Why did cardan make Locke the master of revels/why did cardan forgive Locke?

hi! Thanks for the ask! Hope you’re having a great day/ night too!!

Cardan gave Locke the title of master of revels for a number of reasons,

But first, the title gives Locke he overseeing of revels right, so he’s like the guy that plans all the parties.

Cardan knows that Locke is mischievous, that he likes a good story above all, and that he can acquire that by giving him the title.

But cardan and Locke obviously have history, Locke stole nicasia from him and they screwed around behind his back, so why give locke such a great boon?

Because, cardan didn’t want to be king, he doesn’t even see himself as king, he sees Jude as queen.

But by throwing Jude under the bus by giving locke a position in court that would make Jude’s life harder(to pay her back for putting him on the throne, which he didn’t want), and maybe make cardans job as king something more of an opportunity to be like how he was as prince:

Someone who can drink their problems away, taking the drugs and powders of nevermore/never, making merry with courtiers of the kingdom.

As for his forgiveness toward Locke, we must remember that Locke is (most likely) a gancanagh. A charm speaker, a love speaker. Someone who can sway others to their side by saying all of the right things, by saying the things that person wants to hear most.

It’s likely that cardan was swayed by Locke into remaining friendly with him, even after the betrayal. Tbh tho I’m not sure if cardan ever really forgave Locke. Most likely just tolerated him lol

Locke is also one of his only friends, and one of his only friends that isn’t actively trying to physically hurt him, only emotionally. But cardan is so emotionally and mentally broken from years of abuse that i doubt he comes to care much.

Like i said in my last post, about how cardan forgives his abusers, cardan can be kind. He has the capacity to forgive, time and time again.

Lastly; the whole relationship status in elfhame can be complicated. There doesn’t seem to be a “boy friend” or “girlfriend” or just significant other status that isn’t husband or wife(there’s consorts but that seems reserved for royals, lords and ladies). And husband and wife status, especially in royalty seems to be complete and utter devotion.

When fae take lovers, they seem to see lovemaking as a sport, so coming to CARE for those lovers would make a person seem weak. Especially for a prince. Cardan showing how Locke and nicasias relationship affected him would make him seem weak, would give them both the upper hand, by 1. Giving nicasia power over cardan, and 2. By Locke making a story out of the betrayal.

Cardan lived by the whole “boy with a heart of stone” story his whole life, but he didn’t have a heart of stone, and making it seem like he didn’t made him seem weak. Cardan held desperately onto the only power he had, his title as prince and using it to be cruel.

Overall, Cardan gave Locke the title for cardans own benefit, to terrorize Jude, to see being king as something that isn’t a burden. And he “forgave” Locke because it’s likely that Locke is just charming that way, and because Locke is one of his last buds, and because cardan doesn’t want to seem weak for not forgiving him.

Anyway that’s what i came up w, thanks for the ask! Hope i answered your question! Feel free to add on! 🫶

faerie beauty standard, human/faerie attraction, jude and taryns beauty, and short faerie breeding analysis!!

hi, gladly!! this is another long one bc to fully understand, i threw in some faerie facts lol! hope u don’t mind!

let’s start w what we know,

holly says (at a washington convention !!) that faeries and their beauty is very alien like. they can be beautiful in many ways, beautiful in a way that is not sexually attractive. she compares faeries with the alien man in the movie “shape of water” (this was all found on a tumblr post by a deactivated acc!!! i attached a cropped pic below of the extent of what holly said!)!!

above that pic however, is a letter from holly black herself, explaining faerie beauty standards and if humans would find jude or nicasia more beautiful, to which she says that humans would find jude more beautiful, bc humans have different beauty standards as well.

she also says that beauty is suggestive, which it is. what i am attracted to in a person differs from what YOU are attracted to in a person. this is the same for faeries.

their standards of beauty are ofc centered around faeries and not humans. but that does not mean that they do not find humans to be beautiful, bc they can and many do!

but to them, it’s just a different sort of beauty that they are familiar with, humans do not look like falling stars, they do not have translucent teeth that only shows when they catch the light. they do not have fangs or webbed fingers or green skin.

another thing abt humans and faeries is that faeries can be very skinny and lanky, and jude says that her fingers are rounded like her cheeks and ears, while the opposite is true for faeries, they have cutthroat jawlines and cheekbones, and pointy ears.

