Queen Of Attolia - Tumblr Posts
The Queen of Attolia is killing me
They hate each other, they love each other, their first instinct is to insult each other, attempts to be nice come across as insults, they're sooo dysfunctional I love them
Attolia Irene the legend herself
I like it but it's kinda boring for like, the first half if I'm being completely honest. But Thick As Thieves is worse so whateve
Actually this is the first time I realized Gen has no problem fighting every single member of the guard cause that’s just. How they do things in Eddis. Boy was probably like “ah, FINALLY, some reminded of home!”
Honey are you okay you've barely touched your mocking other people
The Thief is a great read that I really enjoyed!
every book in the series that followed it made me deranged and I mean that in the most positive way possible
There are many things I love about The Queen of Attolia but one of my favorites is how relentlessly Gen roasts Eddis throughout.
Our little fashion obsessed lying brat tells her not to wear a pin with a certain scarf and she does it anyway. Fine, he’ll steal the pin and serves her right.
He tells her that her clothes don’t fit and she looks awful.
The magus says she’s “magnetic” on a personal level and Gen responds, “Bro, have you looked at her? She’s ugly!”
The magus, gently and diplomatically, says she’s perhaps not the ideal of conventional beauty and Gen goes on to list all of her physical flaws with absolutely no hesitation like he’s been waiting for a chance to do so.
And I love it so much because he so obviously adores and loves her. It reminds me very much of my relationship with my own sister and how she talks to me.
And I just know that if Gen ever overheard anyone else say Eddis is ugly, he would absolutely not be okay with it. And it just makes me love him all the more.
It would make him so insufferable if he was stoic. It would be too childish, because anyone who has been in some pain knows it's a lot, and it's way better to play it up than to play it down. If it's about attention, you'll get more attention if you play it down and everyone still knows you're injured.
This goes hand in hand with his character. It allows him to pass under the radar because everyone is used to ignoring his moans. It also is a part of his goofier, less mature self, which is why you see as the books go on he becomes more chill. In The Thief he flips out at Pol for cleaning his injured hands. In the Queen of Attolia, he's depressed for the majority of the book, and everyone acknowledges he's not himself, no jokes, grinning, he becomes stoic. The in King of Attolia, he's getting back into his groove and freaks out after the attempt on his life, whining the entire walk back to his room, as well as flipping out at Petrus when he starts doing the stitches (only to show how much control he actually has by calming down and not reacting at all to the stitches), and in a smaller way, he also complains about sword practice. In conspiracy of kings, he's less present, but he has his moments with sword practice. Think as thieves, he briefly complains about brinna hitting him, but again, he doesn't appear much. Then in return of the thief, he complains for the show of it mostly. He walks in on the ambassador kissing Irene and positively flips out, but when Irene gets sick, he doesn't waste any time talking about himself, he doesn't complain about the food that's brought to him (this is before he goes to the kitchens, so it still has sand, jars he can't open, etc) but he puts up with it silently. Then later when they go to war, he has his fair share of poor health. He gets a fever 2 days into riding and he blows it off, saying oh it's just this dumb coat makes me so hot, I'm not sick, and follows it up with complaints about the doctors. And later he's unconscious for several days and reassures the important people that he's alright. Over the course of the 6 books, he goes from complaining about everything to using complaints as a form of communication and only complaining when it's appropriate/acceptable. He whines as they get home after months away because they all know he's happy to be home and excited to see his wife and kids. He knows when he can and can't complain.
Anyway I don't really know where I was going with this but one other thing. Ages ago, I read the false Prince by Jennifer Nielsen. People said the main character was like gen. No hes not. Dont let anyone lie to you. He demonstrates the difference between Gen as a whiner and Gen as a stoic because the main character, Jaron is supposed to be all tough and stoic and LITERALLY CLIMBS A CLIFF WITH BOTH LEGS BROKEN, not to mention he then gets into a sword fight with his arch nemesis and fights until he passes out and then when he regains consciousness, his arch nemesis is like well I beat you but I decided you can have control of the pirates anyway. And since some people obviously have no idea what is plausible, they should really not be trying. That's something that's great about gen. Is it possible for him to just chill no matter the injury? Yeah probably. But would he? No. It adds so much more to him to not walk off every inconvenience and I love his complaining
One of the things that makes Eugenides such a fantastic character is that he’s brave and loyal and noble, but not even a little bit stoic.
He spends so much time moaning and complaining. He gets scared and he cries and he feels no shame about any of it. He broods and wallows. The gods themselves tell him to stop whining.
I know a certain amount of it is a calculated act, but also, he’s mostly leaning into his strengths in those cases. It’s just so rare to see genuine heroism in a character with such traditionally unheroic traits, and I love it. It’s not something to overcome, it’s just who he is — the most inspiring man you’ll ever meet, openly nursing grudges and dishing out petty insults by the dozen.
Eugenides, right? But what if, for Gen and Irenes anniversary or something, he has a set of wine glasses made that say "you've been poisoned" at the bottom. These glasses will only be used on particular occasions, for instance, when gen and Irene have private dinners, just the two of them; private dinners with Helen and sophos; or dinners to welcome new ambassadors
Eugenides? In the megaron? It’s more likely than you think