#i was actually rereading bc i wanted to do a flashfic about esme (my main muse) before watching the new ep so it worked out i think

[saviolum-sanguineus]

Colour Theory & Romance in Butterfly Court

I was re-reading before the newest episode of the show dropped, and I realised that there's a whole wealth of shipping material that's gone (as far as I can tell) untouched. So naturally, I had to channel my inner Rory and get to exploring - so grab your kittens, your art supplies of choice, and get ready to have your mind BLOWN below the cut.

See that? No, it's not the colour of the sky, but it is the key to a lot of interesting nuance in Butterflyverse ships. All those gorgeous descriptions of clothing, magic, and physical appearance put a lot of emphasis on colour, specifically what colour each character is associated with.

What does this have to do with ships, you ask? Let's get into it, using some of the most popular ones as examples. DISCLAIMER: these are the most popular BC ships as of april 2023, based on how many fics are on ao3 tagged for each ship (book/show/movie all included).

MatRory

Mat: green-red are at a 90 degree angle to each other, so he’s got an element of opposition within himself as well as stability. His whole arc is based on internal conflict (remember his kitchen thoughts right before Andrey got stabbed?) thanks to the external conflict that he’s involved in. When he meets Aurora, she becomes a focal point - and her main colour association is white, which is centred in the colour wheel. Rory and Mat challenge each other’s views and ultimately stabilise each other to work towards a common goal - and IT SHOWS. Literally. Even if we take out Mat’s red association, MatRory stays stable based on the monochromatic scheme; they’re constantly working along the same parallel. Monochrome schemes evoke senses of calm and peace, which makes sense for one of the only canon couples that hasn’t gone through a ton of angst because of being together.

Moving onto something a little more controversial: Esme/Enoch, aka E-squared. A lot to unpack here. Let’s start with Esme: she’s almost comically consistent with wearing red all the time as “her” colour, her hair is red, she’s careful to only perform fire magic in public (or at least look like it), and the amount of time she spends covered in blood is non-negligible. The book also spends a good amount of time describing her eyes: one of the first things we learn about her in the books is that “her eyes are the colour of greed” and there’s a mention of her eyes matching a gold body chain she wears at Razac’s party. Her magic is "fierce gold light". So Esme is strongly red/gold associated. A stretched-out analogous combo, if you will. She’s independent on her own spectrum of warm colours; Esme supports herself throughout the books and it’s only when she gets involved with things outside that spectrum of power that stuff gets Complicated.

Enoch’s eyes are also given a lot of screentime; they’re consistently described as very pale, icy blue, and his magic manifests as “pale aqua” or “cyan” light. If we include Ward colours or his preferred “benthic blue” ink for letters, it’s impossible to miss the association between Enoch and blue. Let’s compare their magic (the focus of their first meeting, when Esme comments on Enoch’s magic after he heals her): gold is essentially yellow, maybe with a touch of orange, and blue is directly across from that on the colour wheel. Esme and Enoch are complementary; constantly opposed despite their attraction and ability to make the other person more vibrant. Some might say opposites attract…or that their differences are irreconcilable and at the heart of why they’ll never be completely happy together. However you look at it, there’s a lot of tension there.

For another spin on the blue/gold complementary angle, let’s take a look at Lunesme. Luna’s hair is naturally “blue”; on the cover art and special edition illustrations, it looks either sky blue or slightly cyan depending on which printing you’re looking at. Regardless, Luna and blue are very, very strongly linked. So we’ve got the same complementary colour relationship - but Esme’s interactions with Luna are completely different from with Enoch.

Although they both share intimate moments, Esme does a lot more “hesitating” and “considering” around Luna, and in the church scene we can see that she’s taking space to be more active and engage with/for Luna, whereas with Enoch (the assassin scene, ice skating, Razac’s party), Esme is more reactive. She’s not on a back foot, necessarily, but there’s definitely a different dynamic (and this could be intentional. Esme does flaunt her relationship with Enoch at the beginning, when she’s still sure of herself within that warm hue spectrum, but the whole thing at her apartment after the Seraphine gala throws her off).

The complementary tension in Lunesme draws them together, but the reasons they support each other so well are the same as why they keep having this will-they-won’t-they energy. Esme’s fear of hurting Luna pushes her away - and it’s why she takes the protective initiative in the church. With Esme’s red/gold and Luna’s blue, we’re looking at a triad - arguably the same as E-squared, but with what we know about Luna and how she and Esme have shared a surprising amount of secrets with each other (the scene where Esme let her pet her ears lives in my head RENT-FREE, and I live in London :P), their stability is challenged by the secrecy of their relationship. They usually only meet in shadowy scenes (remember the lighting in the church scene and all the times shadows are mentioned? Seraphine gala escape in evening…Esme only turns the lights fully on after Enoch arrives). The vibrancy of Lunesme is dulled by their fears of being exposed or bringing harm to one another, since they’re only totally honest in whispers or in letters.

Next example: Imperial Triad. We’ve established that Enoch is blue; Nicholas is pretty obviously green (the eyes, the magic, the Remington colours) and Andrey is most often seen in variations of grey (usually “pearl” and “dove”, with Taran’s hair overlapping a little on “dove” and exclusively taking “ash”). Just looking at hue, green and blue are analogous and grey (a tone) mutes them - this isn’t a bad thing, don’t worry! It’s a bit ironic because Andrey’s antics create more chaos than not, but in the context of his relationship with Nicholas and Enoch, the colour shows how he stabilises them (because let’s be honest, they’re both Unhinged and varying levels of good at hiding it). Their higher saturations are evened out by Andrey keeping them occupied, and overall their hues are harmonious together.

I don’t think we can necessarily try to predict any endgames just through this theory, but it’s pretty obvious that there was a lot of thought put into the symbolism of each character’s colour association and how they play into the relationships between them. It’s already been stressed that wearing certain colours in court is a way of showing or requesting favour, so even in-universe, we might see some mention of something similar! My personal guess is that it’d be focused on magic colours, but we’ll have to see.