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futurehunt · 4 months

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"You're not the person I want to explain myself to." -Eris Vanserra and his hidden motives

The story of Eris Vanserra haunts me. At this point, most of the characters in ACOTAR are an open book in terms of their backgrounds but Eris's is still so shrouded in mystery and I have to know more. Consider this the inspiration for my following lengthy analysis of all the Eris Vanserra scenes we've been given. Additional inspiration being this clip of SJM from a since deleted live stream on Instagram (still available on YouTube) :

Love that SJM says that Eris is her favorite Autumn Court character but more importantly she spills a little detail about Eris having a secret history and a secret motivation behind his character. I think most readers assumed by now that Eris is primed for a redemption arc but this simply could've been reserved to him making amends for leaving Mor injured in the woods. No, this is something more than that- something significant that affected his actions back then and is still influencing them now.

Let's start breaking everything down:

Everything starts with: Eris found and left Mor in the woods at the Autumn Court border after she was tortured dumped there by her father, Keir.

Why did he do this?

“I knew why you did it... So I gave you your freedom, ending the betrothal in no uncertain terms" - Eris in ACOWAR

After Mor slept with Cassian, Eris knew Mor did it because she wanted out of the engagement (for a secret reason- on her end- that we'll touch on in a bit) so he ended the betrothal as she wished.

But why did Eris leave her there, injured with fatal wounds? This is still the biggest point of hostility between him and the IC.

"There were forces at work that you have never considered," Eris said coldly. "And I am not going to waste my breath explaining them to you. Believe what you want about me" - ACOWAR

What are these forces?

We're given an answer to this question during a scene in ACOFAS when Mor is recalling the memory of that day at the Autumn Court border.

“No one touches her,” he said. Eris. “The moment we do, she’s our responsibility.” Cold, unfeeling words. “But—but they nailed a—” “No one touches her.” - ACOFAS

If Eris or his men provided aid to Mor she would've become their responsibility, implying that she would've become a ward of the Autumn Court essentially. This is probably why Keir even dumped her on the border in the first place, because he knew that if the Autumn Court provided her aid they would have to assume responsibility for her. It was created as a lose-lose situation for Mor: get help from Eris and be trapped at the Autumn Court or be refused help and left to suffer and potentially die in the woods.

“I take it you do not wish to live here, Morrigan.” She would rather die here, bleed out here. She would rather die and return—return as something wicked and cruel, and shred them all apart. He must have read it in her eyes. A small smile curved his lips. “I thought so.” -ACOFAS

He knew she'd rather die than live there so he acted according to her wishes, even though it was done cruelly. This scene, which we're given from Mor's perspective, shows that she heard the true reason why Eris refused to provide her aid but because of the trauma of the whole situation she likely never put two and two together.

But the situation is a bit more complex than that. There is more to the reason that Eris left her in the woods to have her freedom.

“Eris nodded to where Mor watched them from beside Feyre and Rhys, her face neutral and aloof. “She knows the truth but has never revealed it." “Why?” “Because she is afraid of it.” - ACOSF; dance scene between Nesta and Eris

Eris knows something about Mor that she's afraid to reveal. What's the only fact we know about Mor that she's been hiding her entire life? That she's queer. It seems somehow Eris was aware of this.

“Eris looked between them, smiling faintly. Secretly. As if he knew something that Azriel didn’t. "I knew why you did it" Again that secret smile that had Mor shrinking." -ACOWAR

Later on in ACOWAR, we find out the big secret Mor is hiding is that she's romantically attracted to females. Alright, so somehow Eris knew Mor was queer back when they were betrothed. It seems that this was part of the reason he left her to her freedom.

Despite the cruel nature he's described to have, Eris keeps the knowledge that Mor is queer to himself. Eris left Mor in the woods because he knew she wanted her freedom and the reason she wanted her freedom was because she is queer. Out of some uncharacteristic kindness, Eris won't share this information with the rest of the IC because he seems to not want to out her because he knows she's afraid of the truth. Refer to the quote between Eris and Nesta above for proof of this.

But what are Eris's own secret motivations in all of this?

“So I gave you your freedom, ending the betrothal in no uncertain terms.”

“And what happened next,” Azriel growled.

A shadow crossed Eris’s face. “There are few things I regret. That is one of them. But … perhaps one day, now that we are allies, I shall tell you why. What it cost me.”

This is such an important line and one that if you don't dissect it properly, you won't understand it's real meaning.

"What it cost me". The cost that Eris is referring to is one that he suffered as a result of leaving Mor unaided in the woods. NOT from breaking the engagement, from leaving her. "The cost" is something that would've been unaffected by breaking the engagement (because Eris has no remorse over that) but affected by abandoning an injured Mor (because this is what Eris labels as one of the few things he regrets). Mor being left in the woods was, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential for the rest of Prythian. The only people negatively affected by it were Mor and the rest of the IC.

