it’s my hill and i’ll die on it

Spoilers for sobh/seasons of shadowhunters below

I've spent the night typing it so y'all could enjoy this novel on your reading apps, I hope there aren't many mistakes, my eyes hurt by the end of the night so be kind🌸

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yes maybe the age thing was weird idk i'm not keeping track of when they met and all that. but otherwise i think he was just lonely and lost.

clearly he loved alastair. he called for him when he was dying, other people noticed the way he looked at him, etc.

he was just too attached to his career and social status to risk it for alastair. and yes he was annoying about wanting to be the consul but can we really blame him for not wanting to let go of that? it's a good job, it would give him money and security and influence, and not everyone can throw everything away for the purpose of expressing their true selves like anna and matthew.

i think judging charles for putting his stable career and safe life above his feelings for alastair is not right. a lot of queer people don't have much of a choice in the matter, and charles is no different. i don't believe he had a choice. at least not a free choice.

charles was just.. scared. and he had a shit ton of internalized homophobia i'm sure. and no one was there to help him through it except maybe alastair who was pulling away from him because charles kept hurting him.

if no one noticed matthew's drinking problem then you best believe no one noticed charles's problem. matthew was more loved, by his parents and his friends, and still no one cared enough to try to help him with his drinking. charles was not liked by anyone, he was alone, sure as hell no one gave two shits about him to try to help him with his feelings.

don't get me wrong, alastair had every right to leave him for these same reasons, but demonizing charles is not the way to go about this.

pretending to be straight, marrying a woman and dooming her and himself in a loveless marriage, having an affair with someone behind her back, keeping alastair a secret.. no one likes these things but i do not blame charles even one bit for wanting to do that. so many queer people have done that and i don't think lumping charles in with the bad guys for doing that is a good thing.

Charles is annoying about his political ambitions, but he was raised to be that way. There’s a comic about Tessa finding out she was pregnant with James that implies that Charlotte has been essentially breeding him to consul since he was a toddler. You best bet that shit is tied to his self worth. So not only does he have to succeed politically in order to please his mother (his mother he is literally named after, as if there wasn’t already enough pressure to love up to her legacy), further reinforcing the idea that he is not free to just throw that away in order to have a fulfilling love life, but he has learned that politics is the only reliable way to get his mothers attention and praise in an otherwise neglectful household

(I’m not trying to villainize Charlotte and Henry either. I don’t think they ever realize just how much their behavior is effecting their children, but they are adults, so if anyone should be receiving the blame it is them and not their children.)

I would go on and talk about how I am not happy with where his character was taken in chain of thorns but I think op said they haven’t gotten there yet so I will shut up for the sake of spoilers.

i just want to add as an example the scene in chapter 8 in chain of iron where matthew is arguing with charlotte

“The Enclave is putting together a day patrol to search the area Basil Pounceby’s body was found. Your name came up, Matthew, but I took you off the list, explaining that you are not well,” Charlotte said. She sounded less than happy about it. [...] “Why would you do that?” Matthew demanded. “I’m fit as a fiddle, Mother.” “I said it because it was true.” Charlotte’s voice shook. “Matthew, you aren’t well. You are always drinking, and when you are not drinking, your hands are shaking. Neither condition is conducive to patrol.” Matthew rolled his eyes, sitting up a few degrees and rearranging the cushions. “It’s not my fault that you and Father were the most boring people alive when you were adolescents. I’m not like you. I want to enjoy being young. I want to drink and stay up late. There’s nothing wrong with it. You are over-worrying.” “There is an old saying.” Charlotte’s voice had gone very quiet. “First a man takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.” James thought of Cordelia’s father and winced. However well intended, Charlotte was taking exactly the wrong tack with Matthew, mistaking his blasé attitude for indifference.

i was so shocked at charlotte for handling the situation in the WORST way possible like??? this is the charlotte who is clever and attentive and loves and cares for people and raised a bunch of teenagers before she even got married?? this charlotte? seeing all the signs of her son's issues and the best thing she could do is tell him a proverb about how alcoholism is bad? i think he already knew that and also what mother says that to her son who is very glaringly obviously suffering?

and people expect her to give a shit about charles? yeah no that is not happening

honestly i think cc made the parents very very absent in tlh. and even the cast of main characters among themselves didn't seem to care about each other. no one cared about matthew's drinking enough to try to get him to stop except maybe cordelia, no one was really affected when barbara died.

charles wasn't even part of their group so i guarantee you no one gave a single shit about him.

i hereby declare i am willing to adopt both matthew and charles because my boys deserve some good parenting.

sorry for going on a tangent and also now i'm worried about what will happen to charles in chain of thorns

And this is the woman who raised will herondale of all people when she was basically just a teenager herself! Even when she thought he was being a dickhead just for the hell of it, she still always reassured him that he was loved. She realistically should have learned from her experience with Will and saw that there was something else driving Matthew’s behavior.

I wasn’t exactly in the fandom then but I’m fairly certain a lot of people hated Alastair when chain of gold came out and only changed their tune when he was redeemed a bit more in later books. You certainly aren’t obligated to like Alastair or Charles or any character for that matter, but the villainization is kinda excessive. I think it’s telling of our modern media literacy more than anything that we automatically label annoying, disagreeable, or morally gray characters as “evil” without even bothering to try and understand them, and this is the reason i think characters like James were changed to be more palatable which is a different rant entirely.