Ours.

Book: The Royal Romance

Pairing: Hakim & Joëlle; Kiara & Hana; Zeke and Penelope

Words: 2,420

Rating: G (light mentions of racial bias, light affection)

Tagging: @lizzybeth1986​ @sazanes​ @choicesficwriterscreations​ @kiaratheronappreciationweek​ @beyonceswigs​ @thecapturedafrique​ @cassiopeiacorvus​ @boujeechoices​

For Kiara Theron Appreciation Week Day 4: Family (I think this fits best there anyway)

Set shortly after the end of TRH, so Zeke and Penelope are married, and the Therons know she’s expecting.

“Kiara,” Hana called as she zipped the last compartment on her suitcase. 

Almost instantly, her fiancée glided effortlessly into the room. Her face glowed with excitement as she noticed Hana’s packed suitcase. 

“Are you ready to go?” She asked breathlessly. In spite of herself, Hana chuckled. 

“What?” Kiara asked.

Hana smiled. “I haven’t seen you this excited since we went to that forum in the Maldives with Kaela. If you’d never mentioned this trip, I’d assume you’d never been to Bora Bora before.”

“It’s not just that we’re going to Bora Bora,” Kiara began patiently, running a hand through her curly hair. She’d stopped straightening it months ago, after she noticed the way a certain someone looked at her at their monthly spa days. 

“It’s the annual family trip to Bora Bora. We take this trip every year for my parents’ anniversary, and you know how important they are to me. But more than that, you’re my fiancée now. You’re finally coming with me!”

Hana was silent for a moment, feeling warmed by the knowledge that her presence was not just wanted, but celebrated. 

“So what will we do on this trip anyway?” she asked.

“Oh, the usual. The beach, the hotel spa, hiking, shopping, boat tours. And of course, we’ll start with Baba telling the story of how he met maman.” 

“How did your parents meet anyway?” Hana asked. “I don’t think you’ve ever told me.”

“Oh, you’ll have to wait until Baba tells it,” Kiara replied. “Trust me. It’s a wonderful story.”

“It must be, if you love hearing it every year,” Hana teased.

Kiara laughed. “Mon fleur, you know I’m a romantic. I’m French. It’s in my blood!” she replied. “Now if you’re all done, our car is waiting, and I want to beat Zeke and Pitsa* to the airport.”

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Reblogging for Kiara Theron Appreciation Week Day 2: Throwback

tagging @lizzybeth1986 and @kiaratheronappreciationweek

I wrote this fic as a way to connect the generations of the Therons and to create somewhat of a starting point for where my fics end up, in the distant future that the Favorites series is set, so Hana and Kiara are newly engaged and Ezekiel and Penelope have just learned that they're expecting. Hakim and Joëlle are the only noble couple in the series that actually loves each other*, and I wanted to celebrate their love, especially since TRR's writing team was always happy to use them as the butt of jokes.**

Since celebrating Hakim and Joëlle was my main priority, much of this fic is their first introduction, when they both happened to be studying in the United States, though I wanted to also create space to celebrate the beginning of Hanara's life together (and throw in a small Penzekiel moment***).

If this is your first time reading this fic, I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading!

Midterms

In which Kiara’s study partner is astonished by her lifestyle.

“It’s open,” Kiara called out.

Diane walked in with her laptop, trying not to appear as though she were secretly appraising the dorm room.

Kiara rolled her eyes internally. She knew the risk she had taken inviting Diane to her room to study for their upcoming Reformers and Revolutionaries of the Arab World midterm, but Kiara needed someone to study with that took serious effort to be prepared, and that was Diane.

Very few of Kiara’s study partners had ever made it to her room. Even less had been invited back, and that was for a very specific reason. Ever since she’d started at Harvard, she’d heard the whispers that continuously floated around her, and as someone who preferred subtlety and finesse, wowing people with her standard of living just wasn’t her style. Of course, it didn’t make the reactions of the few who were lucky enough to make it that far any less amusing, but they had to be worth the new round of rumors that would follow.

“Kiara Theron is like, engaged to the crown prince of her country.”

That one wasn’t true. They got along just fine, but she had always felt Prince Leo was too old for her. She had briefly dated Prince Liam while they were both in academy, but that relationship had flamed out quickly once they both realized they preferred being friends. That rumor had spread after Kiara had invited the gossipy daughter of a senator from California to study in her room. She was never invited back.

Keep reading

Reblogging for Kiara Theron Appreciation Week Day 2: Throwback.

