - he consumes huge quantities of alcohol, known to be bad for both oral health and oral appearance, but Ned notes his teeth as white, not yellowed. He says Cersei has “perfect teeth”; Catelyn says that same thing about Jaime. Stannis is grinding his teeth all the time, but we don’t see any indication that there are serious issues associated with that. The smallfolk are not consuming nearly that much sugar! Why is there so much emphasis on their bad teeth?

Aside from the teeth thing, it’s really very strange. Like, the whole ~Targaryen beauty thing. Are we expected to believe that so many Targaryens were exceptionally beautiful despite being disturbingly inbred, but that random peasants can’t be just as good looking? I’m generally inclined to think it’s just the visibility and the romanticized shine on them because they’re royalty and have money to dress well and take care of themselves that the smallfolk do not, on top of the better nutrition thing, which is similar to Areo’s association of Nym’s beauty with how she was highborn on both sides, but I’m...not really sure that holds true, given the general descriptions of lowborn characters - who barely even exist?

Like, there are plenty of reasons to explain why Nym is perceived as more beautiful, right? She dresses elegantly in silk where Obara more often wears men’s attire and riding leathers; she seems to pay more attention to her hair than Obara, who just ties hers in a knot; and so on. These things have nothing to do with birth, and may not even have to do with actual appearance. But even without Areo making those weird comments, the fact that Nymeria is viewed as so beautiful and Obara is not contributes to the broader association of high status with beauty. That’s something that could be making a point, but I don’t think it actually is - or maybe it is, but I just have no idea what it’s supposed to be.

It also combines with the age thing, too - there is so much focus on how beautiful these, like, thirteen year old highborn girls are that it’s just weird. Also creepy. What, no awkward teenagers? No one has acne? No one’s tripping over their feet? I dunno. There are worse things, but it’s definitely strange.

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aegonbeingfakeisracist · 2 years

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@severelyuniquebarbarian Amazing, love it. Are you planning on reading the side stories, too? Visser is one of my favourite books in the series, so I’d highly recommend them. A friend of mine is working her way through the audiobooks, but they haven’t made audiobooks of the side stories yet, which makes me sad, because I realized only after she started that half the reason I wanted her to read them was for the side stories.

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aegonbeingfakeisracist · 4 years

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I think one of the best arguments for Aegon being real is the fact that he's written as pretty much doomed. Poc dont get to be much more than plot device in these books. Just as Quentyn's death was used as a plot device, just as Oberyn was killed to 'subvert our expectations', just as Baelor died for.. literally no reason, Aegon won't get to be anything more than a plot device for Daenerys. He's there to give her 'something to fight for', to further her own character arc. He doesn't get (part 1)

to be his own character. Him turning away from Dany to go west is actually seen as a fatal mistake by the fandom. Even his training is meant to mirror hers (he learns the same languages she does). We don't get to know Aegon's thoughts about his mother and sister, his most important scene is once again about Daenerys. I swear this infuriates me to no end. Why is Aegon a 'subversion of the hidden prince trope', when poc already don't get to be heroes in fantasy books? (part 2)

Wouldn't it be more satisfying if Aegon got justice for his family and lived on to carry their legacy? Wouldn't it be better than the same tired cynical story of another person seeking justice and getting punished for it ? (Sorry for the rant!!) (Part 3)

You get me.

Baelor dying is so impossibly frustrating, and I wish I had the words to properly express my mixed feelings about the issue. I love me a good heroic sacrifice and someone dying to defend the principles they believe in. And in order to get that same emotional impact, yeah, Baelor probably had to die. But why couldn’t we have gotten that after getting to see more of him and why he was as beloved as he was? A common theme in the story is that good intentions don’t always pan out into good results. People that start off promising can be corrupted by power. But by the time of Baelor’s death, he was still a good guy. His last action was to fight his own family to defend an innocent hedge knight. He’d been an extremely competent Hand of the King, presiding over a period of peace. He was a skilled warrior, administrator, and diplomat, with a firm sense of right and wrong - as Duncan put it, “[h]e saved me once with his sword, and once with a word, even though he was a dead man as he stood there”. He was the hope of Westeros. But we didn’t get to see him interacting with his parents or his wife or his sons. We get a small glimpse of the kind of man he was, and it’s great, but why couldn’t we have gotten more? Why couldn’t we have gotten to see, I don’t know, the conversation between him and Egg where he told him to go apologize? Or something between him and Daeron - “his royal father’s wishes prevailed” when it came to the funeral arrangements, and “Daeron II had a peaceable nature”. I would have loved so much to see their interactions as king and Hand, or the contrast between Baelor and Bloodraven as the angel and devil on Daeron’s shoulders.

