Let’s Talk About Tamlin…

If Rhysand gets a free pass, so should Tamlin.

AKA Literary hypocrisy born of author laziness sucks.

No denying the ACOTAR books are popular and that they’ve spawned many demon children along the way. That’s a lot of exposure to romantic and interpersonal ideals that’s being shopped to young, impressionable brains.

Post-ACOTAR incosisties, such as I will outline below make it almost impossible for me to appreciate book one on its own now (when it really is quite good, all things considered). Not only does SJM’s sloppily constructed plot and characterization ruin what is arguably the best book of the series, but it also puts hypocrisy front and center to young, impressionable minds. You need only to refer to Tik Tok (or tumblr or any other social media platform) for the evidence that women think Rhysand is the hero and Tamlin is the zero.

I’m arguing here that they’re at least equal, and that setting different standards for the same behavior is a dangerous ideal to reinforce. Unfortunately it’s something we see regularly IRL (look at how fmr. President Trump gets away with things that multiple others have been imprisoned for), so lord knows it’s not something we need to see in what should be a relaxing pursuit. Sarah J. Maas, in marketing this crap to kids without trigger warnings or clarification, is emphasizing damaging concepts, whether she knows it or not (personally I think she’s too dense to realize exactly how creepy Rhysand actually is).

Note: It would be helpful to refer back to this previous post, as well as the series I did on ACOTAR (search my tags) which provided textual evidence, including page numbers and direct quotes, for most of the points I’ll be making below. Also, I know I’ve discussed a lot of these points in a very helter skelter manner across several posts on this blog, but I thought it made sense to gather the really important stuff under one umbrella here.

Point the First: Control and Free Will

• The Point: Tamlin controls Feyre by kidnapping her from her family and taking her to Prythian against her will.
  • This allegedly foreshadows his control issues in book two wherein he locks her in the house and won’t let her leave. He admits to locking her up because he was deeply traumatized by seeing her die in book one.
• The Rhysand Version: He manipulates Feyre into a bargain whereby she needs to spend a week a month with him by playing on her fears of Tamlin. He explains this away in Chapter 54 by saying he just wanted to be near her because he already loved her. This is romantic instead of abusive because they are Mates.
  • Rhysand also puts Feyre in a bubble in ACOSF, but she consents to it. Also, the mating instinct makes him overly protective.
  • He also hides life-threatening info from Feyre because he’s scared for her.
• To the Contrary: Yes, she was taken against her will, but SJM writes that Tamlin is bound by magic to take Feyre if he has any chance of saving his court and defeating Amarantha. He actually, somewhat selfishly mind you, lets Feyre go at the end at the risk of seeing her die, thus essentially sacrificing himself and his court’s wellbeing. Kidnapping her aside (again, something he’s essentially forced into by virtue of Amarantha’s curse), he never once pressures her into anything, doesn’t try to cajole Feyre into telling him she loves him, and ultimately decides it’s better to send her away to keep her safe if she’s obviously not ready to say the words that will break the curse. Yes, sounds very much like a guy that was controlling from the jump.
• The Impression You Should Get: Rhysand gets a pass for his good intentions, but Tamlin does not. Rhysand and Feyre are mates which excuses him for his controlling behavior because he literally can’t help himself. He is a mindless automaton at the mercy of his biology, whereas Tamlin is apparently making a conscious choice to be oppressive.

Point the Second: Being a Good High Lord

• The Point: Tamlin is a Bad High Lord and treats his people poorly because he institutes the Tithe in book 2 and does not make allowances for poor subjects. He insists on the Tithe to keep order in a court that is rebuilding itself. He becomes upset when Feyre shows mercy.
• The Rhysand Version: Rhysand is progressive and feminist, and Velaris is basically gentrified Brooklyn. Everyone in Velaris is happy. However, everyone in the Court of Nightmares is miserable and sadistic, plus despite him saying he bans wing-clipping for female Illyrians, we see him take no real action to stop it other than a public proclamation, and are shown examples of the practice still occurring. Rhysand’s hands are tied because Illyrians gonna Illyrian. This is okay because hey, at least he tried.
• To the Contrary: In book one Tamlin quite clearly states that he wants to be a different high lord and does not enforce rank. Rhysand even mocks him for his softness.
• The Impression You Should Get: Rhysand at least tried to get rid of archaic misogynistic practices, which counts for something. Meantime, Tamlin can’t resort to an admittedly old-fashioned practice even if he may have a good reason (in his own mind, anyway) for doing so. There is no explanation for why good intentions that result in bad practices are okay in Rhysand’s case but not Tamlin’s.

