#i also think the kind of cognitive dissonance here where minerva believes in the circle

[vigilskeep]

Hi, I'm sorry if this has already been asked, but I'm fascinated with your character Minerva and was wondering why she didn't betray Jowan to Irving?

ah good question thank u for it!!

minerva is a pragmatist about the circle. she's very aware that a certain number of mages die or are made tranquil and she's in the mindset, at that point in her life, where she's been taught to accept this as a necessary evil. which actually ends up meaning she knows more than anyone that if this is true irving will go ahead with it. she has a very realistic idea of who irving is and what he does. but it's been easier to conceptualise all those losses as um a statistic than it is to face the immediate threat to the person closest to her. especially when her way of dealing with it all has been to say that mages who die or are made tranquil didn't try hard enough, didn't study hard enough, didn't fight hard enough on their harrowings. she rationalises it that way because it means if she just tries hard enough and is polite and gifted and perfect as she always is then nothing's going to happen to her. but she knows how hard jowan tries. so it isn't right. it isn't fair!

the other thing is that in my canon, my amell, halliserre amell, was made tranquil a few months before dao starts. minerva had a bit of a fiery relationship with them (i'd like to summarise it as fierce academic rivals with benefits, jhghsfdgsk) and their tranquillity was a huge and sudden recent shock. that definitely affects minerva's decision-making here. though she tries to rationalise by blaming halliserre themself in that case (halliserre chose to submit to tranquillity rather than undergo the harrowing), she knows deep down there's more to it than that. it's a complicated and painful topic to come up again so soon, it makes her just that bit angrier with the templars and irving, and it makes the danger feel very real

but all of that is kind of blurring the main issue which is that jowan is like minerva's brother and she loves him. the above factors are kind of what allows her to actually do something about that, but the motivation is simply that she cares about jowan, he's her closest friend and the only person more important to her than irving, and she very much thinks it's her job to protect him. she's more skilled than he is, more socially capable than he is; it is and always has been her role to protect him from the templars, even if it that only meant helping him with his studies or calling in favours with senior enchanters. being able to do all that is what has made her feel comfortable with how much she's betrayed herself to be the ideal circle student in the first place. it proves keeping your head down to get influence works, that it's not just selfish, that in the long run it means mages are better off. so if she can't even protect him, then what's the point of it all? it's probably worth noting, too, that minerva's fatal flaw is arrogance: if she's always been able to look after jowan before, what's one more time?

i actually have this really fun um super rough dialogue snippet somewhere in my word doc from when she was little, um, talking to karl thekla actually. and she's being disapproving of anders while hes like benafflecksmoking.jpeg because that's the whole dynamic lmao. she's like, why would you spend time with someone like that, he's an escape artist, the templars hate him, he's not going to make it! (this last said in a kid's deadly serious tone where she expects it to be heard as a totally damning accusation.) and karl is like [in the voice of a very tired young academic] minerva what would you say if i told you, i don't know, your friend jowan wasnt going to make it. and she totally freaks out. shes like thats a lie, dont ever say that, hes trying with the spells, hes going to get it! she's only a kid she's nearly in tears over this immediately even though karl's the furthest thing from a threat and he barely meant anything by it. it's always been the one thing that makes her lose her head. she cares so much about keeping up this perfect image except this one thing, right, she's got this perceived weaker nobody mage trailing after her. she's supposed to be able to keep this one person safe and that will make it all worthwhile. and what she has to learn is that even for all her sacrifices and good behaviour, the circle simply does not care. there's nothing it won't take