The Dunk and Egg novellas after the first are set during a very troubled time in Westerosi history, and it begins with Baelor’s death in the first - this death marks a loss of innocence. Baelor was a young, genuinely good man and a great leader, cut down before he could become the greatest king in the history of Westeros. He was one of the few men that lived up to the idealized, heroic image. He fought to make institutions better. After his death, a cloud falls over Westeros. We see the darkness in the later novellas - the aftermath of the Spring Sickness, Bloodraven’s police state. The world post-Baelor is not at all the same as what we see in The Hedge Knight. Maekar notes that every time a crop fails, people will say that Baelor would not have let it happen. And the thing is, saying that would absolutely be an oversimplification. Some of what went wrong, Baelor would not have been able to stop. But through competent management, some of it he would have been able to improve - it’s hard to imagine him letting Bloodraven create a surveillance state or completely neglecting his domestic duties in favour of obsessing over Bittersteel in Essos! Bloodraven probably wouldn’t have even been his Hand, given what we know about them advising Daeron to do entirely different things. Because we don’t see that preceding golden age, Baelor feels closer to a plot device than a character, and the impact and feeling of loss after him isn’t as strong as it could be. Like, take A Game of Thrones, right - Ned Stark gets a large chunk of the book about his successes and failures and interiority. We see him decide that, yeah, he will confess to anything to protect his kids. And then we get to see the impact of his death on both the short and long term, with different outcomes specifically linked. With Baelor, we see a good, likable guy, and the tragedy of him being cut down in his prime, but so little about anything about him that doesn’t directly pertain to Dunk and his trial. Part of the point is that a good king is not enough - inherited power cannot lead to long term success. One good king does not guarantee his successor will also be good. So in order to emphasize that, shouldn’t we have gotten more of Baelor instead of killing him in his first appearance?

And again, it’s frustrating that the character whose death symbolizes the loss of innocence is the visibly brown one. Why couldn’t the necessary loss of innocence we see in the Dunk and Egg era been the result of, say, Baelor accidentally killing Maekar and becoming a more hardened, cynical man as a result? The throne could have still ultimately passed to Aegon V through essentially the same way it did in canon - Baelor's children predeceasing him, the throne passing to Aerys, a succession crisis from which Egg emerges victorious. Or Baelor could have died, leading to the childless Valarr becoming a harsh, stern king for a time before the throne eventually passed to Aegon. We’d still have the tragedy of losing a good man in both these circumstances, all that changes is how - it doesn’t have to be death. But the brother that explicitly resembled his Dornish mother had to die to pave the way for his white passing brother/white passing nephew to become king.

Then there’s the Dark Sister issue. As I’ve mentioned before, characters of colour are so frequently excluded from the magical side of the story, even in things as tangentially related as Valyrian steel swords. The Martells don’t seem to have an ancestral weapon, let alone any connection to the water magic of their ancestors. And we have zero indication that Baelor - the half Martell heir apparent to the Iron Throne, a known warrior - ever got to wield one of his familly’s ancestral swords. His uncle Bloodraven (notably younger than him) got Dark Sister. The most likely explanation as to how is that Daeron gave it to him. But when was this, and why? Was Baelor passed over for the sword? Did he wield it before his death? Given how he was noted to have his sword sheathed by his side before he went into the flames, that one seems unlikely. Meaning he never had the sword, and Daeron passed over his non-white heir to give the ancestral sword to his white half brother. Teenage Jon Snow is gifted House Mormont’s ancestral Valyrian steel sword, with the pommel even changed to indicate that it’s his sword, now. Grown man Baelor that had proved himself time and time again did not receive his family’s sword. This is the intersection of two problems - characters of colour being excluded from the magical side of the story, and Targaryens of colour being cast aside as unimportant. Baelor and his children all die. Rhaenys is brutally murdered. Aegon is surrounded by “he’s a fake!” theories and is doomed no matter what. But Daenerys gets to be central to the story. Aegon V, who is treated as white even though he’s biracial, gets to be central to the story. There’s no reason it had to be Egg rather than Matarys; there’s no reason it had to be Daenerys and not Rhaenys. Baelor gets a lot more agency than most other characters of colour. It’s not that he doesn’t have a personality. It’s not that I don’t love him and appreciate the choices he made. But since we don’t get to see more of him, his primary purpose is to drive the plot - all his decisions are to advance the character arcs of other people.

