THE CRUEL PRINCE & FOLK OF THE AIR Diversity Review
A BULLY ROMANCE DONE RIGHT
🐘🐘🐘🐘/5
*contains spoilers**
I present to you: an ode to the bully romance. What is a bully romance you ask? It is a subgenre of enemies-to-lovers romance novels (and often fan fiction) where our heroine falls in love with her bully. Now you may be thinking “so basically Stolkholm syndrome”? Truthfully, poorly written bully romances are exactly that. The main character is superficially written, they don’t have much of a backbone, and once they’re turned on it’s like all logic and boundaries go out of the window. A particular pet peeve of mine is when the main character is weak, but they (and the writer) try to pretend that they’re actually a strong woman who won’t put up with shit. They then proceed to put up with absolutely everything, and there’s no accountability. But anyway, that’s just the bad ones.
Bully romance done right hits you in all of your dopamine receptors. Usually the love interest has a tragic past, amazing good looks, sharp jaw lines and spends a lot of time brooding. So basically romance reader catnip. In the case of the current series I’ll be discussing, his jawline “could cut out a girl’s heart”. He also happens to wear flower crowns atop his silky mane and dons gold highlighter. So like I said…romance reader catnip.
But what I truly love about bully romance as a genre is that it provides an access point into abolition. It does so because what lies at the heart of the bully romance is also what lies at the heart of abolition: an exploration of how we repair harm.
Now before I go any further, I must emphatically make this point: the below can only apply when the bully romance is done right. Without real conversations about harm, trauma, accountability, and vulnerability, everything I’m about to say falls flat on its face. At its worst, bully romance is a tale of sexual assault, domestic violence, and pertual re-traumatizing. That’s not what I’m talking about here.
What I am talking about is a story where we look at questions such as: what do I do once someone has harmed me? What do I do once I’ve harmed someone? What resources and conversations are needed to repair that harm? How can we build trust and create safety after the harm has already happened? How do you hold people accountable instead of seeking revenge? What does it take to forgive? What circumstances and systems caused the harm to happen in the first place? How can we overcome those challenges?
At this point you may be thinking, ummm I thought we were talking about romance novels. We are! Though romance novels and community building are very different, the muscle group we use to tackle these questions in romance novels is the same muscle group you use when talking about harm in abolition. This allows romance to become an access point with an incredible amount of potential.
For those unfamiliar with social justice, abolition can seem like a pipe dream: unrealistic and like optimism bordering on delusion. But dark romance has a wider following, and a large portion of that audience are unfamiliar with abolitionist frameworks. That’s why I find this entry point fascinating: it’s so unexpected.
What if the way you saw the potential for good in our tragic love interest, you also saw the good in communities? What if the chances for understanding and forgiveness you gave those characters, you also gave communities? The muscles are the same, it’s just our worldview that drives the wedge. Ultimately, when the author takes you through their healing journey, you can also think about what healing journeys are needed for those who cause harm in real life.
One of my favorite activists, Richie Reseda once said “abolition is about getting rid of the revenge system.” That’s what bully romance can help us do. If we can watch our MC forgive and form a healthy relationship with someone who has previously harmed them and if we can watch the love interest heal, we can then use that same thought process as an entry point into the idea that repairing harm is possible. Moreover, it’s a better choice than revenge.
And with that I present to you, THE FOLK OF THE AIR series by Holly Black. The series consists of three novels, a novella, and a book of short stories: THE CRUEL PRINCE, THE LOST SISTERS, THE WICKED KING, THE QUEEN OF NOTHING, and HOW THE KING OF ELFAME LEARNED TO HATE STORIES.
This, my friends, is the bully romance done right. In fact, it’s done so spectacularly right that in her bully romance, Holly Black gives us one of the most badass heroines in YA fantasy history: Jude Duarte.
Jude is a human girl whose been stolen from the mortal world by her mother’s ex husband, who also happens to be a fairie general and who also happens to have murdered her mother and father. Throughout the course of three novels, Jude goes from a young girl trying to survive in a society that’s quite literally dangerous to her health to becoming its Queen. What’s amazing about Jude is that she has no powers whatsoever. She isn’t secretly a descendant of a fire goddess, she didn’t have a prophecy guiding her life, she wasn’t cursed as a baby, nothing. She’s just a regular human girl, and she’s extraordinary.
