very interested in how a court of fey and flowers takes the fun regency pastiche of it all in its stride to point out: no, devotion is a negative force. being willing to do anything for someone/something else is at the core of the trauma in nearly every character's story. chip and squak's every reference to their grandfather being made with a gesture of obeisance in public, sometimes even in private - he's the one who created them and their rank and their power, and he's also the one who invented birds eating their young. rue's complex allegiance to the court of wonder after being kidnapped and becoming both its public face and its most distant member. the ghost of unbelonging and coercion is there in everything they do, no matter how far they go or how high they rise. captain k.p. hob's dedicated and stringent service only leading to being asked to give up more and more of himself, told not to forget his place. obedience is at the center of his life, as a commitment to avoid the constant looming possibility of disdain and spite; even if it keeps him from the courage necessary for true honor. andhera's shard is literally embedded into his body, so that any failure to comply from his sister's control is very publicly revealed to the world. he is the vehicle of his mother's power and his worth depends on long he goes before he disappoints her, but even so, the self he fashions to present to the world is never confident or sophisticated enough. generations of his siblings have failed before him, and none of them have survived the failure. advisor is his one kind influence, and advisor has to hide his kindness to give it to him; advisor enforcing his mother's rules on andhera regardless. wuvvy's whole deal. and then there's BINX, the outlier, who is devoted to finding justice for her lost court, out of love and grief and righteousness, who has to answer to no one, but still chooses to do it. and she's the catalyst. she is the one who says: this is not how things should be. the one who doesn't like the word 'court'. who means 'home' instead. because she's the one who knows, who lives openly for the idea of belonging to her court, not as an obligation or a burden, but something they choose to do, even though she's the last one, and no one else besides her remembers them.
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