#(( and people wonder why miranda is so bizarrely cavalier with her own safety. yeah thats why. the merkingdom can just Make Another Of Her.

[royalreef]

(( Honestly, it doesn’t bother Miranda so much that her and Aaravi were not fated, that they wouldn’t find each other in every universe and love each other in the same way every time. In fact, it’s what she prefers and is happiest this way.

Miranda’s all too keenly aware that she was not promised anything that she has right now. She knows that the Merkingdom could have easily decided upon somewhere else to station her as a place of first introductions. She knows that she could have never come up onto land at all, that the Merkingdom could have easily decided to have someone else act as ambassador, or to keep their Crown Princess closer at home. They could have decided not to begin land-Merkingdom relationships at all within her lifetime, or trashed the idea before she was established on land, or even before they started properly at all. It could have just remained as an idea, never to be actually explored.

She could not exist. Miranda’s far too familiar with the fact that she was conceived for a purpose, that there was a clear intent behind her creation. Something, anything, could have happened that meant the King and Queen simply never decided to create her. She could have simply not been the one to make it, devoured in the womb before she was even born. Something could have happened in her early childhood to kill her, or any other time, either from a failure of her health or because she was disposed of.

She could have met someone else. She could have met anyone else. She could have been arranged. She could have decided that she would never be allowed this kind of personal wants and desires. She could have shut down. She could have never trusted the land to begin with.

From the moment that she was born, Miranda was told over and over that her life wasn’t her own. She was living for something else, someone else, that she had a purpose and a duty and she was made to perform it. If she failed to perform it, and to perform it well, she could be removed, destroyed. She was a tool, a means to an end, and for as much honing and care and dedication went into her, an expensive tool is still a tool, and still can be replaced if something goes wrong.

Her fate was already decided, already written. Taking it into her own hands was a mistake, something that she would have to be punished for, something that was to be discouraged. It would ruin everything. It would kill people, it would tarnish her kingdom, it would invite ruin into the responsibility that she was supposed to wield, and it would all be her fault. Every moment of every day she was told that the future was in her hands, the future of her entire kingdom and all of their people and culture and history and life, and any tiny mistake means that it would expand out and ruin and destroy and the only person to blame would be her. It doesn’t matter how flimsy the justification was, whether or not that would actually guide her choices or if it made up for the way her family treated her, it was a justification nonetheless. It was blame. It was power over her.

And she doesn’t want to just have that all over again. She doesn’t want to love someone because she was told to love them, told that it was always going to happen, that she was always going to have to love them. She doesn’t want to be told that her breaking out from the Merkingdom’s grasp was destined, because she knows this is a lie too. Miranda’s a testament to all the people she could have been, all the people she nearly was. Their ghosts are leveraged against her constantly. And she doesn’t want the universe to tell her and confirm to her that the Merkingdom was right, that they were always right, that this is good, actually, that it is something that she should want and aspire to and crave.

What Miranda wants is to be able to finally have the option to say no, to have a choice in the matter, to even just have the ability to consent at all. She cannot agree to something if the ability to reject it was never possible, and she wants to love Aaravi because she wants to love her. She wants to make that decision. She wants to love Aaravi not because of some indeterminate and eternal quality, but because she is Aaravi, because of all of the facets of her that exist and she can hold and know. She wants Aaravi to have earned her love, not merely stumbled into it, and she wants to earn Aaravi’s love in turn, to promise her things that she can give, to say that she will change and actually will. Miranda wants it to be real. She wants it to happen for a reason, she wants to say that, yes, every part of Aaravi is lovable and to be able to show her proof, she wants to be there for every step of the way.

There’s a reason why Miranda’s drawn specifically to prophecies about princesses falling into eternal slumber or that they will be poisoned to a death-like state, because a prince or a knight coming by and breaking the curse was not a part of that destiny. She already knows she’s doomed. She already knows the worst is written in the stars for her. What Miranda wants is a way for that to not be the end, for a stray element outside of it all to defy the stars. She wants to be saved from the castle, and for them to do it despite the thorns and the dragon, and she wants them to want her so much that nothing else can stand in their way, to defy death itself.

Fate has never once served Miranda, she’s always just served it. Fuck the crown, fuck the stars, she wants a boring life with the woman that she loves.