#and then madeleine comes in with the prettiest voice in the world

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

that part of old witch sleep and the good man grace when joey batey goes “don’t you think i look pretty curled up on this bathroom floor” reblog if you agree

[bi-outta-cordonia]

A Courtesan of Rome is ending, albeit hurriedly, but here’s the thing:

Xanthe was a waste.

We are given a book that is ultimately historical fiction, allows us to travel back in time to one of the most infamous moments of all time and, along the way, we play as a lone woman in a historical context who is given the power to change the world.

Along the way we meet a plethora of people, each of which plays a role in the story one way or another, with the exception of one.

Xanthe was sold to Lena as a little girl. She’s been trained to become a courtesan since she was a child. We are introduced to her as being a vapid and jealous woman, one who takes pride in her craft nonetheless but is in danger of being pushed out of the comfortable position she’s made for herself in Rome.

Think for a second about the implications behind Xanthe being trained to be a courtesan since she was a little girl. Sabina was married to Legate Aquila when she was between ten and twelve years old. There was an acute sense of horror that players were expected to feel for Sabina because, well, she was forced to become a child bride for the sake of her father needing to advance his political station. Her father used her as a tool, as something he could bargain with rather than love her like a parent would love their child. We felt bad for Sabina, we sympathized with Sabina, 

So now think of a child being trained to please men. She has no family, no one to protect her, no one to fall back on if she messes up because she’s truly all alone. Her routine is entirely of her learning to become sexually appealing to men and, if she is not successful in doing that, she will be thrown out onto the streets and forced to fend for herself from others that would have no qualms with using her for their own gain. 

She is a child when she’s forced to do this, she grows into a woman that then becomes exceptionally skilled at her craft. She learns the ins and outs of the types that frequently seek her out. She learns who the most powerful patrons are and learns how to charm them with but a smile and a few words. She has been training to do this since she was a girl, sold to the people who trained her as a slave meant to serve them and bring them money. She is forced to do this because she has no other choice. 

Perhaps she grows into the role. Grows into the idea of having independence and a reputation better than most of the senators’ wives have. She is her own woman, allowed to purchase her own things, allowed to move freely within particular social circles, and all this is due to the fact that she successfully learned how to play the game and win. She’s thriving and it’s what she needs for the moment. 

But then, here comes some other girl. She’s older by the time she arrives but the girl’s new owners are already fawning over her. They are providing the girl with every advantage, giving her the most powerful patrons. The girl is new, has only been training for a few years at most, but she’s receiving some of the better paying patrons who are supplying her with a lifestyle she was not raised to know. 

This puts the child who grew into the woman in a dangerous position--by losing the wealthier patrons, she loses a good chunk of her income--she becomes useless to the owners and risks being cast away from a position she’s held for years. 

This has been the core of Xanthe’s actual problem with us, not jealousy but fear, and I can’t honestly blame her for feeling that. We were a newcomer, someone who cared not for Rome or any of its trappings. Someone who didn’t care about wealth and power. We came to the scholae already outright rejecting Roman customs but Xanthe was forced to embody them as a child in order to survive. 

Every thing she had been through, all that she had to become in order to simply live in Rome was something she endured as a child. Given that this is her history, it begs the question: why wasn’t she allowed the complexity and depth to be a voice for those that have long since found themselves voiceless?

She was a courtesan in Rome, a woman with no past, sold to Lena as a child, and she never gets a chance to interrogate the systems that bred her or the institution that used her in such egregious ways. She never got to ask “why did this happen to me,” never got to curl her lip in disgust as another senator palmed her dress, never got to seethe as another batch of young girls shuffled through the scholae in tatters with tears in their eyes as Lena explained what their new life would entail. 

The idea that we had Xanthe here to be a complex character that let us see through the lens of history and realize that a lot of what people think of Rome as a civilization is just seen through rose tinted glasses. Rome had brutality of a variety--with Syphax we see the broken justice system, with Antony we see how easily and willingly those who had power would abuse it without hesitation, and with us as the MC we see how brutal and violent the campaigns were for those who were not Roman. 

Xanthe could’ve been another voice, another look into the world of women and the society of Rome. We could’ve had the potential to open up to her and get her side of things. 

