[ SECRET POST #2216 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2216 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 120 secrets from Secret Submission Post #317.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - personal attack ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It's an interesting question. How much is royalty expected to do to keep their country out of a war? Be polite to someone you don't like? Yes. Marry someone you don't like? My knee-jerk response to that is "well, how much do you not like them?"

In fiction, good royalty sacrifice their own happiness and priorities to keep their people happy and safe. Bad royalty sacrifice their people's happiness and safety for their own priorities. It's human not to want to sacrifice your own choices, but royalty doesn't get to be human. That's the price of admission.

[(Anonymous)]

Sort of this...but...

Merida is in a position if total privilege. She has the finest schooling, clothing, food, shelter, horses, weapons, she has a family that can afford to love and take care of her, she has the finest medicine, transportation, and on top of that she actually has a position of authority.

The only thing being asked of her is marriage.

Some kids would rather go hiking than go to school, but it's their parents jobs to make them go to school anyway. Especially in the case of a girl like Merida who has responsibilities.

But she discards all of them because she doesn't want to. This is fine on its own, but the problem is how easily she accepts the privileges of her life and status without giving up a single thing in exchange.

What's more, the movie doesn't even skirt that issue: it fully acknowledges she HAS to get married to prevent a war! People will DIE if she doesn't--but still, she won't do it.

No other girl in her kingdom has all the opportunity and freedoms she does, but she still acts as if she's oh so put upon because she has to embroider shit.

And that's not even touching on the beastly way she behaves towards her mother.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're kind of missing the parts where Merida does stuff that princesses don't do. I don't mean "oh, she rides horses and is an archer and stuff," I mean like, she talks to the servants, she grooms her horse, and this anon just got the impression she would probably take care of everything herself if it came to that -- and that's what she did when she and Elinor were forced to go out into the woods. She fended for herself.

I agree that she took her privileges for granted, but that's largely because she never wanted them, I think, or never cared much for them. I think it would have been just as likely, if she hadn't found the witch's house, that she would have run away and been just a normal (mostly) girl somewhere far far away.

[(Anonymous)]

She doesn't talk to the servants. She says "hi", but her mom addresses Maudie by name, so I assume this is normal for them.

As far as grooming her horse, that kind of goes in line with the archery thing. I'm sure Merida is perfectly happy to let someone else clean her chamberpot, but she takes care of her horse because she loves him.

And she did want some of her privileges--who else would get the clothes she gets, the weapons, the horse, the food, the shelter?

And had she run away, she would also be a pretty bad person for, again, taking advantage of the privilege granted by the people and not making up for any of that. She would have started a war and gotten a lot of people killed.

[(Anonymous)]

The problem I have with your argument is the suggestion that if a person is given certain privileges, then that person must assent to a particular injustice. And, whether you like it or not, forcing someone to marry is an injustice. It's not as inconsequential as you make it out to be. In the context of this sort of society, it's giving up control of your own body; it's not simply having "embroider shit."

The princesses of old were passed around from prince to prince so that their fathers could gain political influence. Often times, a king would have his daughter's husband killed so that he could marry her off to someone else. A woman's worth revolved completely around her ability to attract a suitor and to keep attracting suitors so that her parents (re: her father) could amass social and political capital. Would you really sit there and argue that that's okay because "oh, the girls had lots of privileges?"

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm. This.