#sidenote most of these screenshots are basically useless in making my point

[yardsards]

thinking of the Implications of the blight parents signing their 14 year old daughter up for emperor's coven tryouts

because

1: the emperor's coven takes their recruits away from their friends and family

2: they do not wait until you are an adult to do this

(like, even assuming the process from getting accepted into the coven to actually joining it and moving to the castle aren't as fast as hunter makes it sound here it's like.

we do see lilith having dinner at home after eda's been cursed. so it wasn't immediate (at least back then it wasn't)

but they weren't waiting til she was an adult either. cuz eda was 2 years younger than lilith (thus at least 2 years younger than whatever the boiling isles considers an adult, cuz we know lilith was still a student then too) and she and lilith planned on joining at the same time. there wasn't a "well, eda can't actually *join* join for two more years, so she might as well wait for next tryout anyway"

which, tryouts might not be *yearly*, perhaps it's more efficient to not have to run the training camp every year, but i don't imagine they'd be less often than every couple of years)

so this?

the blight parents are 100% willing to send their FOURTEEN YEAR OLD CHILD away *forever*

14 years old. not even done with puberty yet. half a head shorter than her siblings and a whole head shorter than her parents. face still covered in baby fat.

this is a child who is called *mittens* by not only her siblings but by the very parents who were willing to send her away

and they weren't just sending her off to live far-ish away and rarely see them again; they were sending her off to have a Real Grownup Job. even if exactly how bad working for the emperor is isn't a well-known fact, it's still obviously a full-time job.

odalia has wanted amity to join the emperor's coven for a long time. after all, having a daughter in the emperor's coven would bring a lot of prestige to the family, and she could maybe try to leverage amity's position to gain more power

and odalia can be an impatient woman, so it makes sense that she'd want this to happen as soon as possible. not to mention, she's canonically not averse to child labour

(i briefly considered that maybe odalia wanted amity out of her life but i don't think that's the case. odalia doesn't outright hate amity; odalia's cruelty comes from seeing her family as tools (and seeing amity as very useful but flawed) rather than malice)

meanwhile, alador explains his choice by saying he thought it was what amity wanted

and it's addressed that that's not really her dream (at least, it DEFINITELY isn't anymore. they way she used to "want" to join the emperor's coven is worthy of its own post tbh). and that if he paid attention to her, talked to her, listened to her, and made himself a person that she could comfortably admit these kinds of things to, then he'd know that.

but he also ignores her when she says she doesn't want to go to tryouts that night (even if she didn't admit that she never wants to join the emperor's coven at all) and wants to go to the bonesborough brawl instead.

doesn't stop to question why his daughter -who has previously shown herself to be rather studious, responsible, and goal-oriented- would suddenly want to "goof off". he just... assumes she's being irresponsible and thoughtlessly not pursuing "her dream" or "a bright future" for no reason, and just needs to be pushed into doing the supposedly responsible thing

but that doesn't quite explain why he's convinced that she needs to do this at *age fourteen*, why her future can't wait a few more years, why her dream needs to happen as soon as possible before her childhood's even over. (and i'm not gonna take "because odalia said so" as an answer here; he's clearly convinced that what he's doing is right and is not just mindlessly following orders)

well, first possibility: i think maybe, while he's not as bad or blatant about it as his wife, he might also think material success is the key to happiness (and the emperor's coven is considered one of the most successful positions in the world, next to being a covenhead)

and with that kind of mindset, a lot of the things that would bring the children actual happiness just get forgotten. their needs for attention and affection, for friendship and leisure, for the freedom to express themselves, for the chance to just be kids, all get thrown by the wayside -sacrificed in the name of "success"

by that line of thinking: joining the emperor's coven = material success and material success = happiness. and if joining the emperor's coven = happiness, then joining sooner = being happy sooner. and why wouldn't a parent want their child to find happiness as soon as possible? unfortunately her age and specific needs are not in that equation at all, even though they're obviously actually very important factors

(you could also honestly apply this reasoning to odalia herself as well, if you want to be charitable. cuz i've seen good arguments that she does actually care about her family's wellbeing, but in a twisted sort of way, wherein her priorities are extremely skewed AND it gets obscured by her own selfishness. idk, the show's characterization of her is weird, even compared to her husband (i blame the s3 shortening rushing their development, tbh). so i waited to bring this up til after i started talking about alador.)

there's also a second possibility: maybe he realizes that their home environment is bad for amity (which, it is), and thinks getting her out of there early by any means would be good for her (which, not quite the case)

maybe not even by noticing her actual misery, but by projecting his own misery onto her. like, he's in an abusive marriage and severely overworked. when he says amity has a bright future, he's kind of contrasting her with himself, and -consciously or not- implying that his life is not what a bright future looks like (which kind of goes against the first possibility, because he is rather financially successful). and he's very afraid of his children having to take his place: probably especially amity, because she's the abomination witch and would be more likely to have to take on his exact job

(ironically, though he doesn't know it, emperor's coven members are just as overworked and controlled as he is)

except, y'know, leaving a toxic home environment to become fully self sufficient is not the kind of upgrade for a kid that it would be for an adult. it'd just be throwing her from one bad situation to another

and also it's your responsibility as a parent to provide an environment for your child that they don't need to escape from. and while some concessions can be made due to the whole abusive wife situation, that doesn't absolve him of all responsibility.

like, the whole point of his role in reaching out was that the WERE things that he COULD do better. like, he became a better father at the end of that episode than he was at the beginning. and none of that change was due to "my wife changed, so i now have the ability to be a better father"; odalia wasn't involved in that growth at all