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The End of Ends and the King of Kings: The Case for The Last Ever After As The Superior SGE Ending

I mean. I don't think this is an unpopular opinion, but I did want to have a chat about the two 'endings' of the franchise, bc I find it fascinating. I haven't done one of these bad boys in a while... this is basically a big batshit ramble but it does touch on some interesting things so I'll post it anyway. This is mostly about Sophie.

Putting aside the immortal evergreen can of worms marked 'AGATHA SOPHIE TWINS' for a moment (or forever, bc I'm sick of talking about it and my opinion on it is TL;DR: bad stupid twist esp bc it meant nowt in later books, BUT Agaphie always had zero appeal for me so I have the questionable advantage of apathy on the entire thing), the ending of TLEA was... objectively better.

I, hag wot I am, remember the release of the The Last Ever After and a little bit of the fan spaces as they were at that time. I remember it patchily, but to vaguely set the scene: it is 2015 and you are VERY sure this is the last book in the series, since the tagline is The End Of Ends and it's being billed as such. The two major ships are Tophie and Tagatha, feat. Agaphie (but like, only really on fanfic.net, not the website as much to my memory?). Hophie is like... not taken that seriously. Most other ships barely exist. The fanbase is majority young teenagers, and mostly when you're young you take stuff at face value, and therefore most fans only considered the ships they were very explicitly presented with... unless you're a bit cleverer or a bit more in tune with the world/yourself than the average 12 year old, and remember that gay people exist. So, with this being the Last Book, the main question was: who's getting Tedros? (#feminism #trophyhusband #sexylamptrope #reversebechdelFAILED).

Like, a lot of people hoped it was Agatha, and were fairly sure it would be, but if Sophie didn't become Queen of Camelot, what would she do? Could they live in a weird polycule? (No. it's 2015 and this is a major publishing house). Would Agatha and Sophie become Deans? Twin School Masters like the School Master and the Good Brother? (as we then knew them, bc they only got names in TLEA. Do not say anything to me about Fall of SGE. I know.) Would Sophie become Rafal's Queen to match Agatha, permanently? (Everyone should have known this was not feasible the second rafal's face started falling off in book 1 bc soman has done many things but he never dropped the ball on making it clear rafal was a creep. in the main series idk about the prequels I didn't read em.)

Because it was a middle grade book and middle grade books cannot upset their readership too much (plus this was when one direction was big and teenage girls were hacking airport security and crap, no one was taking chances), it has a fairly conventional ending. Agaphie is put down like an elderly dog via a Sader Ex Machina, which was a bit harsh really. Arguably Soman could have just ignored it and left Agaphie shippers the sandbox of arguing with Tagatha shippers and fanfic, but no. Fly high. What else... Tedros finally stops dithering, pulls a fast one on Sophie, and reclaims agency and self-determination for Token Boy Characters everywhere. He goes back to his happy existence of clinging to Agatha's leg and getting dragged along behind her as she walks. Agatha is a little bit worried about being Queen but she has gained Self Worth and Agency this book so she'll be fine right! And fuck, at least she has something nice that isn't going to get blown to smithereens. (quests for glory (2017) is taken out the back and you hear a gunshot but pumpkinpaperweight says it's unrelated). Tedros has found his mother again and it was a reasonably miserable struggle to square himself with it, that was actually done pretty well. Merlin... Was There and he was funny comic relief for the kiddies. Hort got hashtag rejected, teaching men everywhere that there Is Only One Tedros, And Copycats Don't Get Shit. *paper is passed to the front* oh sorry haha it's about not chasing an impossible toxic beauty standard, because it won't make you happy in the long run, or solve your problems. my bad guys. Everyone has a nice crisp completed character arc, and they're actually good ones too. Lesso is dead and so are a few other people, but no one too major, bc again, middle grade. (I note here that although people were sad Lady Lesso had died, in general the atmosphere around Lesso in 2015 was not the same as it is now and therefore it wasn't like, that big a deal at the time, it was just like "damn :(" more than anything). Callis suffers the fate of important OP mothers to protagonists everywhere, and also dies. At least she can beat Rafal to the afterlife and be there with a hammer when he wakes up.

