The food thing is less important to him, primarily because he's still getting used to eating food that isn't foraged mushrooms slightly warmed over a campfire, but the color is very interesting! Verso has never quite had the passion for art that Maman, Renoir, Clea, or even Alicia do—but he does appreciate the power of color.
"Purple," he echoes with a little dry amusement. "Because it's the color of royalty?"
Is it the color of royalty here, too? He'd just assumed, with how much of it she wears.
Storms. Jasnah truly has never pulled so many subtly confused expressions in all her life before meeting this man. It's not him who's to blame, honestly. More like the small-and-not-so-small mismatches between their expectations, their norms, their touchstones.
"No." Simple, matter of fact. "I suppose the colour for royalty is blue. For Alethkar, at any rate. It's the Kholin colour."
Wait, it occurs to her he likely? probably? most certainly? doesn't know this next fact, so she elides it smoothly onto the conversation — gently nudging it away from topics that might tread back around to her favourite anything.
"The Alethi monarchy hasn't existed long enough to have a traditional royal colour. My father was the first king of a unified Alethkar in centuries."
Since the Sunmaker — the first Alethi king, a genocidal tyrant, and Gavilar Kholin's rolemodel.
Funny, actually, that Jasnah would consider speaking of her family to be anything but personal. As far as Verso is concerned, family is the most personal thing there is—complex, messy, impossible for outsiders to ever understand. So, of course he latches onto this small mention of her father. He's still working through the earlier chapters of that history book (sorry), so he raises his eyebrows as if this is new information to him because, well, it is.
"Oh," he says. "That's nice." Maybe? A unified Alethkar sounds nice. "Sounds like he brought people together."
Honestly, he's talking out his ass. He has no clue of the political intricacies of Alethkar.
"You must have learned a lot from him," he ventures.
Oh, Gavilar had brought people together. For one brief reign all of the other highprinces had been threatened, manipulated, cajoled, or convinced to submit to his rule. Jasnah had been reared on stories of her parents, her uncle Dalinar, their confidant Sadeas — the tight knit group of them conspiring and then succeeding in conquering the ten princedoms.
Hard to say when she realized Gavilar Kholin had been the villain in more stories than just her own. Except...except it's hard to study a history like Alethkar's and then swallow your own family's part in it.
Regardless. She does not hold Verso accountable for the conclusion to which he leaps. Her father was a king; she is a queen. It might be natural of him to assume there was some effort spared in educating a young Kholin princess in politics, strategy, and rule. But Jasnah was never meant to inherit. All that expectation had fallen on poor Elhokar, ill-suited to the throne and crown. Jasnah's value was in her perfect performance of Vorin femininity and a convenient betrothal to Highprince Amaram. Gavilar was still trying to convince her to accept the marriage the night he died.
"I learned enough," she answers.
Learned not to look to her parents for help or comfort when she couldn't trust her own mind. Learned not to fall for propaganda buried in military reports. Learned that a crown is cruel in its neutrality, terrible or wonderful all depending on the head where it rested.
"I'll be the last one." She explains, simple and calm. Her hair is a little drier now than it was, and her fingers busy themselves with a thick, single braid. "The Alethi monarchy will end with me."
Oh. He doesn't say it aloud this time, biting it back because he's starting to sound like an idiot. It's just surprising to hear Jasnah say; admittedly, he has very little political knowledge, particularly about monarchies. Lumière is run by a democratically elected head councilor and their council members, which does seem more fair than a monarchy, but Jasnah also seems like a dedicated queen. Not exactly worth overthrowing.
"You don't support the monarchy?" he asks, because that's what he's picking up here. "That's..." A tilt of his head. "Counter to expectations."
Again, he's not an expert on monarchies, but one would think a monarch would be a little more interested in keeping their bloodline on the throne.
Maybe now her detour interrogation into the political system of Lumière makes a bit more sense. She's shopping around. Trying to determine what can replace her once she inevitably, ideally steps down.
"Monarchy makes for benevolent tyrants at best. Dreadful ones at worst."
