WHA Ch 96 Spoilers
i soooo desperately want to know about tetia! given the atelier's track record, and the story's premise, i can't imagine her life beforehand wasn't at least bittersweet... and i saw this panel again which got me thinking: tetia's whole thing is about "happiness comes in twos," so would it be too on the nose for her to be a twin?
perhaps she lost her sibling and this is how she pays homage. i'm not sure how easy it is to switch mentors, i could even posit the idea that she had a previous mentor with said twin, but after the death is when tetia finds qifrey. i could be so off with this, but it's interesting to consider.
With reference to Aggot and Riche's backgrounds, I'm predicting that Tetia's past has some pain that has put a self-protective edge on her friendliness.
Riche values her autonomy very highly. This is a core character trait. But we also see that she's been through an abusive situation wherein her autonomy was deliberately and cruelly denied. With Qifrey, her demand for autonomy is in part a self-protective reaction to that prior abuse, and is actually now impeding her progress as a witch. We see her start to work through that in the second test arc.
Aggot values competence. She works very hard at magic. She has experienced people using evidence of her competence to dismiss her via claims of cheating -not just 'you can't possibly be this good', but also 'evidence that you are this good will be used to discredit you'. Her resulting obsession with proving her competence, and protecting herself from similar censure, has been quashing her genuine love of magic. She's made strides in remedying that damage in the Silver Eve arc.
Tetia is very pro people. She's very relational. She wants to be friends. She thanks people for thanking her. I think she's been abandoned. To me this reads less as a bereavement, more as a break-up. I'm thinking divorce, otherwise poor parenting, or a best friend who stopped being her friend. Maybe an orphaning, but early- the damage being more from insecure relationships than the loss of loved ones. You can't bring someone back from death with people-pleasing. But maybe you could convince them not to leave you. This time. This time no-one will leave Tetia. If she's bright enough, happy enough, friendly enough, her people will stay.
