#*want

not to rag on reinhard but to me his one-night stand with hilda doesn't feel like the culmination of an ongoing mutual desire between the two but more like the first time reinhard realizes that his absolute power is absolute even in personal matters. To me there's nothing inherently romantic about them sleeping together (like why was hilda reacting the way she did the morning after, why does she look so ashamed and unwilling to acknowledge what happened until her father tactlessly asks her about it), and everything reinhard did afterwards feels like he was trying to distance himself as much as possible from any parallels that could be made between him and the former kaiser (ie annerose's experience as a girl under the previous regime). So now reinhard has to convince himself that he's always loved hilda and he will "take responsibility" and that the choice is hers regarding his proposal. But both the narrator and hilda later recognize that reinhard could have used his power over his subjects to force hilda to marry him, and to me (again, these are just personal thoughts) this doesn't reflect on how "good" of a ruler reinhard is for not forcing hilda into a marriage but instead supports the idea that maybe it's bad that people could be absolute monarchs with no accountability measures in place, because if reinhard didn't possess the particular combination of pride, naivete, and trauma from being forcibly separated from annerose as a child then there was a possibility that the incident with hilda could have been a repeat of the annerose situation. "But hilda agreed to his proposal and seemed happy" hilda was 4 months pregnant at the time bearing the heir to the empire (the civil staff would have had a fit if she decided not to keep the baby, all those guys were later waiting outside of hildas room on news of alec's birth). we don't know if abortion is even a thing in the empire or if hilda would have followed through (or if her father would have allowed it) even if it was available to her. what option did she actually have. also maybe hilda did genuinely love reinhard but she quickly loses the political standing that she once held--she can't be seen "meddling" in politics publicly, her father feels compelled to resign, her ability to rule as empress is immediately decided by a separate cabinet (which is fine in itself but the discussion presented seemed to be framed more as "will future women rulers be as rational as hilda" rather than "how should we keep in check the power of the emperor and his family"), and it seems that she's relegated to caring for reinhard (and alec until he grows up). The one night stand wasn't really born out of love and it didn't really lead to love either, unless you count the handful of instances where reinhard and hilda blush at each other as love. Idk but at least frederica was established to be interested in yang consistently throughout the series, it felt like hilda herself was undecided on whether she liked reinhard romantically or not but the one night pushed her into a position where she had to accept the outcome of marrying reinhard

something that is very funny to me and illustrates how little attention ppl pay to stuff is that ppl will ask me what my natural hair color is when i have a ton of root growth. and i will say, “black-brown,” and they will say, “really!” as if there’s not an inch of black-brown hair right there.