Moar Escaflowne meta rambles
Feb. 7th, 2014 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
konstantyaOr, why I reject the idea that the reason Eries hasn’t married is because she’s in love with Allen, and then lay down my own personal theory behind her apparent devotion to singledom.
Okay. So right off the bat I’m going to come out and say that I don’t consider Kazuki Akane’s statement (that Eries isn’t in line for the throne because she refuses all offers of marriage because she loves Allen) to be canon. I generally follow the Death of the Author approach to media, and so, as far as Escaflowne is concerned, if it wasn’t explicitly stated or shown in the 26 episodes, it ain’t canon to me, period. Word of God statements I tend to see as head-canon that is slightly more legitimate than most, but still head-canon at the end of the day, and if I like it, I’ll adopt it, and if I don’t like it, well, it gets succinctly ignored. (Like the idea that Allen is 185 cm (or just under 6’1”), as is apparently listed in one of the art books? Sure, I’ll go with that, why not? But I will always contest that he’s older than twenty-one—probably closer to twenty-five, and, like, twenty-three at the very youngest.)
But anyway. Not here to talk about Allen’s physical stats. Here to talk about Eries.
When I first came across the above statement by Kazuki Akane, well, I pretty much rejected it right from the get-go, on the basis that I thought it was more than a little ridiculous (and maybe even a little contrived?) to think that ALL THREE Aston gals would fall for the same guy. I have since, well…halfway warmed up to the idea, you might say, because it helps explain things about Eries’s character (and specifically, the way I view her character) without me having to come up with my own explanation. I am lazy, you see.
Basically, I can definitely see her having a crush on Allen in her younger years, to the point where she fancies herself in love with him, in that naïve, teenager type of way. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I tend to see Eries as someone who was very romantic in her younger years. She probably wasn’t reading the Gaean equivalent of Harlequins, but I think she had a very idealized view of love, and of what love should be. And I can easily see her getting at least a little caught up in the romanticism surrounding Allen—he’s a handsome, young, chivalrous knight, who made Caeli by virtue of his own merits, after all. And yeah, he’s had his share of problems, what with his dad wandering off on crackpot adventures all the time, and his sister disappearing, and his mom dying, and then there was that period he spent on the road, presumably homeless and self-destructively attacking anyone who happened to cross paths with him (and I do like the idea that he and Eries were friends, and so she probably was at least somewhat aware of his sordid past), but being intellectually aware of something and really knowing it are two different things. All that stuff was in the past, before she knew him, and so in a sense, it’s like it’s not really real, you know?
(And I don’t think it really becomes real to her until the whole affair with Marlene comes out. Because he wasn’t just romantically involved with her sister—he actually got her pregnant. Like, Eries couldn’t even pretend it was some chaste, courtly affair at that point, you know? And yeah, you can make the argument that Marlene was the aggressor in the relationship and was the one who pushed for sex, but it takes two to tango, as they say. Allen simply could have said, “No, princess, we really shouldn’t do this,” and would have had the physical ability to hold off any attempts she might have made to get into those hot, hot Caeli pants of his. Dude really has no excuse as to why he boned a lady (and the freakin’ heir to the throne, at that*) out of wedlock, other than: He wanted to, simple as that. And I think it was this that really shattered those ideals of hers and even kind of broke her heart in a way—not that he had feelings for her sister (though that surely hurt, too), but that he didn’t conduct himself the way a proper knight and gentleman should. And I think it’s only towards the end of the series that she really starts to forgive him for that, and maybe even see that she was wrong to put him up on such a pedestal in the first place. Title and manners and looks aside, dude’s just a human being, after all, capable of making mistakes just like any other.)
Anyway.
As I’ve mentioned before, I actually can see a romantic relationship working out between Eries and Allen, a number of years down the line. Once Allen gets his issues worked out, and once King Aston dies (because, considering what went down with Marlene, I doubt Grava would approve of another one of his daughters getting involved with Allen, and I think Eries respects her father enough that she would at least wait until he wasn’t around before she actually began a romantic relationship with the guy). Once they’ve both grown and matured as people, I can see it being the sort of thing that grows very organically out of a (rekindled) friendship. Eries is actually one of the very few people—perhaps the only person, as far as canon goes—that I actually can see Allen ending up with, to be honest.(Though I’ll admit, a part of me kind of wants to ship AllenxMerle—once a few years have gone by and she’s grown up, obviously—just because I like bizarre crack pairings like that.) So I’m not actually opposed to the AllenxEries pairing. It admittedly doesn’t do a whole lot for me and I doubt I’ll ever write it, but it isn’t the sort of thing I dislike on mere principle, the way I do, say, FolkenxDilandau**. What I dislike is the idea that she’s been constantly, futilely pining for him all these years.
