Beatrice is STILL AT THE STUPID BALL IS THE WHOLE BOOK GOING TO TAKE PLACE IN THIS BALL?

There’s a DUKE OF THE SIOUX

OH MY FUICKING GODF

I JUST’;LK CANNOTA

I THIOOGUHT IT WOULD BE BAD ENOUUGHT IF THEY NEVER MENTIONED NATIVE AMERICANS BUT

THISLD

I CANOSDT CANNOT I JUST

THE FUCK

THE FUCKING FUCK FUCK

AND DUKE OF THE IROQUOIS AND APPARENTLY THERE ARE MORE NATIVE DUCHIES AND

I

C A N N O T

Like, it is very much not my lane to critique the handling of Native American culture in this way, but to (apparently) forcibly enfold them into a European peerage system like this? There are some natives in this, our current and real ‘verse, who have mixed feelings about VOTING because it’s participating in a colonialist system and this book SHOVED THEM INTO DUCHIES?

Oh my god

Just

Oh my god

My brain is completely blown with how insulting this is and I just cannot make words about how wrong it is it and it’s just SO FUCKING WRONG WHO APPROVED THIS?

And the book specifically calls them duchies, not dukedoms. Duchies are the entailed properties that are attached to a title, whereas a dukedom is just the title itself (no land required to be a duke, it turns out). Which means that in this book, America…fucking took over some sovereign land and then just put some family in charge of said land without any regard for the social or political structure in place there already and now these hereditary families are in charge of…

Like, what, ALL the Sioux tribes? Which, by the way, was not their own name for themselves and also what we now call Sioux is not a homogenous group, it’s several different tribes.

And if this family got a title for ‘service to the crown’ then you just KNOW they were some people fighting on the white side in whatever war lead to the territory being taken over which is EVEN GROSSER and

Somehow the worst thing about this fucking mess is that I bet the author was thinking of this as a ‘good’ and ‘progressive’ thing like “look, I included the Native Americans! And made them fancy nobles like everyone else!”

I want this book to develop a human embodiment so I can fight it.

Anyway, Beatrice is trash, her whole family is trash, her drama is trash, and you know what? Her dancing skills are trash, too. I mean, it’s a book so I can’t tell for sure, but I feel in my heart that this is true. She makes trash small talk with Teddy-the-bear and he’s apparently the only person capable of normal conversation out of the whole bunch, so she invites him on another date.

Later Connor walks her back to her room and there’s a convo about how this whole ‘pick guys out of a lineup’ thing is weird and YEAH, SO? Jesus, I wish a bunch of hot guys would come straight at me and line up for their turn, and given how monumentally bizarre regular dating is, can we really call this all that weirder?

AND THEN THERE’S AN EXPLOSION, YES YES YES

Oh, pho, it’s just a false alarm to get Connor to body slam her for protection so they can get tingly-all-over. Sigh. They have a brief yay-not-dead make out, and then Beatrice goes to mope in her GIANT CLOSET THAT HAS ITS OWN BAY WINDOW because truly, hers is just the hardest life ever, no really, think nothing of all those sovereign nations that your family took over and forcibly integrated while figuring it was all okay because you jammed a few of their people into your nobility system.

God, I bet you had residential schools, didn’t you?

Fucking TRASH.