Tagging: @lizzybeth1986 @kiaratheronappreciationweek @cassiopeiacorvus @thecapturedafrique

I wrote this fic a few years ago after a few friends within the fandom and I were chatting about what Kiara's college experience would be. As the daughter of a wealthy noble from a wealthy country, we imagined that Kiara wouldn’t intentionally flaunt her wealth, but she wouldn’t hide it either, especially with parents that are as proud of her as Hakim and Joelle are.

We also imagined that Kiara would understand her classmates’ mystification regarding her wealth, but be in a situation where it starts to wear a bit thin as her classmates see her wealth and not the person that she is.

If you’ve never read this fic before, I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading!

The real answer is VOS MC because they’re getting the truth of the matter no matter what!

(this awesome poster is the handiwork of our wonderful host @sazanes!!)

Note: So sorry for the delay in getting this out!! IRL has been a little tricky these days.

It gives us great joy to announce our third edition of the Hana Lee Appreciation Week!!

This year we are holding the AW around World Book Day (23rd April) in honour of Hana's passionate, long-lasting love for books!

Hana is talented at a great number of things, but is passionate about just a few. One is music - the other is reading. It was originally a hobby her parents introduced her to, to gain an advantage as a noblewoman, but Hana grew to love it far beyond what her parents expected. Her fondness for Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, her delightful rebellions in secretly reading Wuthering Heights and manhuas, her adorable habit of leaving sweet notes behind, between the pages of a library book. Her love for books has deep and wonderful, and allowed her a window into worlds she didn't even realize existed!

But books and reading aren't our only themes for this AW! Take a look at our theme list for what we plan to do for each day:

April 21st - Character Appreciation/Throwback

April 22nd - Flowers/Fashion Design

April 23rd - Bookworm/AU

April 24th - Competitive Hana!/Culinary Love

April 25th - Family/Friendship/Romance

This event will be held from April 21st to 25th. Any content is welcome, as long as it is Hana-centric and shows a positive depiction of her! Fanfic, fanart, meta, edits, moodboards, playlists, headcanons, interactive media - even simple appreciation posts and screenshots of fave scenes will be great!

It isn't absolutely necessary to post content only on the day of the theme! We often accept pieces even when sent on a later date, and also keep a bonus week in case you couldn't finish your pieces during the week. We also don't mind WIPs, so if you have one that is Hana-focused... we'd LOVE to see it!! We also love throwback pieces, so if you have any that you made previously, do reblog them and tag us!

We also will be accepting pieces after the event is over, and all year round until the next HLAW! So even if you have your post ready much later, please don't hesitate to tag us! 🤗

Blogs to Tag: @hanaleeappreciationweek, and hosts @lizzybeth1986 and @sazanes

Tags to Use: #hanaleeappreciationweek, #HLAW, #HLAW 2024

There are some incredible fan-community blogs that work tirelessly both to promote creative fandom works and make the experience fun for their writers! Do check them out!!

@choicesficwriterscreations, @choicesmonthlychallenge, @choicesflashfics, @choicespride, @choicesholidays, @choicesprompts, @wordwarriors

If you know any others who would like to be tagged, please let me know! Here are the amazing works sent in for 2023 and '22 if you'd like to get more inspired!

HLAW 2023 | HLAW 2022

See you all next month, and looking forward to all your amazing Hana content!! 🤗🤗

✅✅Signal Boosts will be greatly appreciated!!✅✅

Repost of the poll because I forgot the option I was literally gonna vote for. Anyway, feel free to suggest characters for future polls :)

Literally anyone but Thomas (wouldn’t impeach Vanessa’s witness about MC being a thief or move for sanctions against Vanessa) or Vanessa (unethical).

Gabe is getting me off scot-free and getting the judge to award me money.

Laws of Attraction this isn’t even up for debate fuck those other bitches

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs - The "Romances" that Didn't Happen

Previous - Hana and Madeleine: When You Reward Your Favourite Bully with One of Her Victims

A/N: Again, apologies for the length. There was a LOT to unpack in this one!! I'm really, really not going to be nice to Drake here. It was harrowing to go through a lot of these scenes again and I honestly don't have the patience or inclination to sugarcoat any of it.

CW: Mentions of gun violence and minimization of trauma. Mentions of racist fan vitriol towards a black character. Examination of the Jezebel stereotype.