Some of this, I will admit, is reflexive feministic reaction; I like my fictional women to have a bit of spine, and the idea that she would continue to want Allen despite his obvious issues (and what I read as obvious romantic disinterest in her) smacks of Love Martyr a little too much for my liking. But more than that is the fact that making her so hung up on Allen makes her character hypocritical in a way I have a very hard time sympathizing with. And I do like the idea that Eries is a bit of a hypocrite—what with her whole “Millerna, you’re a princess, you have a duty to your country, never mind that I’ve shirked my own duty by refusing to get married”—and I can totally get behind the idea that her feelings for Allen were what caused her to initially refuse marriage. I just prefer to believe that the reason she continues to refuse marriage is more complicated than simply, “I’m hopelessly in love with the guy who knocked up my sister and almost caused a massive scandal for my family and country.” It strikes me as a very lazy explanation, and an unbelievable one to boot, considering Eries’s age and general disposition. Millerna can get away with being stupidly in love with Allen because Millerna (when we meet her) is an immature teenager; Eries doesn’t have that excuse.
The obvious question, then, is, okay, just what are those aforementioned complicated reasons behind why she continues to refuse marriage? And here’s where I really get into my Eries head-canon.Strap in, y’all.
I know it’s common fan theory to say that she became a member of Asturia’s ruling council, and I’ll admit that that’s a perfectly legitimate route to take (I certainly wouldn’t—and haven’t—back-buttoned out of a fic just because I came across it), but it’s not the theory I generally go with***. Basically, I tend to go with the idea that, after Marlene’s marriage and especially her death, a lot of the duties traditionally reserved for the queen just sort of fell on Eries, such that, by the time we meet her, Millerna might be the official heir, but it's Eries who is generally regarded as the Lady of the Palace. She’s the one who keeps up correspondences and plays host and acts as an advisor to the king when necessary. And as far as her father goes, I think her relationship with him has shifted, such that, by the time the events of the series rolls around, she’s less of a daughter and more of a wife to him. I don’t mean that in a squicky way, obviously, just that her role in the family has shifted. Even with Millerna—she’s probably not too good at it, admittedly, but I have a hard time believing that Eries hasn’t at least tried to act as a mother of sorts to her, giving her advice (whether wanted or not), and just in general trying to be some sort of female role model and/or authority figure. So I think, in a weird way, duty is one of the reasons she hasn’t married—duty to her family (and to the roles she has within that family), and duty to her country, yes. (Because someone has to play host and smile politely for visiting diplomats, after all, and Millerna clearly can’t be bothered to do that in her mind, what with all her riding around in pants and wanting to become a doctor and blatantly fawning over Allen.) Who else is going to pick up that slack at home if she gets married off to a foreign country like Marlene did? Who else is going to look after her father and make sure Millerna’s not making an ass of herself?
And here’s where I point out that I think Eries has a…slightly inflated sense of her own importance, I guess you might say. Not to say she isn’t important, because I firmly believe that she is, as far as her family and courtly shit goes, but I think she has this idea in her head that if something were to happen to her, everything would go to hell quicker than you can say, “Jichia’s kneecaps.” Which I don’t exactly think would be the case. Things would be hard, no doubt, but I like to imagine that if Eries did happen to die or was otherwise incapacitated, Millerna would step up her game. (And I actually think one of the reasons Millerna hasn’t stepped up her game by the time we meet her is because Eries seems to have everything so under control, and what in the world could Millerna hope to do that her sister doesn’t already do better? And in case you couldn’t tell, I tend to think both Eries and Millerna alike are downright abysmal when it comes to communicating with each other. I think Marlene was the one who really held them all together, who was able to act as a buffer between their disparate personalities and smooth things over, and once she was gone, well, they just drifted further and further apart****.)
