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tremsing82 · 1 month ago

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My Thoughts on Night Court

So when I read acotar for the first time this summer (2024) my 3 best friends were the ones who peered pressured me to do so and our group chat became my reading experience chat. It was fun. But they are all pro-night court and pro-bat boys. And though I can be open and accepting of the narrative for it moves the plot forward I did start becoming more cynical and posing questions of the ethics and moral standings of the night court. My first big question to my friend group that got them all to pause and think was:

>Is it morally and ethically ok for Hewn City to fight in this war when they are trapped under a mountain and do not have access to Velaris. And Velaris expects hewn city to fight in the war to protect their peace, yet Velaris does not have an army and the citizens are not and to volunteer. Now yes some Velaris citizens did go fight for Adriata but again Rhys never sent out a request for Velaris citizens to join the war effort against Hybern. And also is it morally and ethically ok for Rhys to essentially segregate hewn city residents who will eventually visit Velaris one day considering that was the only request Keir had when Rhys asked for The DarkBringers to fight in the war. Rhys said yes to that because he had already told his Velaris city leaders they can tell the citizens they can deny Hewn City residents from entering their establishments. So these hewn city soldier are gonna go to war possibly be killed leaving behind a widow and children, or they are going to be brutally mutilated with scars or lost limbs. And then they or their widows and children are gonna arrive in Velaris and be denied access to a bake shop to buy a cookie or a toy store and denied the ability to buy a doll all while they went to war to keep this place safe and protected. <

I truly don’t think Rhys would have went to war with Hybern to protect hewn city or Illyria. He went to war specifically to protect Velaris the only city he loves. And that bothers me. And makes me dislike and not enjoy the Night Court, but essentially i really don’t like Velaris. I think it’s a spoiled city of entitled judgemental people similar to its 5/6 leaders of the Inner Circle. Mor is claimed to be the emissary between Velaris and Rhys and Hewn city but she does absolutely nothing to showcase that title and job. Except to tell her father when Rhys is going to visit. She claims to be the only dreamer ever to come out of or born in Hewn City and I HIGHLY doubt that. She tell Feyre the story about how she dreaded the day her power manifested because she knew she would be sold into a loveless marriage the way her cousins had been. So you’re telling me your cousins enjoyed their status and their betrothals but you are the only one who hated this custom. The IC is all telling me that everyone is Hewn City is dark and evil, so even a new baby is touched by evil and deserves to never see the sky outside of that mountain it was born in. How is this ethical and morally acceptable. Feyre says once to Lucien in MaF that if you stare long enough into the darkness sometimes it will stare back, and this to me should be applied to the Hewn Cory residents. If all that they have is darkness and hate and hurt to live with it’s not surprising they all embrace that darkness and hate. They are not given other options. Should we the reader question the ethics of how the Hewn city is seen and talked about and even ruled?

So why do people argue FOR this Court? Why does the majority of the fandom hate to be asked these question or see these blatant issues for this court? Why am I told it’s all a mask that they all have to don to protect the innocents and freedom of a spoiled city that is so well hidden that it remains outside of the conflict happening in Prythian. The attack on Velaris by the Attor was the first time the outside world’s conflict finally reared its ugly head to its citizens. Yes they claim they felt bad for the suffering the other courts went through for the 50yrs of Amarantha’s reign but none of them told Rhys to break the wards hiding them, when he finally returned. None said we should band together and go help the other courts rebuild since we have remained untouched for 50yrs. They didn’t pull their resources together to send aid to the most hard hit villages and cities in other courts. They continued on with their days of holding theater production and eating safely at restaurants and going to nightclubs for 50yrs.

And I am suppose to be mad at Tamlin for starting to reissue his courts only form of revenue to ensure it continued ability to function. A tax that only happens twice a year and is only 10% of whatever a person has produced. So if a person has 10hens they only have to give over 1 hen. If a person has 1 hen that produced 10eggs then they only have to give over 1 egg. 10% twice a year, that’s not a bad taxation. Hell the river nymphs didn’t have to give Tamlin fish, he never asked for fish. He just asked for 10% of whatever they produced. They could have handed him 10blades of lake grass or a cup of river water, he would have accepted it. And heard their pleas for fish to be helped brought back into their lake. He wasn’t gleeful about having to find perpetrators of not paying taxes, he just knows this is how his court functions and runs. Rhys says we do a different form of tax, which to me I assume he means modern day taxation which is sales tax, property tax, and/or income tax. Which overarching means the citizens of night court are paying more into taxes than in Spring Court.

