two theories about mel, drawn from ambessa: chosen of the wolf
on this, the most sacred and important of mel mondays, i bring you a little contribution for day 5 and the prompt “youth.” this also is pretty thematic for yesterday.
spoilers, obviously.
1. elora was collaborating with rudo
it has been so posited that elora was a black rose double agent spying on mel for leblanc the whole time. i thought that seemed off before i read cotw and it was definitively disproven by the fact that, at the end of the book, leblanc had no idea about mel being significant beyond being ambessa’s daughter—and she came for ambessa’s children last. i don’t think that leblanc would have wasted two decades of a loyal agent’s life in piltover, to constantly surveil someone that ambessa willingly discarded, and who she didn’t suspect had powers at the time.
i also think that rudo probably would have thought about it, at least once, if someone loyal to leblanc was watching him give a teenage girl who looks just like him magical tattoos, and been worried about it. he’s a pretty shrewd guy.
also, elora is loyal to mel!!! she's her friend!! they love each other!!
but. i think the existence of elora in so many convenient places is suspicious. mel is suspicious and she's right to be, and i think that it's thematically important that elora is a good person who wants to help her, but i'm not convinced it's a coincidence.
the most compelling and character-driven explanation for this, to me, is basically that rudo looked at elora and said: keep an eye on mel, figure out if her brother is trustworthy, make absolutely sure she never finds out anything about the black rose ever under any circumstances (oops), and don't ever tell her about me. here's a bunch of information. bye.
rudo had enough time to figure out menelik's plans, and then come up with and execute a plan to assassinate him, so he'd probably been in bel'zhun for a minute at that point. the tavern where elora works is also affiliated with the suns of bel'zhun.
2. mel’s dampening runes
why didn’t mel’s powers save azizi?
they saved jayce’s life during the council bombing.
i would argue that they almost certainly saved her life in the very same crash that was serious enough to kill her father on impact. she walked away from the accident with a broken arm.
it’s heavily implied that they saved ambessa’s life on the battlefield in rokrund.
the first, most obvious explanation for this is the dampening runes that rudo included with mel’s tattoos were extremely recent and the magic he imbued them with was still fresh. that’s a compelling argument, but i don’t think either rudo’s magic or the protective factor of the runes themselves have worn off by the time the council bombing happens.
my best counterargument is that mel has to go through hell and back in the oculorum before her powers awaken to the extent she can use them the way rudo could, or, for that matter, control them at all. she was powerful enough as an at-term fetus to save her mortally wounded mother’s life. had rudo not given her the runes (and conceding that she wasn’t found by leblanc) i don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that her powers would have awakened before arcane even happens in the timeline.
so. what do i think.
rudo’s dampening runes did a really good job. not only did they keep leblanc from finding out about mel’s powers for almost twenty years, they also managed to completely suppress mel’s magic for that same time—except for during the carriage crash, and during the council bombing.
rudo also imbued mel’s tattoos with protective magic. it makes sense to me that they sort of acted as a “failsafe” in instances where her life was in danger, but it only extended to protect the person she was with for jayce.
it makes the most sense to me that the thing that made them "work" was mel's trauma response to a situation so similar to azizi dying. a sudden sound and things falling apart and someone she cares about so much is so near and she can’t lose someone else.
i tricked you, you see, because the question isn’t why they didn’t save azizi—they couldn’t, because rudo accidentally made sure of that. the real question is why her protective magic extended to protect jayce. and the answer is that the only thing more powerful than those dampening runes is meljay mel’s trauma.
bonus: it explains mel's sudden interest in viktor's welfare after the bombing ("he'll come back to us") and willingness to ignore how messed up what jayce is doing is, because if the situation itself wasn't enough to set her into a full blown flashback, seeing viktor's body would have. she's carrying around all this survivor's guilt all over again and ambessa is there, again, and everything is falling apart right in front of her. again.
