okay so i want to preface this by saying i like rowan, but i wanted to ask you what you think of him hitting aelin in hof? do you think SJM made a big mistake by having him hit her and then having them most likely end up together? personally i would never forgive a man for hitting me, no matter what happened afterward. it's such a big contrast to how SJM wrote feysand. so i guess, how do you justify him hitting her and do you think SJM made a mistake by saying a woman can forgive that?

Hello sweetie! First, I wanted to make sure it was known that we have many members here and each member doesn’t necessarily have the same ships and fav characters. However, we try to remain unbiased in what we reblog onto HFD so all of our followers can see their possible ships

With that being said, I was able to forward your question to the rest of the team. Here is what some of our opinions are about the scene (under the cut):

Earlier on, Aelin gets is a bloody bar fight after seeing her cousin Garlan, who was being cheered for as he left the city. She had provoked the bar fight, had gotten her nose busted up in its duration, and afterwards decided there wasn’t a point to her plans. This, I feel, was one of the earlier examples of her depression and consequently self-destructive behaviour. Still fresh is the lost of her dear friend Nehemia; at the beginning of HoF, she’s in the mindset of “it should’ve been me” and it’s important to note a lot of her actions echo this sentiment.

In regards to that specific scene where Rowan punches her, Aelin and Rowan and winding each other up with insults and quips. A note: later on in the book, Aelin calls Rowan her mirror image. Aelin has a notorious temper, and can be rather reckless at times (again, the bar fight exemplifies this trait. In short, she could’ve gotten caught and everything could’ve gone to hell). This means Rowan is the same. Back to the dialogue (both inner and outer) in the scene, Aelin fully acknowledges the foulness of the words that sets Rowan off (“Fae like you make me understand the King of Adarlan’s actions a bit more, I think.”) and she understands she’s taken it a bit too far even before Rowan reacts (she “bathed in the pure hate of it”; Aelin clearly knows what her words were implicating). Now, to say “Aelin deserved it!” is a childish way of validating Rowan’s admittedly problematic actions. No one deserves to get beaten. However this scene is delicate in the sense that it could be cited as another example of Aelin’s self-destructive tendencies. She knew how Rowan would most likely react. She knew that she was trying to rile him up, trying to get him to react. She also knows about his notorious reputation as a warrior, she knows what would most likely happen if she provoked him. Saying their people deserved to be slaughtered the way they were? Aelin knew that would do it.

It’s also important to note that after that slip of control where Rowan punched her, he stops himself before the second punch. Aelin’s inner dialogue states “he looked more interested in ripping out her throat than in talking, but he held the line he’d drawn.” Immediately after reacting to her words with a poor choice of action, Rowan is able to stop himself from hitting her again. Though Aelin continues to try and land a hit, all he does beyond this point is evade her hits and trip her before walking off. Subtly or not, Rowan was able to acknowledge that hitting her was a mistake, and he shouldn’t do it again. It’s also evident later on in the book that Rowan regrets things he said and did, after he learns of Aelin’s past and her scars.

I, personally, don’t condone the “Aelin deserved it” argument because THAT green-lights abuse and that is certainly not okay. However it’s also important to look at the scene in context, while taking into consideration their characters, Aelin’s self-destructive behaviour at the beginning of HoF, and how Rowan reacts beyond the initial punch.