"Perhaps one day... I shall tell you why" when Eris says this, he means: perhaps one day he'll them why he regrets it, NOT why he did it. It's important to read this quote in the context of its surrounding passages because you'll see that he had an opportunity to explain why he left her but he instead tells Mor he's not going to "waste his breath explaining it to her."

So after breaking down those lines we know: Eris regrets abandoning Mor because of something it cost him in relation to the IC now hating him after the events at the border but "the cost" is something he's hesitant to reveal to them.

For the sake of the analysis, let's go over a few things we know Eris does canonically care about and why they are not the cost he's referring to:

His father's throne: It's not secret that Eris wants to usurp his father. Feyre even notes how startled she was to hear Eris discuss killing his father so blatantly. Also, if the marriage to Mor would've aided Eris in taking the throne then Eris would've expressed remorse at ending the engagement but he didn't. He only regretted leaving her injured.

His mother, Lady of Autumn: The text shows us that Eris is concerned over the welfare of this mother when he angles his body to protect her during the High Lord meeting scene. However at the time of Eris's betrothal to Mor, his mother wasn't miserable in her marriage the way she's described now. It wasn't until LoA's affair with Helion was revealed, which happened decades after the Eris and Mor situation, that Beron began abusing his wife. Of course, Eris undoubtedly wants his father dead because of this but we know it's not "the cost" that Eris references since it wasn't a factor at the time.

“Helion shrugged. “On and off for decades. Until Beron found out. They say the lady was all brightness and smiles before that. And after Beron was through with her. You saw what she is.” “What did he do to her?” “The same things he does now.” Helion waved a hand. “Belittle her, leave bruises where no one but him will see them.” - ACOWAR

Lucien: Eris has a soft spot for Lucien but he wasn't born for decades after everything happened so he can't be a factor in why Eris regrets his actions.

His father tortures him: It's revealed at the end of ACOSF that Beron tortures Eris after Cassian realizes Eris is injured after returning back from Autumn. We're not told how long it's been occurring and Eris is extremely reluctant to speak on the matter. However, if this was the big secret Eris has been hiding there'd be a bit more emphasis placed on the reveal. In fact, Cassian pushes him again after that to tell him the true reason he left Mor on the border (keep in mind Cassian doesn't know Mor is queer and Eris is refusing to reveal that information to others) and asks Eris for the real reason he's back the Night Court trying to make amends.

Why is Eris back at the Night Court after everything that happened, pushing so hard to build an alliance?

When pushed for the truth, Eris tells Cassian:

"You're not the person I want to explain myself to" - ACOSF

Cassian assumes Eris means Mor and tells him she won't want to hear his explanations anyway. But is Mor really the person Eris was referencing. I think not, given we've been given these lines:

Eris nodded to where Mor watched them from beside Feyre and Rhys, her face neutral and aloof. “She knows the truth but has never revealed it." -ACOSF

"There were forces at work that you have never considered," Eris said coldly. "And I am not going to waste my breath explaining them to you. Believe what you want about me"- ACOWAR

Eris says that Mor already knows the truth and has explicitly said he doesn't care what she thinks about him. He has nothing to explain to her. And aside from those two facts, which already make it clear enough that Mor is not the person Eris meant, what more would Eris gain from speaking to Mor? Assuaging his guilt? That could be a reasonable explanation if it weren't for Cassian already asking Eris if guilt is what was motivating him, Cassian realizing it's not and pushing for Eris to "give me a damn answer".

"You're not the person I want to explain myself to"

So, who in the IC does Eris want to explain himself to?

Mor? No, for reasons stated above

Cassian? No, they're speaking in that scene and if Cassian were the person then Eris wouldn't have said that

Feyre? Nesta? Elain? Weren't alive so aren't applicable

Lucien? Wasn't alive during the incident and is thus unaffected

Rhysand? We're told in ACOSF (Chapter 7) that Eris already has Rhysand's trust and allyship

Amren? I guess I can't necessarily eliminate Amren as the person Eris wants to explain himself to but let's be real, it's not her.

Azriel? Hmm....The person who arguably hates Eris more than even Mor herself. Who has such a burning passionate rage towards Eris that he attacked him during a High Lord meeting, yet also dropped everything to fly to the Continent to save Eris when he was abducted by Koschei.

