#branchesposting

IM LAUGHINF MANICALLY

AS A MATTER OF FACT,

we are introduced to manon as a sexual being from the start - it's at least implied (if not explicitly stated, I forget) that she often has sex with her male prey before killing them and drinking their blood (hot of her). but we also interpret this as an emotionless act of conquest, her taking more pleasure from the hunt than the actual experience of sex.

then her character arc begins to take shape, and repeatedly we see instances where nakedness is used as a way to underscore intimacy, even if it's not sexual. see: asterin stripping down to share her story about her witchling, elide being naked when manon rescues her. though manon is comfortable with nudity (she canonically sleeps naked, iktfr), she has never interpreted it like this before.

now enter dorian (technically re-enter, but this is the first meeting between manon and valg-free dorian), who gets to know her while she's half-naked and chained to rolfe's ship cabin after she fell out of the sky half-dead. for my girlie whose entire image of herself is based on her adeptness for strength, flight, and survival, there's literally nothing more vulnerable than that.

so manon's first truly emotionally intimate sexual relationship starts here, and continues to follow this pattern wherein she explores what it means for her to submit to someone else. she starts to employ nakedness and sex as tools when she's feeling especially vulnerable (see: immediately taking her shirt off after "and if I asked you to stay?" before dorian goes to morath, which breaks my heart every time). obviously because dorian's a certified king he doesn't let her get away with selling herself out like that, but she does continue to take on a more submissive role during all of their sex scenes.

now here's where it gets interesting!! I think if the war had gone differently, their dynamic would have changed and grown with time, and she eventually would have taken on a more dominant role in sex (or at least they would have switched it up on the reg). but because manon literally had her whole life ruined in koa I think her perception of herself kind of stagnated as a result, and she got entrenched in this belief that submission is the only way to be vulnerable and the only way to be intimate.

then there's this really interesting element postwar where, now that the thirteen are d*ad, the only people left who manon loves were aelin's first (elide was aelin's childhood friend, dorian was aelin's friend first, etc). and whereas aelin and manon both inherited kingdoms in disrepair, the witch kingdom is much worse off than terrasen - terrasen literally just needs a fresh coat of paint and some light carpentry, whereas the witch kingdom has zero infrastructure and also people who have settled there in the meantime.

so while I definitely think manon and aelin have a lot of love for each other and are friends, manon has this ugly jealousy toward aelin that she can't shake. it's so unfair that manon's loved ones all fucking died and her kingdom is dust, whereas aelin comes out of this (comparatively) unscathed. and, whether or not this is actually true, manon definitely believes that, should it come to either of them having to make a choice, both elide and dorian would pick aelin over her.

she doesn't tell aelin or dorian this, of course, but it claws at her badly even though she tries to push it down. and then there's the underlying angst of knowing dorian and elide are going to die in a few decades anyway, and she'll be left with nothing at all (even though she doesn't truly believe herself worth of either of them, to begin with).

so all of this manifests as this need to fuck aelin (respectfully, of course), which is both a representation of simple jealousy and a more unconscious desire to take back some of the dominance manon feels like she lost. making aelin come feels at least a little bit like the victory she thought she was owed, even though she'd never admit to this (and maybe doesn't even see it).