Whenever I think about how unhinged the hatred towards Kiara (and especially towards Kiara's attraction to Drake) was, a specific edit comes to mind.

On the surface, it looks quite simple. Kiara in a white wedding dress, Drake right next to her in his blue formal suit. Both of them are smiling at the viewer. The background is a beautiful forest, and the entire picture is bathed in a lovely, muted sepia tone. A sweet, simple wedding scene.

The caption underneath this edit?

I’ve been waiting for this one Lizzy, and you didn’t disappoint!

Kiara and Drake on paper can be intriguing in the right hands. Drake is MC’s entrance into the court, both as an American of common birth and as someone who (supposedly) is familiar with the nobility as the crown prince’s best friend.

Kiara is a courtier who notices people (and we later learn that her family was once very close to the Royal Family), meaning they have similar experiences but can view them through vastly different lenses.

This isn’t what happens at all. Drake’s point of view is presented as the more legitimate one at all times because he is a voice and representative of the common people of Cordonia. This is even the ending to his arc in TRR3, where he is appointed to the Council in order to ensure Liam and the nobles don’t forget the everyday Cordonian people and is knighted for his contributions to Cordonia, showing that one doesn’t have to be of noble or aristocratic birth to have an impact on society.

The key problem with centering Drake’s worldview is that he might be a commoner but he is not “common.” Drake has no job, a limited education, but grew up in a palace and lives entirely on the goodwill of his best friend and literal crown prince and later King of the Cordonians Cordonia. This is even pointed out by Olivia, who asks what Drake does when he’s not “living off of Liam’s generosity.”

The second problem is hypocrisy. Drake looks down on nobles for being useless and viewing people as beneath them, but he considers nobles beneath him and doesn’t actually do much but be Liam’s emotional support friend. He also almost immediately writes the actual, working-class MC off for being a crown chaser despite having the same relationship with the crown that he accuses MC is wanting; one that only cares about the benefits and material comforts that come from

He criticizes them for their spending, but an enduring trait of his is his love of high-end whiskey, which isn’t cheap (and how he covers his own expenses is never mentioned. Does Liam give him an allowance? A stipend?)

He criticizes them for living comfortable lives of luxury, but he lives in a palace and doesn’t have actual skills or ways of supporting himself. While he does well in the barn raising and has modest survival skills, he’s canonically a crappy woodworker and, as noted above, it’s never actually noted how he supports himself.

Most significantly, Drake doesn’t support any pursuits that he himself is not interested in. He makes no effort to learn courtly manners and traditions until he is embarrassed for his background. Despite being praised for being thoughtful and sensitive beneath his gruff exterior, he never makes an effort to understand why his sister who grew up among nobility is so fascinated by them.

This is where Kiara should’ve come in, and where the writing team missed its opportunity to incorporate her into the story. Not only does he contradict his story of “all the nobles picking on her,” she taught Savannah French so well that she was able to hide out in France, something that requires her to have a level of compassion and skill that she’s never credited for.

Kiara should’ve been allowed to help Drake understand his sister better. Instead, because of the implicit (and often explicit!) racism present in the fandom and rewarded by PB, Kiara is forced to stay away because the fans demanded that she stay away from their man (meanwhile, Liam romancers don’t have a say in how involved Olivia and Madeleine are despite one of them kissing him without his consent and the other being formerly engaged to him).

To be clear, I don’t think Driara would’ve worked, simply because Drake doesn’t respect Kiara and she wouldn’t appreciate the lack of effort he puts into things around him. But there’s a reason Drake’s behavior towards Kiara (and sometimes even Hana!) is allowed and even encouraged by the fandom.

An easy way to identify racist narratives is to ask who gets the benefit of the doubt. Penelope sets MC up to be sexually violated but is treated with kid gloves for the rest of the series. She gets rewarded with a husband and a spot in MC’s inner circle, even when she endangers the Heir and has to be convinced to tell her fiancé that she’s been married before.

Madeleine has been engaged twice and never married. As Liam’s fiancée, she bullies her ladies in waiting to the point where MC’s biggest selling point is that she won’t ever treat them the way Madeleine did. She can assist in the kidnapping of the Heir if MC isn’t nice to her, yet she gets to be MC’s press secretary and be hailed as a savvy and strategic courtier who “played the game well (never mind that her engagement to Liam came from her desperately begging Liam to choose her in exchange for letting an MC that potentially outperforms her be his mistress).”