Conclusion and remaining questions

Let's put everything together:

Eris is back at the Night Court attempting to smooth things over, make amends, and build an allyship. On the surface, we're told it's all because he wants the throne. But what we now know from SJM (in her interview) and our textual analysis is that Eris paid a big, deeply personal price due to the fall out of leaving Mor injured at the Autumn Court border. This cost was directly tied to the IC's perception of him. Eris lost something or the chance at something when the Night Court began to hate him. So he's back, 500-ish years later, attempting to make amends because of the same problem that plagued him all those centuries ago. We also know there's only one person he's interested in explaining himself to- and that person interestingly seems to be Azriel. Why would Eris want to explain himself to Azriel? Why go to these lengths to make amends with him? Was "the cost" Eris paid 500 years ago tied to Azriel?Is this all tied to Eris's "secret history and secret motivations" that SJM referenced? Crack theory time: What if Eris and Azriel are mates? If they are, it would seem maybe Eris knows about it but Azriel isn't consciously aware? It could explain Azriel's extreme and passionate reactions to Eris. What if when Eris became an enemy of the Night Court he lost his chance at having a connection to his mate. It would also explain why Eris is so tight lipped about his secret motivations. We know that Beron tortures Eris as he is now, imagine what he would do to Eris if he found out he was queer. If Eris is queer it would also explain his empathy to Mor and his reluctance to tell her truth to other people. This could also explain why Azriel is the one person Eris wants to explain himself to, because Azriel is the only person whose opinion he cares about. AND this would also provide an answer to the great "Azriel mate debate". I know Gwynriel is a popular theory but the text has not given us any indication that they are (yes, bonus chapter included) and Azriel had never displayed any mate-like behavior around her. Eris and Azriel also provide interesting foils to one another: flame and shadow- which is a theme that's mentioned in both of SJM's other series. We also know how much SJM loves her enemies to lovers.

"There was an icy rage in Azriel I'd never been able to thaw" -Rhysand in ACOMAF

Azriel is routinely described as icy and frozen, physically and emotionally. What better to thaw ice than fire!

If you read this far- thank you and ily.

Feel free to let me know if you have any critiques to my reasoning!

#acotar #acosf #acowar #acotar theories #eris vanserra #eris apologist #azriel #azris supremacy #azris #azris theories #cassian #morrigan #sarah j maas #sjmaas #sjm #acofas #what was the cost #the cost!!#what is he hiding

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howlsmovinglibrary · 7 years

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So I finished ACOWAR

This is in no way a coherent or articulate piece of writing in the same way my ACOTAR/ACOMAF piece tried to be, and I don’t think it even can be called a review, because I don’t tend to review books that already have this much visibility in the booklr community. It’s more just the notes I made while reading ACOWAR, which I kind of felt was the weakest book in the series so far (and if you haven’t already guessed it, I’m not much of a fan to begin with).

This entire piece is basically just spoilers, and salt, so please don’t read unless you already know/don’t mind finding out some major plot points!

First off, can I just say that every time ‘the male’ or ‘the female’ is used as a descriptor, I wince. I think it is a) bad writing and b) cis-centric as fuck. There needs to be more non-binary people in fantasy!

This book was so….bloated. It needed to be edited down a lot – the sheer number of chapters is insane. I had this poignant realisation when I read five chapters of High Fae trash talk at the faerie High Lord meeting and then…the thing they were having a meeting over just…happened anyway? And the meeting suddenly had no meaning whatsoever?

So many abusers are now being made into sympathetic/rehabilitated figures. I took Rhys’ redemption arc in ACOMAF because I kind of suspected that that was the way his and Feyre’s relationship were going to pan out but….both Eris and Tamlin received sympathy, and were made into heroes or forces for good at some point in the plot? Feyre forgave Tamlin? Mor’s abuse at the hands of Keir and Eris is pushed aside because ‘times are hard’ and ‘tough choices have to be made’? And Mor had literally no say or agency in that decision?

Meanwhile we have Ianthe. an abusive woman who’s entire character is one-dimensional villainy and demonised female sexuality. She is portrayed as having not a single scrap of goodness in her soul, not one redeeming characteristic, someone who Feyre has no moral quandary over letting be munched up by the Weaver. Even though her use of sex could realistically be portrayed as a product of internalised misogyny? And yet the men who ‘nailed a message’ into Mor’s womb get nuanced portrayal, the benefit of the doubt in the run up to the war, and even moments of heroism?????

I’m not saying that Ianthe should be redeemed, I just don’t understand why this instance of sexual abuse is so utterly condemned to the point where we watch her smash her own hand in some kind of medieval punishment, and yet the instances of sexual abuse perpetrated by men are all given a degree of either redemption or pardoning because of the circumstances of the plot. Is it because female to male abuse is more taboo and thus seen as more ‘evil’? Because SJM has so ingrained male-to-female sexual abuse into the very fabric of her patriarchal fantasy society, that we and Mor are expected to just accept that this is ‘the way things are’, or even write it off out of necessity as ‘boys will be boys’? I HAVE NO IDEA AND IT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE.

Given my recent essay on the subject, I was interested that SJM tried to problematize and dismantle the concept of mating bonds a little in the conversation Feyre and Rhysand have about Lucien and Elain. It’s made into ‘Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls’ (Chapter 24). There was even the handwave of ‘oh this homosexual relationship may be the product of a mating bond, but they’re probably keeping it a secret from everyone’.

