The thing is, she DOES look dreadful, AND she is beautiful. She does not conform to standards of What Is Conventionally Considered Attractive.
It also takes her until the third book to start embracing a little more masculine presentation, and it suits her way better, but for the first two books, we're constantly getting little jabs about how she's failing to perform femininity, or at least failing at the flavor she's aiming for. She doesn't carry herself "correctly." Her dresses are "tight where they should be loose and loose where they should be tight." Like nearly all necros, she's grossly underweight, gaunt and bony, with a sickly pallor, and in her case the latter leaves her ghastly pale with green tinted veins visible. Her lips are dried out and have too little color. Everything about her is washed out and grayed down. She looks haunting and half-dead, because she kind of is.
But her base features are still the same as Corona's, and while Corona's beauty may literally be unnatural (courtesy of Ianthe's flesh magic), whether she's been enhanced or not it was still clearly a strong base. Ianthe has a lot of the same qualities, it's just that Corona's looks uplift and highlight what she's got, while a lot of Ianthe's sort of clash or downplay. Even their voices are the same voice, but Corona speaks in a lovely musical way while Ianthe drawls languidly and spits acid for fun.
But that's always been a huge part of it. They go out of their way to have people compare Ianthe to Corona, and Corona does lean into more conventionally attractive ideals. When people see Ianthe on her own, that's when she can't help but shine.
The way she carries herself is not the queenly way Corona does, but there's an undeniable confidence and shamelessness that is deeply appealing. She's snarky and cocky and mean, but she's incredibly witty and very funny about it, and there's appeal in that, especially as you get to know her. She's tall and proud and her "washed out" features can be striking. She DOES look half-dead but there is beauty in things that are haunting. There's beauty in things that are scary, even deadly.
Corona is beautiful like Hollywood, like a garden in bloom, like a summer sunset over golden fields, like the fluffiest fox or most majestic horse. Ianthe is beautiful in a way that's more mundane yet almost surreal, like dead and dried flowers that smell sweeter than ever, like the snowy death of winter, like a cobra or the most elegant jellyfish.
Ianthe IS a wet rat, there's just beauty in being a wet rat, too, and no one rocks it quite like Ianthe.
