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I’m thinking about the time in Red Queen where Mare has a panic attack about her family and Cal pushes a pressure point on the back of her neck to calm her down. He said at the time he learned it for the soldiers that got panic attacks at the front but it’s much more heart breaking if Cal learned it for Maven when they were kids.

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me when i don’t have time to shave my head

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Checking to see if tik tok is on the Apple Store again is like checking to see if my ex has unblocked me yet.

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Jokes aside, I'm conflicted about the TikTok ban because on the one hand, the free speech implications are bad. But on the other, the way it facilitates the rapid dissemination of misinformation goes beyond mere "brain rot" into something more dangerous and sinister.

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Me, thinking back to this scene in volume 2 of Red Queen, where Mare's best friend, after declaring her one-sided love, also tells her that we don't choose who we love (who we fall in love with in this context of course), then she thinks back to Maven and their kiss from volume 1, when she had just kissed Cale not so long ago.

Me, thinking back to that moment in volume 3 where Mare says she's still clinging to the ghost of the man she thought Maven was and loved. That she wishes to believe that he is still there somewhere.

Mare telling Maven that he broke her heart as much as Cale did in volume 4.

Still in volume 4, Mare wanting to see Maven's body to be sure that he is really dead and that all her suffering is finally over, but at the same time, not wanting to see him and being relieved that his body was not found because seeing the Maven's corpse would have been the equivalent of seeing herself dead too.

Then, Mare, in the last pages, mentioning all the people she misses : Maven being in it.

Mare and Maven had a relationship that was twisted and toxic as hell, but they still loved each other...

Bonus : Maven briefly regaining control of himself, letting Mare kill him so he wouldn't have to kill her / because he didn't want to kill her.

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Random RQ headcanons!!

- Cals coffee order is double espresso with caramel

- Farley has an ex in the Scarlet Guard... They're on good terms but it gets awkward when her and Shade are passing by him- they always joke about it and do that awkward side eye👀

- Mare doesn't like Cheetos... She says they taste like hair dye and isn't a fan of the texture

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Favorite Maven lines?

ugh I have to read the books again but:

"The punishment she deserves. Really. Are my parties that bad?"

"I don't use my spies to track your emotions, Mare. No, my darling. I just know you better than anyone else."

"But yours is coming up, isn't it? I have no doubt we'll spend it together."

I forget the exact wording but something in his letters in Glass Sword about how Cal wasn't going to escape Mare's leash

"But if you'd like to return, and pretend you're doing it to save some nameless soldiers, then I'm happy to welcome you back."

"But I do so miss our conversations. You keep me sane, Mare."

"Jon said he couldn't see them, the dead futures. An easy lie. It let him manipulate me in a way even Samson couldn't. And when he led me to you, well, I didn't argue. How was I to know what a poison you'd be?"

"I like your hair."

"I tried, Mare."

The entirety of the bathtub scene

And that's all I can remember off the top of my head

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Why is Maven obsessed with Mare? Do you think he genuinely loved her?

I'd have to analyze the first book again (I lent my copy to a guy who turned out to have fourteen Title IX complaints against him so I am never getting it back), but I think it's a combination of her reminding him of Thomas and genuinely finding some sense of identity in the role he pretended to be for her. Remember he genuinely did have hesitation about betraying Cal before the dancing scene, and he also threw Elara off her when she was punishing her for speaking out of turn. (For the record Maven's "I almost died" line in The Knife's Edge is just him being a dramatic ass. However, I don't doubt he was risking rather severe pain in defying her, even if he was her son.) Her hesitation in the Sun Shooting scene I think spoke to his own resolve to sacrifice anything and anyone to accomplish his goals. He says something along the lines of the sacrifice paining him despite him knowing it must be done. I think he kind of admired her commitment to the Guard even as he was scheming against them. Her saying she loved him over his brother finally sealed the deal.

And then she chose death over being his queen.

As for loving her . . . it depends on how fine you cut the line between "care" and "love". Because he definitely cared about her. It was never enough for him, but he tried. Loving someone can be a longing for something you lack, this craving for connection, and he . . . lacked a lot. He wanted to love, at the very least. He just didn't know how.

