#i always feel so cringe breaking out the tags bhfdksbfhds but i feel like i haven't heard this anywhere!!!

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

Alright alright alright, I'm finally home now so I can put my musings about the Triumphants onto paper at last. I'll put it under a cut though since it's probably gonna be kind of long.

Okay so bare with me here, but I was musing around with friends regarding the Triumphant skins and we stumbled upon something that seems... literally so obvious in hindsight, I don't really know how I haven't really thought of it until now. I'll just say it outright, okay, here we go:

The Triumphant skins do not represent the forms the survivors would take if they fully embraced the power of the throne and became the monarchs of the Constant. Or, at the very least, after much scrutinization, it would be very unlikely that this would be the case.

To spoil my own theory before giving you the facts here, I think that the Triumphant skins- instead of being throned versions of the survivors- are iterations of the survivors mutilated by Charlie's desires. Warped by her hand, if you will. And I've exactly three reasons that I suspect this is the case:

Reason number one: we've seen what Maxwell looks like when he's embraced- or at the very least stopped fighting against- the nature of the throne; we've seen both his appearance in magical apparitions, as well as the true form that's tethered to the chair. While both of them were unique, neither of them shared the same visual aesthetic that the rest of the triumphant skins embody. The antagonistic version of Maxwell has always had more color, with multiple shades of purples, greys, and even occasionally whites making up his usual palette. The Triumphants, on the other hand, don exclusively greys and blacks, with splashes of red at most as their only accents.

If the Triumphants were supposed to represent the appearance of a throned ruler, then how come Maxwell bares no resemblance to them? There's only one person who so strongly obeys the black and red motif, and that's Charlie. Meaning it would obviously make sense if those who stemmed from her hand- created in her image- all followed such a set color scheme, instead of branching out in a variety of colors and styles, had they actual control of their appearances.

Reason number two: Maxwell's triumphant skin itself. Obviously, from the perspective of wanting to create a collectable item people would want to... you know, collect, if the Triumphant skins were supposed to represent throned iterations of the survivors, then obviously they would need to shake it up a bit with Maxwell, to make the set something unique to the rest.

However, if the Triumphant sets were made not to represent throned versions of the survivors, but to present exactly how Charlie might- if presented with the opportunity- contort said survivors into shadows of their former selves, wouldn't it make complete sense for her to mutate Maxwell back into the man he used to be? Into the man he trusted? The man he was before he started this mess, trapped her in this place, and forced her into the body of an ungodly creature? The only way, really, to improve upon someone as flawed as Maxwell is to eliminate Maxwell entirely, after all.

Reason number three: uhh Winona literally like. has a rose on the back of her Triumphant skin. Which was a bit of a dead giveaway for me after I remembered that. I mean, I know Winona came into a picture almost a year after the triumphant skins were first originally announced, but there's literally no other explanation I have for her sharing a motif so obviously linked to Charlie if she wasn't... oh, I don't know, under the influence of Charlie. Even if she is aware of Charlie's affinity to roses- which she has no reason not to be, in honesty- she doesn't like them! Not even roses! If Winona of all people gotten herself into a scenario where she succumbed to the embrace of the throne and became fucked up and evil to the point where she'd see it fit to rule over the Constant with an iron fist, what reason would she have to plaster a flower over her back of her own accord? None.

ANYWAYS. All this to say that, after much deliberation, I doubt that we've actually had any canon answers as to what each survivor would look like if they truly became rulers of the constant. And I personally think we should get on that and start designing Throned Survivor outfits like. Immediately. Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk