To answer some of your questions:
Mireil was an adept at Spiritism. She used spells and disguised herself as/shape-shifted into one of the Salantir noble ladies and joined the ball.
Ante was far from being a newbie spy. When the Param kingdom’s spymaster (Ante’s late superior) died in the Salantir-Parami war, she got appointed as the new spymaster of the kingdom due to her experience. Of course, her past experience certainly didn’t stop her from f***ing up so bad and getting the MC killed.
Wym book one? The swords were in book 2.
Someone insisted the swords existed in book 1. As I said before, I haven’t checked book 2 for this yet.
“I will kill you the moment you blink, Tahlia.” My mage says
Five minutes later he’s enjoying a nice tea party and discussing architecture and Arcadian history with her
“If I get the chance I will kill all of you.” My mage says to his “companions”
In the next page he proceeds to risk his life to save a man that explicitly stated he hated the mage and would have no problems with forcing a slave collar upon.
The man then says he’s glad they’re friends and my mage agrees.
82 seconds later the mage is vowing eternal enmity unto the 90th generation
74 seconds after that they enjoy a nice conversation about how they were tortured as children and very happy to be working for a woman that not only knew about that particular and strangely widespread phenomenon, but actively allowed it in the hopes of being able to recruit the survivors as weapons.
14 minutes later the mage again vows to murder them all and desecrate their corpses, destroy their culture, and erase their history.
Immediately following that the mage asks if he can spend some time in the library and Tahlia is happy that the mage is so interested in his culture.
He then thanks her for the spirit she forced upon him despite his emphatic rejections and refusals
On the next page he tries to escape and gets tortured, while vowing to have his revenge.
2 paragraphs later he seeks out Tahlia for advice
I exaggerate but the constant tonal shifts gave me whiplash. I feel like if the story had either started with Tahlia basically begging the mage to save the Arcadian people, with the surprise face-heel turn that obviously would come later where she reveals she’s actually just a blood thirsty magical proto-dictator or having it simply established from the beginning that her resurrection of the mage give her control over the mage’s will would’ve been less annoying than the whole “she’s definitely evil but grrr I’m so weak i can’t resist” shtick we have to experience.
Yeah I have no idea who that is lol
Seriously. People try to justify or excuse it like “well what about param they torture arcadians” but then the only arcadians you regulary interact with are unrepentantly evil slavers and murderers who explicitly tell you they want to destroy the parami people. Not just the aristocrats and royalty that do the evil stuff, they openly advocate for genocide and then get mad when you balk at that.
But she could reform our ashes back into bones, skin, muscles, nerves, a functioning brain, and somehow pull our soul and consciousness from wherever it goes after death.
There was the village that was hit with plague, then the pov scene of the arcadian noble whomever it was.
Maybe thalia is just trying to make that situation concerning the resurrection spell, feel like those who got resurrected are very special, trying the old butter up tactic to make our mc want to help the arcadians or Thalia more and also I think thalia was never going to bring back Miriel because considering that Miriel might reveal who thalia truly is or she will just take over arcadian easily from under thalia nose
Perhaps.
I’m sure it’s more that fact that big sister was crazy with a capital K and would’ve almost definitely immediately gone on the attack when she woke up
Well she did track down her little siblings to the end of the earth as if the mc and Eli were even planning to strike back
Now i think about it, what even happened to that other kingdom Miriel was mind controlling since she is dead then what became of the people
The leadership is gutted because all the major players in there royal court and a great many not so important people got mind controlled by miriel and or killed during the war if they fought in it. Then tack on they are having to pay for much of param reconstruction because of the war they are essentially as a nation leaderless and devasated. Mireil had been rulling from the shadows for years so i imagine its great big mess of a place to put it lightly leaving only param capabable of resisting arcadia to any true level not to mention the mysterious threat of the empire and that broken flame faction.
Dammm Miriel really did “if I can’t have it, then no one can” cliche
My low key pick for most annoying character in the game is the centrist barber from the start. I tell this man that fighting the war was to save as many lives as possible and I do not regret it. His reply amounts to “As many PARAMI lives you mean, but I guess some lives are more important to you than others when you’re blinded by ideology unlike me, the rational barber” and it’s like, Salantir waged a completely unjustified war of aggression led by a genocidal maniac with no interest in peace? What was I supposed to do, let myself, my friends and the country I live in be destroyed? He really thinks he did something by going “but what about the other side :(” in the most obvious good/bad conflict the continent has ever seen.
Actually she did more of a “if you want it done right, do it yourself.” Thing so that the nation had absolutely nobody else capable of running things once she was gone
That is exactly what the Arcadians want
They’re mad because that’s what happened to Arcadia when (as they tell it) one day the other kingdoms decided for no reason to invade and destroy them because of jealousy or something dumb and unrealistic
Willing to bet Arcadia was blood magic central and ran roughshod over the other nations.
There’s plenty examples that there may have been more going on between arcadia and the rest of the world. Can’t remember the exact spot but there was a reference to arcadia having “city leveling” magic at hand.
Cycles of violence etc etc…
Could be reason that the church named them devils but why would they have need of such violent magic.
Cycles of violence etc etc…
I think Ive already said this before, but while Param and its neighbors certainly didnt destroy Arcadia out of the goodness of their hearts, I highly doubt Arcadia was a land of saints and freedom where the sun always shines.
As far as we now, and seeing what lenghts its willing to go to now, the amount of fucked up shit Arcadia could have done probably rivals genocidal Param.
Yeah, besides the whole “let’s not share knowledge with our descendants” makes old Arcadians hella sus
Huh version 2.5?!? How long have been sleep??
But uhh it still ver 2.0? Weird
Iirc, I mentioned the swords and you thought I was talking about book one. I distinctly remember them in b2 but never actually said b1.
submitting to forum playlist aesthete @Arella that Unknown / Nth by Hozier is a very good song for pseudo-divorced leon/mc
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Ugh I’m crying my eyes out here…for some odd reason I can literally hear the MC saying this before being burnt to a crisp…oh the guilt and anguish!!! 
Leon was literally moving further and further away yet MC went through so much to shoulder both their pain only to realize when Leon turns around in the end the MC is no where to be seen in the end…the realization of Leon waking up from his torment from stabbing himself thinking MC was the one doing the stabbing in the end just to realize MC was the one that got burned by his own hand never getting to hear those silent words of pleas from the pain MC endured for him to wake up from his nightmare…MC’s love was the shield all along and was broken by the man they loved as a tool only for him to realize the true value of what MC was to them in the end. 
Yep this hit me in the feels for sure…curse you and your perfect lines you keep finding…ya gutting me like a fish with these poems and songs…now I can’t stop seeing MC shattering like glass…knowing MC is reborn a new from missing fragments that can never be whole again while Leon is stuck with the scars of it and bits and pieces of the MC stuck to them… 