Storms, she might be a benevolent tyrant. Although she tries, so often, to gild her legal amendments in precedent. Her ban on dueling had been proposed in the aftermath of a duel she herself had fought — much to her opponent's humiliation.
"I intend to leave this nation better than how I found it. Better for its everyday people."
...For such a hard and realistic woman, she does indeed have a bright idealism that shines through from time to time. There's almost a smile as she says it. Sorry, Verso. Little Geneviève won't be a princess.
"My father would be disappointed. A grand legacy was all he wanted."
Despite the fact that poor little Gen-Gen will be crownless, he finds himself yet again charmed by Jasnah, although this time for an entirely different reason. Since the moment he first met her, she's been icy and invulnerable. It's like her entire body is covered in some impenetrable protective shell, with no way to get through to her heart.
This sentiment, though, is nearly soft. Almost a little starry-eyed. He would have expected her to have an entirely detached, dispassionate opinion on monarchies, something about their stability or lack thereof, with cold, hard facts about whether the economy fares better under monarchic or democratic rule. But no— she wants to make the world a better place.
It's a desire he can relate to. He'd wanted to make the world a better place, too. It's just that the only better place he could imagine was oblivion.
No point in ruminating on that now, when it's likely that Maman has already left the Canvas and Renoir has burned it and all of its inhabitants to the ground—although he'll certainly spend his time at night ruminating on it regardless, as he is wont to do. For now, though, he focuses on the subject at hand: her father.
I'm sure he would be proud of you is the obvious thing to say. He would understand where you're coming from. Platitudes meant to make someone feel better without any real thought behind them. Verso's tempted, but he knows Jasnah will see right through it.
Instead, he shrugs. "Well, parents can be... critical."
Yes. Gavilar could be critical. Critical of many things, but most of all of his wife, Navani — though never in public. That was the trick of it. The deception. Perhaps her parents assumed she had been too young to notice; perhaps everyone did. But through her teenage years Jasnah had been quietly astonished by how no one else seemed to register the pattern. Her father would leave the full, grinding labour of political maintenance to her mother — then demean her for it afterward. He never once admitted that his grandeur rested on the scaffold of Navani's shrewd diplomacy and social acuity.
And Jasnah, younger, far less wise, had once mistaken her mother's endurance for complicity.
She knows better now. Understanding, unfortunately, does not make any part of it easier. Love does not inoculate against harm. Harm does not preclude love. And in those final months before his assassination, she had — strangely, disturbingly — related to Gavilar more than she ever had. The work he pushed onto her. The evenings when he would ask her to read The Way of Kings aloud to him, obsessed with the lessons laid down in that text. But always for the wrong reasons.
Nevertheless.
"I know criticism. I'm comfortable with criticism." I can handle criticism. Jasnah's posture straightens, the familiar steel settling into her voice. She is criticism incarnate — methodical, incisive, the cold scalpel of expertise carving the weak arguments from the worthwhile. "But criticism without evidence...without rigor...without any intent to improve—"
Her mouth has gone dry. She realizes it only when she drags her tongue across her lower lip, catching on a cracked corner. The soap, she tells herself. Cheap. Drying. Irritating.
Gavilar only ever punched down to push himself up. Watching that — enduring that — drove her to flee as far from his methods as a daughter can. Jasnah is not kind, not gentle, not warm or lovely or conventionally supportive. She knows this. She inherits more of her father's temper than she would ever admit aloud.
But her doctrine has never been his. She cleaves to the Philosophy of Aspiration: the most good possible for the most people. If she cuts, she cuts to remove rot. If she judges, she judges to refine. Her ruthlessness is not for grandeur; it is scaffolding for a world that will not need a monarch at all. Or so she insists.
She exhales — soft, decisive. "No matter. It isn't as though he gets a say in it."
Hm. Verso takes in the description of Jasnah's father—cold, it seems, and harsh; he perhaps understands a little why her armor is so thick now—and the flippant comment she makes at the end. An attempt to distract from something unpleasantly personal, he imagines, because that's the same reason he'd say something glib like that.
