notaficwriter:

alright, but you can’t convince me that whitestone doesn’t fall completely head over heels with lady vex’ahlia for the next several hundred years. can you imagine going from a cultist necromancer as the lady of your city, to her being killed and replaced by a sun-blessed half-elf, who saved and brought home the long-lost prince, helped him out of the jaws of his demons, both figurative and literal, and kissed him back to life when his archenemy felled him? who slayed the dragon that threatened whitestone and wore its hide as armor? who convinced the city’s patron god to sponsor her to bring down an evil usurper god? she’s princess charming, you guys. 

for the next several centuries, every heroic love interest who comes to rescue the cursed prince in any play or penny dreadful published in the north is going to be suspiciously dark haired and part-elven, with a roguish smile and an animal sidekick she saved as a cub. there will be tendencies in whitestone painters to portray beautiful women as having broad, toned shoulders for archery, and allusions to the Huntress found in the margins of portraits, in little figurines of bears and arrows. people are going to claim that they still see the spirit guardian of the woodlands patrol through the city late at night, still resuming her tenure as grandmistress, and they might even be telling the truth, some nights.

and details will be forgotten, over time, myths remembered in place of facts. time will forget how she questioned every decision she made, how the three times she escaped from death’s teeth were marked by grief, not victory. but when children ride kitchen brooms in the yard, wearing pointed hats, it will be to represent a heroine, not a witch, and that matters. they’re going to remember her.