Also, I have issues with the origin of the Water Gardens story. It was Daenerys that had to tell her son to keep his people in mind with every decision? Seriously? Maron isn’t even named in that story. He’s referred to as “one of [Doran’s] ancestors”. He was the Prince of Dorne, and his heir is only referred to as Daenerys’s, as if it were she that were the real ruler. Maron Martell is one of the poster boys for keeping his people in mind - he joined the Seven Kingdoms! That would not have been a popular decision! But he did it anyway because it was what he needed to do. Women are constantly neglected in this story, so while I’m often very happy about the female ancestors we do get information on, I find it frustrating that in this case, it’s information on a white woman that comes at the expense of a brown man.

It gets even more uncomfortable when we think about the parallels between the Water Gardens and Summerhall. Summerhall is the Targaryen equivalent of Water Gardens. Both are pleasure palaces. Doran stays at the Water Gardens, rather than Sunspear. Daeron the Drunken stayed at Summerhall, rather than Dragonstone. Where it gets uncomfortable is when we start talking about why these castles were built. Maron built the Water Gardens explicitly for Daenerys. Daeron built Summerhall to commemorate the peace he’d made. While it would be logical to infer that part of the reason for the construction of Summerhall was Daeron wanting to do something for Queen Myriah, it’s not in the text. Daeron and Myriah’s marriage is inextricably linked to Maron and Daenerys’s. Daeron and Myriah’s marriage ended the war. Daeron’s younger sister marrying Myriah’s younger brother brought Dorne into the realm. Both marriages were happy. Both marriages involved a woman leaving her home to go somewhere extremely different. But where white Daenerys gets a speech that makes it explicit that the palace her husband built was for her, the reader can only realize that something similar was true about brown Myriah through inference. Maron treated Daenerys spectacularly well. We have no way of knowing how Daeron treated Myriah. Myriah’s name isn’t even spelled consistently.

Now that I’ve gone on my pre-series characters rant, Aegon! I’ve said many times that it’s gross for him to just be a plot device. It’s unfair. He’s got death written all over him, and I hate it. You’re so right - what even is the point of having him be anyone other than Aegon? No matter what, he’s still dead, so why go off on this weird, needlessly complicated thing? It’s a logical flow that I dpn’t even understand. Why should he be fake? To prove what Varys says about power residing where the people believe it to reside. Then why is he doomed? Because he’s not really a Targaryen. Then how does that prove that power resides where the people believe it to reside? There are “too many secret princes”, but there’s nothing wrong with the ridiculous concept that Aegon being is Illyrio’s son by a wife that was a female line Blackfyre descendant and Illyrio is for some reason all in favour of sending him to be raised by someone else for the sake of conquering a land ravaged by war when he could instead gain more power and influence in Essos? How? It’s hard to see what the point of it is - if Aegon were to live and be king at the end of the series, I can maybe buy it. But we all know he won’t. The only argument is “foreshadowing” - which, you can’t really say whether something is foreshadowing or not until you know what the payoff is. Right now, there’s just as much setup for him to be who he says he is. And while there are so many cool ways his story could be taken...he is, indeed, just used as a plot device.

