why did you do it? why do you keep doing it?

you have No Idea how often i think about maximus and his issues. im abput to go insane here you set me in motion.

honestly there is very very little in the comics to suggest maximus actually had/has any sort of romantic attraction to medusa. generally he only wants to marry her because A) itd make bb upset B) its just kind of a societal expectation for there to be A Queen. honestly with the amount of au comics where he tries to marry crystal instead with basically the same level of disregard towards an Actual Relationship im pretty certain this desire has literally nothing to do with romance. like he just wants there to be a person to hang out with him or at worst to sit next to him for impressions. now some of this is obviously just cus comics dont want to delve very deep into the main villain’s romantic life esp since the inhumans are already not a group of characters who tend to get any runs going long enough to give proper attention to all its characters, so like maximus is just Generic Wants The Girl sometimes. but like theres also a handful of times he is actually flirting with someone and its fairly removed from how he treats medusa so. u know.

^ this page isnt really related but i really like it. what if max introduced bb and medusa too on top of all this.

but also like between that panel in right of birth where maximus says he’s never had a real friend before and how his friend group seems to be basically nonexistent when hes not actively attempting a coup (plus how many of them seem to have Moved On to something else, like stallior becoming part of the royal guard, and disregarding him as a past mistake), with how plenty of comics do show him being visibly upset by people he definitely cares about dying, even down to him freaking out to the point of self-harm in an attempt to get someone to talk to him again, even if he himself thinks/knows its not a real person who cares about him??

dont even let me bring up uncanny and imperial. ok ill do it.

THESE ARE NOT THE REACTIONS OF SOMEONE WHO ISNT DESPERATE TO BE LOVED AND TERRIFIED OF BEING LEFT BEHIND!! HE CARES SO MUCH IM SICK!!! he would literally rather potentially doom the only person who has been willing to keep him around then let his family give up him. he doesnt even go to the. what would this be called. im gonna call it the judgement. he doesnt even go to the judgment and he is clearly not happy about this!! the panel of him as bb pairing with “no family will miss you” as hes sitting alone in the rain. im sick im ill. you cannot convince me anything other than he didnt go because he knew nobody would object and nobody would mourn and he didnt want to have to face that. because at the heart of maximus is someone who self-destructs constantly instead of looking at himself and admit mistakes and emotion.

medusa would run off to find her family no matter the cost because thats who she is and maximus would not and he knows hes not like her and he hatessss it. because medusa started out like him and was friends with him and they were treated as the same annoying rebel children and bb was an outcast who only really had maximus for the first 18 years of his life and then they Changed. and then max lost his only Real friend and his brother and his parents and his cousins and his entire plan of being king instead of bb was taken away from him and he couldnt fathom any way to deal with this other than Take It Back.

that guilt memory he saw in royals was because he knows if his parents HAD survived, they wouldn't have fully blamed bb, they would have blamed max too. and max isn't dangerous enough to be kept in a room in attilan to contain his powers. max almost 100% would have been exiled for that if his parents had lived. maximus fears his parents' disappointment in him. i truly believe there is nobody he loves or values more than his parents, and the idea of them hating and blaming him the same way the rest of his family does terrifies him. i dont think that initial reaction at the end of imperial was faked, i think he was genuinely afraid for a moment.