#sarkan

What an unequaled gift for disaster you have

Captain William “I will abandon my naval career to stay with this dragon I’ve known for all of two minutes” Laurence, adopted prince of china

and

Galadriel “I’ve come into contact with at least six maw-mouths in two years” Higgins

and

The Dragon, “I forgot to actually tell the woman I’m trying to teach Magic that she has magic” Sarkan

Alina doesn't want to train, whines endlessly, neglects her responsibilities, screws over people because of her incapabilities in front of the royal family, blindly believes in monarchy despite their many failures? Reminds me of Agnieszka from Uprooted. And what did the Dragon do when Agnieszka acted stupidly? He yelled at her, berated her, lectured her, etc. Pointed out her flaws harshly instead of being encouraging and smiling at whining arrogant complaints like the Darkling did with Alina.

Alina, unfortunately, had grown up in an environment where she was beaten for misbehaving. I feel bad for her and beating obviously is not a good solution, (even though that's what any normal general would've done in an army to a soldier for insubordination), but the Darkling was too soft on Alina and he let her dictate the pace of her learning instead of commanding her to pick up the pace. Alina was lounging about and gossiping with new friends and reading what she deemed was necessary, instead of actual training. She never seemed to care about the ongoing genocide and more children getting orphaned because she was too busy feeling sorry for herself because she was also an orphan and not as pretty as Zoya. At least Agnieszka tried to learn, to her credit.

Case in point, Baghra beat, belittled and insulted Alina and called her stupid and she believed Baghra's nonsense exposes with no evidence.