Sincere, he says, "It must have been tough to deal with that." Someone who only wanted to 'diminish'. It's strange, really. He's not sure he's ever met someone less diminished than Jasnah. Maybe that's her form of rebellion.
"Is that why you don't want children?"
An insane question, a very presumptuous question, and he realizes it right after asking. "Sorry. I just assumed, with the way you reacted earlier." You know, about Geneviève. She'd been pretty pissed.
Jasnah is too stunned to speak. At least, for a heartbeat or three. She stares at Verso — unnerved by the audacity of his question, but also equally caught up in asking herself whether he’s right. A child would be inconvenient. For so many reasons. A child could be used against her. A child could become the rallying point of royalists keen to restore a defunct crown. A child could be...could be...
(—is there anything hereditary about one’s ability to use Stormlight, to attract spren...? Considering all but Adolin in the Kholin family eventually bonded one, maybe. And there’d been a time where she wondered whether all the additional Invested Arts practiced by Wit might...)
No.
A child could be another way in which history repeats itself. Endlessly circling the same errors in judgement. Years ago, she'd decided against that path. Not because she didn’t like children — children, not yet browbeaten out of their curiousity, often ask the best and most natural questions. No, Jasnah likes children. Cherishes them. But given her ambitions, her goals, and the frameworks she must work within...? Well. She'd decided against that path because a child deserved better.
The silence has held out too long. She needs to say something.
"Earlier," she starts — slow and careful as she picks her way through her words, "I was surprised. Your...plot twist. It caught me off guard."
It doesn't answer his question. Ask me again after the enemy is defeated. After my homeland is reclaimed. After Roshar is secured. It all tastes like ash in her mouth.
"I'm many things, Dessendre. Motherly is not one of them."
Ah, there it is again: Dessendre. He wonders if she does it on purpose to create distance between them, or if it's unintentional. She only seems willing to use his first name when she's in an advantageous position in their conversation, correcting him for something he's done or said wrong. Otherwise, it's Dessendre.
Allowing the clearly uncomfortable subject to pass, he laughs a little, shaking his head. "You know, I don't think anyone has called me that in seven decades."
They'd had no reason to, once it became abundantly clear that he was not and never would be a real member of the Dessendre family.
"You sound like one of my old academy chums." Simon, maybe, or Claude. A playful Dessendre, you dog as they'd shoved him on the shoulder. Even 67 years later, he misses that.
Storms, but it's odd to feel so — what? Managed? It's like she can sense a current-shift in the air when he sidesteps anything like a direct confrontation. Sometimes, even on sensitive topics of her own, it makes her want to dig in her heels. It makes her want to plot the edges of his conflict avoidance. An unhealthy desire. Likely something else she’s inherited from Gavilar Kholin.
(That said. Seven decades? She tucks the number away in a corner of her mind. Another data point to be scribbled down later. Alongside Academy, question mark. It's a wonder she doesn't ask about it straight away.)

"—Would you prefer if I didn’t?"
Oh, look, an olive branch! Or whatever they call it on Roshar because they probably don't even have olives.
You've heard of crabapples, now get ready for crabolives.
That's not a question he knows the answer to off the top of his head. Would he prefer if she stopped? He doesn't spend an awful lot of time ruminating on his preferences in general; it's been a rather pointless endeavor to have things like wants and needs up until very recently. Verso doesn't feel particularly attached to the name Dessendre, doesn't feel like somebody who really belongs to that family. He'd never belonged to the real family, and it's been 25 years now since he truly belonged to the Painted one. He feels the scar across his eye burn at the memory.
"I didn't say that," he says after a second of thought. "But that reminds me—what should I call you?"
He's avoided calling her anything at all, for the most part. Seems like a bit of a minefield. She is a queen, although she isn't technically his queen—although she might soon be his employer, so he probably should show her some level of deference.
"Her Majesty? Mademoiselle Kholin?" A huff of a laugh, wry. "...I'm guessing mon amie is off the table."
He didn't answer. Jasnah exhales through her nose, mildly annoyed. Even if it's a tactic she's employed herself. Or maybe she's mildly annoyed because now she has to actually draw a kind of odd, thoughtful distinction. A boundary around what level of formality and when.
