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XandertheWriter t1_j0zfyy8 wrote

Reply to comment by CCC_037 in [WP] You are her majesty's most loyal knight and most trusted confidant. She may not necessarily be an angel by any means but these rumours calling her the “evil queen” and the “crimson monarch” are just outlandish. Slander all of it, surely people are exaggerating. Certainly. by 66th_Legate

Can you say more? Evidently I did not make a strong enough case that Calidan has become desensitized to the violence that the Queen demands -- or maybe I made it so obvious that he was desensitized to it that it made him seem like the violent one?

I'd like to hear your thoughts!

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CCC_037 t1_j0zitgy wrote

Oh, he is definitely desensitized. However... I got the impression that while he knows what he means by "water the daisies", I wasn't sure that she did. (Perhaps the euphemisms had been set up by her parents and no-one had ever explained them to her). So she starts telling this knight about a problem, and he just wants to go gardening. Of course she gets upset! But she angrily tells him to go water the daisies anyway, because someone needs to care for the garden.

When she mentions this village again later, he'll tell her that he already took care of it, and she'll accept that. She never hears of trouble from a place that he already took care of.

One day, she's going to figure out that he doesn't exactly leave smiling, happy villages behind him.

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XandertheWriter t1_j0zk3tz wrote

Ah, I see what you mean now. Thank you for clarifying!

What I tried to do was have other people mention how she is violent -- I don't think a person needs to commit the acts themselves to be violent. Classic example is that one Austrian leader of Germany in WW2; as far as I'm aware, he didn't kill anybody himself, but few would claim he was non-violent.

(e.g., "even the birds knew not to sing. She wasn't in a vengeful mood but how could they know that?, "The family had kept the power to themselves" (brought up by the mention of voting -- in the West, a lack of voting is generally equivalent to a dictatorship and rarely a peaceful one), Calidan knowing that the Queen would be head him if he tried to retire, the group in the pub referring to her as a violent and a tyrant, etc.)

With this explanatory comment, does the story make more sense, or should more direct details still be added?

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CCC_037 t1_j103isw wrote

Well, a lot of these examples run into a problem - the Queen has a violent reputation, yes, but why? Is the violence that is reputed to belong to the Queen actually Calidan's?

Consider the scenario where the Queen's new maid messes up in some minor way. The poor girl is terrified. Everyone knows what will happen to her! The Queen tries to calm the girl, but she can't have her servants messing up. So she tells Calidan to make sure that the girl gets a proper retirement package; fearing the possibility that the girl might be the sole income earner for her family, she also tells Calidan to take care of said family.

Calidan, somewhat shocked at the extent of the Queen's brutality, kills the maid and her family.

Then you get a world where everyone knows her as a violent tyrant... where she might very well not be one at all.

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