Point the Third: Temper tantrums and physical/sexual abuse

• The Point: Tamlin has a bad temper in ACOMAF forward and can’t control his outbursts and winds up blowing up and hurting Feyre physically.
• The Rhysand Version: Rhysand drugs Feyre against her will, makes her dress and dance suggestively in public, and touches her in a sexually suggestive way without her awareness. She is deeply shamed by this and says so. He admits he does this both to keep up the pretense of being evil as a means of protecting his court and also to get under Tamlin’s skin. Tamlin does not lose his cool in this situation, mind you.
• To the Contrary: We are shown several instances in book 1 of Tamlin not only being able to control his temper (though he admits he has one), and Rhysand even mocks him for his softness. This makes Tamlin abusive.
• The Impression You Should Get: It’s okay to touch someone against their will because he never touched her private parts. Also, the drugging is okay because he really only wanted Feyre to forget what he absolutely had to do in order to keep his evil mask in place. Attempting to provoke a rival at the same time is ultimately excusable because he was in love^(TM).

Point the Fourth: Being a Man of Action

• The Point: It’s been posited that Tamlin never really loved Feyre in book one because he did not physically fight to free her from Amarantha and often sat passively by when Feyre suffered through her trials. He also doesn’t try to break Feyre out when he has the chance and instead tries to have sex with her. In book 2, Feyre wishes Tamlin would have fought harder for her and Rhysand accuses him of “sitting on his ass” and doing nothing to help.
• The Rhysand Version: Rhysand surreptitiously helps Feyre win her trials. He also tortures and kills innocents in Amarantha’s name during his 50 year imprisonment, but he had no choice because of the spell/curse he was under. He wasn’t powerful enough to resist her influence when it came to murdering innocents, but he was powerful enough to protect his hidden city for 50 years while the rest of Prythian suffered.
  • Rhysand and Feyre are ironically shown fucking the night before the big battle in book 3 while people are literally dying outside their fuck tent.
• To the Contrary: According to Lucien, Tamlin is passive because he knows Amarantha is a psycho and doesn’t want to further provoke her ire against Feyre by acting out himself.
• The Impression You Should Get: Impassivity is okay so long as there’s a plausible reason behind it. Fear for the person you love is apparently not one of those reasons. Wanting to be as close to possible with the person you love even at inappropriate times is acceptable when backed up by a biological imperative.

Point the Fifth: Forgiveness and Healing from Trauma

• The Point: Both Tamlin and Rhysand suffer trauma at the hands of Amarantha. Tamlin withdraws after this, becoming sullen, reclusive, and paranoid. This eventually drives him to lock Feyre up. This is the wrong thing to do. Rhysand, meanwhile, sets out almost immediately after he’s freed formulating a plan to save Prythian.
  • Both Rhysand and Tamlin suffer some form of sexual abuse at the hands of Amarantha. Rhysand is literally her whore, whereas Tamlin had to suffer her romantic advances for years, beginning when he was a child. With regard to forgiveness, Tamlin must be aware that the way he acted was wrong, because we see him wondering if he’s worthy of Feyre’s forgiveness in ACOFAS. He’s basically a shell of himself and winds up going totally feral in ACOSF, so obviously, not worthy.
• The Rhysand Version: Rhysand had every advantage post UTM, having Velaris left untouched, whereas Tamlin had to rebuild Spring and deal with all of his people. Rhys basically only cares about Velaris, and leaves the CoN to its own devices, except when he needs to show up to remind everyone he’s still their High Lord or whatever. Feyre doesn’t even think twice about accepting Rhysand’s chapter 54 explanation, but Tamlin needs to continue suffering. Never mind that he has already done plenty to make up for past transgressions (fighting in the war with Hybern, rescuing Feyre’s sisters). Rhysand’s scales are obviously balanced at this point, so the fact that Tamlin is still suffering makes no sense given the fact that objectively, at the very least, they are guilty of many of the same things.
• To the Contrary: The fact that SJM even tries to show that there’s a right and wrong way to deal with trauma shows that she really knows nothing about the healing process. Tamlin’s mistake after UTM isn’t in how he reacted (it’s quite common to withdraw the way he did), it’s in not getting help and not talking about it. Something, I should mention, that Feyre is equally guilty of.
• The Impression You Should Get: Rhysand is obviously supposed to be the model for trauma recovery – his court is thriving and he has everything he ever wants. Tamlin is weak because he winds up basically going full Unabomber and staying in beast form. Do I even need to bring up how Rhysand rubs all of this in Tamlin’s face in ACOFAS under the pretense of “checking on him” (when he really has ulterior motives in case war breaks out again) – SJM plays it for laughs and it’s fucking disgusting because Tamlin’s state at the current point in the series is eerily similar to veterans suffering from PTSD that wind up homeless because they don’t know how/can’t deal with what they went through. How is that something to laugh at?