#Lady Asha

[viivdle]

cardan: i'm not just a bitch, i'm a bitch with a backstory

the backstory: cat milk

[highladyofterrasen7]

Lady Asha reading Cardan’s letters right before she burns them:

✨ Guilty ✨

[praisethelorde]

I hope Cardan told Jude what was in the letters and I hope Jude told Cardan that their mothers were best friends.

[ladyashaofelfhame]

There's too many mortals everywhere, it's absolutely disgusting.

[thebestbrunettee]

i don’t think you guys understand how much i FUCKING DESPISE lady asha. like firstly she is the shittiest mom known to planet earth and secondly this raggedy ass whore has the AUDACITY to BURN cardan’s letters to jude. my man was DISTRESSED BC OF HER. like when i find her istg she better be ready

[murasaki-cha]

Thinking about how Jude set Lady Asha free for Cardan, so he could have closure about his relationship with his mother, something Jude never had and also gave her the freedom Lady Asha was willing to desperately bargain for.

ONLY FOR THAT OLD HAG TO FREAKING BURN THE LETTERS CARDAN SENT TO JUDE WHERE HE WAS LITERALLY BEGGING HER TO COME HOME!!!

If lady Asha has no haters than I am dead.

[marossa]

Me after reading The Queen of Nothing and finding out that Lady Asha took all THE LETTERS.

Is it only me, or does anybody else feel like burning Lady Asha down and making her Ash?

[yureichi]

Now another one straight out of my notes app doubt list: why exactly did Lady Asha burned the letters? She’s a faerie and they’re all deceiving ass creatures and yada yada and it’s common knowledge she’s a shitty person and an even shittier mother but I always thought she had some ulterior motive. I also never understood why or what exactly she disliked about Jude, since they literally chatted just once and later Jude let her out of the tower and that’s as far as their interactions went. Did she just intended to make Cardan suffer? Thought that without Jude around he would be easier to manipulate? Some old grudge against Eva? Simple contempt for mortals? Just for shits and giggles?

[ezziefae]

i think it went over everyone’s head that lady asha wasn’t at the family dinner table in the prisoners throne prologue.

which isn’t surprising since she wasn’t a good parent to cardan, and doesn’t deserve to sit at the table. but it has me wondering what she’s been up to since TQON. has she been scheming? attempting to cause trouble at court? did cardan or jude kick her out? i hope she appears or gets mentioned in the prisoners throne.

[graaaaaayy]

your dash has now been blessed with tfota memes

[viivdle]

lady asha reading the letters:

cardan when he realised he was being crowned:

[lovethornes]

i am the no.1 lady asha hater.

[starrynightsxo]

cardan to jude in his letters, basically:

[ladyashaofelfhame]

Why did you say I don't deserve Dain?

Because you don't. You aren't worthy of a prince of Elfhame. Really, just what does he see in you? I bet you only want him because of his status.

[avelanlorelay]

About Cardan and his mother

I was re-reading the comments on my fic Deniere Danse and most of them are against Lady Asha, which may be proof that she's just as hated by the fandom in the "parents" category as Madoc and Balekin (Or maybe it's bc of the plot I've created, sorry). So one unanimous question is: why does Cardan still allow her to stay in the brugh?

My pov: From Twk to Tpt we can see that Cardan is not as insensitive as he makes himself out to be, on the contrary, he has a lot of love to give (😭) (a side of him that probably only Nicasia had access to🙄). He's admitted to still liking his mother a little and if we look closely, that despite having a strong personality, Cardan is no longer a hateful person. After losing his entire family, he wouldn't throw out his mother, the second only person left of his blood, for bad things in the past. In Tpt we see how he's very happy with Jude and probably, thinks about the future instead of holding grudges about things from the past.

Okay, Cardan isn't the boy with the heart of stone, but why would he still like Lady Asha? Why didn't he lock her back up in the tower of oblivion like he did with Balekin? First of all it's obvious, she never committed any crime. But although the books say very little about their relationship (a shame because I've always been curious about it), I think there are some clues:

In the prologue to Tqn we see the discovery of Cardan's curse. It's said that Lady Asha doesn't seem to know how to hold a baby, but she hugs he when Eldred seems to be considering parting with the child and holds he tighter when she leaves. Perhaps she was just afraid of not having privileges, but it's the only gesture of affection we see from her.

Still in Tqn, Oriana tells Jude about Cardan's childhood:

"It wasn't as though she didn't dress him in velvets or furs; it's that she left them on until they grew ragged. Nor was it that she didn't feed him the most delectable cuts of meat and cake...."

Now, in Htkoelths, when he meets Aslog in the stables, despite being there because of her (bitch) Cardan thinks that if he called his mother she would beat Aslog up and throw her out. I found this passage strange bc Lady Asha is described as delicate and thin, yet Cardan knows that she would protect him from a much bigger and stronger woman. If he's so sure of this, has Lady Asha defended him before?

And finally, just a guess: when he travels to the mortal world in Tcp's time to save Balekin's mortal slave, Cardan travels on a giant moth owned by Lady Asha. It's said that the creature was personally tamed by her and he still remembers how, so he was probably there when it happened. Which means that perhaps Lady didn't leave him completely abandoned, there were moments that the two of them spent together, when she dressed him, fed him and perhaps took him for walks and played with him.

What does my monologue mean? That if we compare, Cardan seems to have more feelings for Lady Asha than for Eldred, because despite so many bad ones, he has good memories with her too. It's not just a blood bond.

It's sad and unfair, but Cardan has a much more forgiving heart than it seems.

There's probably something else too: guilt. If I'm not mistaken, in Twk's deleted scenes, when Lady Asha meets him to talk about Jude, it's said that Cardan didn't free her because he didn't think he had the power to, after all, Jude was the real High King.

Now, if we stop to think about it, Lady Asha had never committed a crime, (if we don't consider her to be the worst mother in the world), yet she probably spent about ten years trapped in the tower of oblivion, starving and cold, completely alone. Not even Balekin or Madoc suffered so much. Can we feel sorry for her for that? Idk, if you're a good person and can even like Madoc, that's fine, but I think it's well deserved. But not from Cardan's point of view, not least bc from his perspective it was his fault. Now, as High King, the best thing he can do to be fair is to reward her for all that time of suffering. So it's understandable that he lets her live in the palace and have everything she ever wanted.

Jude pov: I think that since she would like her mother to be alive and by her side and Cardan has that opportunity (which I would frankly pass up), she would never take it away from him, even for revenge. And like him, she's too happy to worry about the past and people who aren't worth it.

[hildamushroom]

Lady Asha while her child was surviving with cat milk:

Oriana and the whole fandom: