I always find it super weird when I see posts that say “Aelin would hate Rhys if they ever met because of how he treats Illyrian women.”
Because what exactly would she hate??
She would hate that Rhys outlawed wing clipping and is advocating for illyrian women’s rights??
she would hate that cassian goes to the camp to ensure the women are allowed the same training time and rights as the men?
She would hate that Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel all have personal issues with the Illyrian’s laws and have felt the effects of how badly they treat women?? (Ex. cassians mom, azriel himself and his mother, and Rhys mother.)
She would hate that the entire inner circle are all in agreement that the illyrians are cruel in many ways and need to change and are actively trying to change them??
Did we even read the same series?? Because I genuinely don’t understand how much more clearer they can be on the fact that they’re all trying to change the illyrians ways and get women more rights.
Like why are y’all acting like he’s abusing them or taking away their rights or just ignoring what’s happening??
And are we forgetting that is an ACTIVE plot point?? Like the series isn’t over?? The books are still going, this is a plot that is actively going on, this is a problem that is actively trying to be solved within the books and has been since ACOMAF.
Haters are always complaining that Rhys is a bad high lord and doesn’t actually do anything yet when he’s actively changing laws and actively pushing for change and trying to help people, y’all say he needs to try harder?
“Aelin would’ve had the laws changed in one day unlike Rhys. She would’ve came in there and threatened the illyrians and gotten things changed.” Like sorry but not only is that entirely unrealistic, but it also completely goes against what the book has stated about the whole Illyrians issue. They’re stubborn, they’re set in their ways, they will not listen to threats, they make loopholes. The wing clipping was outlawed and they’re still doing it! The females are supposed to get trained and they’re still not doing it. This is not Rhys fault, this is not feyre fault, this isn’t the inner circles fault.
“And my mother—she was gentle and wild and loved to fly. So she did everything in her power to keep herself from maturing. She starved herself, gathered illegal herbs—anything to halt the natural course of her body. She turned eighteen and hadn’t yet bled, to the mortification of her parents.”
“She tried to flee—took right to the skies. But she was young, and the warriors were faster, and they dragged her back. They were about to tie her to the posts in the center of camp when my father winnowed in for a meeting”
“She loved her people, and missed them, but never forgot what they had tried to do to her—what they did to the females among them. She tried for decades to get my father to ban it, but the War was coming, and he wouldn’t risk isolating the Illyrians when he needed them to lead his armies. And to die for him.”
“A real prize, your father,” Mor grumbled.
“Mor’s face was pale, tight. “I hate this place,” she said under her breath, the heat of it clouding the air in front of us. “It should be burned to the ground.”
The male in front said, “Another camp inspection? Your dog,” he jerked his chin at Cassian, “was here just the other week. The girls are training.”
Cassian crossed his arms. “I don’t see them in the ring.”
“They do chores first,” the male said, shoulders pushing back and wings flaring slightly, “then when they’ve finished, they get to train.”
Rhys said at last, “Pleasant as it always is to see you, Devlon, there are two matters at hand: First, the girls, as you were clearly told by Cassian, are to train before chores, not after. Get them out on the pitch. Now.” I shuddered at the pure command in that tone.
Rhys just shook his head and said to Cassian, “Check on the forces, then make sure those girls are practicing like they should be. If Devlon or the others object, do what you have to.”
Cassian grinned in a way that showed he’d be more than happy to do exactly that.”
“You’re training female Illyrian warriors?”
“Trying to.” Rhys gazed across the brutal landscape. “I banned wing-clipping a long, long time ago, but … at the more zealous camps, deep within the mountains, they do it. And when Amarantha took over, even the milder camps started doing it again. To keep their women safe, they claimed. For the past hundred years, Cassian has been trying to build an aerial fighting unit amongst the females, trying to prove that they have a place on the battlefield. So far, he’s managed to train a few dedicated warriors, but the males make life so miserable that many of them left. And for the girls in training … ” A hiss of breath. “It’s a long road. But Devlon is one of the few who even lets the girls train without a tantrum.”
“I’d hardly call disobeying orders ‘without a tantrum.’ ”
“Some camps issued decrees that if a female was caught training, she was to be deemed unmarriageable. I can’t fight against things like that, not without slaughtering the leaders of each camp and personally raising each and every one of their offspring.”