Jude uses her wit, determination, grit, and prowess to not only decide who gets to be on the throne, but outsmarts fairies who have lived longer than some countries have been in existence. She is upfront about who she is — she is secretive, lies, murders, and does whatever she needs to do to protect her family, and she uses Cardan just as he uses her.
She does not submit, she schemes. She uses her fear; she overcomes it. Where she sees weakness, she clenches her jaw and becomes stronger. Not immune to poison? No problem, cue mithridatism. Not immune to glamor? No problem, become a Prince’s spy and make a bargain. Your pseudo father won’t let you be a knight? No problem, take the throne from under his nose. Time and time again, she topples the odds stacked against her. She does all this without Cardan, without her sister, really without anyone. And though, by the end, she grows in many ways and learns to trust others, Jude never changes the aspects about herself that make her, her. Instead, she finds a place for herself within Elfhame and forms a family who love and appreciate her for who she is.
So this much is clear: from a gender perspective, Holly Black knows what she’s doing and we’re here for it.
Now onto her bully, who is none other than (as I’m sure you guessed from the title) the prince, Cardan Greenbriar. Cardan is handsome, Cardan is cruel, and mostly Cardan is besotted with Jude. But he hates her so much that loving her makes him nauseous. One of his best lines is “Kiss me again. Kiss me until I am sick of it”. He does everything to get her out of his mind, and when that doesn’t happen (as is true for a large portion of bully romance), he takes it out on Jude.
I feel it’s necessary here to pause and state for the record that his behavior is not okay. Jude should not have to suffer because Cardan can’t get himself together. This storyline perpetuates the problematic narrative we tell young girls when we say “oh honey he’s just pulling your hair because he likes you”. Love does not require pain. It does not require torment. Take this logic down its full path and ultimately it morphs into protecting abusers.
And at the same time, we also must recognize that this does happen. Toxic masculinity exists, and we as a society do not do enough to teach our children, particularly boys, how to emote in healthy ways. Moreover, not everyone behaves exactly as they should at the beginning of any relationship, and even if they do it’s inevitable that we cause those closest to us harm intentionally and unintentionally. One of the aspects of this series I loved the most is Holly Black’s exploration of this very thing — the complexity of relationships and how we navigate love when everyone has different motives. Though the story has a wonderful amount of whimsy, at its core, it is bewitchingly human.
This exploration arises in three relationships: Jude’s relationship with Cardan, Jude relationship with Taryn, and Vivi’s relationship with Heather.
In the case of Cardan and Jude, they go from being enemies to, slowly but surely, learning more about the other and becoming friends. Jude learns about the abuse Cardan has faced throughout his life, while Cardan sees Jude for who she is at her core. When Taryn and Locke make a mockery of her, he secretly gifts her a dress to help her hold her head up high, a dress as armor and balm. When Madoc and Balekin try to steal the throne, she gets him to safety while he helps her navigate the necessary political relationships to give Oak the throne. She rules in his stead when he first becomes King, and he saves her from the Undersea when she gets kidnapped. The power dynamic in their relationship slowly morphs from Cardan having all the power to them ruling as equals. He makes her his Queen, and works to earn her trust even if that means giving up half of his troops, simply because she asks. They don’t merely fall in love three chapters in. Instead, they spend THE CRUEL PRINCE learning to truly see each other. They spend THE WICKED KING forming a friendship. Then, finally, in THE QUEEN OF NOTHING when you think you can’t stand the wait anymore, they begin having a real relationship. Cardan spends these last two books making amends, taking accountability, and building trust.
While Jude, true to the badass fem hero she is, spends that time scheming, getting stronger, and also learning the strength of vulnerability and love. It’s her strength, her refusal to break that allows this bully romance to thrive. It’s what gives this bully romance its magic. Even though Cardan started out with power over Jude, she never truly cowers to him. She doesn’t allow him to get in the way of her goals, and even when they start to form a friendship and relationship, it’s always on her terms. She finds belonging, not in Cardan, but in herself and in faerie through her own wits. And at the same time, as they navigate faerie politics together, they learn to understand each other more and from that understanding burgeons a friendship and then love. Ultimately, they become equals and they each become better people. I’d even argue that in many ways, though Jude is simply human, she has more power than Cardan.
