The Tridentarii Power Shift System
Lately, I've thought a lot about the Tridentarii power dynamic. And I've come to some interesting results. My main point I will explain below is: Corona is not a "Third House Twin puppet" and Ianthe is not her "puppeteer". In fact there is no "twin in charge". But it's a little complicated to explain. While I could do it by presenting you my (very confusing) train of thought, I'll do it by first giving you the infos my subconscious apparently had when I started to think about it.
(Fun fact: your subconcious owns 80 % more information than your concious. That means that it's not even a bad idea to follow "your heart".)
To even think about their power dynamic we need to remind (or find out) their negotiating positions:
For Ianthe, it seems to be pretty easy. She has the ability to do necromancy and that's something that Corona needs of her. Maybe it's interesting that she doesn't seem to have interest in it, though.
It's something she needs, but she doesn't want to have it herself.
For Corona it's more complicated. She has no necromancy. But she does in fact have something Ianthe needs of her:
Ianthe doesn't want to be the Crown Princess. Being the Crown Princess is of course more than a title. It's about the whole social & representative aspect. It's therefore understandable that she doesn't want to do that - her social skills are terrible. But it means that Ianthe can't represent (herself and) the twin couple appropriatly and needs Corona to do that for her.
And that makes Corona's negotiating position way stronger than it seems like at first.
With that knowledge we can finally analyse the Challenging scene. Judith challenges the Sixth and Corona tries to offer Third help - and fails. And this moment is interesting:
As it's been pointed out before by others: Corona seems to be surprised about that. Ianthe contradicting her in public is no familar experience to her. She was expecting to get her way. Apparently, Ianthe wouldn't have questioned here before Canaan House.
And that shows us, that Corona has (had) not only pro forma, but in fact the control in public situations. It's not only for show that they tell each other they'd need each other. It was true before Canaan House. What we see confirmed in right the same scene:
Corona can take the lead over the talk and reprimand her. Their dynamic is not "one evil twin in the shadows and in charge" but more a kind of power shift system. Corona takes the public shifts and Ianthe takes the shadow shifts.
Before Canaan House Ianthe would never have questioned Corona in public. The only reason why she can suddenly do it is, that she knows that she will ascend to Lyctorhood and therefore to the First House. She knows, that won't need a Third House Crown Princess there. The scene doesn't portray their usual power dynamic. It's a break point. The power dynamic shifts during Gideon the Ninth.
But it was different before.
