One of the interesting things about monarchs is that becoming a monarch is an inherently selfish choice. It is a choice that requires you to fight reality itself constantly and requires that you not care about the massive harm caused to all the people affected by the dreadgods. Despite this however the monarchs do not for the most part think of themselves as selfish, because they didn't start out selfish. They often start out trying to protect or avenge others and they carry that view of themselves with them into their time as monarchs but they are forced to leave behind the actual selflessness that they started with in order for them to stay as a monarch.
Path of the Immeasurable Swarm [Worm/Cradle]
- Thread starter derivativeoflife
- Start date
- Crossover
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This one kills me and I want a fic to address it at some point because she actually has that moment of revelation before the battle in the heavens breaks out. She looks at her daughter and asks herself what the fuck her priorities have become…. And then she throws that away and falls straight back into bad habits. Things would have gone so much smoother if she had followed through on that thought and talked to Lindon's wrecking crew to get a feel for their plan, helped, and then ascended.
She could have been the voice of experience helping plan things out, beyond the initial vague outline of a plan, and fretting about the repercussions, and debating how much of her family to take with her and she could have had character development! It was all right there waiting for her to take that first step and instead she chose manipulate and fight and hold onto power like Golem with the one ring!
Honestly, a significant part of my motivation to write this fic was feeling like both Malice and Mercy got kind of a raw deal in canon. Mercy was portrayed as a prodigy among prodigies, more talented than even Lindon or Yerin, but after she lost to Sophara and Malice went full abusive she kind of got sidelined and never really managed to recover much agency or relevance. As for Malice, it felt like Will kept flip flopping between making her a deeply flawed person who still ultimately loved her family, or a cold-hearted manipulator who faked everything from the start.
They've become less awesome with time and being stuck as crabs in a bucket.
They're all insanely biased and have things lined up to feed their biases and worldviews.
Mercy and Malice really where wasted in canon. I feel like Malice was used really well in how you could see the manipulator and the woman who cares for her family. Also I can't wait to see Mercy go out to do her thing, Mercy really does feel like the prodigy of prodigies but she's kinda hit the limits of that given she now has to contend with Sages, Heralds and Monarchs.
Roth963
If I become inactive with this massage, I died
I personally think Malice was pretty well done, she was a very complex character, you could feel that she loved her family, but you could also feel that she let her greed, fear and selfishness warp this love, she just couldn't let cradle go, she needed the control being a monrach gave her, she needed to safety it provided her family, this is why I think she had change of heart when daurman arrived, she lost the control and with it the baggage of her problems, but when she got the control back, the problems came along with it.
Northstrider was similar, he was mostly heroic before becoming a monrach, but you could see how his fear of being controlled made him delay his ascension, until the next advancement, until the next treasure, it is unlikely he would ascend by himself even if he got a perfect dross, he let fear rule him for so long that nothing he can make would ever be enough, I imagine that after getting a presence, he would look at making a penance like treasure, there will always be just one more advancement for him.
Northstrider was similar, he was mostly heroic before becoming a monrach, but you could see how his fear of being controlled made him delay his ascension, until the next advancement, until the next treasure, it is unlikely he would ascend by himself even if he got a perfect dross, he let fear rule him for so long that nothing he can make would ever be enough, I imagine that after getting a presence, he would look at making a penance like treasure, there will always be just one more advancement for him.
Canon definitely needed more Mercy.
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I thought Mercy played a fine role in canon, honestly. Though she was a side character, she had a good arc. I liked her Lord revelations and Herald advancement, and the final Malice confrontation worked incredibly well for me.
As for Malice flip flopping, as specific moments aren't listed, I can only say she'd naturally react differently to different situations with different kinds and levels of emotion. Mercy losing UKT is going to provoke a different reaction than what happens at the end of Reaper. Which is going to provoke a different reaction when Mercy starts actively rebelling against Malice after she's lost control of basically everything.
To give a real example, some days my dad was great and chill. Other days it fucking sucked.
As for Malice flip flopping, as specific moments aren't listed, I can only say she'd naturally react differently to different situations with different kinds and levels of emotion. Mercy losing UKT is going to provoke a different reaction than what happens at the end of Reaper. Which is going to provoke a different reaction when Mercy starts actively rebelling against Malice after she's lost control of basically everything.
To give a real example, some days my dad was great and chill. Other days it fucking sucked.
I'm not holding it against Mercy for not keeping up with Lindon and Yerin when their teacher is Eithan. Generational talent is utterly meaningless stacked against the personal guidance of the greatest being to have ever existed in the history of creation.
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- Pronouns
- he him
I had a theory after reading Reaper that all the monarchs are affected by the hunger aura they generate. As beings of immense willpower this doesn't mean much at first, but after centuries of life with constant little nudges trying to align you to the ideals of hunger it makes a significant enough change that it has a real effect on their personality and willingness to relinquish power or work together with peers.
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I don't like this theory. Takes the agency away from them to make their own mistakes.
It isn't necessary anyway, if they didn't want to be selfish people they shouldn't have acted so selfish themselves.
