Mare, Maven and the Color Purple
inspired by a recent post in the red queen tag that mentioned it by @thomavenaddict
In the Maven and Cal facts sheets that were provided in the Barnes and Noble edition of Broken Throne, Maven's favorite color was listed as purple, the color of Mare's lightning, dyed hair, and the colors she wore during her first stay at the palace. I don't think it's causal: I imagine Maven liked purple long before Mare entered his life, but thematically, it echoes connections between them that I don't think should be ignored.
The most obvious connection is to Mare's lightning: not only is it the one constant through all four books, but it establishes the main thematic throughline of each, that being Mare's relationship to power. As stated by Julian, power and ability are different things in this world, but in the narrative, a lot of Mare's importance, at least in the beginning, stems from her having an ability at all. It challenges the base foundation of Silver propaganda, and must be swept under a Silver coat of paint. The color is sublimated into a more acceptable form of power, that of noble house colors, something bestowed by another (the crown) and ultimately, in Mare's case, ephemeral. It is a mask, and the slow development of ruthlessness that she struggles with throughout the first book.
And it is through that struggle where Maven falls in love with her.
You see, Maven's love for Mare is a paradox, because on one hand, he does treat Mare like an object to be possessed, especially in Glass Sword, and on the other, he is very much enamored with her resistance to him. Ordinarily, this would not be a contradiction: many men who treat women like objects enjoy the fantasy of breaking a strong-willed woman into their mold. And this is somewhat supported in Glass Sword with the letters, but destroyed in King's Cage. There is no goal to Mare's imprisonment, just an irrational attachment and obsession Maven doesn't know how to let go of. Because ultimately, what he's attached to isn't the idea of breaking Mare: it's the reflection of his old self, the one that wasn't chipped away by the world around him, the one he feels like he ultimately lost.
And that's what leads me to the basis of Maven's love for Mare: sincerity.
Throughout the entirety of book one, Mare struggles with the idea of having to lie, of having to enact violence, of having to survive in this world that is so determined to crush her spirit. In this, Maven sees a reflection of how he was shaped, of how he was forced to become someone who lies, who performs, who hides behind a mask as he plots in the shadows. He pushes her further and further, holding firm in his (seeming) convictions whenever Mare starts to falter:
"'I know them all, and it hurts to betray them, but it must be done. Think of what their lives will buy, and what their deaths will accomplish. How many of your people could be saved? I thought you understood that!'" (pg. 236)
There's a sincerity to Mare that he dearly misses in himself, that was scooped out of him from a young age and replaced with a highly tuned ability to fake it. This sincerity is what dooms her in book one, but what frees her in book four, and Maven is drawn to it, as he remarks on in his cell.
The golden glow of her skin is warm, illuminated by the harsh light of fluorescence. She is so stubbornly alive, still burning like a candle fighting against rain.
I give her what she wants
I think it's what I want too. (pg. 503)
(Sidenote: almost cried reading this scene again I love them sm. Also the scene where they have their last convo before Montfort captures him . . . UGH they kill me!)
Maven and Mare have enough in common for Maven to relate to her: they both have darkness in them, a desire to enact violence upon those who hurt them. But Mare has a rock, an anchor to her, that Maven simply doesn't. Mare believes in something, even when she lies, even when she does bad things, in a way that makes her able to live for herself and other people in a way Maven was never allowed to. If Mare was a perfect angel, Maven could dismiss her as just another Cal, someone who walked in a light he would never find. If she was as fake as he was, he would view her as just another obstacle. But that dichotomy, that tension, that glimpse of sincerity makes him feel like he is alive, like something is returning to him, however briefly. He doesn't want the "triumph" of breaking her, because it would feel like a lie. And he doesn't like her pain because it is a reminder that he feels like it's all he is, all he's capable of, that he is unlovable and alone and destined to live his life as an empty shell. He's accepted she will not love him again, but he needs to feel the ghost of it, to cling to the memory of what never could've been. And he knows it never could've been, which is why he tries to avoid her in the first month of the King's Cage timeline before Evangeline brings her out. He does not want to face her inevitable rejection, to face the fact that he has destroyed so much for a girl who does not, and will not want him again. It's something he will never confront, and something Elara doesn't understand, so they simply rationalize it as Elara being unable to erase "certain types of love." But at its core, it's a rebellion. It's Maven hanging on to the edge of the door, the echo of his old self, the glimpse of sincerity he would not, could not, ever feel again.