But anyway, that’s just one reason, and one that doesn’t really hold all that much water when you stop to think about it—I mean, who’s to say that she would even be married out of country, anyway? Millerna married an Asturian dude, after all; who’s to say Grava couldn’t arrange a similar sort of thing for Eries, which would thus keep her in the country? (And the fact that Marlene was married out of country, despite presumably being heir, is something I previously addressed in this post, if you’re curious and/or haven’t already seen it.)
I really can’t see Eries as the type who ever wanted to be queen, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that there might be a small, selfish part of her that keeps refusing marriage because she still doesn’t want to be queen. But more than that, I think there’s a part of her that truly believes Millerna would make a better queen.
Asturia is a patriarchal society, after all, and no doubt there are some gender roles at play. Eries might be intelligent, might be diplomatically wily, might be able to get shit done on the administrative side of things, but a queen—as a woman and a public figure—needs to be more than that. They need to be charming, they need to be charismatic, they need to be able to woo the masses. While I’m of the opinion that Eries is an attractive enough woman, she’s also cool and aloof—polite, yes, but probably not any friendlier to any given person than societal expectations say she has to be. Millerna, for all the bratty immaturity she first displays, is far warmer in personality, and I daresay more compassionate. (She wanted to become a doctor to help people, after all, and helps break Allen out of jail so that they can get word out to Freid that Zaibach is planning to attack. Her heart is in the right place, even if her methods could use a bit of work.) I think Eries truly believes her skills would be better suited to a role behind the scenes, where one can afford to do some shady business and twist a few arms and, just in general, get their hands a little dirty, because not everyone is watching them*****.
Which isn’t to say she couldn’t hold the fort down well enough if need be (and I personally like to think that’s what she did, all Elizabeth I style, when Millerna went AWOL and her father fell ill), and I think if something happened to Millerna, such that Eries was the “last resort,” so to speak, she would acquit herself admirably, but ultimately I think there’s this little niggling insecurity in the back of her head that keeps telling her, “You know, Millerna (if she could just manage to grow up a little, gods) would probably be better for Asturia as a whole, in the long run.”
So I guess there you have it. My complicated, convoluted head-canon as to why Eries hasn’t married.
* And I’m of the firm belief that, despite the fact that Allen is nobility and a Caeli on top of that, he’s still at least a good few rungs down from royalty on the social ladder, such that he should have known a marriage wouldn’t be possible between them (and that even a mere relationship between them would have been considered scandalous enough, had it ever gotten out). So it’s not like they could hope to just shotgun wedding it up in the unfortunate event that she did get pregnant—which, as we all know, is what actually happened. (Boy were they ever lucky Mahad was around. I mean hot damn, shit could have been bad.)
** Which I dislike mostly because I can’t see Folken willingly breaking (what I assume to be) military protocol by having an affair with a subordinate. To say nothing of the fact that they don’t even seem to like each other all that much, on a personal level, and it is a rare instance where antipathy genuinely reads as UST to me. (I could maybe see it working in an AU setting, where their situations are different and maybe even their personalities are tweaked a little, but not within the confines of canon, I’m afraid.)
*** I actually don’t think Eries is all that progressive or even itching to break out of traditional gender roles, such that she would even want to serve on the council, to be honest (though I’ll admit, I still kind of like the idea of it—women in positions of power, w00t). But in truth, she strikes me as very conservative, and I daresay even a traditionalist (eg: this is what a princess should be, and thus, this is what we will be; there are Rules, and we must Follow Them; etc.This is one of the reasons why I think she and Austria from Hetalia would be, like, BFFs, but whatever. I’m inclined to think she really latched on to etiquette and protocol and this idea of being “proper” as a defense/coping mechanism of sorts after her mother died, but that’s for another day and another schpiel.) If she does have some liberal, progressive streak to her (which she very well may; I’m not discrediting the idea entirely), I think it manifests itself in a very quiet, reactive way. Like, she refuses to get married, but that’s her simply refusing a role that is traditionally seen as feminine (ie: being someone’s wife), not actively seeking out a role that is traditionally seen as masculine (as you can argue Millerna does to a certain extent, what with her “FUCK YEAH, I’M GONNA WEAR PANTS AND GO HORSEBACK RIDING (THAT’S RIGHT, ASTRIDE, BITCHES; YOU BETTER BELIEVE I’M NOT DOING THAT SIDE-SADDLE BULLSHIT) AND I’M GONNA BE A DOCTOR BECAUSE SAVING LIVES IS METAL AS FUCK, AND Y’ALL WHO THINK LADIES ARE TOO DELICATE FOR THIS SHIT CAN STUFF IT. YEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!”) I’m not saying this makes Millerna a “more feminist” character or anything dumb like that; it’s more just me pointing out the contrasts between them—even down to the different ways they potentially rebel against society—as a point of interest. Oops, this was a very big segue.
