#i can't believe amalie is the only main character whose parents are both alive

[taz-writes]

11, 13, 19 for the oc ask thing?

11. They’ve won the lottery. Spend, or save?

Spenders--Aelia, Kyrina, Fianora, probably Lavender

Savers--Hope, Dusk, Violet, and Sayara despite the other three’s assumptions. Dusk has an investment plan, Violet doesn’t tell anyone she won and hoards the cash for some mysterious future “emergency.” No real emergency she finds herself in will ever be worthy of spending the cash. It’ll probably become inheritance for someone. 

Kyrina canonically made her Regents blow half the country’s budget on her new ugly castle on Eth Zantaara, so it’s established that she should never be given full access to money, ever. They’re literally fighting a war about it. Granted she was about five years old at the time, but I promise you, she has not gotten any better.

13. Name one thing their parents taught them.

Ooh! Ooh! Fun one!

For Sayara... Power exists to serve those without it, and fame and wealth exist as rewards for doing so. This is the big thing Doriel’s worked his butt off to drill into her, because otherwise she’d have some rather sociopathic tendencies. She’s not a legit sociopath per se, she does have high capacity for empathy and she almost feels too many emotions, but she has a lot of difficulty understanding how other people think and putting others’ needs before her own did not come naturally. By the time the story starts, she’s mostly learned this, but the first part of the phrase becomes one of her driving mantras. 

She learns to help people first because that’s how you make them like you, and she wanted power so that she could help people so that she could make people like her. This is still very much the subtext to her personality, but she’s growing towards the more straightforward “I want to be the leader so I can help people,” without so much of the “...and then they’ll love me and give me everything I want and make me rich and popular” bit. This is 100% Doriel’s work showing itself, and if she was raised by anyone less attentive she’d be a supervillain. 

Hope’s lesson from her parents is more a lesson from her grandmother, taught through Doriel: Hard work will earn you what kindness alone will not, but selfish work will earn you nothing. She actually picked this up from the same “power exists for the good of those without it” line that Sayara got “be famous so they love me” from, the two of them read VERY different lessons out of that speech. Sayara’s takeaway was “if I do good things it’s good for me because then people will like me,” Hope’s takeaway was “if I do things for myself instead of for other people, then I’ll never get anywhere.” If she works her butt off, then she can be like her grandmother and earn the title she’s inheriting, but she has to put that work towards the interests of her country and not herself. If she works hard but only for her own sake then she’ll never get what she really wants, which is for her tribe to be successful and proud of her. 

Kyrina (and Fianora) never really knew their parents, since the late Queen and Prince Consort died in a fire when they were very little. Fi remembers Sharing Is Caring, and Ky remembers zilch. Ky remembers playing toy boats with Fianora and falling down the stairs a lot because Fi was the Leader and she liked to explore. She doesn’t actually have any memories of her parents. It’s kinda fucked up when you think about it. 

Violet’s mother taught her not to take anybody’s shit. If they don’t like that, tough luck, because you’re not going anywhere. Lilac also taught Violet how to do mind control and brainpain people. This was a very valuable life skill. 

Lilac taught Lavender to stand up for herself. The lesson didn’t quite stick, but Iani still remembers it. Lilac tried really hard to press into Lavender that she’s not just a copy of somebody else, she’s her own person with her own wants and needs and thoughts. Violet wanted to be exactly like Lavender for a very long time, Lavender doesn’t have to want to be exactly like Violet. 

Aelia learned how to be sneaky from Lilac, after being caught bumping around the kitchen at night one too many times. She’s still not very good at it, but her mom tried her best. Aelia’s very much a black sheep in the Ravenhart family, in case you couldn’t tell from her (GASP) NON-THEMATIC NAME!! 

Amalie’s father taught her how to go for the jugular first. Her mother taught her how to seduce people, not that she would EVER want to know... yeah, most of her good life lessons were not taught by blood family. 

19. Do they study before tests? Practice before job interviews?

Sayara is a firm believer in “entrepreneurial studying” (read: stealing the test questions ahead of time and strategizing). It’s mostly because she lacks the attention span to study for real. 

Hope obsessively studies for everything, and can be heard in her room by passersby chanting responses to standard questions to herself in rhythm. It’s creepy. Sayara’s caught her memorizing speeches this way and she finds it very unsettling. 

Violet’s average, she studies pretty normally, doesn’t practice much for interviews... if she’s actually worried about something, though, she can get a little manic-obsessive. 

Lavender is a diligent student, and practices interviews by a mirror because she’s got such awful social anxiety that otherwise she won’t be able to speak. 

Aelia doesn’t study or practice for almost anything except her martial arts. She doesn’t care enough, tho she’s juuuuuust smart enough to skate by anyways. 

Amalie studies for tests but doesn’t practice interviews, she’d rather wing it and insert stock puns if she can’t come up with something. 

Kyrina’s never actually gone to school, and her tutors pass her because otherwise she’ll fire them and kick them off the mountain. 

Thanks for asking!!