Having just declared her intention to end the monarchy, being constantly referred to by her title simply feels wrong. But she acknowledges that she can't simply let him call her anything in mixed company.
"Your Majesty when you must — in public, in front of others." A wrinkle of her nose. "When it's only us...? Jasnah will do."
Really, she ought to insist on Brightness or Brightlady. But even those terms are antiquated, based on eye colour, and belong to a system meant to be dismantled.
"I think I'll go with Kholin, if it's all the same to you." Tit-for-tat, and all. Doesn't she want to create an egalitarian world? He, too, can refer to her as if they're school bros talking about their conquests.
Then, since she'd seemed interested in him: "Esquie would call you Jasjas."
...This is the face of a woman who has never has a nickname in her life and doesn't intend to start now.
"Absolutely not."
Oh, the FROWN.
"To — to Esquie's candidate." She can't even bring herself to repeat it. "Kholin is fine — but all the more reason to keep it between us. I think you underestimate the amount of Kholins you'll be around when we find our way back to Urithiru."
The deeper Jasnah's frown, the wider his grin. Annoying people is the sixth love language, and it's his. He puts Jasjas away on the shelf, albeit to be used with precision at a later date. It's certainly not his style of endearment, but he can make an exception if it'll get under her skin like that.
But for now, he (once again) lets it go. "Big family, huh?"
He remembers one already. The handsome, sweaty cousin she'd been laughing with in the courtyard.
Jasnah has far kinder things to say about the remaining Kholins. But — actually, they hadn't ever covered the intricate politics at play back at the tower. Made all the more intricate because of the occupation of Alethkar, the dividing line between the throne and the princedom, and the tower itself.
She glances around the room, wondering...right! She crosses the room, pulls a rolled map out of the trunk, and spreads it on the table. Yes, it's filled with her charcoal notations and scribbles on different topics unrelated to the complicated multi-throne conglomerate that is the Kholin family. But the map will at least help this explanation!
With her gloved hand, she gestures for him to join her.
"This is Alethkar. My kingdom." A finger circles the area between the Horneater Peaks and the Unclaimed Hills. Then, with a jab: "With the city of Kholinar as its seat of power. Both the city and the larger kingdom are currently held by the enemy."
She is a queen in exile. That much has already been suggested, hinted, outright said if not explained.
"This," she drags the tip of her finger to the very centre of the continent. Amongst a mountain range, she identifies: "This is Urithiru. Dalinar Kholin is the king of Urithiru. Navani Kholin, his wife, is the queen. Alethi nationals in the tower are — refugees, along with countless others who have fled to its safety."
Jasnah is a queen, yes. But she is not the queen.
"Adolin Kholin, the man you so carelessly assumed was my..." oh, a grimace! "...lover. He's Dalinar's son, but he refused to be the heir. He is the Highprince of the Kholinar princedom, one of the ten princedoms that make up a unified Alethkar. The name is the same, but they're technically two different houses: mine, the royal line. His, the princedom."
...But then her expression softens. How could it not? She likes Adolin, certainly, but she adores Renarin. Renarin reminds her so much of herself, some days.
"And there's Renarin, who would be next in line for the princedom if anything happens to Adolin. Arguably, the sole Kholin whose managed to avoid a title. Apart from Gavinor, I suppose — but he's only four."
Four, and her heir by way of being her brother's son.
She pauses there. Technically, she's only ever defined her own relationship to Adolin (cousin) so it's still a bit murky who she is to all these other people. Buckle up, Verso. Because it only gets more complicated from here.
"...Ah," Verso says, like he understands completely when that certainly isn't the case. Somehow, Jasnah's family tree is more complicated than his own, despite the fact that there's two of nearly every Dessendre. Made worse, probably, by the way she avoids naming who any of them are to her. Kholins, in the abstract—the way a history book might refer to them, not the way a sister or cousin or niece would.
Curious.
"So," he says slowly, leaning over the table and looking at the map. Working this out in his mind.