Olivia forces a kiss on Liam and constantly belittles Hana. She dedicates herself to finding out information that she either never shares or never discovers. After cosplaying as a spy and not finding any facts on a fact finding mission, she walks right into a trap and almost causes MC to lose custody of the Heir. She receives a spot on the Royal Council and is part of the MC’s circle, where MC can even call her “bestie.”

Kiara doesn’t pretend to be friends with an MC who is never interested in her as a person, an MC that can disrespect her mother to her father’s face, an MC that can mock her family’s interests and their efforts to carry them out both behind their backs and to their faces, an MC that gaslights her, and an MC that doesn’t even let her touch her child. While her vote for Barthelemy to take custody of the Heir is indisputably a bad decision, she was also fairly easy to convince to back MC: all the MC has to do is convince Kiara that the Crown takes the Therons seriously (which, considering how Constantine treated Hakim and how MC can treat them, is not an unreasonable request).

Does Kiara get the same opportunities to redeem herself or the narrative space of her counterparts at court? Does she get favorable treatment from the fandom? Does the fandom highlight and uplift her regardless of her one misstep?

No, she does not.

What’s the common denominator between how the fandom and writers treated Kiara vs. Penelope, Madeleine, and Olivia?

I've been replaying The Freshman so I decided to do a cover redraw for book 2.

I thought I’d be able to write a semi coherent post expressing my thoughts on the finale and the book overall after stepping away from it for a while. But as I’ve started thinking about it again, I’ve only gotten more annoyed. So here’s some disorganized rambling on my issues with Blades 2 instead. Probably just gonna make separate posts for my thoughts as they come to me.

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The Romances that Didn't Happen

Previous - Liam and Olivia: When You Prefer the Side Character to the Main

A/N: There won't be a lot of exploration on Maxwell x Penelope, as there is very little the pair gets in canon. I will be largely looking at their individual characterizations and the changes and retcons made there. There will be a lot of exploration on Penelope x Ezekiel.

CW: Mentions of Penelope's actions as part of Constantine's nefarious plot against the MC in TRR1 & 2, mentions of Penelope's social anxiety.

(Screenshots from the Skylia YouTube Channel, Drake playthrough)

Compared to the other three alternative romances, Maxwell x Penelope turned out to be a bit of a one-chapter wonder. It was extremely short-lived, and the only indication that it had ever happened was one conversation between Penelope and the MC in TRR2 Ch 6, after which there is no reference to it, ever again.

In my mind there are two major factors behind this pairing being left behind, which I will get into later in this essay. However, what I find even more interesting is what the narrative and the writing team did with Penelope after they set aside that subplot. What did TRR3 give her in lieu of this alternative romance, and why, and what does it tell us about the narrative that she alone got that?

But before we can get into that, we need to look (separately) at how Maxwell and Penelope were written in TRR1, and how it culminated in the characterizations they got by TRR2.

The Evolution of (White) Side Characters

One thing that fascinates me about TRR1 is the trajectory of some of the characters, when you observe them on rereads. We often go into those rereads with a strong impression of their character type (or stereotype), before we learn to our surprise that the initial writing doesn't always match the image we carried in our heads.

In the case of some side characters, we may find traces and hints of a totally different characterization, before the team zeroed in on a trope or characteristic that may have hit the right chord with the audience. When done right, this could result in a more rounded character. But in the wrong hands, the writer may keep falling back to that one trope that made the character click, and turn them into caricatures instead.

As you pointed out, very little of Penelope’s characterization makes sense, partially due to the extensive retconning PB engaged in to shift her from a foreign princess to the heir to a major Cordonian duchy.

She is a great example of how PB elevates the role of specific side characters to the detriment of others. The fact that MC never actually gets to hold her accountable for her role in the Tariq incident (where a powerful white man and a powerful white woman trick a brown man into intruding into the space of an MC who’s in her underwear) is proof of this, not to mention her ultimate reward (for doing nothing for MC) is not only MC promising her to protect her from Madeleine and bullying at court, or her inclusion into MC’s circle of confidants, but a love interest specifically created for her (who as a character, doesn’t make much sense, since Zeke doesn’t seem to know Liam, Drake, Penelope, Olivia, or Maxwell very well despite having grown up in the same circles as them and all of them being his sister’s peers). She is the first TRR suitor whose romantic interests for another noble are encouraged, and this is a trend that continues from her revealing her crush on Maxwell all the way to MC officiating at her wedding.