When talking about the monarchs ascending, I think there always has to be a reminder of the different scales of the collective whole. For Cradle in general, it would be better for Malice to ascend. One less monarch means less hunger madra, which means weaker dreadgods.
...but then you see even in this story what happens when there is no Malice or Fury...and the hundreds of billions of people who live in Malice's lands are kind of fucked. For those people, Malice ascending is negative, because their entire extended families and everybody they know are about to be killed by the dragons who turn up or have their entire civilisation torn down. As mentioned in book 4, people mostly just get out of the way of the dreadgods.
Of course, as Taylor said, it's a prisoner dilemma. For the most good, you want all the monarchs to ascend at once but the incentives to be the one who stays behind are massive, and if somebody else is that person staying behind, well...
This doesn't even get into the thing where like Northstrider is staying until he can be a big enough fish that the Aiden don't just turn him into a grunt (in his view, even though he keeps putting it off), Shen's whole greed, manipulation thing or even Emris's thing about preserving language etc. Honestly, Northstrider might be counted as one of the most selfish because he doesn't have any territory that he holds other than a few semi-aligned people, and nobody is going to kill them off if he vanishes like Shen and the Dragon Monarch are going after the Akura or what happened with the Arelius when Tiberius died.
However, yeah, all the monarchs are flawed. I think its Eithan who basically said 'there was something wrong with people who just stayed behind', and its difficult to know if it is just a result of hundreds of years of resisting the world trying to eject you or personal issues that compound over hundreds of years of being in in their position.
...but then you see even in this story what happens when there is no Malice or Fury...and the hundreds of billions of people who live in Malice's lands are kind of fucked. For those people, Malice ascending is negative, because their entire extended families and everybody they know are about to be killed by the dragons who turn up or have their entire civilisation torn down. As mentioned in book 4, people mostly just get out of the way of the dreadgods.
Of course, as Taylor said, it's a prisoner dilemma. For the most good, you want all the monarchs to ascend at once but the incentives to be the one who stays behind are massive, and if somebody else is that person staying behind, well...
This doesn't even get into the thing where like Northstrider is staying until he can be a big enough fish that the Aiden don't just turn him into a grunt (in his view, even though he keeps putting it off), Shen's whole greed, manipulation thing or even Emris's thing about preserving language etc. Honestly, Northstrider might be counted as one of the most selfish because he doesn't have any territory that he holds other than a few semi-aligned people, and nobody is going to kill them off if he vanishes like Shen and the Dragon Monarch are going after the Akura or what happened with the Arelius when Tiberius died.
However, yeah, all the monarchs are flawed. I think its Eithan who basically said 'there was something wrong with people who just stayed behind', and its difficult to know if it is just a result of hundreds of years of resisting the world trying to eject you or personal issues that compound over hundreds of years of being in in their position.
NemiTheNen
Perpetual Phone Poster
Emriss is in the Monarchs Out faction, she just keeps quiet about it because they already fucking killed her once for trying to uplift the common people/establish the internet for collective action, iirc.
Even before everything they're so fucking close to winning, on a Monarch level timescale at least.
- Location
- western US
I think it explains plenty to just point out that the people who are left after everyone who might choose to ascend, do so, are all the people who never did.
IE: theres functionally a massive selection bias for the monarchs who are around to be gigantic controlling jerks. Malice is probably an edge case in that she had at least mostly good intentions (along with the tree-one)
IE: theres functionally a massive selection bias for the monarchs who are around to be gigantic controlling jerks. Malice is probably an edge case in that she had at least mostly good intentions (along with the tree-one)
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Emriss stayed behind to try and figure out how to make the others ascend. The 8ME and Emriss have always had that long term goal… they just didn't really have anything much they could do except keeping the status quo.. When given the opportunity to act (i.e. help Lindon and co.), they did so pretty much immediately.
Roth963
If I become inactive with this massage, I died
The only ones who's people are under actual threat are the dragons, Akua and Emriss.
Dragon and Akua because they want each other dead, Emriss because she is holding the silent king, if Shen wanted to leave, he can cut a deal with some other faction to take his territories under some soul oath.
If everyone leave and there is nothing stopping another monrach from rising, it is a coin toss what he does with his power, entirely possible he just ends the world with no one having the power to stop him.
Likewise, the dreadgods wouldn't immediately die even if everyone left, and would probably do a lot of damage, also possibly world ending.
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Roth963
If I become inactive with this massage, I died
Silent king would be free, and can probably awaken the others.
- Location
- USA
Keep in mind the Dreadgods still cause damage even when "asleep". They don't have the intelligence they do now, but they still rampage. We know the Weeping Dragon was drawn in by the Shen/Tiberian fight (unclear if a Sage/Herald fight is enough to draw their attention), and that the Weeping Dragon rampaged on the Iceflower continent fairly recently (that's where Ziel's sect was, so something like 10-15 years ago).
Also, the Titan was going to attack Lindon's home within his lifetime (the lifetime of a Gold), so it's not centuries between their rampages.
In the vision of a probably future given to him in 'Unsouled', he would have been an Iron, not a gold. Your point stands, though.
- Location
- USA
Yeah I wasn't sure what advancement he was, just wanted to indicate he didn't have the lifespan of Lord or higher in the vision.
