*SPOILERS*
Voya seems to have graduated from fear and sadness about not being respected by her family, to anger at realizing that it wasn’t about her working hard enough to earn their respect, but about them not being able to give it to her.
The more she tries to assert her dominance, the more pushback she gets. Her choices are questioned by the adults in her family, and in the wider community, including her beloved cousins, who this time around are piling on with the criticism too. All that respect for the hierarchy goes out the window when she’s at the top.
And like many people whose family never truly prepared them to be independent people capable of governing themselves, Voya is a raw nerve, reacting to every slight, every sign of disrespect, and every obstacle to harmony at a 10, regardless of whether that’s warranted.
The family learned to manage their reactions and bite down their desires when they feared Ava, their elder. They have no such fear of Voya, and aren’t shy about showing that. Voya interprets this as a sign of her failure to lead rather than the hypocrisy it is. They were never actually going to respect her leadership, and any power she tried to wield was always going to be seen as too much and too wrong.
As the story evolves we start to see a shift in both Voya and her family. She attempts to be more decisive and to act more, but because the root cause of her anxiety was never addressed, it is fueling her actions as much as it fueled her indecision and lack of action in the first story. Her family, in the face of a crisis unlike any they’ve encountered, shift from begrudgingly following her lead to embracing her unique perspective.
There are many tearful conversations between Voya and her family members where they confess their regrets and vow to be better to each other. These feel like very surface level interactions that serve the purpose of smoothing things over so that they can work together. Many of the larger issues of respect and acceptance are presumed to be resolved.
And while that can be easily written into a story and wrapped up in a happy ending, these larger issues would follow a real life family, seeping into conversations about things like household duties or in laws. Family systems built on fear and control don’t shift to healthy connection because there was a temporary need for collective action. Means of control and fear instead become more covert.
While it is nice to assume that the Thomas family learned their lesson in one generation and will now move into an era of inclusion and egalitarian respect, that is not realistic nor likely, but luckily this is a fantasy novel and not a family therapy session.
by Shell | scribbles and sketches