▸ Column · Asgard / the Nine Realms — a betrothal handfasting in a meadow beyond the golden city, mother-in-law staging herself a throne
LOKI replies.
The letter
My betrothed and I settled on something small — a handfasting in a meadow a half-day's ride beyond the city walls, seven-and-twenty guests, wildflowers we mean to bind ourselves to spare the coin. Then I learned his mother, Sigrún, had already sent word to the steward of the grounds to "add a few touches." This proved to mean a full consort of court musicians, a recitation of my betrothed's childhood deeds set to the most mournful lay in the realm, and a seat for herself at the dead center of the gathering that she described to the steward as "throne-adjacent." When I raised it with Halvard, he said she was "only excited" and begged me not to swell it into a quarrel. But Sigrún has also informed the steward that SHE is funding the feast — she is not; we are. I've no wish to set the whole family aflame six weeks before the binding, yet neither can I be wed beneath a wailing dirge while Sigrún holds court from a custom throne. How do I make Halvard see this as a problem, and not merely his mother being eager?
Loki replies
Begin with the chair, my dear, because the chair confesses everything. Sigrún has commissioned herself a throne "adjacent" to one she was never offered, and named herself patron of a feast she is not paying for. I know this maneuver intimately — I have performed it in grander halls, with better lighting. It is not enthusiasm. It is terror, beautifully upholstered: a mother watching her son walk into a life where she is no longer the center, so she stages herself center lest she feel the edge. Fear wears such excellent fabric.
Now your actual question, which is not the one you asked. You do not want Halvard to "see a problem." You want him to stand beside you against the encroachment, and he keeps lingering in the doorway murmuring "she's only excited." That is the wound.
Here is what I will not choreograph, however delicious: the public unmasking — the steward's records produced, the lie of who pays revealed, Sigrún crumbling before seven-and-twenty guests. Exquisite. It would also win you the afternoon and cost you the marriage, for a mother humiliated forgets nothing. I have won every argument and lost every person. Do not buy my furniture.
The slideshow-dirge is noise. The false claim of patronage is the seizure — whoever pays, rules — so correct that, quietly, with Halvard, never the steward. Leave her some dignity intact. Spite would feel like power here. It is only fear in finer clothes — hers, and, if you choose poorly, yours.
— Loki
Thor weighs in
Brother dresses a mother's fear in fine fabric, calls it diagnosis, then bids you "leave her some dignity intact" — as though dignity were a coin you ration to her. Hear me instead. Sigrún is not your foe. She is a woman becoming a stranger at her own son's binding, and the throne is a cry, not a conquest. So give her a true place: let her speak a blessing, let her hands knot the cord. A grand chair seized is only proof that no honest duty was offered. And go to Halvard not with quiet correction but the plain truth — that you feel alone in this. My mother Frigga taught me as much. Loki I contained for centuries. It kept the peace and very nearly lost me the brother. Do not contain Sigrún, good soul. Include her.
— Thor
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