Not that I second your opinion here, nor do I object.. I would just like to comment and commend your eloquence here . You write so well, hun!
yeaaaa and it's kinda icky cuz she literally has no autonomy, he's the guy so what he says goes in this time period I guess. idk he could disagree with her pov, but at the end of the day Riftan gets to choose to risk his life in battle and if Maxi respects that, then he should respect her choice too. It's just a red flag that ordering her around doesn't make him feel anything. Like if my mans started telling me what to do, even out of concern for my safety, that's not my mans if he doesn't see me as someone who can literally do whatever I want. Like I'm so sorry but just cuz we married don't mean I need to ask you permission to fight when you're not asking me. Bro...you can't force your partner to do anything and a real man would know that.
the thing is riftan is genuinely so emotionally stunted i can’t even tell if he is concerned for her safety or feel entitled over that safety because he has done so much to ‘earn’ her. and not being able to tell makes his pattern of behaviour where he orders maxi around as if she is beneath him even more jarring. like it is giving insecure tyrant. it is giving man child. she is considering having his kids and riftan be out here acting like one.
exactly, like we’ve had enough of men telling women what to do in romances. I still rlly have high hopes for this one, like I thought by now he would have figured out what kind of life she had growing up (he still thinks she had a noble woman upbringing), but hopefully since this doesn’t look like it’ll be over anytime soon we’ll see some character growth. I just wish he understood that you can show concern and even reject Maxi’s thinking without minimizing her as a person which literally everyone around her did to make her self esteem go that low. now she’s in a place where him saying “I’d rather die” won’t cause her to loose all her progress, but in the past it could have and i’m soooooo disappointed he would say something like that KNOWING who Maxi is
The previous comments I can understand, but not this one. Riftan being entitled of "earning" Maxi should never be thought of as the man himself do not think he would ever deserve a woman like her.
A knight's mindset will always be to put a lady's safety a top priority. Regardless of what her desire is, if he knows your life will be in grave danger, no questions asked, you need to kept away from that. Now add that to the fact that this knight is your husband. The man who was always a breath away between life and death as he did not see his life that significant, but a dream of you and life wins his subconscious and continues to embark a journey he never planned. But again a word about your possible presence within his reach and he threw away all that irresolute just to get a glance of even just your face. And he, a lone mercenary became the greatest out of sheer will to see you.
No man child will ever think of building a grand life just in the case he will have you in his life and provide all that's worthy of your value.
first off, in what handbook does it specify that “a knight’s mindset will always be to put a lady’s safety a priority”? under charlamagne knights were given full education and under william the conqueror knights were of such volume they were left illiterate but the uniting factor is that knights killed people, they were an emperor or a king’s most reliable weapon of war because they were so good at killing people. a knight’s actual mindset is slaughter. throughout history knights have pillaged entire villages and raped women and girls as war prizes in their victory. rape is still used as a weapon of war today and the knights are the modern history it came from. the idea that “a knight’s mindset will always be to put a lady’s safety a priority” is from the concept of chivalry which is an informal code of conduct that valued things like loyalty (to the king that ordered you to kill people) and valour or bravery (in combat where you rob people of land and resources). chivalry never meant protect the weak nor did it mean anything along the lines of “put a lady’s safety a priority” unless if the lady’s safety was king’s orders. the romanticisation of chivalry as the height of masculine behaviour was adapted in 19th century literature to explain and glorify the way knights seduced noble women and girls that their honorary title gave them access to but no future with. it was never proper masculine behaviour, it was always manipulation in order to get a woman in bed.
secondly, if you are going to say “regardless of what her desire is” then you have swerved far past the point where he is acting like a man child as the evidence of man child behaviour stare you dead in the eye. adult people who see each other as equals do not disregard the other’s desire because their explicit desires stated is the first sign of consent thus if he values her safety over her consent then he does not respect her consent seeing maxi to be beneath him the way an owner might pick up a pet even if it doesn’t want to be picked up because what the owner wants trumps in value.