Thomas was a similar situation, but it has more to do with the fact that Elara wasn't there to interfere with them while he was alive. So there's a different shade of holding on to his old self, but one that is more painful because it was more formative, but also because he feels there truly is no one to blame but himself. That because it was his own flame, his own accident, that he is trapped in what he is and can never go back.
And what he feels he is, destruction, is a part of Mare very much symbolized by her purple lightning. And Mare's relationship to her lightning is a complicated one. For one, it is how she was thrust into this Silver world in the first place, and what she relies on to keep herself a threat in Glass Sword. Neither Silver nor Red. Stronger than both. She prioritizes saving Newbloods and turning them into weapons over anything else, for it is their abilities she feels will bring them power, that will set them free in the end.
And we all need power, in some form or another, to keep ourselves from being squashed or taken advantage of by the world around us. Martin Luther King said it best:
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
Mare learns to maintain that balance in a way Maven never even tries to. He simply embraces power, and he desperately tries to cope without love, but it is only through love that he feels any semblance of meaning. He asks her in the bathtub scene, in a roundabout way, if she feels the same:
"'Knowing what you know now . . . would you go back? Would you choose that life? Conscription, your muddy town, your family, that river boy?'
So many are dead because of me, because of what I am. If I were just a Red, if I were just Mare Barrow, they would be alive. [ . . . ] My mistakes. Too many to count. I am worlds away from perfect, or even good. The true question eats at my brain. What Maven is really asking. Would you give up your ability, would you give up your power, to go back?
But power for Mare is not the same as power for Maven. Maven was born with more than enough power, and he simply could not see that because there was someone with more. Power, for Mare, was the ability to grasp for justice: Maven's was simply the poison of envy and greed.
This all comes to a fruition in War Storm, where Maven, when he is set up to be executed, asks to be "ripped apart by [her] fury", for her lightning to be his final end. For him to get some sense of poetic destruction, in the end. Lightning has no mercy, she thinks to herself. But lightning is only one part of me. And in her refusal, in her denial of what he wants, Maven is shocked, and ends up giving up his choice in frustration. His destruction is meaningless if she doesn't value it. His destruction is meaningless if it doesn't validate his worldview.
And that brings us to the final appearance of purple: Mare's dyed hair.
We know for a fact that it's connected to her lightning: that was the case for all the electricons. But Mare only dyes the ends of her hair, the silver that appeared from her hardship in the Stilts, the ones that grew deeper as she endured Maven's love in King's Cage. In this, she is acknowledging what she went through, and reclaiming it through her power, both integral parts of her that cannot be untangled. The covering up of it, and the inevitable re-dying, symbolize healing, but as a continuous process that doesn't make it go away.
And we learn about it through Maven's POV.
"The gray ends are gone, replaced by a beautiful, familiar purple. I love it.
I feel a tug deep in my chest. She's on my jet. Probably to keep an eye on me. To let her torturer friend stand over me all night. That's fine. I'll suffer it.
A few hours of fear are worth the dwindling time we have left." (pg. 566)
Maven finds comfort in the familiarity of Mare's endurance, in the way she stays alive while he does not. He wants to believe that destruction is sincerity, that it is the truth, that it is the base component of human nature. But this too, is a lie. This too, is a fabrication. It is a cage he built for himself, that he never escapes because he thinks it's pointless to even try. He tells her he "like[s] the hair" in their final scene, in the one soft moment before he gives in to his final act of destruction. But ultimately, he can't go through with it. Ultimately, he lets her kill him.
"We destroy. It's the constant of our kind.
I've seen that firsthand. In Archeon, in Harbor Bay, on every battlefield. In the way Reds were treated and still are across the continent.
But that world is changing.
We destroy. But we also rebuild." (War Storm, pg 656)
Mare takes with her the best parts of her lightning, the best parts of her past, without leaving behind the uglier bits of truth. She rebuilds a better life for herself the way Maven couldn't, and ultimately, if he couldn't live, I think that's what he would've wanted.