every faerie sees humans differently, and every human sees faeries differently. ESPECIALLY since faeries have advanced eyesight, and can see in the darkness, makes me wonder if they can see shadows very well, (like if jude’s eyes always look amber, like the sunlight is shining in them, which is what cardan implies in htkoelths when he says that her amber eyes are alight, despite them flying at nighttime.)

anyway, to make it simple, you can compare it with human traits, hair color, eye shape, hair cut, lip shape, smile, teeth, etc etc! what YOU find attractive or pretty in a person is yours and yours alone, no one will have the EXACT same attraction as you (ever heard someone say “i don’t see the appeal”??)

anyway, take for example, eva duarte and madoc. madoc is a big green guy w tons of sharp teeth that poke from his bottom lip and two cat eyes. YOU may find that scary or ugly, but to eva, she is attracted to him. whether she finds him handsome is another story, bc attraction and good looks don’t always go hand in hand-yk how ppl are attracted to funny but unattractive ppl, it can be like that.

now let’s compare how cardan sees jude. cardan is attracted to jude, lusts for her and desires her despite not liking her, because he’s attracted to her. he later on reveals that to him, her beauty is overwhelming, distressing, alarming, etc.

BUT he also says, “some of you may swear jude is unlovely” bc that is the faerie way, jude does not conform to the faerie beauty standards of being this sunrise eyed, blue haired, skinny to death sort of beauty, like faeries do.

now onto jude’s overall appearance:

we know jude is of average height; abt 5’4, she has the wavy red-brown hair of a willow tree, and she has amber eyes. she is described by kaye, as someone who is comfortable in her body, someone that has the body of an acrobat, or a soldier. jude says that she is musclier than taryn, and only when she rises from the undersea does she look sickly and pale. (just mentioning that i don’t think she is pale skinned, i imagine her w warm brown skin) and lastly, she has freckles across her body.

i also wanna add that another things faeries and humans do not have in common aren’t just their looks, but the shape of their bodies. jude’s hips and breasts are heavier than that of a faeries, mainly because faeries are so unfortunate in fertility, that their bodies do not grow to suit childbearing, because few of them have any children at all if ever.

i suppose that trait is something that could’ve been passed down through natural selection(or they just simply were never built for childbearing), as faeries started using human midwives and human women to help care for babies had, and to help strengthen the bloodline. (bless it w the fertility that comes w being a human)

and since faeries breed true (if a human bears a faerie child or if a faerie bears a child w a human, the child will still be very fae, more than it will be human) human characteristics (like heavy breasts and wide hips) are not passed onto those children, and instead they acquire glamour, curse breaking, magic weaving etc.

now onto jude:

one thing abt hollys writing that differs from many other authors is that she does not consistently remind the reader of the main characters looks.

but, fortunately for us, jude’s looks are described a few times by a few faeries.

in book one, immediately, valerian comments that jude and taryn are recognizable in any crowd, and that there is no head more plain.

which i actually find funny. since he was attracted to her.

nicasia in the first scene that she has any lines, speaks down on jude’s appearance, comparing jude’s looks to that of a faeries beauty, “did you think [this hair pin] would make you as we are?”

nicasia says that jude is not pretty like faeries and merfolk are, bc she isn’t, which jude finds disheartening bc the fae are painfully gorg if they aren’t frighteningly disgusting.

now me personally, the way that ONLY nicasia mentioned jude’s looks out of the whole group makes me think she’s sorta insecure bc she knows that locke is seeing one of the twins, and she’s not outright dumb, she prob also sees that val and cardan look at the twins in such a heated sort of manner.

but again later on, nicasia actually ends up calling her a “pretty thing” so, pretty contradictory but she just means that jude will never look the way a faerie does, but she admits that jude’s still pretty in her own way.

later on, jude visits the mortal world, where “milo” the human boy, circles jude at the mall before approaching her, hitting on her, and asking for her number, promptly before jude clocks his shit for grabbing her. (as she should queen, what was he grabbing at her for 🙄)

time passes and locke tells jude how beautiful she is (twice, like a “winter night”), yaddah yaddah yaddah, in book two, balekin says jude has a pretty face, and ofc smooches on her, and val moren calls jude pretty. in book 3 grima mog calls jude pretty, and later grimsen takes a liking to jude since he likes pretty things (pretty sure he said something to her abt that along those lines, or oriana did, too lazy to get my books)

as for taryn, jude often says how pretty she is, like a princess out of a story book, soft and beautiful, how impossible it seems that they share the same face. taryn also encounters a faerie that describes her beauty as “divine”

i mention all these things bc faeries cannot lie, so jude is beautiful, atleast in those faeries eyes.