lastly, it is delusional to say that “no man child will ever think of building a grand life” because that is all child like mentalities ever think of. the grandest things. and even more delusional to say “worthy of your value” when he literally knows nothing about maxi to even begin to comprehend her value. riftan sees maxi as this beloved spoiled daughter that he had to kill the unkillable in order to be with. we both know that daughter does not exist. therefore only possible to infer that riftan does not even begin to grasp her value when the things that she assigns of value in regards to herself such as healing and magic castle management riftan has only never showed her support to pursue what makes her happy but has instead impeded maxi multiple times in pursuing them further because all he wants is a damsel trapped behind bars waiting for him to get home. like some kind of fairytale. as if a child.
this floored me, everything I didn’t know I was feeling in wordsbut yea I feel like sometimes “what someone wants” can be seen as irrelevant in comparison with what we think that person needs (how Riftan sees Maxi), but that’s literally what makes everyone a person, yes maybe it’s for Maxi’s benefit that she not get involved, maybe she’ll come to regret ever wanting to become a Mage, but even just her believing that she can change for the better is so so important. Maxi is learning her worth, that she’s not just here because she’s alive, but that she has a purpose. I think she even told Riftan that the thing she hates the most in the world is herself. I don’t believe that you can truly care for Maxi without thinking about why she said that. I have ppl in my life that I would quite literally die for, like no thought to it, if my sister was abt to die ooooo we pulling a I’ll catch a grenade for you. even then, if she came to me and expressed that she needed to do something or her spirit would die, I would do everything I could to help her achieve whatever that is. Girly you wanna fight on the front lines???? when we joininggg???? This is a silly scenario, but what people want is connected to their purpose in life and if not doing what Maxi feels she needs to do would kill her spirit, girly we becoming mages together. There are people who, knowing they’d die, risk themselves to save someone they don’t know because that’s who they are and wouldn’t be living if they weren’t themselves. If my sister was that person(if she were in Maxi’s position), I love her and respect her enough to accept it. Like to me when I see Riftan saying how much he cares abt Maxi I just get annoyed. I’m not even married to Maxi yet why would I treat her better that you her husband??? Possessiveness (however hot the character (I understand, I get it)) is not real love. And y’all I’ve read them all like I am the first person to say “it’s fiction it’s not real life” but you don’t see me talking abt how Edward Cullen is the epitome of what a real man is. No matter how much I love my bad boyzzz and my red flags not for one second would I ever believe that what Riftan feels is true unconditional love than if he let her go. Quite literally: if you love her let her go. lmaoooo like it’s not a lieeee, that’s what unconditional love actually is and you can’t fall into that trap of thinking otherwise. “I can fix him” is something I say everyday, but as a person who has people I love, all those characters don’t got nothing on me, they don’t kno me!!!!
For all I know, I am reading Under the Oak Tree. I wouldn't dare interpret the author's writing nor evaluate the poor characterization of the leads because I have extensive perspective and knowledge on what should be and what not should be.. And, compare them to this and that. My focus is on the flow of THIS story.
I love this writing so much, and Maxi and Riftan, however it did not occur to me that some would think otherwise of how the author had portrayed them. Maybe that's the beauty of it too. Everyone has something to say. But this was too heavy to handle. As it seems you are adamant in dismissing the balance of the script and I feel like I am being dismissed as well for trying to reel in a perspective that seems like 360 to yours, and as much as I want to receive and respect the opinion, I am not getting the same notion. So as to stop spoiling my love for this manhwa, I will hand you over the floor and mute this thread.
Sankyu for the handful of studies, by the way. Not that I deemed them relevant to my understanding of the story, nevertheless, thank you~
there is a distinct difference between worrying about your wife because you love her so much and want more than anything for her to live versus controlling your wife because you look down on her and doesn’t see her to be capable of taking care of herself or knowing her limits. it is infantilising and not the first nor the second not even the third time riftan has completely disregarded what maxi had to say or disrespected her abilities in front of other people when she has a long and arduous history of being traumatised and sold off at the hands of an abusive father who acted exactly like that. and yes i am aware that he doesn’t know her history because they have literally never talked about a single thing worth an ounce salt about themselves to each other the way normal people do let alone married but it doesn’t make how he talks down to her any less belittling. a lot of her “independent queen” era is just her constantly having to prove herself to him with no space to grow as a person nor as a healer. riftan is more of a roadblock than he is a supporter. “he loves her so much” “he killed the dragon for her” blah blah blah ok and? she didn’t ask him to do it. in fact knowing maxi she would have explicitly told him not to do it. if his love is a chokehold then perhaps she should love literally anyone else.