#i promise my actual essay is better than this trashfic

[lareinesophie]

HELLO darlings!! I had originally intended to get this blog on a good start by posting a sober, scholarly (and as yet unfinished) essay on the intricacies of Lady Lesso’s character, but then I got a much better idea, that is—

Repost this prompt with your own response: Write that one thing you really desperately wish will happen in the second SGE trilogy, but which in all likelihood won’t, and CHALLENGE: COME UP WITH THE CRAZIEST, MOST CREATIVE, MOST OUTLANDISH, MOST ABSOLUTELY MENTAL EXPLANATION as to how it just might be possible, even as it’s highly improbable.

Mine is that Lady Lesso is the character resurrected, because “who ever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back.” (Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Chapter XII). I’m not talking about a zombie!Lesso literally being brought back from the dead, tho I wouldn’t put it past Hester to sneak to Lady Lesso’s grave/probably-still-unburied coffin in the Garden for Good and Evil and attempt necromancy or whatever serious black magic that Rafal had performed to reanimate the Old villains. (Tbh Hester totally would bc she’s such a huge Lady Lesso fangirl; look at how she shamelessly appropriated Lady Lesso’s life advice to Sophie as her graduation quote in the Ev-Nev Handbook. I bet she reads The Tale of Sophie and Agatha again and again just for the bits in which Lady Lesso appears and cries heavy black mascara tears and spooks Anadil’s rats with this Overwhelming and Uncharacteristic Display of Sentiment.) But anyway, my pet wacko theory is: So we know that Lady Lesso had appointed Sophie her successor as Dean and gifted her her sharp-shouldered purple gown before tying Aric up & freeing Professor Dovey & all that, but what if she had also… *dramatic pause*… enchanted all the mirrors in the School for Good and Evil and saved fragments of her eternal soul in them (like with Horcruxes), not bc she was afraid that Aric would kill her, but rather she wanted to keep an eye on Dean Sophie and continue to guide her from beyond the grave!!

“[…]I’ll always see you as my student, Sophie. And when you lose your way, I’ll be there in the shadows, your Evil fairy godmother, pushing you towards your destiny like a wind behind a sail. Even when you lose sight of what that destiny is.” Sophie could see there was more Lady Lesso wanted to say, but she was holding back. Instead, they just gazed into each other’s eyes[…]”

The Last Ever After, Part ii Chapter 29. “Who’s Helping Who?”

Everyone knows about Sophie’s obsession with mirrors and that she spends all day preening in front of one, doing her make-up instead of her schoolwork. It’d make perfect sense to observe Sophie thru a mirror and it’s certainly the most effective method of spying on her. Also, although mirrors were more plentiful in the Good castle, they’re really an Evil artefact associated with vanity and with the greatest villains. For instance, the “Enchanted mirror belonging to Leandra of Frostplains (aka The Frost Queen)” is displayed in the Exhibition of Evil, and Little Snow-White’s Evil stepmother famously owned a rather opinionated talking mirror that basically mansplains her and makes her insecure about her body image, and in horror movies and the “Bloody Mary” urban legend the ghost always passes into the mortal realm through a mirror. Given her deep knowledge of fairytales and of everything Evil, Lady Lesso would have been very familiar with the magical properties of mirrors. Furthermore, having been a “sensational” witch back in the day (TLEA), she would have been well-versed in “the art of life-extension”. Indeed, being both Dean of Evil and Professor of Curses & Death-traps, she must have been until her death the most powerful and knowledgeable witch in the Woods; notice that she was revered even by Evers for her prowess in casting spells—the magical purple-tinged shield she cast in over the Schools for Boys and Girls could withstand the continuous onslaught of the entire prince population in the Woods. A life-preservation spell involving soul fragmentation & a mirror is likely child’s play for her.

[..]the two boys watched more feral princes climb through the hole in the broken shield. “You must be quite the magician to crack it,” said Tedros finally. “Lady Lesso cast that shield herself.” Aric didn’t reply.

A World without Princes, Part II Chapter 13. “The Supper Hall Book Club”