One would be forgiven for assuming that Penelope marrying Kiara’s brother meant that Kiara and her family would see a larger role in the story. The opposite happens. Despite trying to give candy to an infant who doesn’t have teeth and almost dropping a sword on said infant, Penelope gets to interact with the heir and be known as “Auntie Peppie” while Kiara has never once physically touched the heir. The last elevation of Penelope and simultaneous middle finger to the Therons was at her wedding (a better one than the MC gets, I might add); the MC persuading her to reveal something she should’ve said before her engagement: that she had previously been married and was being extorted by her ex-husband.

Penelope’s reasoning for not revealing such a key part of her life is not only nonsensical, but cloaked in the writers’ disdain for the only canonically Black family in the books, a family that they make Penelope marry into and whose name they make Penelope take. One would think she’d have a little more respect for the family she’s marrying into, but Zeke exists for Penelope’s enjoyment, not for his own development and definitely not for his family’s.

Better writing could have made Penelope make sense. A Penelope that acknowledged her own wrongdoing and that her mental illness was not an excuse for her betrayal of MC would have been a powerful representation of balancing accountability with mental illness and the difficulties of having a mental illness while living under a critical public eye. Unfortunately, PB was either unwilling or unable to write that version of Penelope, and my personal opinion is the latter.

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The Romances that Didn't Happen

Previous: A Brief History of Alternative Romances in Choices

A/N1: My apologies for the length of this one! There was a LOT to explore, and even more that I had cut out from my initial draft.

A/N2: This essay operates on the premise that Liam is not the "favoured LI"/"golden boy" of the team - an argument I have made in detail in other Liam-centric essays. I am not interested in arguing those same points in my comment box/reblogs. Visit the Liam section of my meta masterlist if you want to learn more about that.

CW: Mentions of non-consensual kissing. Mentions of the plot against the MC in TRR1. Very fleeting mention of the "infertility subplot" TRH pushed onto Hana.

(Screenshot from HIMEME's YouTube channel)

As I mentioned in the previous essay, TRR (along with ES, to a far smaller extent) was the only series that seemed to make an attempt to pair even their popular LIs with another character. It also was (along with TCaTF) one of the very few books that hinted at an alternative romance in the first book itself.

This section of the essay series will perhaps be the longest, since Liam x Olivia got the earliest hints, and was built up first. While the other three pairings were introduced or hinted at in Books 2 and 3, the reader got to see glimpses of a possible Liam x Olivia pairing from the finale of Book 1 onwards.

Excellent as always Lizzy! Olivia and Liam’s mangled alternate route is a cautionary tale against letting your fans tell the story for you. Even with her roughness, the vulnerability Olivia begins show is a key part of her ultimate integration into the group (not that Kiara’s moments of vulnerability are ever appreciated in the same way). In fact, one of my favorite Olivia lines is in TRR2 when she criticizes Drake for his constant whining about the nobility despite living entirely off of Liam’s goodwill.

Olivia’s narrative in the sequels (and the fandom’s complaints about “sloppy seconds” despite the fact that she’s not entitled to Liam’s romantic love) where her worst traits are encouraged and she chews unnecessary scenery (her ridiculous spy arc comes to mind, and she wasn’t even good at that!) are a direct result of PB listening to the loudest anti-Liam voices in the fandom in deciding to weaken his character to make the less-impressive ones seem better. Instead, we got a Liam who was held back by the plot and an Olivia whose presence often made whatever issue PB haphazardly invented worse.

A Wild Thought about the Empress and the Empire

After the bombshell info that Valax was created, the idea that her mother is likely one of the old gods cannot stop running through my brain.

1 - I originally didn’t think much about Valax looking like an elf (her ears) back in chapter 1, but she doesn’t look anything like the shadow-realm residents as she said.

2 - When she said her mother created her, it reminded me of the old gods creating the elves (Valax appearance didn’t help dissuading me).

3- I don’t know why but my mind immediately jumped to either Nifara or the mother of grey being a possible candidates. Nifara because the way Valax phrased how her mother is denied power sounds like ( the mother of grey is mostly because she seems to be the most mysterious).

These points are just my thoughts for now and it has a lot of holes I know, but it’s just something I wanna share.

After accidentally restarting and having to binge through the book again, I’m convinced it’s the Mother of Grey. Nifara’s letter to the dwarves mentions a defector, elven mythology states that the Mother of Grey willingly gave up her life for the elves, and Valax says that her mother was deprived of power that should’ve been hers in the Light Realm.