Status Updates From The Rain Maiden

You get snatches of it earlier when they are at dinner and snickering together, humouring each other at Philippe’s expense, or when Adele recognizes Isabel’s absence when Philippe is mourning Geoffrey, but it’s really good to see the relationship between Isabel and Adele transmute. I’m really glad they didn’t make the mother-in-law the other woman/villain here.

At last Richard pulled away, but his breath was still hot upon Philippe’s face. “Don’t think that you can use me as a weapon against Henry. I want you, but I won’t be made a pawn so you can satisfy your hatred for my father.”

👀🍿🥤

Honestly this should have been just about Philippe’s exploits… sons of Plantagenet are not safe from him and his ways ⛔️⛔️⛔️

GEOFFREY!!! Philippe didn’t even like tournaments and he didn’t need another reason 😩😩😩

Isabel being sidelined in her own damn novel 😔

This is SO messed up 🤣 I am so uncomfortable 🤣 I can’t wait until Isabel is at least a teenager 😭. But this is so trashy… almost like GoT if it was a soap opera.

(Isabel’s mother-in-law is literally screaming in all-caps at her younger lover if he’s 🛏️ with Isabel who is 11. This is why I initially had to pause on reading this. Isabel is basically seen as and portrayed as an adult).

Annnd we got incest now too. Unclear what stage the relationship is, but definitely improper. Bodice ripper bingo coming up soon at this rate.

Hoping to get Isabel’s POV. She sounds like the male gaze of femme fatale. It is uncomfortable that she is underage and characterized as a Lolita archetype.

“You debased her! You treated her like a slut!”
Philippe jerked his head to look at his sister-in-law; a black-eyed stare. “She was a slut,” he answered quietly, “but it wasn’t her fault. Or mine.”

-
Ok but this is giving 👁️🤌🏼👁️ and I await further spicy dramatic dialogue.

1. Ok but the prologue really did end with some necrophilia huh 🫡

2. First chapter is a historical recap.

3. Ugh the writing is very nice. I don’t think this wordy or flowery. I think it’s accessible to read (high school reading comprehension) but every word chosen well, paragraphs flow. It’s a pleasure to read.

She made him unaccountably nervous. It was so hard not to look at her, yet her beauty intimidated him because a child should not look like her or speak like her. She didn’t seem like a child at all but a miniature goddess, lapped in velvet and peering at him through eyes that held some strange message he could not decipher.

The Druids were a strange people, and they left their stamp upon this land. On cold dark nights the landscape still has the look of the devil about it… .”

Isabel hung on his words for a moment, absently caressing his hand and wondering at the quiet thrill that had passed between them as he described the scene. Philippe had felt it too; Isabel knew it by the way his fingers entwined with hers.

“The old beliefs persisted here for many years, even after Christianity became the established religion of the people. The Druids left no written records of their practices; much of what we know of them is legend except for what Caesar put into his commentaries....

“Isn’t it spoken that in the days of the Roman occupation in Gaul, Druidic cults worshipped on that very site?”

He looked down at her with a surprised smile. “It is true enough. when the foundation for Notre Dame de Paris was being dug many pagan relics were unearthed: a stone altar, a sardonyx drinking vessel, even the ring of a Druid priestess. The ring was so unusual, so beautiful, that I kept it.”

I'm honestly struggling with the incest. At least in GoT there is a fantasy element, or the ones doing it are the villains, that helps. Or with the Scarabae they're not even humans, but vampires.

Harry & Philippe are giving me Renly Baratheon & Loras Tyrell vibes rn.