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youre like the only account i look at on here for red queen content (specifically maven) so please go full psychological analysis on maven please. i love your posts they itch my brain perfectly

omygosh anon 🤭 tyyyy tyyyy

theres so much to say about maven and its kinda crazy considering he doesn’t get that much actual page time. so keep in mind that many people could have different interpretations of his character, since he is quite elusive. and i may or may notttt be biassed idk.

the first thing i believe: he's a character that, for all his supposed motivations, had no ambition or dream of his own. he was a complete vessel of his mother’s spite, so he makes for a pretty interesting paradox. mare was haunted by a ‘false’ maven that didn't exist (debatable). cal was haunted by an ‘erased’ maven that used to exist. what is maven haunted by? everything and everyone? he’s a ghost himself, he’s the one who usually did the haunting, but even when you get his POV in the books, there’s a tragedy in the negative space you find. there are clear holes in his psyche that he also subconsciously attempts to fill (his memories always fight to bubble to the surface, but they invoke feelings he can’t feel anymore) and never can. despite how pissed off he is at everyone and everything, he so very clearly yearns for love and approval, to the point where he is absolutely delusional about it. there he was, shocked that mare would reject him after he imprisoned and betrayed her and the scarlet guard. here’s him outraged that anabel lerolan would side with cal after he plotted her son’s murder.

elara basically sculpted a monster, and i don’t think that can be debated since its pretty clearly stated in text. even maven knew what she took from him and the extent of the abuse— but he didn't care because she gave him the love he craved. she couldn’t fill it all, if maven’s obsession with mare was anything to go by. i do think elara genuinely loved and adored him, but i don’t know if i would use the word ‘enabler’ for her because it seems too soft a word. maven is elara. elara dies and maven can’t survive on his own for long without her. he was her iron fist in a way, but neither had much interest in norta as a country like most scheming for the throne usually do– which i find so interesting. it wasn’t political, only personal.

now then there lies the debate of choice— some maven fans are completely comfortable heaping all of the blame onto elara and calling it a day. but i think even elara was failed in a similar way maven was. red queen is cool because it shows how evil is encouraged and nurtured in oppressive societies, how certain individuals even in privileged positions will be abused and neglected, how vices are taught to be hidden rather than treated and how violence is perpetuated as the surest, most permanent decree. every character is affected by this system in some way, and i could talk about it for years but i’ll save you the time. my point is that this would apply to maven, but that doesn’t make him void of choice. it’s sort of predictable that he would make the terrible choices he did in the series considering he never had the chance to escape what predestined narrative was already planned for him, but no one was physically forcing him to burn his initial into mare. no one was physically forcing him to try slaughter a whole race of people. no one physically forced him to blow up naercey, or taunt cal after forcing him to murder his dad, or psychologically torture mare when he kept her as prisoner. yes, there’s nuance but maven is also much too comfortable with being a terrible person, because thats what ultimately earns him love, respect and approval.

i don’t think maven could’ve been saved, not because 'the damage was too bad,' but because he had no desire to be saved, and no one but cal had wanted to put in the effort to save him. i always find it interesting how cal secretly resented mare for killing maven, even though it was such a longtime coming, and he would never voice it because considering all maven had done to her, she had more than the right. but i don’t want to yap so much about maven’s relationship with cal because i’ll be here forever. nor do i want to talk too much about his relationship with mare. i'll only say that when i was talking about his death scene i did mention how much of an impact both of them had on each other, how maven was so scary to mare because he was a viable twisted path that represented the worst of her. i think mare could’ve been (my biassed interpretation) a path for him too, but he was so far gone by the second book and especially after elara’s death that he never considered it (would’ve been too late for him then anyway). i have some thoughts on the chances of maven rehabilitating if he had the tools and will to. some thoughts. they won’t go here though.

lastly i just want to link this post which had super interesting additions by @lucy-the-cat that delves into maven from a psychological perspective. its sooooo well written and i still think about it to this day.

last thing i wanna do is glaze a bit so im just gonna 😭 its refreshing to see this sort of villain be portrayed as an mmc who isn’t attractively suave and super misunderstood and depressed and supremely intelligent for what he does– maven is intelligent and sad, but he's presented as a floundering, insecure, delusional brat that the fmc understands entirely. something so refreshing in how he can only either be hated, and at best, pitied.

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okay so I feel like I should clear a few things up from the “true villains of red queen” post, because I didn’t articulate my point well and people replied with valid criticisms.

Okay so someone (I don’t remember their name I’m sorry) commented about how Julian couldn’t really say anything about Elara and Maven to Tiberias the Older (I don’t remember what number he was sorry) because after his sister died Julian didn’t really have standing in court, he was just the royal librarian and his love got her tongue removed just for knowing what Elara did. So yes I accept it I was wrong, he had a pretty good reason not to say anything.

When I said Julian was at fault for what happened to Maven, I wasn’t trying to say he was entirely at fault. That’s my fault for not making that clear, I read the post back and yeah I could’ve worded it better. What I was trying to say was yes, Elara is entirely at fault for the abuse Maven suffered, she is the abuser. I just wanted to have like I don’t know a conversation about how Julian and Anabel contributed in a small way to Elara’s ability to enact that abuse. Not saying what happened to Maven was entirely their fault and I’m not excusing Tiberias the Older’s hand in it either, I think I said in an earlier post that his neglect also heavily contributed to Maven’s abuse. It’s just abuse is complicated thing right? There are a lot of components to it, and I just wanted to highlight that. No it wasn’t Julian’s fault that Elara abused her son.