**** At least until the end of the series, because I like to think that Millerna (and even Eries) have grown and matured, to the point where they’ve started to learn how to bridge that gap on their own. That little bit during the final credit sequence, where Eries puts her arm around Millerna’s shoulders, gets me every time, I swear.
***** But then, as I’ve also stated elsewhere, I tend to see Eries as a bit on the morally grey side, who kind of takes after her father in that respect—she’s willing to be a bit manipulative if she believes she has good enough reason to be (and in fact, I like to think that’s how she got out of being married off in the first place—I think she actually threatened her father with blackmail—but that’s also for another day and another schpiel).
Okay. So right off the bat I’m going to come out and say that I don’t consider Kazuki Akane’s statement (that Eries isn’t in line for the throne because she refuses all offers of marriage because she loves Allen) to be canon. I generally follow the Death of the Author approach to media, and so, as far as Escaflowne is concerned, if it wasn’t explicitly stated or shown in the 26 episodes, it ain’t canon to me, period. Word of God statements I tend to see as head-canon that is slightly more legitimate than most, but still head-canon at the end of the day, and if I like it, I’ll adopt it, and if I don’t like it, well, it gets succinctly ignored. (Like the idea that Allen is 185 cm (or just under 6’1”), as is apparently listed in one of the art books? Sure, I’ll go with that, why not? But I will always contest that he’s older than twenty-one—probably closer to twenty-five, and, like, twenty-three at the very youngest.)
But anyway. Not here to talk about Allen’s physical stats. Here to talk about Eries.
When I first came across the above statement by Kazuki Akane, well, I pretty much rejected it right from the get-go, on the basis that I thought it was more than a little ridiculous (and maybe even a little contrived?) to think that ALL THREE Aston gals would fall for the same guy. I have since, well…halfway warmed up to the idea, you might say, because it helps explain things about Eries’s character (and specifically, the way I view her character) without me having to come up with my own explanation. I am lazy, you see.
Basically, I can definitely see her having a crush on Allen in her younger years, to the point where she fancies herself in love with him, in that naïve, teenager type of way. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I tend to see Eries as someone who was very romantic in her younger years. She probably wasn’t reading the Gaean equivalent of Harlequins, but I think she had a very idealized view of love, and of what love should be. And I can easily see her getting at least a little caught up in the romanticism surrounding Allen—he’s a handsome, young, chivalrous knight, who made Caeli by virtue of his own merits, after all. And yeah, he’s had his share of problems, what with his dad wandering off on crackpot adventures all the time, and his sister disappearing, and his mom dying, and then there was that period he spent on the road, presumably homeless and self-destructively attacking anyone who happened to cross paths with him (and I do like the idea that he and Eries were friends, and so she probably was at least somewhat aware of his sordid past), but being intellectually aware of something and really knowing it are two different things. All that stuff was in the past, before she knew him, and so in a sense, it’s like it’s not really real, you know?
(And I don’t think it really becomes real to her until the whole affair with Marlene comes out. Because he wasn’t just romantically involved with her sister—he actually got her pregnant. Like, Eries couldn’t even pretend it was some chaste, courtly affair at that point, you know? And yeah, you can make the argument that Marlene was the aggressor in the relationship and was the one who pushed for sex, but it takes two to tango, as they say. Allen simply could have said, “No, princess, we really shouldn’t do this,” and would have had the physical ability to hold off any attempts she might have made to get into those hot, hot Caeli pants of his. Dude really has no excuse as to why he boned a lady (and the freakin’ heir to the throne, at that*) out of wedlock, other than: He wanted to, simple as that. And I think it was this that really shattered those ideals of hers and even kind of broke her heart in a way—not that he had feelings for her sister (though that surely hurt, too), but that he didn’t conduct himself the way a proper knight and gentleman should. And I think it’s only towards the end of the series that she really starts to forgive him for that, and maybe even see that she was wrong to put him up on such a pedestal in the first place. Title and manners and looks aside, dude’s just a human being, after all, capable of making mistakes just like any other.)
