not the same anon but i agree with your opinion on rhys, like he was such a deep complicated character in the previous books who i loved but in this one (and somewhat in acowar) it felt like sjm just plucked all the depth out of him and made him one of those alpha male types, i mean him lying and hiding things from feyre and basically locking her up into that shield without telling her what it's for just saying it's to keep her safe? how was that different then what tamlin did to her sjm how?
I have ruminated on this for a while....and I think that the Tamlin vs Rhys issue is like a fair question for you to be asking. The way I see it:
Tamlin:
-when he’s overprotective of Feyre in acomaf, he does it primarily to make himself feel better. he’s not protecting her from an actual threat it’s like....because he’s worried if she even leaves the house someone will murder her.
-he doesn’t treat her like a partner, but like a literal object
-his protectiveness entirely stems from his own trauma with no thought to hers. I mean, he ignores all her issues, she’s so thin and depressed and he doesn’t notice at all. And he was like...so worried about her being safe that he couldn’t see that he was contributing to her being traumatized and unsafe.
Rhysand:
-in acowar, we see his sneaky side, mainly in the Mor/CoN situation and the way he doesn’t tell Feyre he’s sacrificing himself at the end. I didn’t interpret him in acowar as alpha male, rather, I saw it as an expression of the Rhys who is still having PTSD from UtM, where he had to do everything on his own and where telling others about his plans or not being careful enough could result in deaths/his death/him getting raped.
-his behavior in acosf very much reads as a similar regression, and I do think it’s distinctly different from Tamlin. (doesn’t mean it’s better than Tamlin’s treatment of Feyre it’s just...different.) His protection of Feyre in acosf is motivated by multiple things:
- a desire to spare her from the horror that the pregnancy is turning into.
- a desire to spare her from the guilt that she would feel over it all. their lives are linked. if she dies, so does he. in an enormously awful situation in which all three of them face death, and Rhys feels like he has to find a way to fix it before telling her.
-Rhys isn’t being overprotective the way that Tamlin is, for his own sake, he’s lying to Feyre because the truth is so horrible. Tamlin is motivated to make himself feel better, Rhys is motivated by concern for Feyre’s happiness and the inability to reckon with her/his/nyx’s potential death.
In terms of Rhys vs Tamlin and if Rhys’s actions are as bad as Tamlin’s...I don’t think they are necessarily *better* but I think the question to ask if how Feyre would feel about it? Like how will Rhys’s actions impact their relationship and will Feyre be able to forgive him.
SJM wrote it like she did forgive him but we didn’t see that convo so....if it were me, I wouldn’t forgive Tamlin because his mistreatment was selfish as well as abusive...like he was being abusive to serve himself. Rhys told his partner a major lie, like a MAJOR FUCKED UP LIE, but it was motivated by an actual desire to make her happy. Tamlin is motivated by wanting to...protect his own self from dealing with anything bad happening to Feyre.
But!! This doesn’t mean that a) Rhys’s actions are somehow okay or that b) as readers we cant continue to really dislike him and resent them for it. I think it will be highly unrealistic if this is not an issue later on for Feysand. I actually think it DEMANDS being dealt with on the page. Rhys needs to grow out of this...thought pattern in which he is the only person who can fix things. He needs to view Feyre as a true partner, and they need to work towards rebuilding their trust.
Also, it’s extremely fucked that Majda doesn’t tell Feyre. I think....telling one’s partner they might die and that their baby will die....is sort of not something many of us would know how to do. It’s literally a medical professional’s job to communicate that with the patient. It’s so weird that she left that to Rhys and so weird that Maas included that bit at all. Like, why would Majda NOT tell Feyre? Why would she expect Rhys to know how to do that?
Honestly this whole plot line was a mess and doesn’t hold up well to critical character analysis like. I still love Rhys because acotar-acofas Rhys matters so much to me, and I only accept his actions in acosf on the assumption he planned to tell Feyre as soon as he had a solution. :)
EDIT: she knew what the shield was for, no one else did though. He had the shield around her to prevent other people from smelling the pregnancy, which in a world in which killing Rhys’s heir would be a super effective way to wrest power from the night court....it makes sense.
This was the worst part of book for me. I can let go of a lot of my issues with Acosf, consistency and plot have never been a strong suit of the series, but Rhys withholding this information from Feyre has severely damaged how I view his character.
I understand the logic process of this choice, I can see where he connected the dots, and I even understand his hope that he would find a solution before it became necessary to tell her, but their friendship was based on the promise of honesty. Rhys promised to be open and honest with her from the beginning, no secrets, no games. And he didn’t just break that promise with this, he threw it in the trash, dumped manure on it, and lit it on fire.
He withheld medical information from her. Information about her own body. Not only that, he withheld information about their child’s health from her. And then told their entire family and some mutual friends what was happening, while she was completely ignorant of the problem. That is a horrific violation of her body autonomy.
It would have been one thing if he just told Amren and Mor, worked with just them to find a solution, and no one else knew, but he was willing to let their entire family, as well as Helion, Kallias, Miriam, and Drakon, look on her in pity and sadness because she and her child were likely going to die, just so he didn’t have to break the news to her. It’s so gross, and I don’t think I could ever forgive a partner for doing that. That kind of lie would be a relationship ender.
I’m sure SJM could have come up with another reason for Nesta and Feyre to have that confrontation in Amren’s apartment, and for Nesta to give up her powers at the end of Acosf to save Feyre and Nyx. I’ve thought of a several since I read the book. This one was too close to home for a lot of pregnant people, and too unforgivable from a relationship stand point.
Yeah. All of this. It’s one of the worst parts for me too because of how much I loved Rhys prior to this. His story as a survivor is SA mattered so much to me and this whole thing with Feyre and the pregnancy and bodily autonomy is upsetting. I almost have to like...ignore it as canon in order to still enjoy him? Because he matters so much to me in the first four books