#malcolm fade

The Dark Artifices is an insanely gothic series, and I felt really silly when I realised how much I'd missed the first time I read the books. Starting with the obvious: the multiple references to Annabel Lee and Thule and every chapter title being from an Edgar Allan Poem. Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' mentioned in 'Lady Midnight'. Emma and Jules stay in an isolated cottage on the edge of the stormy Cornish sea, as in many Daphne du Maurier novels. The wild, cold, inhuman natures of the fae as a throughline that reference both folk tales and ballads, and the untameability of nature. There are multiple orphans, and a mad-uncle in the attic, akin to 'Jane Eyre'.

But the deepest and most enduring parellels have to be to 'Wuthering Heights'. Malcolm and Annabel are literally Cathy and Heathcliff; neglected children brought up as siblings by an uncaring family, who are able to find freedom in nature and in each other, but who have a clearly enforced social divide between them, meaning they can never be permitted to choose each other. Malcolm, like Heathcliff, is a marginalised Other treated as less than human and never worthy of a (Shadowhunter) lady. Annabel, like Cathy, dies young and imprisoned, and Malcolm/ Heathcliff spends longer with his lover's memory than he ever did with her. Heathcliff wants Cathy to haunt him, and Malcolm, who lives in an urban fantasy world, wants to bring Annabel back; both of them grow increasingly unhinged and detached from reality with time.

But of course, much of the text of 'Wuthering Heights' is about Heathcliff blaming even the next generation for his lover's death, and visiting his revenge upon them, just as Malcolm does with Emma and the latest generation of Blackthorns. Julian and Emma and have their parallels in Catherine II and Hareton, who are also neglected, treated as siblings, and manipulated against each other, but who ultimately manage to break the cycle and find love and support in each other.

Deep, repressed feelings that cannot be named, and textual and subtextual incest are also very gothic features, and they are recurring motifs in Cassandra Clare's work. Although there are more overt examples (Clary making out with both her  her real brother and her perceived brother), Emma and Julian's subtextual incest born of growing up together, being parabatai and reproducing a family unit in the absence of responsible adults is the most emotionally involved example (to be clear, I love Emma and Julian and I find this an interesting choice). Catherine II and Hareton have an unhealthy relationship not because they are cousins, or inherently bad for each other, but because wider social forces and Heathcliff's machinations cause divides and resentment between them, even while circumstances constantly force them together. The dangers posed by the authority of the Clave (like the separation of the Blackthorns and the institutionalisation of their uncle) and the specific secrets that both Julian and Emma are keeping (Emma wanting to avenge her parents, Julian running the institute, secretly being in love), are what allow barriers to be created between the two of them. Once they break through these, and manifest the parabatai curse, they are literally unstoppable.

I would argue that TDA's climax, where Emma and Julian almost destroy themselves but manage to break the curse isn't an argument for romantic love being more important than platonic, but for the idea that one person should never be your everything. Cathy and Heathcliff have a gothic, all-consuming love that doesn't consider the feelings of anyone else, or often even of each other. Emma and Julian's relationship is at its most dangerous when they are each other's entire support system. But throughout TDA we've seen both of them become able to rely on other strong bonds. Julian's older siblings have come back into his life, and his younger siblings have started to assert their right to look after him for a change. Emma has met Cristina, and is finally old enough to be Clary's equal. Both of them have become less wary of forming alliances and building connections that they never would have made at the start of the series.

We even see an example in the Thule versions of Emma and Julian of Cathy and Heathcliff's kind of self-absorbed love. Thule Emma and Julian are devoid of morality or care for others, but are still able to hold on to a selfish romantic love, at the expense of all else. When Julian kills his alternate self, he is metaphorically rejecting the version of him that cares only for Emma. In the end of Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliff abandon themselves to cling to each other, forever as ghosts, but at the end of TDA, Emma and Julian are talked down by the Blackthorn family and friends; saved by their bonds to those around them.

‘he taught me that there's a place on a man's back where, if you sink a blade in, you can pierce his heart and sever his spine, all at once.’ — sebastian morgenstern

the morally questionable characters aesthetic series:

alexei de quincey

axel mortmain & nate gray

benedict lightwood

camille belcourt

the greater demons

malcolm fade

sebastian morgenstern

the seelie queen

tatiana blackthorn

valentine morgenstern