For the Illyrian struggles with female empowerment i struggle to always completely blame Rhys on this. I think Illyria has Rhys by the balls. If Rhys enforces his laws in Illyria again wing clipping and female oppression then he loses one of his strongest armies (which the fandom and SJM also claim is possibly the strongest army in Prythian 😒😪🙄). This is an army that is under his full control and cannot deny his decree to go fight or go to battle like the Keir can do with the DarkBringers. So if he starts killing Illyrian men for wing clippings or if he starts throwing Illyrian men into the barrack cells then he essentially will lose half of 75% of his army. He is definitely in between a rock and a hard place with how to enforce the laws that protect Illyrian women. A person on Instagram had a wonderful idea to help this conundrum; Rhys law should be if any Illyrian woman has their wings clip illegally from this day forward then the males in her household will also have their wings clipped. If they are not afraid of Rhys throwing them in jail or killing them then go to their biggest fear losing their access to flight. And enforce it. See how quickly the other males stop once they see one neighbors household have the patriarch and sons all lose access to flying. And it should be done in the city streets where all can see. Now granted this could turn Rhys into looking like and feeling like a dictator of a violent regime but truthfully I sometimes already see him that way anyway with how much he torment and degrades hewn city and its residents. Now like I said in the begging of this paragraph i don’t fully hate Rhys on this. My arguments for Rhys on Illyria is that he is the first high lord to make laws and changes to a society that has been free to do what they want in their traditions for possibly 15,000 years. He has put laws into place to help empower women. Emerie inherited her father’s shop because of these news laws being in place allowing women to own and inherit property. Emerie is progressive, she knew of the new laws and she seized them and used them to help herself. Other Illyrian woman have been oppressed for so long that the thought of finally using the new laws to enforce their rights to autonomy or property ownership or joining the army is scary for them. It’s gonna take more than a male high-lord and 2 male Illyrians to help them feel safe to express their freedom. Which I think will come in with Nesta moving the Valkyries training to the Illyrian camps to help the lllyrian females. They gonna see females learning battle strategy and fighting techniques that are designed specifically for females, they are going to see females who can’t fly conquering the blood rite. That will be the driving force for the female Illyrians to enforce the new laws that Rhys put in place to help them and free them and protect them. Rhys has the laws in place he just needs the people to start using them.

And I guess I will end this essay with I don’t hate Rhys or his IC (well most of them, I hate Amren and Mor annoys me for being useless). I just wish we could explore the other lands. Why must everything be so centralized to night court/Velaris. I know they have the ancient crabby lady (Amren 🙄🙄🙄) who has answers to Prythians lost history (which first she never wants to share willingly, second doesn’t always share all the truth, and lastly her knowledge is mostly night court focus).

-Day Court has the most libraries in all of Prythian with books written that are as old as their lands. Day Court is the only court with Pegasus, a rare magical animal that are dying/going extinct. Day Court is the court of the Sun. And what are suns but stars in the night sky. Suns are liquid fire. And the dread trove items which are as old as the daglan has sun symbols all over them and makes Helion feel uncomfortable which makes him think an ancestor of his might have own it or used it.

-Autumn court has entire strong bloodlines missing because they followed Theia into Midgard. A bloodline that just reappeared into Prythian in Night Court. I would like to know their history with Queen Theia, with how they helped fight the Daglan.

-I know the Daglan (acotar), the Asteri (CC), and the Valg (ToG) are all the same parasitic beings. And we know the fae of Prythian overthrew their Daglan. And we know in ToG on how to kill a Valg (fire and healing). And well I can only assume that Autumn court with their fire and possibly Day Court with their sun fire and possible healing magic were the ones that helped liberate Prythian from the Daglan in battles.

-And well we have a character, Lucien, that people kinda write off as not important to the world plot, who has parents from these 2 courts. But the majority of the fandom write him off because well he is not from night court, he is not a bat boy, and he is not a night court/rhys worshipper. And so we have all this foreshadowing but I worry that SJM is just not gonna do anything with it because it not night court specific. Now granted she might have us leave the night court finally and learn the importance of Prythians history through Day Court and Autumn Court. We know Eris was happy to share Prythians history with Nesta who was showing curiosity but Cassian was rude and stopped him. We might find out that Eris is a history nerd like Bryce. That he is researching his bloodlines and his courts involvement in the building and creation of Prythian. We might find out from Helion that Dawn and Day were once a single court but split to give the solar courts more chances of pleading their cases at high lord meetings where the seasonal courts had more sway in votes. We truly just don’t know anything about these courts and Night Court doesn’t want to know. So as a reader who likes to travel a world in a book I want to leave this oppressive and isolated land and meet the others.

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