Anyway.
As I’ve mentioned before, I actually can see a romantic relationship working out between Eries and Allen, a number of years down the line. Once Allen gets his issues worked out, and once King Aston dies (because, considering what went down with Marlene, I doubt Grava would approve of another one of his daughters getting involved with Allen, and I think Eries respects her father enough that she would at least wait until he wasn’t around before she actually began a romantic relationship with the guy). Once they’ve both grown and matured as people, I can see it being the sort of thing that grows very organically out of a (rekindled) friendship. Eries is actually one of the very few people—perhaps the only person, as far as canon goes—that I actually can see Allen ending up with, to be honest.
Some of this, I will admit, is reflexive feministic reaction; I like my fictional women to have a bit of spine, and the idea that she would continue to want Allen despite his obvious issues (and what I read as obvious romantic disinterest in her) smacks of Love Martyr a little too much for my liking. But more than that is the fact that making her so hung up on Allen makes her character hypocritical in a way I have a very hard time sympathizing with. And I do like the idea that Eries is a bit of a hypocrite—what with her whole “Millerna, you’re a princess, you have a duty to your country, never mind that I’ve shirked my own duty by refusing to get married”—and I can totally get behind the idea that her feelings for Allen were what caused her to initially refuse marriage. I just prefer to believe that the reason she continues to refuse marriage is more complicated than simply, “I’m hopelessly in love with the guy who knocked up my sister and almost caused a massive scandal for my family and country.” It strikes me as a very lazy explanation, and an unbelievable one to boot, considering Eries’s age and general disposition. Millerna can get away with being stupidly in love with Allen because Millerna (when we meet her) is an immature teenager; Eries doesn’t have that excuse.
The obvious question, then, is, okay, just what are those aforementioned complicated reasons behind why she continues to refuse marriage? And here’s where I really get into my Eries head-canon.
I know it’s common fan theory to say that she became a member of Asturia’s ruling council, and I’ll admit that that’s a perfectly legitimate route to take (I certainly wouldn’t—and haven’t—back-buttoned out of a fic just because I came across it), but it’s not the theory I generally go with***. Basically, I tend to go with the idea that, after Marlene’s marriage and especially her death, a lot of the duties traditionally reserved for the queen just sort of fell on Eries, such that, by the time we meet her, Millerna might be the official heir, but it's Eries who is generally regarded as the Lady of the Palace. She’s the one who keeps up correspondences and plays host and acts as an advisor to the king when necessary. And as far as her father goes, I think her relationship with him has shifted, such that, by the time the events of the series rolls around, she’s less of a daughter and more of a wife to him. I don’t mean that in a squicky way, obviously, just that her role in the family has shifted. Even with Millerna—she’s probably not too good at it, admittedly, but I have a hard time believing that Eries hasn’t at least tried to act as a mother of sorts to her, giving her advice (whether wanted or not), and just in general trying to be some sort of female role model and/or authority figure. So I think, in a weird way, duty is one of the reasons she hasn’t married—duty to her family (and to the roles she has within that family), and duty to her country, yes. (Because someone has to play host and smile politely for visiting diplomats, after all, and Millerna clearly can’t be bothered to do that in her mind, what with all her riding around in pants and wanting to become a doctor and blatantly fawning over Allen.) Who else is going to pick up that slack at home if she gets married off to a foreign country like Marlene did? Who else is going to look after her father and make sure Millerna’s not making an ass of herself?
And here’s where I point out that I think Eries has a…slightly inflated sense of her own importance, I guess you might say. Not to say she isn’t important, because I firmly believe that she is, as far as her family and courtly shit goes, but I think she has this idea in her head that if something were to happen to her, everything would go to hell quicker than you can say, “Jichia’s kneecaps.” Which I don’t exactly think would be the case. Things would be hard, no doubt, but I like to imagine that if Eries did happen to die or was otherwise incapacitated, Millerna would step up her game. (And I actually think one of the reasons Millerna hasn’t stepped up her game by the time we meet her is because Eries seems to have everything so under control, and what in the world could Millerna hope to do that her sister doesn’t already do better? And in case you couldn’t tell, I tend to think both Eries and Millerna alike are downright abysmal when it comes to communicating with each other. I think Marlene was the one who really held them all together, who was able to act as a buffer between their disparate personalities and smooth things over, and once she was gone, well, they just drifted further and further apart****.)