To be honest, I don’t think it succeeded in explaining away the problematic elements of mating. The biological imperatives were still there, ‘the bond is nothing more than...preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring’ (Chapter 24). Aggression was still a major part of the male side of the bond (like when we get the internal monologue of Lucien and witness him fighting his ‘instincts’) and it’s still implied that men are slaves to the desire that the bond generates, whereas women don’t feel it as strongly/can control their physical desires? ‘But the males...It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through’ (Chapter 24) This has some serious ramifications in terms of gendered conceptions of sexual drive. In my opinion, mating bonds are still squicky.

I now mostly just want SJM to put her money where her mouth is and follow through on her attempts at muddying the water: if she insists on pairing the spares, have Elaine get together with Azriel rather than Lucien, and show a relationship where the mating bond is terminated not because of outright physical abuse on the side of the male, but because of a romantic attraction overcoming a sexual/biological one. (Yes, I ship it. Or rather, I ship Elaine overcoming her trauma and going on to be a badass seer, building herself a temple and calling out bullshit like Cassandra in ancient Troy. But if she needs to have a boyf – and it’s SJM so she probably does – I want it to be Sad Shadow Man.)

‘Helion favours both males and females. Usually together in bed’ (Chapter 47). I’m not saying that bisexuality can’t work this way, but I gather that SJM has used the hypersexualised bisexual trope before.

I think that perhaps Mor’s jealousy of Nessian is because she’s attracted to Nesta (a la season 1 Korrasami)? But even so her possessiveness of Cassian and her hostility towards Nesta was horrible and OOC and made me angry every time it happened. I hate it whenever female-female relationships are sacrificed because of a guy, but it is particularly frustrating in a book where male-female relationships are definitely already the priority. And given the way that Nessian is reaching canonical status, even if you do attribute the jealousy to female-female attraction, it’s only going to end badly for Mor.

Feyre used Mor’s sexuality as a weapon against her after she was justifiably called out on reckless behaviour. Fuck off Feyre.

I know that Azriel is a good character. I know this. And yet this book turned his relationship with Mor into this awful poster child ‘friendzone’ dynamic, where Mor feels pressurised to hide her sexuality because of the hurt it will cause *him*. I don’t think this is a fault of the characters, but of the entire treatment of their friendship and SJM’s portrayal of Mor’s queerness as a burden.

No main characters die. In this apparently impossible war that basically ends in an afternoon. No – everyone is magically resurrected after barely five pages.

Bonus points for not even having the courage to keep Amren out of fae form and thus rip up her incipient ship with Varien. You could have written an entire book on the inner circle going off on a quest to find and subdue a superhuman dragon Amren unshackled from the bonds of human morality. But no. She’s ‘in the cauldron’.

DEUS EX MACHINAS (dragon ex machinas?) MAKE ME WANT TO SCREAM. Find a better way to resolve your conflicts. Especially when even the decision to unshackle Amren from her human form in order for her to become the Deus ex Machina in question has literally no lasting consequences.

Speaking of deus ex machinas: is anyone else annoyed that the only death god who survives the battle is Bryaxis, the one who only asked for a window in exchange for his services, rather than freedom and an implicit murder spree? This means that there are literally no consequences to these so-called ‘tough decisions’ that have to be made in times of war, and everything can just go on fine. ‘No evil death gods were permanently unleashed in the making of this war.’

Can I forcibly rip SJM away from the Russian mythology that she is no doubt going to butcher in the continuation of this series? As soon as I read the name ‘Koschei’ I groaned aloud. You can’t just take whatever mythology you like and use it to make your own magic system! You’ve already detached the Morrigan from any semblance of Celtic Mythology!!!

That being said, I did like:

That the Archeron sisters FINALLY seem to be forming a strong friendship rather than the girl-on-girl hate mess it’s been for the past few books. I liked that Nesta was as powerful as Feyre, and had a more integral role in the final battle than she did.

I liked that in Feysand we see a stable ‘after they get together’ relationship. I still think ACOMAF is ‘stronger’ as a book, as SJM is better at writing romance than plot, but at least there was no needless YA angst, beyond Rhys’ martyrdom complex.

And this sounds awful, but I’m glad that Feyre had a PTSD relapse. I felt that in ACOMAF, her recovery from mental illness was equated a little too strongly with her growing romance with Rhys. Love doesn’t cure mental illness, and I’m glad the SJM showed that.

But overall, this book (much like this commentary) was a bit of a rambling mess of little consequence.

#acowar spoilers #a sort of live tweet reading thing I think?#and it probably falls on the side of #anti-sjm #anti-acowar #I gave it 2.5 stars on goodreads in case anyone is wondering

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