So, this is not how I expected to spend my last evening in self-isolation because of Covid but apparently I have a lot to say on this topic, so I’m sorry? This is also going on a VERY OLD not used blog so…you gotta do what you gotta do.
First off, I’d like to say a quick disclaimer. This is a bit of fun for me, this is all opinion backed up from my own personal reading of Sarah J Maas’ books, but everyone reads things differently. Just because I read something in a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s fact. These characters do not belong to me, and this is purely opinion based. If you disagree with me, that’s 100% fine. I’m also willing to have discussions and debates about this as long as it doesn’t get aggressive or nasty, so yeah.
Also there’s gonna be spoilers so if you haven’t read the entire series or if you don’t want to look into it too deeply, you can skip it.
Let’s get into it.
I want to discuss the internalised sexism that the ACOTAR fanbase has seemingly put out there. This is brought on by kayladawnreads on TikTok posting about how Azriel has essentially been put on a pedestal by BookTok even though we know very little about him because there is so much unknown about his character from the actual source material. By assigning him a personality of this dark mysterious good looking male, a lot of the fans see him as this almost god because of this.
Which is interesting, when you take Elain, and see the personality that’s been assigned to her, and why she’s seen as unlikeable. Why are these two characters who have very little explained about them, given such opposing roles that have been forced upon them by the fandom?
My first instinct when it comes to this is to realise that a lot of it is from what we’ve been taught by society. Internalised sexism and misogyny is rampant in our every day lives, even if we don’t want to admit it or don’t realise it. The fact is that I have had to make a conscious effort to stop slut shaming people for wearing cute clothes, stop trying to look at women based solely on their size or how they look or how they present themselves, on how they choose to live their lives. That is because I’ve been taught from a young age that I should act/look/be a certain way to be desirable. The idea that good girls are seen and not heard. The idea that we should provide for the family, that we should act a certain way, the way women are ‘asking for it’ when we wear a certain thing.
This idea pollutes our minds into thinking that everything a woman does, no matter what, she’s going to be to blame for what happens to her. And unfortunately I think in the ACOTAR world the Archeron sisters get a lot of crap for this. Feyre is looked down upon by Nesta for not being the perfect lady that Nesta and Elain were taught to be, that Feyre missed out on because she didn’t have the same upbringing. That Nesta and Elain never helped Feyre when it came to hunting and providing for themselves, because they had only ever taught to be ladies and being able to provide for themselves was seen as beneath them. That Elain could have grown vegetables and fruits instead of flowers, because of her upbringing. This is only to touch on a few things to do with their upbringing when they’re human.
The Bat Boys, however, are exactly what you should want. They’re attractive, strong, brave, willing to drop everything to help the ones they love. We also get sensitivity because let’s be honest, the audience of these books is predominantly female, so Sarah J Maas does a good balance of bad boy with tragic backstory who’s got sensitivity. We see it in Rhysand and in Cassian, these males who would do anything for their love interests, but always keep that manly attitude. It’s a very hard balance to get, but she does it well.
The issue is, we expect that from Azriel because of who his friends are - we wouldn’t expect them to be so close if he didn’t share the same values. But where’s the proof of that?
Yes, there are a few scenes that lend themselves to us believing that Azriel is that type of person. He automatically defends the females close to him (as we saw in the meeting of the High Lords), he and Cassian both went to save Feyre when she was running from the Spring Court.
But these things are expected of him as one of the Inner Circle.
Feyre being Azriel’s High Lady means that he has a duty of care to look after her. And the fact that the Inner Circle didn’t know that she was High Lady until after Feyre went back to the Spring Court means there had to be some form belief that the Inner Circle failed her by not keeping her from the enemy.
I do find it interesting that we forget that Feyre was the one who decided to do it. She didn’t tell Rhys she’d do it, she didn’t plan it, she knew it was the only way to save her people and was more than willing to give her own life for those she loved. So while I can understand that Cassian and Azriel are upset on a personal level for her leaving and making them feel useless, how can we blame Feyre for wanting to help to save the Night Court when it’s the only reason that she was saved from the dark place that she was in herself?
The other piece of information we have to do with Azriel, is his history with Mor. Mor specifically has tried to be with other people to keep Azriel from being so hung up on her. To the extent that Mor and Feyre have a big discussion about it in the third book where Feyre blames Mor for leading Azriel on. Oh hey, there’s the internalised sexism. The fact that Mor has to explain herself to Feyre isn’t okay. Sure, maybe Mor could have explained it to her friends so that they have an understanding of the pain and confusion that she’s been going through, but Mor’s sexuality isn’t something that we should expect her to be comfortable saying to people. Expectations were put on from the fact that Azriel saved Mor after Mor’s traumatic experience of getting out of her arranged marriage, and that expectation shouldn’t be there.
Mor does not owe Azriel her romantic love just because he saved her. And yet, because of the society of fae males and how they see women as their property - despite Rhys trying to show Feyre that he isn’t like that - Azriel seems to have expectations about how Mor was the damsel in distress.
And yet, he is still seen as this king who is mysterious.
I think it’s an interesting fact that mysterious is often taken in two ways. When you add mysterious to a male who is handsome, a hero, quiet, aloof, he’s seen as sexy. When you add mysterious to a female, someone who isn’t willing to share their stories, they’re seen as untrustworthy. Especially when it comes to the female gaze. Unfortunately women are more critical of other women because we’ve been taught that’s what we should do.