But Sophie? Right up until the last few pages, it looked like she was going to go to Camelot. It really did. And Tedros was so right to think that was gonna be weird, bc it would be so weird. Sophie being somewhere where she has to be inferior to Agatha all her life?! Don't make me laugh. She needed her own individual ending... and Soman actually wrote her a really good one!!! It was a positive riff on the concept introduced in book 1, of Nevermore, Paradise Alone, in that Sophie could be happy without the conventional Ever romance she destroyed herself repeatedly in the pursuit of, but not be utterly alone, bc she still had Agatha and her friends, and now some students. She adopts the Deanship of the School for Evil, which works incredibly well considering she was reforming Evil with her Lunchtime Lectures even in book 1, and it gives her influence, power and purpose, without her having to ursurp Agatha and impose herself upon a man who has not loved her since halfway through book 1 and will not be made to pretend to. (#tedrosagencyarc #tedrosgirlbossera). Also, I think it was a very good move to make her and Agatha have a day's ride of physical distance between them, to crack that weird codependence they have going on, and force them to develop separate lives where Agatha is not constantly worrying about how to defer to Sophie, or what Sophie will think. (Say what you will about Tagatha but Agatha used up all her deferential spirit on Sophie and has never spared any on Tedros. She will exercise her Woman's Right To Tell Tedros To Shut The Fuck Up. *tedros voice* mine lady wife is passing incensed with me, prithee good lord that I may perish, etc etc etc. he does argue but you can see him getting worse and worse at it throughout the books as he slowly realises a) it's useless b) she's like nearly always right).

So, that's all good right! It's a good ending! Everyone has a completed character arc and a happy ending, even if it's not conventional. All three books closed off. Nice! It--

SON OF A BITCH.

I'll only talk about OTK for brevity's sake. (I have never been brief in my life).

SGE has, for a while, had a Thing about needing to be smarter than readers. Not pinning this as a personal flaw on Soman's part, I actually think it's really just a product of the media environment that we're in right now. Creators get really really weird about fans guessing endings or plot twists. There is a preoccupation with being shocking and subversive. I don't think this is inherently really bad, since who DOESN'T want to impress their audience? But as it is these days it's a bit... extreme. Think Marvel not giving their actors entire scripts so they can't spoil things, or Sherlock and Westworld trying to outsmart their fanbases, or... Game of Thrones. Lol. All this to say, these books read like Soman desperately wanted to blindside readers with the Camelot Years, and especially the ending of One True King, but kind of couldn't, because it was a middle grade fairytale book and he can't kill off Tedros because the book says 8+ on the back, and it's not the done thing in mainstream middle grade. This meant that he had to resort to random bizarre plot points in order to make the path to the ending surprising, since the ending was pretty much predestined. That meant King Teapea, and the crystal ball, and the many, many deaths, and the Putsi bank, and the wizard wishes. And bc everyone was so stressed from the journey there, the ending seems nice and relieving, like an oasis. We got a wedding we expected to get two whole books ago! Yay!

...except we didn't, bc Tedros's freak magic grandpa DIED and stole the spotlight before the ceremony and then the book ends!

(as an actual ending scene it's fine and well written, I just have beef with merlin, and think the ending as a whole is. questionable. the ending ending is a perfectly servicable scene)

If you look too hard at the OTK ending as a whole, bits start falling off. Questions that have just not been answered are left. And it's not like TLEA, where it didn't really matter what Hester or Beatrix were gonna do, because we had no expectation of anything they should be doing. Here, the Coven started QFG looking for a School Master, as a key plot point in the new trilogy. It was sort of maybe implied it would be Nicola? At least I felt it was. But by the end, there is no School Master, the plot point is dropped, the Coven's quest is incomplete, and Nicola, despite QFG heavily insinuating she'd be important, is irrelevant. Sophie is now not Dean (it's... Manley?? Ok boring. and we don't even know who Good's is, it's probably Anemone) and is riding off into the sunset with Hort, whose wolf bit... died? Idk. Tedros is apparently a-ok with his dad sending him to be executed, and being executed in general. He's literally seen the abyss but he's chill w it. (Again; middle grade. Soman did a big scary concept, then couldn't make it scary, bc it was too scary for the kids. Fair is fair. Fanfic can fill the gap I guess.) Agatha's there, getting sidelined at her own wedding in a fairly OOC wedding dress, #storyofherlife. The Coven are doing the Sherrif's job or something, it's weird. Nicola has a kpop boyfriend. It's all weird.