He taps Kholinar. "Adolin is your cousin, not your boyfriend." Lover. Whatever. Obviously, he jumped to a few too many conclusions. "And Renarin must be his brother." That's how the line of succession works, he's pretty sure.
"Which would make"—his finger slides to Urithiru—"Navani and Dalinar your aunt and uncle." So close!! "And Gavinor is your— brother?"
He gives her a split-second look, blink and you'll miss it, obviously proud of himself for making all of these deductions.
Nod, nod, nod. Yes! He's doing lots of great deduction work. Right up until...
"No — Navani's my mother."
Chew on that for a second. Because she definitely doesn't disagree that Dalinar is her uncle. And as for little Gavinor? Well, everyone kinda forgets little Gavinor.
"No," she repeats the word. More forceful, this time. Because he shouldn't get the wrong idea! Except...
Well. Except, she kinda is. Isn't she? Ugh. This is Navani's fault for blatantly and openly pursuing Jasnah's favourite uncle. And then having the audacity to marry him!
"My father and Dalinar were brothers."
It's true that when Navani married Gavinor originally, she effectively became Dalinar's sister in the eyes of the Vorin church. But they're not actually related. Just...in-laws. Still, they'd been unable to find an ardent to perform so blasphemous a wedding.
He's got to stop saying, "Oh," but she also needs to stop saying things that could garner no other response. Verso goes through a little face journey, eyebrows raising in surprise, forehead wrinkling (don't tell him that, though; he'd be very upset to hear he looks old) before his brows drop back down, furrowed again as he frowns in thought. So if Navani is her mother, and she's married to Dalinar, who's Jasnah's uncle—
"Is it... common in Alethi culture to share wives?"
Her confusion borders on animated. Honestly, she cares so little for whatever drama of the heart her mother underwent two-ish years ago. But in this instance, she's on Navani's side in theory and in principle. Even if she sorely wishes Dalinar had made better choices.
"Decidedly not. The church didn't approve of a widow marrying her dead husband's brother. Even years after his death. Yet another demonstration of its arbitrary, heartless dogma."
Verso's quiet for a moment. Then: "—I'd say oh again, but I'm afraid you'll think that dubious soap seeped through my scalp into my brain."
It might have. Honestly, it was highly questionable as far as soap goes. It did its job, though; his hair is mostly dry now save for the still-damp roots, and it's decidedly cleaner than it was before. Still a little bit of a mess, but give him a break—he's without his hair products.
"That must have been... complicated for you."
Her father dying, cold as he might have been, and then her mother marrying her uncle. Verso's family is a disaster, but at least he'd never once had to worry about Maman marrying anyone other than Renoir. Because she designed him to be her perfect husband, he thinks uncharitably, before course-correcting with because she loved him.
"I'm not sure how I would feel in those circumstances."
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"Purple," he echoes with a little dry amusement. "Because it's the color of royalty?"
Is it the color of royalty here, too? He'd just assumed, with how much of it she wears.
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"No." Simple, matter of fact. "I suppose the colour for royalty is blue. For Alethkar, at any rate. It's the Kholin colour."
Wait, it occurs to her he likely? probably? most certainly? doesn't know this next fact, so she elides it smoothly onto the conversation — gently nudging it away from topics that might tread back around to her favourite anything.
"The Alethi monarchy hasn't existed long enough to have a traditional royal colour. My father was the first king of a unified Alethkar in centuries."
Since the Sunmaker — the first Alethi king, a genocidal tyrant, and Gavilar Kholin's rolemodel.
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"Oh," he says. "That's nice." Maybe? A unified Alethkar sounds nice. "Sounds like he brought people together."
Honestly, he's talking out his ass. He has no clue of the political intricacies of Alethkar.
"You must have learned a lot from him," he ventures.
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Hard to say when she realized Gavilar Kholin had been the villain in more stories than just her own. Except...except it's hard to study a history like Alethkar's and then swallow your own family's part in it.
Regardless. She does not hold Verso accountable for the conclusion to which he leaps. Her father was a king; she is a queen. It might be natural of him to assume there was some effort spared in educating a young Kholin princess in politics, strategy, and rule. But Jasnah was never meant to inherit. All that expectation had fallen on poor Elhokar, ill-suited to the throne and crown. Jasnah's value was in her perfect performance of Vorin femininity and a convenient betrothal to Highprince Amaram. Gavilar was still trying to convince her to accept the marriage the night he died.
