thinking about Kozue, and the nature of the Bride
so, generally speaking the fandom seems to take Kozue at her word that she just couldn't play the piano as well as Miki, or at least so I've observed anecdotally.
but on one of my more recent rewatches i realized that in her black rose episode she just... plays the sunlit garden? perfectly, by herself? it is in fact exactly how she lures Miki in.
Now, this happens after she's given the black rose to be fair, but also before she takes Miki's sword/power, so... what? did Anthy give her magic piano playing powers as a side bonus, that went unmentioned?
I think the more compelling read to me is that Kozue can play the Piano just as well as Miki, but along the way convinced herself that she can't, partly due to trauma and partly due to her idolization of Miki.
One of the critical foundations of the Bride/Prince paradigm is the Bride's own internalized sense of inferiority. This is an intensely stressed point in Shiori and Juri's relationship, as well as Saionji and Touga's.
Ruka and Touga as Brides might call this into question, except that Ruka outright states Juri's potential far surpassed his own and he could merely "bring it out".
As for Touga, it actually makes a good deal of sense that he might admire Nanami on some level precisely for her ability to reject Akio's system and incest so thoroughly once confronted with its reality, given what we learn about him in the movie.
In the fairy tale theater of Ohtori's patriarchal structure, The Prince is made stronger by the Bride to an extent equal to the degree in which the Bride believes in said Prince, but that intensity of faith in another person almost unavoidably comes at the cost of the Bride's faith in themselves.
(Note: I'd actually suggest the Utena car sequence is the one version of this dynamic that is actually parseable as both mutual and healthy--Car!Utena is symbolically a Bride for Anthy taking on Prince-adjacent action, though notably their mutual empowerment through doing this comes from both trust and discarding the aesthetics of Princes and Brides altogether, as well as the hierarchy they imply.)
I think this was largely always understood in the fandom, im just putting my own words to it because it helps me thread the themes connecting Shiori, Kozue, Wakaba, Anthy and others more clearly in my head.
