MALDIK: You … you just love seeing me … fail. You’d … just … Gah! No one ever really gives shit for a shoenail about me, they never did. They … they just push me around, they tell me what to do, how to live, how to act, what to say, who I’m gonna marry … everything. And then … and … you just - you always have to be a bitch! Every time - every time! And when I’m dead you’ll … you’ll just say “I told you so” in some nasty way that … that … what the fuck, Mother.
YANORA: (sigh) Yes. Yes, I can readily understand how I give that impression. Would you … like to hear what I can say about it, or is this just you venting at me about what an awful person I am? Because I could just sit here and take the abuse wordlessy for awhile, as a treat for you. I didn’t give you anything for your birthday this year, after all.
MALDIK: What can you say? What can you say about yourself, what lies are you going to tell me? That you love me? That’s a lot of balls. You’re cold as … as … as the coldest cold thing anyone ever heard of in the history of … cold things.
PAUSE
MALDIK: Well?!
YANORA: So you do want me to say something?
MALDIK: Yes! No - I … Fuck it, I don’t care. Let’s hear some of your horseshit, why not.
27 thoughts on “Family Feud – Page 1126”
Phoebe
Wow! Progress! The ball is in your court Yanora! I’m sure she can find the words, but will Maldik’s conscious mode hold long enough for her words to have an effect?
Matti
The way he phrases it, royalty has surprisingly little freedom. Though I expect it to be more like that for the female members.
Archone
“Here, have a crown. It’s been yours since birth… oh, by the way? Everyone wants to either use you, or kill you and steal that crown. You don’t get to have any real friends you can trust, and you have zero choice about who you marry. No, you DON’T get a choice in the matter – you get to either be king, or you get to be DEAD. You don’t get an alternative.
Oh, and here’s your little brother – if you die, he gets the same deal. Otherwise, he gets worked like a dog, sent around to do whatever he’s told and made to do all kinds of labor on behalf of the family and the kingdom. And if he’s smart, he’ll be HAPPY about this – he doesn’t get a choice about who he marries either, but at least HIS kids will be spared the headaches you two are going through.”
Prairie Son
It works that way for the men as well. Even in reproduction, the men are constrained, for about as soon as they start to mature people are telling them they need to ‘secure the title’ for ‘the good of the realm’. I forget who it was, but a King of Spain had enough power that he executed people who tried to tell him how to be a king, married who he wanted (not a cousin) and had normal kinds rather than the type the Habsburgs usually turned out.
Naturally, he was deemed a bad king and killed.
Tom Billings
The top of *any* human hierarchy is a perilous place to be. To add in an alliance partner like the Urrts was always fantasy squared and cubed.The problem is, that in politics, Maldik knows that he isn’t considered dangerous, and only fantasizes that he can become dangerous, if he just allies himself with people who *are* dangerous. Thus, his alliance with the Bishop, and his Urrt allies. He has just been brought back to reality by his last obviously less than fulfilling fantasy session with the Bishop’s niece. How long *that* will last is anyone’s guess.
Like many, Maldik believes in power without restriction, but the world does not work that way. Even with just humans involved, agency cost is present in *every* human organization. Worse, even his selected primary ally/kingmaker, the Bishop, does not even conceive that he, in turn, is helping Shuach back into the world. Maldik is now aware enough to perceive that he is out of his depth, and does not have any way to bind his allies to him that does not bind him even more thoroughly. In addition, he has not even imagined a factor like Kor Lachnis, much less Shauch. His fears are vague this night. Yanora’s real problem is that even if she *can* turn her son back to loyalty to the current King, she will have to keep him from freaking out once he, and everyone else, find out about the *real opposition. Yanora’s life is *not* simplifying!
Lora
Oh, how he longs to hear some words of comfort, of reassurance. But he will, of course, deny them and fling them away should they come.
jd.
Let’s hope for now, sister. If nothing else, Yanora might be able to at least plant seeds of realization.
Reservist
Well, you know, Maldik, Your Highness, if you were not such an arse to pretty much everyone around you, and that is even without mentioning the paedophilia thing, you’d have many more people loving you.
jd.
I don’t remember him having sex with children. With young wenches he treated as prostitutes, sure.
… And I don’t think we’ve seen him being actively malevolent so much as idiotically lashiung out in pain. (Which I’ll agree is even worse in someone holding a position of power, not to mention a regent.)
Reservist
@jd.
Oh, that? It was in the much-earlier pages, when Tethik interrupted him and he verbally lashed out at him, asking him why he hadn’t had him executed yet, with Tethik replying in a smirk that he was too intelligent and too valuable of an asset for Maldik to get rid of him.