"I learned enough," she answers.
Learned not to look to her parents for help or comfort when she couldn't trust her own mind. Learned not to fall for propaganda buried in military reports. Learned that a crown is cruel in its neutrality, terrible or wonderful all depending on the head where it rested.
"I'll be the last one." She explains, simple and calm. Her hair is a little drier now than it was, and her fingers busy themselves with a thick, single braid. "The Alethi monarchy will end with me."
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"You don't support the monarchy?" he asks, because that's what he's picking up here. "That's..." A tilt of his head. "Counter to expectations."
Again, he's not an expert on monarchies, but one would think a monarch would be a little more interested in keeping their bloodline on the throne.
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"Monarchy makes for benevolent tyrants at best. Dreadful ones at worst."
Storms, she might be a benevolent tyrant. Although she tries, so often, to gild her legal amendments in precedent. Her ban on dueling had been proposed in the aftermath of a duel she herself had fought — much to her opponent's humiliation.
"I intend to leave this nation better than how I found it. Better for its everyday people."
...For such a hard and realistic woman, she does indeed have a bright idealism that shines through from time to time. There's almost a smile as she says it. Sorry, Verso. Little Geneviève won't be a princess.
"My father would be disappointed. A grand legacy was all he wanted."
She doesn't sound too cut up about that fact.
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This sentiment, though, is nearly soft. Almost a little starry-eyed. He would have expected her to have an entirely detached, dispassionate opinion on monarchies, something about their stability or lack thereof, with cold, hard facts about whether the economy fares better under monarchic or democratic rule. But no— she wants to make the world a better place.
It's a desire he can relate to. He'd wanted to make the world a better place, too. It's just that the only better place he could imagine was oblivion.
No point in ruminating on that now, when it's likely that Maman has already left the Canvas and Renoir has burned it and all of its inhabitants to the ground—although he'll certainly spend his time at night ruminating on it regardless, as he is wont to do. For now, though, he focuses on the subject at hand: her father.
I'm sure he would be proud of you is the obvious thing to say. He would understand where you're coming from. Platitudes meant to make someone feel better without any real thought behind them. Verso's tempted, but he knows Jasnah will see right through it.
Instead, he shrugs. "Well, parents can be... critical."
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And Jasnah, younger, far less wise, had once mistaken her mother's endurance for complicity.
She knows better now. Understanding, unfortunately, does not make any part of it easier. Love does not inoculate against harm. Harm does not preclude love. And in those final months before his assassination, she had — strangely, disturbingly — related to Gavilar more than she ever had. The work he pushed onto her. The evenings when he would ask her to read The Way of Kings aloud to him, obsessed with the lessons laid down in that text. But always for the wrong reasons.
Nevertheless.
"I know criticism. I'm comfortable with criticism." I can handle criticism. Jasnah's posture straightens, the familiar steel settling into her voice. She is criticism incarnate — methodical, incisive, the cold scalpel of expertise carving the weak arguments from the worthwhile. "But criticism without evidence...without rigor...without any intent to improve—"
Her mouth has gone dry. She realizes it only when she drags her tongue across her lower lip, catching on a cracked corner. The soap, she tells herself. Cheap. Drying. Irritating.
"It isn't critique. Critique refines," she finishes softly. "His variety merely diminished."
Gavilar only ever punched down to push himself up. Watching that — enduring that — drove her to flee as far from his methods as a daughter can. Jasnah is not kind, not gentle, not warm or lovely or conventionally supportive. She knows this. She inherits more of her father's temper than she would ever admit aloud.
But her doctrine has never been his. She cleaves to the Philosophy of Aspiration: the most good possible for the most people. If she cuts, she cuts to remove rot. If she judges, she judges to refine. Her ruthlessness is not for grandeur; it is scaffolding for a world that will not need a monarch at all. Or so she insists.
