#mareven

Forever obsessed with the Maven line "No, my darling. I just know you better than anyone else." because it's the only time he's ever used a pet name with her and it's so perfectly calculated for maximum discomfort. It's not just "darling", it's "MY darling", and the sentence itself is possessive and isolating. It's intimacy as performance, because at the end of the day, he doesn't actually know her as well as he thinks he does. But he NEEDS to believe it's true, because Mare might actually be the one who knows HIM more than anyone else. And if that's not mutual . . . what does that mean for him?

The first half of King's Cage is just Maven doing his kingly duties and touring around the continent, dragging Mare along like his emotional support Labubu.

rest in peace to the real ones (mare barrow and runin fang) for having to put up with their crazy rich bratty mentally unstable ex-situationships whose betrayals shifted the entire narrative and who couldn’t help but induce psychological warfare through the messiest, most passive-aggressive letters

no bc the part in War Storm, right after they capture Maven and they're carrying him away and he's talking to the voice in his head saying, "I did as you said, I did as you said" breaks my heart into a million pieces every single time omg.

I wish in the RQ books they explored Maven's love for theatre, like it's so ironic how he says he loves plays and shows but then you find out his whole life is pretty much an act. I think it would be so interesting to know why he liked it too, did he like the actors ability to pretend? The chance to escape the real world? I was so surprised that VA like never mentioned it again, maybe because by the time we got to his pov so much was happening? but then Cal never mentioned it either so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