So going back to Elain, it’s interesting that we see her as something almost villainous. The information that we have about Elain is that she loves gardening, she fell in love with a human who hated the fae (she never said she hated the fae, in fact the engagement happened after Feyre didn’t come back from the Spring Court with none of Feyre’s family knowing she was fae), that she’s a seer, and that she has always been seen as the one to protect.
Most of what she and Nesta are stigmatised for is the fact they didn’t help Feyre go hunting. Feyre was made to promise that she’d look after her sisters because their mother knew that Nesta and Elain couldn’t do it. Feyre felt that need to hunt and to take care of her sisters because of that promise to her mother. But in my opinion Nesta and Elain had been taught some very different things. They were brought up with wealth, enough to learn to read and write, enough to attend social gatherings and were probably taught that how you present yourself was the most important trait you could have. So to them, looking their best, not getting their hands dirty, not looking as if they were struggling through poverty was what they could do. Elain had been coddled for so long that she didn’t know how to function without money, she didn’t know how to function as someone less than a lady. So why do we expect more from her than she understood?
As a person who provides for myself, if suddenly my house was gone, and I didn’t have money to buy food, but there were forests I could hunt in, but someone else seemed to have learned already how to do that, I’d see myself as a hindrance to them more than a help. I can learn how to hunt with you, but I’m phobic of blood, I’m a vegetarian, and I’d probably cry seeing a dead animal. Of course you don’t want me hunting with you, and because we don’t see Elain’s perspective throughout any of the books (yet), we don’t know why she did or didn’t help Feyre.
I think that’s what this entire essay boils down to. The fact we have two characters who’s perspectives we’ve not read from, being described by other narrators, and we have formed an opinion about them.
We see Azriel through Feyre’s eyes. We see a very very handsome male who has gone out of his way to help the person she loves most in the world, and who has also helped to teach her how to do things as fae she didn’t know how to do, has protected her and her sisters without hesitation. We also see him through Nesta and Cassian’s eyes in ACOSF. We get his best friend, and Nesta who would jump his bones if she had a chance (still upset that scene between the three of them was cut from the book). These are all bias perspectives. We cannot rely on getting a fully realised character from these perspectives because they see Azriel in a certain light, and are always going to paint him in a good way.
Elain is interesting, because in my opinion the worst she does on the actual pages of the books is call Nesta out in ACOSF. Why does she call Nesta out? Because Nesta invalidates Elain’s trauma and uses it for herself. Elain is the only one of the sisters who internalises a lot of her trauma (besides the breakdown about her fiance) and continues doing her quiet hobbies and continues to live. And even then, all she does is explain that Nesta is hurting herself and using Elain’s trauma to act the way she does. She explains that she’s also not okay with what she’s gone through, and then cuts off her sister who at the time is acting in a very toxic way when it came to Elain’s own emotional healing.
I think the other issue is because Elain is quiet and girly and ‘soft’ in a fantasy book where you have the strong headstrong characters such as Nesta and Feyre, people like to call her boring, quiet, just the other sister. But again, while waiting for ACOSF I heard a lot of hate towards Nesta, and Nesta really redeemed herself in her own book.
Why? Because Nesta got to show her mind. We got to see why Nesta was cruel, why Nesta was willing to break the world in half out of spite.
Side note; I thought the hate for Nesta was ridiculous. Throughout the original series I could tell that Nesta was fierce, willing to do what she needed to do to survive, and yes she might be hateful or angry, but why should that matter? Why is it that she should have sat down quietly in the corner and just let life give her the crap hand she was dealt? Why was she expected to go with it and not rage when the deck was stacked against her? Girls don’t owe you nice. Girls don’t owe you pretty. Girls don’t owe you anything. Stop assuming that you deserve these things from us because you don’t.
So what now? We have these two characters who are given personalities despite not having all that much body to them. It’s obvious that no matter what happens in their books, they’re going to be given fully fleshed out personalities, and this isn’t going to make everyone happy. The series is too big, and it’s impossible to please everyone. Azriel is going to disappoint some fans, he’s not going to be how they pictured him from the original books. Elain is going to get on people’s nerves, or once we see inside her head, people are going to say she’s not true to the original character. There is no way that these characters are going to come out of this without some form of disappointment from fans.
Both of these characters have gone through an enormous amount of trauma in their backstories. Elain both when she was human and when she became fae. Azriel from his childhood. The way they are in the books is exactly how Sarah J Maas writes all of her characters. We have trauma filled individuals because no one leaves this life without being traumatised. We don’t exit this world being unscathed, we deal with it.
But I want to end with one question. Including all of Sarah J Maas’ books, ACOTAR, TOG, CC, if you weren’t reading from the main character’s perspective, would you like them? Would you find Celaena insufferable, would you find Feyre annoying, would you find Bryce a dumb party girl? The only reason we like these characters is because we see inside their heads. And we haven’t been given that chance with Elain. Why give Azriel the benefit of the doubt when you won’t the female characters?
If you’ve come this far, thank you for reading almost 2500 words of ramblings. I might continue to do these types of ‘essays’ later about other books if I want to, no promises. I just needed to get this out. I might add to it later too.
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