She exhales — soft, decisive. "No matter. It isn't as though he gets a say in it."
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Sincere, he says, "It must have been tough to deal with that." Someone who only wanted to 'diminish'. It's strange, really. He's not sure he's ever met someone less diminished than Jasnah. Maybe that's her form of rebellion.
"Is that why you don't want children?"
An insane question, a very presumptuous question, and he realizes it right after asking. "Sorry. I just assumed, with the way you reacted earlier." You know, about Geneviève. She'd been pretty pissed.
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(—is there anything hereditary about one’s ability to use Stormlight, to attract spren...? Considering all but Adolin in the Kholin family eventually bonded one, maybe. And there’d been a time where she wondered whether all the additional Invested Arts practiced by Wit might...)
No.
A child could be another way in which history repeats itself. Endlessly circling the same errors in judgement. Years ago, she'd decided against that path. Not because she didn’t like children — children, not yet browbeaten out of their curiousity, often ask the best and most natural questions. No, Jasnah likes children. Cherishes them. But given her ambitions, her goals, and the frameworks she must work within...? Well. She'd decided against that path because a child deserved better.
The silence has held out too long. She needs to say something.
"Earlier," she starts — slow and careful as she picks her way through her words, "I was surprised. Your...plot twist. It caught me off guard."
It doesn't answer his question. Ask me again after the enemy is defeated. After my homeland is reclaimed. After Roshar is secured. It all tastes like ash in her mouth.
"I'm many things, Dessendre. Motherly is not one of them."
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Allowing the clearly uncomfortable subject to pass, he laughs a little, shaking his head. "You know, I don't think anyone has called me that in seven decades."
They'd had no reason to, once it became abundantly clear that he was not and never would be a real member of the Dessendre family.
"You sound like one of my old academy chums." Simon, maybe, or Claude. A playful Dessendre, you dog as they'd shoved him on the shoulder. Even 67 years later, he misses that.
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(That said. Seven decades? She tucks the number away in a corner of her mind. Another data point to be scribbled down later. Alongside Academy, question mark. It's a wonder she doesn't ask about it straight away.)

"—Would you prefer if I didn’t?"
Oh, look, an olive branch! Or whatever they call it on Roshar because they probably don't even have olives.
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That's not a question he knows the answer to off the top of his head. Would he prefer if she stopped? He doesn't spend an awful lot of time ruminating on his preferences in general; it's been a rather pointless endeavor to have things like wants and needs up until very recently. Verso doesn't feel particularly attached to the name Dessendre, doesn't feel like somebody who really belongs to that family. He'd never belonged to the real family, and it's been 25 years now since he truly belonged to the Painted one. He feels the scar across his eye burn at the memory.
"I didn't say that," he says after a second of thought. "But that reminds me—what should I call you?"
He's avoided calling her anything at all, for the most part. Seems like a bit of a minefield. She is a queen, although she isn't technically his queen—although she might soon be his employer, so he probably should show her some level of deference.
"Her Majesty? Mademoiselle Kholin?" A huff of a laugh, wry. "...I'm guessing mon amie is off the table."
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Having just declared her intention to end the monarchy, being constantly referred to by her title simply feels wrong. But she acknowledges that she can't simply let him call her anything in mixed company.
"Your Majesty when you must — in public, in front of others." A wrinkle of her nose. "When it's only us...? Jasnah will do."
Really, she ought to insist on Brightness or Brightlady. But even those terms are antiquated, based on eye colour, and belong to a system meant to be dismantled.
a short but very meaningful tag
Then, since she'd seemed interested in him: "Esquie would call you Jasjas."
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"Absolutely not."
Oh, the FROWN.
"To — to Esquie's candidate." She can't even bring herself to repeat it. "Kholin is fine — but all the more reason to keep it between us. I think you underestimate the amount of Kholins you'll be around when we find our way back to Urithiru."
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But for now, he (once again) lets it go. "Big family, huh?"
He remembers one already. The handsome, sweaty cousin she'd been laughing with in the courtyard.
