u/prosebe4bros

I can understand still shipping Bryceriel fyi - my favourite ships are non-canon ships who will never be canon - but if SJM made Bryceriel happen it would be cruel and I think she would alienate a lot of people. She has twice (I think?) said explicitly that Bryce and Hunt are not only mates but ENDGAME. I know people love to point to her interviews at the time of ACOTAR and how she gushed about Tamlin as evidence of her happily faking out her audience, but that is not the same thing. Being coy about questions or generally gushing over an MMC/couple who is not going to be endgame is very different from explicitly stating to your fans that a beloved and well-established couple is endgame and then later changing that. That is straight up lying to your fans and would alienate a lot of people IMO.

Are there any other examples of SJM straight up lying about couples being endgame?

The difference is particularly pronounced because the series have grown in popularity so much since the ACOTAR days too.

Just my two cents. Keep shipping whoever you want, but making Bryceriel canon would feel pretty mean-spirited to me in light of her interview comments.

Obviously Gwyn wasn’t introduced until ACOSF, but I’m curious when you all think SJM had the concept of her and that she would be Azriel’s love interest. I’m in the camp that thinks it’s pretty clear SJM intended for Az and Mor to be endgame originally both from what’s in the books and from her Pinterest board. It seems like that idea changed in ACOWAR with the reveal that Mor is more attracted to women. I was perusing the recovered Pinterest board images again the other day and saw so much mermaid imagery and a picture of a woman with long reddish hair perching on a rock above water reaching her hand down to a hand coming out of the water - it had been tagged “book 3” by SJM.

All of that to say, I’m curious to know when everyone thinks SJM thought of Gwynriel!

This post is a bit tongue in cheek, but I do think SJM gave a cheeky hint to this in Azriel’s bonus chapter.

When Elriel have their almost kiss, the text reads: “just this taste in the dead of the longest night of the year, where only the Mother might witness them” (emphasis added).

Of course, Rhys ends up seeing and putting a stop to it. The fact that the Mother was invoked and the kiss was then aborted by outside factors suggests that “higher powers” put a stop to it. In a literary sense, it’s a way to foreshadow/signal that Elain and Azriel are not meant to be together. It’s similar to when a character in a novel says “may God strike me if I’m wrong” etc and then there is a lightning strike or something like that.

Basically, the Mother saw Elain and Azriel about to kiss and said “not on my watch, babes.” And/or Rhys is Mother, confirmed.