#i guess this is pro tam tam so ill tag it

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

Rhysand teaming up with Amarantha? That’s like comparing TikTok dances to ancient spell. The Illyrians? They’re on a whole different level. You totally missed the memo on this argument

ehhhh what💀

the whole point is that rhys is (1) a bad high lord and (2) just lacks initiative. he's...a lazy ruler. he only 'challenges' the status quo in ways that still uphold it. everything 'good' about the night court -- he already inherited. if anything - the story kind of praises antiquated practices of rhysand's fathers in relation to velaris. and a lot of this is a symptom of sjm being a lazy writer - but the problem still persists. like he can make feyre 'high lady' but if he told cass or az "do not tell feyre about this," az/cass would defer to him. im not speculating about this, its literally canon.

the whole point in pointing out that rhys rounds up all the 'bad' illyrians and decides to torture and murder them is to show the disconnect. rhys is willing to commit these atrocities and murders - just not in a way that would productively help the females in his court. he is the absolute authority on this issue. we're not saying "if rhys did x" - we already know that he'll receive no consequences if he did. like if rhys didn't kill the illyrians, it would have been hard to make my argument; i would have been making up a hypothetical situation and then the argument will devolve into a semantic mess. but like we can make this argument bc rhys would just round up a bunch of illyrians and kill them. he already did.

the the overarching problem is that sjm has written in a scenario in which the citizens are all blamed for their poverty, femicide, and clipping. and the story cant justify how under the most perfectest, beautifulest high lord to ever walk the earth has had over 300-400 years to fix an issue, but hasnt.

like even tam tam rebranded his court so well that his citizens fundamentally didn't align themselves to his father's previous ideology. remember the spring court that literally supported slavery - tamlin rebranded that. feyre even mentions that he did such a good job at it that his people didn't miss a step when he started to exhibit those same behaviors. tamlin didn't inherit that atmosphere - he made it. and its weird when the villain of the story has shown more initiative than your protag.

in the same 300-400 years only one court actually changed. and it wasnt the night court. and this is not to be pro-tamlin, it’s just what’s established. and we can absolutely pick apart tamlin’s politics (he was also written by sjm - she can’t write politics for shit) too, but like broadly speaking - the night court operates in the same manner it did when rhys's father was in power.