In short, Lady Lesso could and would cast a spell preserving part of her consciousness within a mirror/several mirrors; she had both the means and motivation for doing so. But — and things get even more FANTASTIC from here on — a tiny caveat: Remember that mirrors are more plentiful in the Good castle? In fact, practically all the mirrors in the School for Good and Evil are found exclusively in the Good castle; in Book 1 Sophie had complained about not being able to find a single mirror in the Evil school and had resorted to improvising one in her dorm by flooding the floor, and when she did get a proper mirror it was the one Agatha had removed from her dorm in the Good school. Professor Manley’s Uglification classroom did have “desks with rusty mirrors”, but you’d bet Dean Sophie had those thrown out in one of her first acts as Dean and replaced them with very classy and very expensive antique mirrored stations ordered from Putzi, much like those in Professor Anemone’s Beautification classroom (AWWP), Manley’s protests notwithstanding. (“BUT THEY’RE PRICELESS ANTIQUES!” “SO ARE MINE! AND MINE ARE ACTUALLY CLEAN AND FREE OF TRACES OF TADPOLE GUTS!”). And there’s the Ice Queen’s Enchanted Mirror in the Exhibition of Evil, which Lady Lesso did not touch due to it being a priceless artefact from Evil’s glory days and a token of Evil’s greatest triumphs (and for sentimental reasons too — The Frost Queen was her “favourite tale of all”), and which in any case was still languishing under a thick layer of dust in the tiny broom closet that housed the Exhibition, because Dean Sophie had evidently not seen fit to move the Old Evil relics to more dignified settings. Or rather, there simple was no room for them in the new museum (the ‘Temple de la Gloire de Sophie’) that housed all the items from her fairytale, and seeing that she was the only Never to win a fairytale in centuries, there wasn’t any point in making room for the remains of losers; it might demoralise new Nevers to see that their greatest heroes were this rotting vine of thorns (Vera of Woods Beyond) and a bunch of dead stuffed animals. And lastly, there’s probably a mirror in the private living quarters of the Dean’s office, given that Lady Lesso admitted she had “a vanity that is rare among Nevers”, but Sophie had taken up residence in the School Master’s Tower and set about renovating it into a five-star hotel, and decorated it not with massive jewelled mirrors from the Good School but with the finest silver-backed floor-to-ceiling mirrors ordered directly from the Putsi Metal Shop, the same company that supplied the chair-and-mirror stations for the new Evil Groom Room.

Sooooo mirror!Lady Lesso has had absolutely no opportunity to catch up on Dean Sophie’s doings and gleaned zero intelligence on what’s going on in the Evil School, and worse, is subject to a constant, unending barrage of vain, vapid Evers preening in front of the mirrors every spare moment. And she’s regretting her life decisions terribly and at first she vents by haunting the Evers but then feels bad bc the frightened Evers go crying to Professor Dovey who has to comfort them lest she receive angry letters from their haughty royal parents inquiring about “a POLTERGEIST in the GOOD SCHOOL?! WHAT HAS THIS SCHOOL COME TO? FIRST YOU LOSE EVERY COMPETITION, THEN YOU STOPPED HOSTING SNOW BALLS ETC. ETC.” and these missives are often laced with threats to sue the school for criminal incompetence.

BUT THEN Dean Sophie decides she wants to throw an Evil Snow Ball for Christmas, with the exact same winter wonderland aesthetic as that of previous Snow Balls, but as she invited the whole School and not just the Nevers, she needs more entertainment venues to ensure there’s room for everyone and that everyone has a good time, so the dungeon is converted into a carnival of wintry amusements, AND SHE TURNS LADY LESSO’S ICE CHAMBER CLASSROOM INTO AN ICE-SKATING RINK. Aaaand for final touches, as the dungeon walls are a little bare and gloomy for such a joyous occasion, Sophie convinces the Evers to loan those massive jewelled mirrors in the Good castle to Evil for a night, so as to pretty up the place and brighten the rooms by reflecting the dancing fairylights. And the Evers carry a whole lotta mirrors, practically every mirror in school, into the Evil castle, and Lady Lesso, who’s trapped within these mirrors, sees what Sophie has done to the Evil castle and FLIPS OUT, LIKE, WHY ARE THERE EVERS IN THE EVIL CASTLE!!??? IN HER CLASSROOM??! SOPHIE HAD DONE WHAT TO HER CLASSROOM?? AND WHY WAS EVERYONE GLIDING ON…KNIFE BLADES?? HOW TRIGGERING ESPECIALLY SINCE SHE HAD BEEN STABBED TO DEATH WITH ONE OF THOSE THINGS… Then Sophie pirouettes in and stops before a particularly handsome mirror (and mirror!Lesso) to admire her cute little ice-skating outfit and matching silver skates, her long golden locks swept elegantly upward and pulled into a tight dancer’s bun, and intoxicated by her own appearance, she leans in so close that her face is barely an inch away from the mirror and her eyelashes graze the mirror’s surface in a butterfly kiss, and she croons dreamily “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall,/ Who’s the fairest of them all?” And she opens her eyes to find…Lady Lesso glaring back at her, face literally white as snow (and thus fitting in perfectly with the ice decor) bc of how angry and horrified she is at what Sophie has done. Now, Lady Lesso had never shivered in her frozen classroom, but then and there during the Evil Snow Ball, she trembled uncontrollably with rage.