I do not remember what page it was, though.
Prairie Son
Way back when Zona first came by the Kivalian court with Michael in tow. The woman in Maldik’s bed (her name escapes me) is shown in a later scene to be mature enough to be about a B or maybe C cup, so definitely not a child.
Lora
I really, really, really hope a girl’s cup size is not how you judge whether a girl is a child or an adult in real life, because I’ve known plenty of tweens with developed breasts. Cup size is a terrible way of judging the age of a young girl.
Girls as young as 8-9 can start developing breasts, though it’s more common to start around 11-12. By 14-15 most girls will look more or less like women, but they are not adults yet.
Lora
You’re forgetting Dia. I know it’s been a lot of pages, but she was a child turned into a whore. So yes, Maldik did have sex with a child, and for all we know it’s the only sex he’s really enjoyed having. (I’d guess her age to be around 11-13 from the way she looked in the pages; she had started to mature, but still had growing and maturing to do).
Just go back to the early pages of when Zona first comes to Normos to find the first scene with Maldik and Dia.
Prairie Son
No, JED explicitly told us she was a woman. And told us that Tethik wouldn’t countenance pedophilia even for the survival of the kingdom. Back when we met Morcai and people were so dead certain Tethik was offering him and endless parade of children to abuse.
Ooorah
Man, even if she is planning on being heartfelt and honest, she’s still setting up for it with a pretty passive-aggressive opening. Then again, he did lock her in a tower…
Jack_Simth
Maldik apparently came already drunk. That, or his tutors were NOT worth their money.
The Last Garou
Oh, hell…
Maldik is showing personal growth?! Or the potential for it at least?
What wondrous times are these, that such miracles may occur!
jd.
Amen, sibling.
vrwhammer
here comes the truth rather you want it or not
jd.
I think this scene counts as Yanora getting her comeuppance for being so witty at her sons’ expense. (Yes, what she said was right; stills that’s a harsh way to raise kids. And, I believe, not one that raises healthy ones.)
I hope she treads carefully, but everything in this page seems to show that she will.
I’m a bit puzzled about Bethela’s expression. I can’t decide if she’s disgusted at Maldik (normal reaction) or dismayed at his meltdown. Maybe a bit of both.
Archone
There’s “being right” and there’s “being right without being verbally and psychologically abusive.” Helpful hint: when people flinch away from you and try to avoid you, you’ve probably been an abusive jerk towards them.
MidnightDStroyer
There seems to be some bitter dregs in that “dreadful red” wine they’re drinking, huh?
The Gorram Batguy
As horrible as Maldick has been this whole story, I find myself feeling quite sorry for him. He’s not very bright, but he was born into a dog-eat-dog world of politics, use-or-be-used, kill-or-be-killed. He was out of his depth from the start. His own mother treats him like garbage and mocks him for his shortcomings; I doubt he’s ever known security, love, or compassion. The closest person to a friend he ever had was Tula. And what did that mean? She was not a subject he had to control, nor a rival, nor an enemy, and she actually treated him with basic civility (and is quite pretty which affect things too, let’s not deny it). And he’s almost head-over-heels for her to this day just for that.
He is a victim of a lifetime of abuse and mistreatment. No wonder he grew up to be such a piece of pathetic garbage. And now, he knows his scheme to get back at “them all” is going down in flames, and he’s miserable, and he just wants somebody he can trust, somebody in whom he can confide, somebody who can help him makes things RIGHT. And the closest thing he has to any of this is his nasty mean-spirited mother. He never had a chance in life, wealth and finery notwithstanding.
(And despite admitting she was a terrible mother with a big share in the nasty, petty person Maldick has become, Yanora still hasn’t improved her ways nor shown any lasting contrition.)
The MacNut
I think at this point the kindest thing anyone can do for Maldik…is assassinate him. It would put him out of his, and everyone else’s misery.
EmmaC
I have to admit I am in the same boat as The Gorram Batguy.
Yes Maldik is a little shit but… how much of this comes from the way he had been raised? Yanora might not be completely innocent in the way he has become. Now, people with worst parents have become great people so I am not exonerating Maldik but still…
I don’t know how this will play but I hope Yanora will play it well… I think Maldik, for once, deserve something more…
But, as well all know very well JED is a master crafter so we might be in for a surprise.
SeanR
I’m guessing he’ll sacrifice himself to save one of the heroes, the one trying to redeem him, by bodily grabbing Gorshash and throwing him into the abyss, resulting in lethal damage to his life support…
You know what? Wrong movie.
Als. R.I.P. Chewbacca.
Uhl
And once again, we see Maldik’s persecution complex rear its ugly head! Ugh!
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