Tear Tarnished Angel

A ramble… The death of Queen Frigga in Thor Dark World angered me so much I did not watch the movie. Ever.

I loathed the idea that she had been used only as a source of motivation for Loki, a character who lies, hurts, and betrays people.

The idea of, “…the familiar trope of the death of a female providing source of motivation for the hero.”

Welp… shit. I may have done the thing :<

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Aidna Royale. Drefan’s mother, a woman who has been abused and largely silenced by the King who she is the concubine to, a woman who promised to care for the child of the Queen dying in childbirth.

“She was my friend.”

There wasn’t jealousy between the two, and the Queen had helped the woman her husband loved, to understand and speak better, the language of the foreign land Aidna found herself residing inside. Concubines were normal in Royale, and so were political marriages. Being in Royale meant that Aidna was cut off from her people, from her father by thousands of miles and an arctic mountain range, which all aided Robert in his maltreatment of her.

Drefan finally having the power to do so, murders Robert for the years of abuse. Aidna finds herself free, but even more alone. She misses Robert, and she cannot tell her son, as she knows he will look down on her for it, after all, Robert was a villain. But love does not always make sense.

Thom, the son of the Queen falls ill, begins to waste away and he asks for his death to not be meddled with, abnormal in a land where necromancy was the norm and often royals become undead. But Thom wants to pass on, hoping against all hope that he can find his love again, another boy, Nathanael, in their next life. Nathanael has been dying of illness too. But they were of antagonizing Gods, there would be no way… The afterlife did not work that way for them.

Originally in the novel- Unrepentant Hopes, Aidna kills herself only a month or two before Thom finishes his wasting in bed. Another piece of sanity lost for Drefan. Drefan goes mad, free falling into the Abyss at the end of Unrepentant Hopes. The God who took up space inside his mind, snapping away from its own tenuous sanity too. They go on to butcher millions.

But is it not that I am taking her personal agency and using her for the same plot device?

It is true she is suffering emotionally and mentally, awfully by the near end of the First book. But she made a promise and even if Thom was dying and she felt that she had failed, would she leave him to die alone?? No. She would be a wraith, lifeless but still there, waiting, unable to leave until Thom is gone. Thinking perhaps that she can find the strength to stay after Thom is gone, as Drefan is her son and she should not leave him alone. Drefan was suffering as well, it is easy to see it upon his face as they wait for Thom to pass. She has to stay for her children even if suicide would be the easy way out.

It makes much more sense that she is by Thom’s side as he breathes his last, with Drefan and Nathanael. That she sees at that moment Drefan losing to the madness and the Void rolling off of him, licking at the walls and floors. Aidna raised by a people who worshipped the Void, realizes her son is gone. That the laughter is not Drefan’s alone, multiple voices are inside that madness.

It is Aidna who pushes Nathanael under Thom’s infirmary bed, surging to her feet and shoving the boy Thom had loved safely undercover and away from the fell magic.

Does she still die? Yes. Is it still another death on Drefan’s concious? Yes. Does he blame himself still? Hell yes. But her death is not just another motivation on the path of one of the main male characters. She chooses to protect Nathanael in the same way she has always chosen to protect Thom and Drefan: with her body & her life.

 

Drefan had not thought everything through in murdering his father, he was not normally so impulsive. The last year had disrupted and changed so much. But the King of Royale, his father was dead, in small pieces in some brook somewhere, where no-one living would find the abusive Son of a Bitch. But that meant Royale had no King, Robert’s wife Elizabeth was a mouse of a woman from the abuse, daughter of a Danaigh merchant from the north, she could not rule herself, a foreign woman and in a foreign land.

The throne fell to Drefan, but wait, the peace agreement, the legally binding marital agreement between Cama’ra and Royale told a different story. Bitter enemies for more then a millennium, this had been a very long time in coming, orchestrated by Drefan that his younger brother would marry the Camar’ian heir. So Drefan could not rule if he did not wish to break treaty. He had worked for years, putting up with slander and ridicule by his enemies to get peace for his people…

Until Thom was of age their would be no King of Royale, the throne left empty and Camar’a pulling it’s strings. Drefan had to talk to his people, translating for the two people he wanted dead now even more then his father, but the thought of war stilled his hand. With Queen Elaina and King Peter standing at his back he passes the edicts that are veiled threats, and diplomatic vomit. He cools his expression and acts the diplomat as he boils inside, strings being pulled as a marinate.

The people of Royale listened to him, true heir of the Dark throne, to tell them to peacefully give up their arms, the men ordered to give up their swords and military academies closed. The Kingdom of Light feared it’s old enemy greatly and the only control they could keep was through military superiority. Drefan felt the clenching of his gut squeeze harder each and every time he saw the look of confusion, the mix of trust and loyalty in the eyes of his people. An honest bewilderment of people with too great an honor code to not obey their Lord. The Royalians simply wanted  to know why Drefan was agreeing, they wanted to know why they did not fight the Camar’ians.

All Drefan could say to them in his anguished eyes was…

Wait.

By Nanqa, the Dark Lord, I’ll do something.

I promise.

The resignation of their eyes would only grow in the next year as foreign policies were instated, foreign guards and lords taking the place of their own. Sadness, anger Drefan could have understood, could have comforted but resignation? Resignation was unassailable.

To save himself and his brother from private agony he had caused the oppression of his own people by their oldest enemy. Peaceful the guise may have been he knew as Elaina and Peter took his brother Thom aside to teach him how to rule that they would systematically destroy everything Royalian about his beloved homeland.

Drefan’s killing of his father caused this disaster, then the spell he meant to use on one of his brother’s friends went awry and began to slowly kill his brother… His mother Elizabeth suicides and Drefan knows as he reads the note she left behind it is his fault. Monster.

At last his brother succumbs to the disease from the spell and perishes with Drefan clutching his hands at Thom’s bedside. Chaos had been inching it’s way, twisting in, breaking pieces away and finally his mind shattered.  Everything he had meant to do to help had only furthered the destruction of everything he held dear.

So then, who were the first to die when he loses himself to the darkness and his God with him?

The King and Queen of Cama’ra.

Gaelians, the people of Camar’a, oppressors of his people.

Those who scorned and hated him still.

All would die, and rise again to serve him in undeath. All for the love of his family and his homeland.