lastly, i wanna add; that of course there is human-faerie sexual attraction, bc cardan feels it for jude, as does valerian. jude feels that way for cardan, and once even locke (? tbh she didn’t long for his touch like she did cardan so) but there is also eva and madoc, val moren and eldred, whom val moren was willing to burn his life away just to feel eldred touching him again, there is val and ravus, and hazel and jack. and more.!

so moral of the story, while jude’s and taryns beauty do not fit the faerie beauty standard, they are still seen as beautiful and desired by many faeries, just not all of them, since they all have their own attractions.

i hope this made sense, and thank you for the ask! feel free to add on in the cmmts!

dain greenbriar analysis! not that u asked but i did one of madoc so i’ll do one of dain since he’s super complex

i really liked dain too! he was totally mysterious, which was later revealed that he was more so manipulative and cunning. balekin says that dain is “surprisingly unsentimental” which is shocking coming from balekin of all ppl. since balekin believes it to be true, then imagine like a 10x worse version of balekin. we know dain is very smart, he is charming and manipulative, which are all qualities that balekin do not quite posses. (as seen in the lament of lutie loo)

dain truly did not play around when it came to things in the way of his coming into power. which shouldn’t come as a surprise since we know that dain was slowly poisoning eldred to make him weak and make him resign from being king. then obv what he did to the woman he sent love poems to (liriope) whom he poisoned alongside the fetus in her womb. all that just to assure his succession to the throne.

not to mention how he played poor 5ish yr old cardan. dude was beefing w a toddler! which again, he uses his elder brother charm to do, and his manipulative hand to persuade eldred to kick cardan out and cast asha out. (which makes me wonder if he had a personal grudge or something against asha ((maybe something she knew that he didn’t want eldred to know)) or if he was simply just killing 2 birds w one stone)

it’s fascinating to me that he killed liri despite caring for her sm. why do i think he cared for liri at all? because he was at a great risk to dally and play around with one of his fathers lovers/consorts. for someone who is so notoriously careful, he must’ve really grown to care for her, the same way nicasia came to care for locke!! ( i ADORE the parallels in lockes and his mothers relationships!)

but maybe dain caught on to her gancanagh/ love/charm speaking powers and was displeased enough to not really gaf when he administered poison to her and oakey.

while dain is a giant asshole, he really fascinated me. his actions at first were charming and humble, and from jude’s perspective, almost kind, and even someone she could look up to. but after jude fell out of favor with him, he was cold, cruel and calculating.

he even managed to skillfully manipulate his own spies into liking him, seeing as the ghost still served dain after his death by betraying jude (which wasn’t his fault). the roach and the bomb didn’t know of dains poisoning of liri, and even jude wasn’t allowed in on some of the spy work she was doing for dain.

and ofc when jude delivers the paper that says, “i know the provenance of blusher mushroom” dain, who is put on the spot, skillfully manipulates his spies yet again by claiming that “he”(could be any faerie that goes by “he” btw) was blackmailing orlagh.

furthermore, he says about balekin.

“he and i never got along. and yet i had hoped ….” purposefully not finishing his sentence so as to not reveal to his spies how truly unfeeling he was about his elder brother,balekin.

i wonder a lot of his plans for jude, i saw a theory that he was going to arrange jude in a marriage, and i have a few small ones of my own, but it’s super intriguing that he chose jude, the daughter of the very influential grand general (the man to stole half of the high kings army in twk lol) to use as a spy. makes me wonder what his plans were for madoc and for jude if madoc ever found out. because surely, as careful as he is, he would’ve had one.

ANYWAY sorry i kinda went on a tangent there but he’s such a cool character and while i def do not agree w his actions, i almost wish he stayed alive longer to be a more significant villain, but i am SO glad we got cute oakey pokey as a cute less evil replacement! and also more insights of what oak thinks of him in tpt and tsh!

holly black, despite dain and several other characters have short amounts of page time, managed to make dain such a great subtle villain! which is why i love her work so much. she slides in and incorporates little damning facts and details that could mean nothing, but could also have great significance!

lastly, i rly like doing character analyses so feel free to add on or send me characters or questions thru the ask thingy!!