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She glances around the room, wondering...right! She crosses the room, pulls a rolled map out of the trunk, and spreads it on the table. Yes, it's filled with her charcoal notations and scribbles on different topics unrelated to the complicated multi-throne conglomerate that is the Kholin family. But the map will at least help this explanation!
With her gloved hand, she gestures for him to join her.
"This is Alethkar. My kingdom." A finger circles the area between the Horneater Peaks and the Unclaimed Hills. Then, with a jab: "With the city of Kholinar as its seat of power. Both the city and the larger kingdom are currently held by the enemy."
She is a queen in exile. That much has already been suggested, hinted, outright said if not explained.
"This," she drags the tip of her finger to the very centre of the continent. Amongst a mountain range, she identifies: "This is Urithiru. Dalinar Kholin is the king of Urithiru. Navani Kholin, his wife, is the queen. Alethi nationals in the tower are — refugees, along with countless others who have fled to its safety."
Jasnah is a queen, yes. But she is not the queen.
"Adolin Kholin, the man you so carelessly assumed was my..." oh, a grimace! "...lover. He's Dalinar's son, but he refused to be the heir. He is the Highprince of the Kholinar princedom, one of the ten princedoms that make up a unified Alethkar. The name is the same, but they're technically two different houses: mine, the royal line. His, the princedom."
...But then her expression softens. How could it not? She likes Adolin, certainly, but she adores Renarin. Renarin reminds her so much of herself, some days.
"And there's Renarin, who would be next in line for the princedom if anything happens to Adolin. Arguably, the sole Kholin whose managed to avoid a title. Apart from Gavinor, I suppose — but he's only four."
Four, and her heir by way of being her brother's son.
She pauses there. Technically, she's only ever defined her own relationship to Adolin (cousin) so it's still a bit murky who she is to all these other people. Buckle up, Verso. Because it only gets more complicated from here.
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Curious.
"So," he says slowly, leaning over the table and looking at the map. Working this out in his mind.
He taps Kholinar. "Adolin is your cousin, not your boyfriend." Lover. Whatever. Obviously, he jumped to a few too many conclusions. "And Renarin must be his brother." That's how the line of succession works, he's pretty sure.
"Which would make"—his finger slides to Urithiru—"Navani and Dalinar your aunt and uncle." So close!! "And Gavinor is your— brother?"
He gives her a split-second look, blink and you'll miss it, obviously proud of himself for making all of these deductions.
my turn for a short but effective tag.
"No — Navani's my mother."
Chew on that for a second. Because she definitely doesn't disagree that Dalinar is her uncle. And as for little Gavinor? Well, everyone kinda forgets little Gavinor.
mom said it's my turn
Huh. His brow furrows. He bites his lip, doing more deductive work. "...And— also your aunt?" He's familiar with this incestuous monarchy thing.
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Well. Except, she kinda is. Isn't she? Ugh. This is Navani's fault for blatantly and openly pursuing Jasnah's favourite uncle. And then having the audacity to marry him!
"My father and Dalinar were brothers."
It's true that when Navani married Gavinor originally, she effectively became Dalinar's sister in the eyes of the Vorin church. But they're not actually related. Just...in-laws. Still, they'd been unable to find an ardent to perform so blasphemous a wedding.
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"Is it... common in Alethi culture to share wives?"
Royal polycule???
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"Decidedly not. The church didn't approve of a widow marrying her dead husband's brother. Even years after his death. Yet another demonstration of its arbitrary, heartless dogma."
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It might have. Honestly, it was highly questionable as far as soap goes. It did its job, though; his hair is mostly dry now save for the still-damp roots, and it's decidedly cleaner than it was before. Still a little bit of a mess, but give him a break—he's without his hair products.
"That must have been... complicated for you."
Her father dying, cold as he might have been, and then her mother marrying her uncle. Verso's family is a disaster, but at least he'd never once had to worry about Maman marrying anyone other than Renoir. Because she designed him to be her perfect husband, he thinks uncharitably, before course-correcting with because she loved him.
"I'm not sure how I would feel in those circumstances."
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look i couldn't find a way to make him taking another card more interesting
FAIR.
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slides back in here
the fun never stops!!
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