But anyway, that’s just one reason, and one that doesn’t really hold all that much water when you stop to think about it—I mean, who’s to say that she would even be married out of country, anyway? Millerna married an Asturian dude, after all; who’s to say Grava couldn’t arrange a similar sort of thing for Eries, which would thus keep her in the country? (And the fact that Marlene was married out of country, despite presumably being heir, is something I previously addressed in this post, if you’re curious and/or haven’t already seen it.)
I really can’t see Eries as the type who ever wanted to be queen, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that there might be a small, selfish part of her that keeps refusing marriage because she still doesn’t want to be queen. But more than that, I think there’s a part of her that truly believes Millerna would make a better queen.
Asturia is a patriarchal society, after all, and no doubt there are some gender roles at play. Eries might be intelligent, might be diplomatically wily, might be able to get shit done on the administrative side of things, but a queen—as a woman and a public figure—needs to be more than that. They need to be charming, they need to be charismatic, they need to be able to woo the masses. While I’m of the opinion that Eries is an attractive enough woman, she’s also cool and aloof—polite, yes, but probably not any friendlier to any given person than societal expectations say she has to be. Millerna, for all the bratty immaturity she first displays, is far warmer in personality, and I daresay more compassionate. (She wanted to become a doctor to help people, after all, and helps break Allen out of jail so that they can get word out to Freid that Zaibach is planning to attack. Her heart is in the right place, even if her methods could use a bit of work.) I think Eries truly believes her skills would be better suited to a role behind the scenes, where one can afford to do some shady business and twist a few arms and, just in general, get their hands a little dirty, because not everyone is watching them*****.
Which isn’t to say she couldn’t hold the fort down well enough if need be (and I personally like to think that’s what she did, all Elizabeth I style, when Millerna went AWOL and her father fell ill), and I think if something happened to Millerna, such that Eries was the “last resort,” so to speak, she would acquit herself admirably, but ultimately I think there’s this little niggling insecurity in the back of her head that keeps telling her, “You know, Millerna (if she could just manage to grow up a little, gods) would probably be better for Asturia as a whole, in the long run.”
So I guess there you have it. My complicated, convoluted head-canon as to why Eries hasn’t married.
* And I’m of the firm belief that, despite the fact that Allen is nobility and a Caeli on top of that, he’s still at least a good few rungs down from royalty on the social ladder, such that he should have known a marriage wouldn’t be possible between them (and that even a mere relationship between them would have been considered scandalous enough, had it ever gotten out). So it’s not like they could hope to just shotgun wedding it up in the unfortunate event that she did get pregnant—which, as we all know, is what actually happened. (Boy were they ever lucky Mahad was around. I mean hot damn, shit could have been bad.)
** Which I dislike mostly because I can’t see Folken willingly breaking (what I assume to be) military protocol by having an affair with a subordinate. To say nothing of the fact that they don’t even seem to like each other all that much, on a personal level, and it is a rare instance where antipathy genuinely reads as UST to me. (I could maybe see it working in an AU setting, where their situations are different and maybe even their personalities are tweaked a little, but not within the confines of canon, I’m afraid.)
*** I actually don’t think Eries is all that progressive or even itching to break out of traditional gender roles, such that she would even want to serve on the council, to be honest (though I’ll admit, I still kind of like the idea of it—women in positions of power, w00t). But in truth, she strikes me as very conservative, and I daresay even a traditionalist (eg: this is what a princess should be, and thus, this is what we will be; there are Rules, and we must Follow Them; etc.
**** At least until the end of the series, because I like to think that Millerna (and even Eries) have grown and matured, to the point where they’ve started to learn how to bridge that gap on their own. That little bit during the final credit sequence, where Eries puts her arm around Millerna’s shoulders, gets me every time, I swear.
***** But then, as I’ve also stated elsewhere, I tend to see Eries as a bit on the morally grey side, who kind of takes after her father in that respect—she’s willing to be a bit manipulative if she believes she has good enough reason to be (and in fact, I like to think that’s how she got out of being married off in the first place—I think she actually threatened her father with blackmail—but that’s also for another day and another schpiel).