We could’ve learned that she knew her parents. We could’ve cried when she described the first time she tended to a patron. We could’ve seethed with anger when she voiced her concerns for the other girls who got dragged into our mess after Legate Aquila ransacked the scholae. We could’ve helped distract a particularly difficult patron so she could breathe for a moment or pushed off a more powerful patron to her as a gesture of kindness. 

We could’ve sat down with her and explained what Caesar did to our family, did to our homeland. We could’ve explained that we are not here because we choose to be, but because we had those choices taken from us by the Romans and their constant thirst for power. We could’ve been the lens from which she finally understood that absolute power corrupts and casts despair upon those who are not strong enough to deflect it. We could’ve seen her breakdown and throw amphoras, break mirrors, shred her clothes as she ranted about Rome, fucking Rome, Rome and its constant need to conquer the shiniest and prettiest new things. 

We could’ve still had angry, vengeful Xanthe but instead of having her be a vapid airhead, she could’ve been so hurt and so distraught after we explained that Legate Aquila almost forced us to have sex with him had it not been for his wife who finally found the courage to stand up to him. 

We could’ve had angry, vengeful Xanthe who told us that she would not forgive us for what happened to the other girls or to Syphax, but she would sooner risk death by spitting on the Legate for attempting to force us to do what we had been given the choice not to do with patrons. 

We could’ve had angry, vengeful Xanthe who would tell us that we are insane for thinking we could possibly bring down a Legate but who would also go on to provide bits of useful information she gleaned from other senators in regards to Aquila’s movements. 

We could’ve had angry, vengeful Xanthe who would butt heads with Lena and teach girls unconventional lessons that the older woman would never teach them; lessons that Xanthe would then teach MC in a few exclusive scenes once she finds out that Antony intends to give her as a gift. 

We could’ve had angry, vengeful Xanthe who would still call us a fool knowing we plan to make good on killing Caesar and who would subtly stir unrest amongst her own patrons for the sake of taking vengeance on not just Caesar, but on Rome--for robbing her and other girls like her of their families, of their lives, of their personhood for the sake of building a utopia they never wanted to be a part of. 

We could’ve had angry, vengeful Xanthe who still didn’t like us but respected us for having the courage to refute Rome at every step--for being able to grow up our own woman. 

Instead, Xanthe remained vapid and useless, only meant to be the jealous and bitter rival who, in the grand scheme of things, did not really matter. Xanthe who was villainized at every step and Xanthe who we so boldly claimed we could’ve been friends with even though, at no point throughout the entire story, did we ever get an option to actually be nice to her. 

But sure, we’ll let Madeleine have a redemption arc even though she spent all of The Royal Romance belittling us for being less wealthy than her, after she humiliated our closest friends, after she made us go pick up the wedding ring the man we loved was likely gonna slip onto her finger, and after she offered no apology to us for her past behavior whatsoever. 

We’ll let Penelope just sweep the fact that she helped orchestrate a literal sexual assault on us so that we would be photographed in a compromising position and was absolutely rewarded for her efforts, a thing she did without a shred of guilt until after we put two and two together and confronted her about.

We’ll let Sebastian have a redemption arc after he literally stole money from the university he attended, money that could’ve helped pay for scholarships and other resources that different educational programs needed, which of course came before he tried to cut all scholarships that weren’t purely academic just to spite a few people he didn’t like, and of course again after he sabotaged the boiler in our house and could’ve seriously injured someone.

We’ll let Landry have a redemption arc after he gave the most superficial reasoning for why he decided to throw our friendship under the bus and did so by way of endangering actual patient lives by turning off our pager, taking our patients’ charts, and just flat out telling lies about us to the nurses which seriously damaged our ability to do our fucking job. 

We’ll let all these people slide with the proper consideration to the plethora of conditions that give us a complex look at why they did what they did--Madeleine because she was byproduct of a loveless marriage and has never understood that people are driven by empathy rather than practicality, Penelope because she had anxiety and could never have survived in the court without a serious edge over her peers, Sebastian because he had a fucked up childhood, and Landry I guess because he’s not used to losing,

But we don’t have any room or sympathy in our hearts for the woman who was taken from her family as a child, sold into slavery, and forced to learn young how to shut her mouth and be pretty or else she’d be cast into destitution for the rest of her life? How sway?