( gwenaëlle might say, it is, and mean it, but she's alive to complain and her sisters are not so—
she shrugs, )
I don't think they're insignificant, just different. And I don't know that it's family, usually, that does the refusing, but I don't know if I'd lead with that if it were true, either, so maybe I only haven't been told.
( she is thirty years old, and finally she can say: maybe they wanted to love me. maybe they did. everything that her mother had given up for her children — maybe it was more than the terrible thing that she hadn't been able to see past. maybe she will never know, truly, how guenievre baudin felt. how her sisters felt. what they had wanted or dreamed or imagined.
but maybe, finally, she can allow that she doesn't know, and that there are more possibilities than she had once felt. )
It's a ... it's complicated. You know? How your family might feel about you and how the neighbours might and what prospects you have for your life. The people who you love and the people who should love you can hurt you, that's just true, no matter who you are or what your house looks like or the shape of your ears, it's just...
( she spreads her hands. )
In Orlais, it's a rite of passage for the elite chevaliers to get drunk and go into the alienage to kill an elf. It's family wounds versus — an elf family or a human family can be ruinous, because they're family. But you could say, that elf stole from me and I want their hand cut off, and they can't say it back to you. I don't mean that if— if your elven family hurt you, or if that's what you've seen before, then I'm not saying it doesn't matter or that it shouldn't be painful. I'm saying if I had my sisters horse-whipped in the street, they wouldn't have had any recourse against me.
no subject
she shrugs, )
I don't think they're insignificant, just different. And I don't know that it's family, usually, that does the refusing, but I don't know if I'd lead with that if it were true, either, so maybe I only haven't been told.
( she is thirty years old, and finally she can say: maybe they wanted to love me. maybe they did. everything that her mother had given up for her children — maybe it was more than the terrible thing that she hadn't been able to see past. maybe she will never know, truly, how guenievre baudin felt. how her sisters felt. what they had wanted or dreamed or imagined.
but maybe, finally, she can allow that she doesn't know, and that there are more possibilities than she had once felt. )
It's a ... it's complicated. You know? How your family might feel about you and how the neighbours might and what prospects you have for your life. The people who you love and the people who should love you can hurt you, that's just true, no matter who you are or what your house looks like or the shape of your ears, it's just...
( she spreads her hands. )
In Orlais, it's a rite of passage for the elite chevaliers to get drunk and go into the alienage to kill an elf. It's family wounds versus — an elf family or a human family can be ruinous, because they're family. But you could say, that elf stole from me and I want their hand cut off, and they can't say it back to you. I don't mean that if— if your elven family hurt you, or if that's what you've seen before, then I'm not saying it doesn't matter or that it shouldn't be painful. I'm saying if I had my sisters horse-whipped in the street, they wouldn't have had any recourse against me.