#and Kristen had the 'disadvantage' of being born into a cult

[do-what-the-knight-tells-you]

This! I was on the verge of replying to a previous post trying to figure out if we had a Cannon basis for the assumption a lot of folks are making that she's like Proper Wealthy.

Cuz I very much had gotten that impression, her mysterious revenue stream with which she paid Aelwyn is not her parents, her parents are like "solid middle class" etc.

But she definitely you know has grown up seeing classmates who are wealthy-wealthy, (Seacasters, Abernants, The Wallace's aren't actually wealthy but you wouldn't know that by how Ostentatia behaves etc) and she very much strikes me as the type to tell herself that her family is worse off/has experienced more hardship than they have. Since they're not Really Rich, that means they should get "points" for being underprivileged, right?

Except of course she does not get attention/compensation for not being Rich-Rich (because 1. There appears to be no financial aid in this world at all, hence why things are so very hard for Adine and Riz this year for example, and 2. Even if there was, She Would Not Need It, and would not meet the qualifications for it... Again, if it existed, which it doesn't appear to).

Seems to be a decent example of the whole "absence of privilege feels like oppression" thing. She feels that she ought to be privileged in a lot of ways she isn't, and overlooks the ways in which she is... Either straight up not realizing that she's privileged, or else being flatly unwilling to see those things as privilege. She feels like a lot more should have just happened for her, that she was due a lot more just because she was... And because she didn't get those things, she's got to find a Way to justify that that feels better to her than "actually other people did work harder than you, often despite their disadvantages" or " You had the good luck to be born into a stable family, but not the starshot luck to be born WEALTHY... And Also have a stable family".

i will say that one thing about kipperlilly that a lot of people seem to be confused about is the ways in which she is privileged - to my understanding she is not actually from a wealthy family? without her own actions and choices she would be perfectly average in every way, and that is what drives her to the brink! the perfect median in every way, uninteresting as a result…

aelwyn strongly implied that her money is her own, not her parents, and so, much like her decision to come back and actively serve ankarna’s rage form, everything that stands out about her she actively chose and chased. in a world of literal gods and devils, her privilege is actually the things she hates: that she is boring.

this is a girl who cannot understand why “may you live in interesting times” is a curse