As the son of a Dornishwoman, Aegon is a descendant of Rhoynish refugees. He has a greater connection to the Rhoyne than most of his Dornish contemporaries! We meet him travelling along it! It would be perfectly reasonable - and very cool - to see him using rediscovering water magic, to contrast Dany hatching the first dragon eggs in a century. He could carry on his family’s legacy. It could be made extremely clear that yeah, Dany needs him and it is not true that Dany doesn’t need anything but her army and dragons to conquer Westeros. We could get emphasis on how Daenerys has nothing waiting for her in Westeros and could have done literally anything, but is too busy being fixated on the idea of “returning” to claim the throne, while Aegon very much does have ties to Westeros through his living maternal family and the need to avenge his murdered mother and sister. But nah, can’t have that.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said I wish Rhaenys had lived, and how I think the Young Griff story could have been more powerful with her. But it honestly doesn’t matter, because neither of them are allowed to matter. I talk a lot about how characters of colour are not associated with the magical side of the story, and we see even more of that by thinking about prophecy. We get all this talk about the prince that was promised, with people trying to interpret what it means and who it is. Aegon is portrayed as a false lead, with it really being Daenerys, with no one in the present actually believing he has a part to play in this magical story. But the Martell sigil is literally a sun with a spear through it - a “bleeding star”, so to speak. As Elia’s children, Rhaenys and Aegon were both born “beneath a bleeding star”. It should come up, but it doesn’t. Quentyn must die because he's not special enough to tame a dragon. Oberyn has to die to subvert expectations. Baelor has to die to save Dunk’s life and clear a path for Egg to take the throne. And Rhaenys and Aegon cannot have any connection to magic because that would make the white characters less special. The only reason Aegon (real or not, it doesn’t matter) gets to be in the story at all is that he looks white. Aegon looks like Dany, so he can be painted as an obstacle for her to fight. It can become a pseudofeminist story about a woman challenging an entitled man who thinks he ought to rule because he’s male. If Rhaenys - a visibly brown woman - were in the story, it would quickly become apparent that that’s not what the conflict is at all. So she can’t be, just as Aegon can’t matter in and of himself.

There’s this novel. It’s called Sorcerer to the Crown. It’s a cross between low fantasy and regency romance, with two leads of colour. In it, there’s a scene where the female lead hatches three familiars’ eggs. A familiar - ha! - scene, to one in ASOIAF. But it’s striking to compare how in Sorcerer to the Crown, it’s a nineteen year old brown woman that gets this powerful scene. She gets to go from a position of weakness and being used by people around her to a position of strength. The novel doesn’t just involve people of colour, it centres them. Prunella and Zacharias are the story. They are the heroes. They don’t have to justify their existence and power to any of the other characters demanding they apologize for taking up space. It’s hard not to think of that whenever I think about how every character of colour in ASOIAF is used to prove how special the white characters are.

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aegonbeingfakeisracist · 3 years

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One thing that never fails to anger me is theorists referring to Quentyn as 'the Sun that rose in the West and set in the East". Ugh it's gross on sooo many levels..It's bad enough that Quentyn died because Grrm used him as a plot device (to drive a wedge between Dany and the martells, I suspect) but now you're telling me that Quentyn dying is some sort of metaphora about Dany being able to bear a child again? Like, that is so damn gross and the worse is that it's probably canon :(

Yuuuuuup. The way theorists talk about Quentyn in general is gross. Oh, he’s a casualty of vengeance and representative of how Doran doesn’t actually keep the people in mind! He’s a deconstruction of a hero’s journey! He’s the wedge between Dany and the Martells! Have you guys ever thought about the fact that he’s Quentyn and that matters, too?

I’ve been accused of only caring about ~representation in the sense of whether characters of colour live and are important or whatever. But I have to reiterate that that’s not true, and Quentyn is the perfect example of why. It’s not that he died that bothers me, it’s the way and purpose for which he died. He died in part for the juxtaposition of his failure against Dany’s success in terms of riding a dragon, when by rights, he ought to have died for Arianne’s arc, or better yet, live. The juxtaposition between him and Arianne could have been so, so gorgeous. House Nymeros Martell, the unity of Nymeria’s sun and the Martell spear, represented by Arianne and Quentyn! But nah, he’s got to be a metaphor.

it’s just so frustrating after Oberyn, who was the example of flaws in the work that didn’t become apparent until later. Introducing a character of colour only to kill them just a few chapters after their introduction for the sake of someone else’s story is fine once. Not fine when it’s repeated - at least once, with Quentyn, and probably again with Arianne. It’s just gross.