We as readers get to ask: How do you take a Cruel Prince and turn him into a just King? How do you take a powerless mortal, give her power and equality, and then repair the harm done to her and the harm she does to others? How do two people who cannot stand each other, form a bond of trust deep enough for not only marriage but to rule a kingdom?
Now in the case of Jude and her twin sister Taryn, we look at this same exploration but there is a lack of accountability. For the sake of love, Taryn allows her sister to be used and embarrassed. She then works for Madoc to the detriment of Jude and Cardan, and in the end she still asks Jude to save her when she murders Locke. No one can deny Taryn is selfish. But, she is also determined. Holly Black published a novella after THE CRUEL PRINCE’s publication entitled THE LOST SISTERS where Taryn tells her story. It’s clear that Locke is abusive and he sees Taryn as disposable. It’s also clear that Taryn wanted to belong so badly that she twisted herself in whatever form was necessary, and when she couldn’t take it anymore she did what she had to do to get out. What I love about the novella is that it gives Taryn room to explain herself and for us, the reader, to understand that characters are complex. Their motivations are not black or white, and even though I don’t agree with Taryn, I can understand why she did what she did. This is especially important because Taryn is a female character, and this stops her from being a “pick me” or simply cruel. This also allows us the opportunity to also ask — how did Elfame as a society contribute to Taryn being forced into the position she was? How can we stop that from happening in the future? What resources did Taryn lack that could have helped her, both before marriage and during her pregnancy?
It also brings more complexity to Jude because you can clearly see how her sister is her weakness, her blind spot. Though Taryn and Jude ultimately reconcile and Taryn uses her skills to shape Jude’s image into that of a ruthless Queen, I still wish there was a conversation where Taryn admits her faults and works to make amends. At the same time, Taryn as she is now is too proud. So while I understand why it didn’t happen, I was still a bit disappointed. AND on the flip side, I love the fact that Taryn is a female character that doesn’t let you put her in a box.
Lucky for us Vivi and Heather step in to give us an example of what that conversation and accountability could have looked like. After Vivi admits to both lying to Heather and then glamouring her without her permission, Heather stands up for herself, doesn’t let Vivi get away with it, and demands better. She makes Vivi start over and woo her the right way. Yes she forgets the harm so it’s easier to repair it, but at least Vivi admits to what she did and allows Heather to tell her how she wants that harm to be repaired.
I also love them because they are the main queer relationship in the story. King Eldred also had many lovers, one of his most prominent being a human man, so its clear that being queer was common in Elfhame. But, so often in literature queer folks are relegated to handy side characters or the entire book is about their queerness. It was nice to see a novel where being queer was normal, no big deal, and just one aspect of the character. The relationship was given space to live and flourish as a relationship generally, not the propped up “queer relationship”. Though King Eldred was promiscuous in his relationships, Vivi and Heather’s was monogamous which also showed that there are so many different types of queer relationships, and avoided tropes that center on queer sexual preferences and habits. For a YA book, it does a great job at not scandalizing sexuality. Therefore, I’m also happy to report FOLK OF THE AIR does well from a LGBTQIA+ diversity perspective, though I wouldn’t have been mad at more airtime for those characters.
The reason I gave the book 4 instead of 5 is what it lacks in diversity: intersectionality, characters of color, and characters that are differently abled. Now, not every book needs to have all these aspects of diversity. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. But, that’s not true here. In a setting such as Elfhame, with its whimsy and fantasy elements, there was such an opportunity to include these types of characters. If we have characters with tails, fox fur, and hooves, why not some with melanin and/or a physical disability? It would have been so easy.
Overall, the FOLK OF THE AIR series was a quick, lovely read that did very well in the realms of gender and queer representation. Though it missed opportunities in race and ability, it was also not problematic in those areas. I also have to give kudos to the questions explored because though I don’t believe this was Holly Black’s intention, it did bring up a lot of the questions we explore in abolition, which allows us to understand how accessible the framework really is. Oftentimes social justice seems in a realm of its own, and a segment outside the “norm”, but truthfully it’s about how we as people choose to interact with one another and what we believe we owe each other in terms of support, forgiveness, resources, second chances, etc. The series explores all this while also giving us a badass heroine, a juicy love story, a love interest to drool over, and a fantastic plot. What a lovely read.
To stay up to date on my latest work, you can subscribe to my Medium or any of the below social media platforms. If you’re looking for diversity advising, or would like to have your own script or novel analyzed, you can schedule a free consultation on my website.
