Hello! Do you think that Mor and Azriel are mates or were initially endgame? During the cauldron scene Azriel was more focused on Mor than he was on Elain. I feel like if Azriel and Elain are revealed as true mates this scene will have to be explained.
Hello!
Based on my own extrapolation (and I know this is a hotly debated and controversial topic amongst Elriels, who are quite hive-minded about things), I personally believe they could be for a variety of reasons I’ll lay out here.
I will say that this is solely my opinion, and I can see the logic in oppositional arguments to my own. I’m not firm or convicted they are mates, and acknowledge that this is truly my own thought on the topic. Others have, what I consider, compelling reasons to the contrary.
Let me first start by saying that I’m in the “corrupted mating bond” camp. I believe there are different kinds of bonds: we already know of carranam, mating bonds, and a fake/spelled bond via Mauve in TOG. We learn in HOFAS that Bryce and Hunt have a bond gifted by higher powers as opposed to a bond of power advantage (carranam??). We also learn in HOFAS that the cauldron was warped to work the will of the Daglan in Prythian. My thought is that the cauldron was warped to make stronger offspring of greater reproductive advantage to better feed the parasitic “host” (the Daglan) with their magic tithe. I think there are bonds of will, choice, and love that happen to result in a true and meaningful/soulmate bond- gifted by mother/cauldron/fate (I absolutely adore @wingedblooms thoughts on this and hope she’ll expand on some thoughts soon). I believe predetermined bonds (Tamlin and Rhys parents, Elucien) are corrupted cauldron bonds based on reproductive advantage (look at Rhys- the most powerful HL in history and the product of one of those bonds void of choice and a “poor match”). Of course, I could be wrong.
This creates a predicament for Mor (and potentially the Illyrian bat boy x Archeron sister bond for reproduction), as she is not heterosexual and practically, cannot produce biological offspring with another female. Could this mean Mor actually does have a female mate (we have not seen a same sex mating bond in ACOTAR but we know it’s possible from Sarah), but it’s buried beneath a corrupted/reproductively advantageous bond with a man? Is this also what’s happening with Elriel?
Mor’s behavior around Az raises my eyebrows. She acknowledges how wonderful Az is and how deserving he is of love and is very drawn to him, but intentionally maintains physical distance and space. It’s almost, to me, as though she is trying to keep a bond from snapping. Here are a few examples of what I mean:
Mor opened her mouth, but Azriel laid a scarred hand atop hers.
She snatched her hand back as if she’d been burned—burned as he had been.
And then we see Eris:
Azriel’s mask of cold didn’t so much as waver at the rejection. Though Eris chuckled softly. Enough to make Azriel’s hazel eyes glaze with rage as he settled them upon the High Lord’s son. Eris only inclined his head to the shadowsinger.
“Watch it,” Azriel warned.
Eris looked between them, smiling faintly. Secretly. As if he knew something that Azriel didn’t. “I wouldn’t have touched you,” he said to Mor, who blanched again. “But when you fucked that other bastard—” A snarl ripped from Rhys’s throat at that. And my own. “I knew why you did it.” Again that secret smile that had Mor shrinking. Shrinking. “So I gave you your freedom, ending the betrothal in no uncertain terms.”
“Eris gasped for air as those scarred hands loosened. As Azriel turned his face toward me—
The frozen rage there rooted me to the spot.
But beneath it, I could almost see the images that haunted him: the hand Mor had yanked away, her weeping, distraught face as she had screamed at Rhys.
And now, behind us, Mor was shaking in her chair. Pale and shaking.
Eris knows something, it seems, others do not. It seems he knows something about Az and Mor, specifically. He knows something Mor is potentially aware of that Azriel is not.
“After Azriel found me with that note nailed to my womb … I tried to explain. But he started to confess what he felt, and I panicked, and … and to get him to stop, to keep him from saying he loved me, I just turned and left, and … and I couldn’t face explaining it after that. To Az, to the others.”
“And the male lovers I took … it became a way to keep Azriel from wondering why—why I wouldn’t notice him. Make that move. You see—you see how marvelous he is. How special. But if I slept with him, even once, just to try it, to make sure … I think after all this time, he’d think it was a culmination—a happy ending. And … I think it might shatter him if I revealed afterward that … I’m not sure I can give my entire heart to him that way. And … and I love him enough to want him to find someone who can truly love him like he deserves. And I love myself … I love myself enough to not want to settle until I find that person, too.”
She acknowledges she throws him off to communicate a lack of interest by sleeping with other men (and not him). She acknowledges they both deserve true love and not a half-baked relationship based on something that isn’t true.
Mor is named in the context of the questioning of the cauldron both when Az raises the question of the cauldron being wrong about Elain and Lucien (“what of mor, Az?” which Azriel ignores) and when Feyre raises the question to Rhys about why Elain and Azriel are not mates. The placement and paralleling of those two couplings has always been interesting to me. It’s like she’s shoving it in our faces that they are mates, respectively, but Elriel are true. They’re the real deal.
Mor stiffens and reacts to Elain and Az (similar to Nessian). She reacts in the scene you spoke of at the end of ACOMAF in very mate like ways (imo). She reacts when Azriel’s eyes churn and he winnows away after he asks Elain more questions about what she saw. Mor sees truth. What does she see in those moments? Does she see truth between Elain and Az? Does she see true love?
It also explains 500+ years of Azriel pining after Mor. That they’ve been drawn to each other and can’t quite escape the pull. It explains why Mor is canonically the first to greet Az after dangerous missions to ensure he’s ok. It explains why Mor is noticeably reactive when Az doesn’t tell her things or withholds info.
I fully understand why this is unpopular amongst some Elriels, as they feel it could detract from Elriel. To the contrary, I think it makes for a symmetrical and beautiful opportunity to show us that love, freewill, and choice will always prevail. That predetermined bonds will never hold up against true love and choice.
That love would trump even a mating bond
Through love, all is possible.
Again, I acknowledge this is one possibility of many, but it tracks for me, personally. It makes sense to me and helps explain a lot of questionable occurrences in my mind.