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aegonbeingfakeisracist · 3 years

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What do you think were some of Doran's shortcomings as a father? Do you agree with those who say he failed to adequately prepare Arianne for rulling?

Martell Communication Issues (TM). The root of the troubles within the Martell family is Doran’s failure to talk to his kids about literally anything. Arianne and Quentyn adore their father. But his failure to actually talk to them as people is harmful. It would not be all that much of an exaggeration to say that pretty much almost everything that goes wrong for the Martells over the course of the series is can be traced back to Doran not talking to Arianne directly. That and his protectiveness.

Doran is not overprotective in a way that people immediately recognize as such, but it seems clear that that played a heavy role in why he did not communicate more with his children and thus damaged his relationship with Arianne. And it’s not an overprotectiveness that sprang up out of nowhere - it’s there for a reason. His little sister was murdered. His toddler niece and his infant nephew were murdered. And his reaction to that was to remind himself again and again of the need to protect both the children in the Water Gardens and his own children. Protecting them isn’t just about not going to war - Doran tries to shelter his children by not telling them about what he intends to do. He struggles to recognize that Arianne is now a grown woman, not the child he remembers, because he’s frightened of what her growing up will mean. Doran was about Arianne’s age when he was left as castellan at Sunspear while his mother, sister, and brother went on their betrothal tour throughout Westeros. But he can’t leave Arianne in charge because his own emotional issues make him struggle with the idea of putting too much pressure on her.

I do think there’s some element of truth to the idea that he should have done more to prepare Arianne to rule. I emphasize some because this is point frequently made by Doran’s detractors in a way that is not fair - either to Doran or to Arianne, because Arianne has way more skills than these people give her credit for. This needs to be stressed because this world is set up in a way that duties that one would think ought to be the responsibility of the ruler or their consort end up as the responsibility of a steward, castellan, etc. - Robb Stark ultimately ended up taking on some of the steward’s responsibilities, not because anyone was like, “hey, Robb, do this thing, that’ll be a good way to learn how to rule” but because Catelyn was not in a fit state to appoint an actual steward to replace Vayon Poole. Meaning a ruling princess Arianne would not be doing a lot of the things people argue Doran should have taught her unless she wanted to edge pretty close to micromanagement.

To be clear, Arianne does express interest in these areas. She tells Arys about her father’s seneschal, castellan, tax collectors, bailiffs, treasurer - it’s a clear expression of interest in the nitty gritty of governance. She’s right that those are important. Serving in one of those positions would absolutely be a good way of learning all the details that go into running Sunspear. More information is always helpful, and knowing these things could well have made her a better ruler. And I think Doran probably should have named her castellan after she’d proven capable of handling festivities. Arianne notes that Oberyn was essentially Doran’s emissary - Arianne could have served as castellan under his management until it became clear that she was ready to take on the acting ruler role herself. Doran’s service as castellan in his youth prepared him well, and it’s logical to assume that it could have helped Arianne, too. Buuuuuuut that doesn’t mean that Arianne’s canon job is unimportant, easy, and an inadequate way to prepare her for anything.

Arianne is dismissive of her own purview. That’s why people latch onto the idea that she was inadequately prepared - because she dismissed her job as mere feasts and frolics. It’s true that it’s not as critical a role as, say, treasurer or castellan. But that’s why it’s a good entry role. It allows for the safe learning of important managerial skills. I have a tendency to dismiss the things I’m good at as unimportant. That’s something I see a lot in Arianne - she is dismissive of her job, not because it’s unimportant, but because she’s naturally very good at it and feels more satisfied when she succeeds at something after a struggle, which she doesn’t have to do with party planning. But those skills are transferrable to other elements of ruling. Coupled with Arianne’s knowledge in other areas, skills, and innate personality traits, I think she’s very equipped to rule. She has a pretty impressive spy network in her own right already, and that’s just as heir! She has completely internalized a lot of the advice we know Doran gave her, including how she should watch what she says because words are weapons!

Should Doran have allowed Arianne to advance to more critical responsibilities? Yes. But she is still prepared to be a good ruling princess based upon the jobs and responsibilities she has had. It’s not that she has the skills she does because of Doran. But it’s also very much untrue to say that she’s “inadequately prepared”.

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