you can always come back home

sat among the soft seagrass🌾🐚

anyway, when trey gloats that he doesn’t need to listen to her and could just steal everything, valencia says “you really think i came along to negotiate with you?” and fae & the hero appear, ready to fight.

AND THEN. AND THEN trey says THIS:

afaik this is the one time we learn anything about valencia’s mother, and it’s that she “would have been so proud” of valencia for fighting him…

what does this mean?

my theory/headcanon is that mrs. (?) surehunter had noticed trey’s lust for power and tried to stop him, similarly to how valencia is doing now. maybe she also got a group of friends/allies together to try to stop him?

another thing is that trey’s wording… she “would have been so proud,” the fact that we never hear anything else about mrs. surehunter, the fact valencia never mentions her mother, only her father… makes me think that mrs. surehunter is not involved with her daughter’s life (and to my knowledge, the only other family member we meet in the artix games is trissa surehunter from aqw, who is valencia’s paternal cousin. no one on her mother’s side).

“That story I told you about my dad was a sour one. There’s more about how amazing he is, and how he helped preserve so much of Lore’s history. He even risked execution to keep Kings from burning books. You can’t be as good as dad without dedicating your life to your work! All of it. Mom walked out on him because he was away so much. It broke his heart. That’s why he brought me on every trip until the incident…”

SO idk how aqw canon fits into df or aq canon, but this is closer to my initial reading of the family, that val’s mother left trey for some reason (i just thought trey killing her was Prime ANGST!!).

but omg . omg …..

this is so crucial to my reading of valencia… just the way she idolizes trey. he taught her everything!! her identity is a treasure hunter!! she takes so much pride in her abilities. when you meet her in df she literally introduces herself as the “world famous rare item hunter!”

and then when she discovers who her father really is, how far his greed has corrupted him…