(Like why do y’all act like this isn’t in the books?? It is literally completely explained. What are y’all missing??)
“Horrible people,” Mor grumbled into her earthenware bowl. “I don’t blame Az for never wanting to come here.”
“I take it training the girls went well,” Rhys drawled from beside me
Cassian drained his mug of ale. “I got one of them to confess they hadn’t received a lesson in ten days. They’d all been too busy with ‘chores,’ apparently.”
“No born fighters in this lot?”
“Three, actually,” Mor said. “Three out of ten isn’t bad at all. The others, I’d be happy if they just learned to defend themselves. But those three … They’ve got the instinct—the claws. It’s their stupid families that want them clipped and breeding.”
“And for the females: drudgery. They didn’t see it as such. None of them did. But their required tasks, whether old or young, remained the same: cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, clothes-making, laundry … There was honor in such tasks—pride and good work to be found in them. But not when every single one of the females here was expected to do it. And if they shirked those duties, either one of the half-dozen camp-mothers or whatever males controlled their lives would punish them.
So it had been, as long as I’d known this place, for my mother’s people. The world had been reborn during the war months before, the wall blasted to nothingness, and yet some things did not alter. Especially here, where change was slower than the melting glaciers scattered amongst these mountains. Traditions going back thousands of years, left mostly unchallenged.
“The girls are busy with preparations for the Solstice,” the camp-lord was saying, his arms crossed over his barrel chest. “The wives need all the help they can get, if all’s to be ready in time. They can practice next week.”
I’d lost count of how many variations of this conversation we’d had during the decades Cassian had been pushing Devlon on this.”
“The girls can help their mothers after training is done for the day. We’ll cut practice down to two hours. The rest of the day will be enough to assist in the preparations.”
Devlon slid his hazel eyes to where I lingered a few feet away. “Is it an order?”
“If Cassian says it’s an order, then it is.”
It had occurred to me, during the years we’d been waging this same battle with Devlon and the Illyrians, that I could simply rip into his mind, all their minds, and make them agree. Yet there were some lines I could not, would not cross. And Cassian would never forgive me.
Devlon grunted, his breath a curl of steam. “An hour.”
“Two hours,” Cassian countered, wings flaring slightly as he held a hard line that I’d been called in this morning to help him maintain.
It had to be bad, then, if my brother had asked me to come. Really damn bad. Perhaps we needed a permanent presence out here, until the Illyrians remembered things like consequences.
But the war had impacted us all, and with the rebuilding, with the human territories crawling out to meet us, with other Fae kingdoms looking toward a wall-less world and wondering what shit they could get away with … We didn’t have the resources to station someone out here. Not yet. “
“None of us had forgotten that during Amarantha’s reign, a few of the war-bands had gleefully bowed to her. And I knew none of the Illyrians had forgotten that we’d spent those first few months after her downfall hunting down those rogue groups. And ending them. Yes, a presence here was needed. But later.”
“Two hours in the ring each morning,” Cassian said with that same hard tone that even I knew not to push unless I wanted a flat-out brawl. He didn’t break Devlon’s gaze. “The boys can help decorate, clean, and cook. They’ve got two hands.”
“They practice for ninety minutes,” I said, “An hour and a half every morning, then they do the housework, the males pitching in whenever they can.”
“Do not forget that a great number of the females, Devlon, also suffered losses. Perhaps not a hand, but their husbands and sons and brothers were out on those battlefields. Everyone helps prepare for the holiday, and everyone gets to train.”
I do not understand how alllll of this (plus more!) can be said throughout multiple books and people will STILL somehow say Rhys/the inner circle doesn’t care about the Illyrian women.
It’s in the books!! It’s right there!! Why can’t some of you just accept that Rhys is not evil, not a bad high lord, and that the Illyrian plot point is not a valid reason to dislike Rhys or the inner circle.
It’s so tiring seeing the same anti-Rhys comments made over and over again when they’re not even true and can easily be disproved by taking 5 minutes to look at the books.
If you dislike Rhys, fine whatever that’s your opinion. But don’t go around making the same argument and comments about something that can easily be disproved by simply reading the books.
