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‘Sebastian Delacroix's (TF/TSo/TJ/TSe) new look resembles Violet (MC's cousin in RoE) very very much'

Credits to @pixelberrychoices-verse for the original template and Pixelberry for the assets.

Best Character Development

I’d like to rant about RoE’s Nana for a bit.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found her actions problematic. The entire idea of the will - including the way it attempted to push the two eldest into settling down - seemed really sketchy. Like she was forcing them into her idea of what a perfect life should be like. But Nana’s thought process was nothing new to me. As a desi (South Asian) woman, I’ve met a dozen relatives who would never fail to ask me or my friends about marriage and children from the time we turned 22. I may not agree with that mentality but I understand where it comes from. And I know how difficult it is to change.

But what she did (and didn’t do) to Violet is on another level altogether. Think about it for a sec. The deathbed scene was probably the first time Violet was seeing family in a long time. Within that time she’s had to put up with tremendous emotional abuse, bullying and belittling from Mallory. From the beginning her mother basically made it crystal clear that her own vendetta meant more to her than her daughter’s mental health. This is a child that was abruptly torn from the only people she considered family (her own cousins) - who now hate her. What’s the first thing you should be saying to that child? “I’m sorry you had to go through this, darling, you deserved better. I love you.”

What does Nana give this wounded child instead? A lecture on forgiveness and grace and being the better person. I have faced emotional abuse, from the people closest to me, and I cannot begin to explain how much damage talk of this sort does to you. I’ve heard many, many people tell me to let go, to “not be bitter”, to “forgive for your own sake, not anyone else’s”. If they really, genuinely cared about my well-being though, they would have let me forgive on MY terms, at MY pace, when *I* felt ready. You don’t rush that. That’s the way healing works.

When someone prefers to concentrate on your responses, or what you might become, rather than what you went through, it hurts. Like you wouldn’t believe. There is no acknowledgement of your trauma. There is no validation of your feelings. Just a dismissal of what it took for you to get to this point. Like it doesn’t matter. Like you don’t matter.

If this is the send off she got, why wouldn’t she be bitter??

To top it off, Nana gives Violet the equivalent of a begging bowl in her will. By forcing her into a reconciliation with her cousins before she is truly ready. This may heal the cracks in the relationship, but in Violet’s mind those cracks developed both ways. And in this task Violet seems to have to do most of the work.

If this was Violet’s task, and Nana truly wanted reconciliation, why didn’t Nana work on softening her other grandchildren towards Violet, just to make it a little easier on her? Why didn’t she leave behind a clue, a sign, SOMETHING…to make them understand where their wayward cousin was coming from? She gave them total power over Violet without any effort to change their negative view of her.

Had Dean not convinced the MC that there was more to Violet than it seemed, what was the guarantee that they would change their attitude towards her? (Yes, Violet’s attempts to sabotage their tasks didn’t help matters, but by this point she had already lost hope). Had Dean not seen her pain, her frustration, her helplessness - had he not listened to her - the cousins wouldn’t have found a way to break through her walls.

Notice how the littlest things seem so monumental to Violet? Being invited for the cousins’ parties, being made bridesmaid, being told she looks nice, an invitation to dance on the table at the club, a say in what kind of dress she would like on the MC’s wedding day. She feels flustered everytime someone so much as says a kind word to her. No one should have to scrape around this much for kindness. The only thing Violet seems to have going for her anymore is pride. For Nana to force such a person to crawl towards the cousins she distrusts and almost beg for her inheritance, is a pretty low blow, no matter how good her intentions were. Even Alex, who starts off hating Violet’s guts in Book 1, and who seems to relate to her the least, recognizes how cold this is.

I know Nana is essentially the moral compass of this book. But at this point I’d probably be happier if all the cousins said “fuck this shit Nana” and tossed that darn will into the ocean.