I was just trying to point out how Julian’s and Maven’s relationship might’ve contributed to her being able to emotional abuse her son. I mean Julian and Maven don’t have a good relationship, even before Mare gets to the palace. The first thing Julian tells Mare is that Maven’s “his mother’s son.” So you can assume they’ve never really gotten along. But you can’t assume it’s because “Maven and Elara were trying usurp Cal” because they themselves said they only started scheming for the throne when Mare arrived, and Maven, despite not being able to feel love for Cal, still felt something close to it and had a somewhat decent relationship with Cal that he would hold onto in his own way until he spares Cal the pain of “killing his little brother” by pretending the boy he was supposed to be was never there in the first place So at least I assumed that wasn’t why Julian didn’t like Maven. The only other reason was because of what happened to Sara and his sister. Which when you think about it is crazy considering Maven wasn’t even born when that happened. But Julian can’t hold Elara accountable for it, she’s the queen, and he’s just a librarian, but he can in a way hold her son accountable for it. That’s all I was trying to say.

so no. I don’t think Julian is entirely at fault for Maven’s abuse. I’m not saying it’s all Julian’s fault that Elara abused Maven. I was just trying to have a conversation about how Julian and Anabel might’ve contributed to Elara’s means of abuse by giving her things like favoritism (on Anabel’s part) to manipulate Maven with. Just like Maven’s father did by neglecting his youngest son even though he did love Maven without being able to show it.

I’m open for a further conversation about this in the comments, and yeah, if you disagree that’s fine, we all have our opinions so yeah have a great day and thanks for reading this super long post

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i come back to say that maven's back had to be somewhat arched in that bathtub scene. he did not take his heat suppressants or something. because like what was that.

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Many things led to this day, for all of us. A forgotten son, a vengeful mother, a brother with a long shadow, a strange mutation. Together, they've written a tragedy.

- Red Queen♡

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this artwork was commissioned by @fairyloot character is Azriel from the ACOTAR book series by @sjmaas hope you all will like it xoxo 

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one of my absolute favorite things about the multi povs in King's Cage - War Storm, is the fact that every single person that had a pov chapter (besides Maven) has called or referred to Maven as a child.

I rly wish I had ss for this but I'm too lazy to go through every chapter to find them (💀)

but I remember that the more the story went on, the more the characters began to realize what a child Maven was. which is ironic considering the fact that he turned from a boy prince that no one looked at to the King of Norta who everyone feared.

everyone slowly began to realize what a child Maven Calore truly was. and it's almost haunting. the only person who I feel always knew was Cal.

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thought i would drop this here

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You guys ever have those Red Queen moments, where you think it has symbolisim but really, it's just an added detail to that scene? (But deep down, you still think there is, just can't point a finger👉 as to why🤔)

Yes? No? Well I have one.

Remember the iconic moment in King's Cage where Maven removed his gloves🧤 with his teeth?

Later in the book while Mare was being rescued, she saw a fallen Scarlet Guard member and took her red bandana🚩, tied it around her wrist with her teeth.

Then in the Marecal chapter of King's Cage, when they were being intimate in the forest. Cal unlatched his flamemaker bracelet🔥 with his teeth.

My take, though please feel free to add, cause I'm just pulling this out of thin air:

Cal unlatching his flame bracelet in front of Mare would mean that he trust her enough to not have it around her, maybe he removed it as to not hurt Mare since he hadn't done it with anyone before, or simply showing us how familiar he is at his bracelet that he could easily remove it with his teeth, since it's a part of him. It might also be a foreshadowing of Cal abdicating his throne in War Storm.

While Maven, is a bit tricky, as maybe he just wants to show off what he can do with his teeth, cause he made a show of it to Mare or the simple gesture of him being polite, even infort of his prisoner. An odd behavior he carries throughout Mare's imprisonment. Such as making her wear expensive clothes, a nice room with a small window and having meals together. Then I googled what gloves symbolizes, as it embodies power, protection and nobility. Things Maven lost when Iris betrayed him.

While all three used their teeth, Mare Barrow is the only one of the three to tie the object to her, while both Calore brothers untethered themselves from it. As if she is embracing and taking on her role as a faceless member of the Scarlet Guard. Her desire for revenge reignited when she tied the red bandana around her wrist before wreaking havoc during her escape. Establishing her stubborn loyalty to her cause and her blood.

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“She is my wife,” Cardan says. “The rightful High Queen of Elfhame. And most definitely not in exile.”