(Tedros and Agatha get a much more balanced ending in TLEA, too; while both endings have a bend towards Sophie and are from her POV- which is fine if you think Sophie is the main character, which Soman seemingly does- Agatha gets almost no narrative attention at the prep for her own damn wedding, and considering Tedros got his head hacked off not too long ago, everyone seems a damn sight more concerned about other things. They're much more present in the ending of the School Years compared to the Camelot Years, ironically, considering they practically are Camelot. Figure that out.)

If you remember the promotional material for Quests for Glory (oh! I know, eons ago), they did trailers for various characters who were implied to be important, in rising order of importance. (These were really good btw. We were losing our minds. It was so fun). Tedros was billed as most important, which was the biggest fucking lie in the world, because he is STILL a supporting character in the CAMELOT YEARS, which should have been called the Sophie Years. But Nicola, Kiko, Bogden, Willam, Beatrix, Reena, and Kei were all on there, and hardly any of them ended up being important in the slightest. Bodgen and Willam were there for nothing but foreshadowing; even Willam being the brother of Tristan/Yara had no bearing. Kei was just there to obsess over Rhian and then die. Reena, Kiko, and Beatrix and Nicola were shunted into the Knights of Eleven alongside the other sidelined female characters who didn't have a job (Guinevere, Dean Brunhilde, The Coven, Maid Marian, Queen Jacinda). There is a whole scarf's worth of loose threads in the end of OTK, where these characters are introduced for one minor purpose, or are hangovers from previous books, and are either hastily killed off, or just simply purposeless.

I understand that Soman was just... obliged to do a lot of stuff in the OTK ending, (imagine if the wedding hadn't happened at all, that would have been my final straw) but really it's less the fanservice and bizarre choices, and more that entire loose threads are left dangling, and Sophie's ending, that piss me off so bad.

and that tedros wore a white and gold suit to his wedding in magic medieval fantasy world. for all the movie's faults at least they had confidence that tedros could slay...

Ppl argue that Sophie's ending is a 'learning to love yourself before you can love anyone else' kinda thing (in which case soman needs to stop taking plot pointers from rupaul), and her learning to settle for a man who isn't a perfect image of Tedrosesque Princeliness, which is a fair enough interpretation, but it is just... nowhere near as interesting as the TLEA ending? Her endgame being Hort is so... naff. Hort should have had a chance to develop as a person beyond his obsession with Sophie. The end of TLEA WAS his chance! But it doesn't happen, and he falls into the spike-pit trope of like, slightly stalkerish guy gets framed as funny and harmless and therefore gets the girl. It's not even consistent; he improves a bit, then he gets trolleyed and suggests offing Agatha, and then Sophie calls him a sad soft boy and for some reason we're meant to like, believe that, even though he's been acting a bit of a dick for no real reason. Also, I didn't even think many people cared about Hophie like that?! I didn't think Soman cared about Hophie like that! And I do not understand why Sophie couldn't have had Hort and the Deanship? Couldn't they have gone back to school and had one of those funny unethical Teachers Dating relationships, at the very least? The Deanship was her perfect ending! To take that away and replace it with Hort just seems so... idk, flat. I was so dismayed when Sophie started dismissing the role and talking down about it / letting Rhian convince her it was a lower purpose in QFG and ACOT; should have seen it coming that she'd ditch it. It's disappointing that the Deanship and the (albeit dysfunctional) love of Agatha, the Coven, Tedros, etc weren't seen as enough for her; they should have been. Love, purpose, food made no sense to me; she already had the first two! It makes so much more narrative sense for Sophie to be alone, but alone and happy, because it bucks the trends of villain's ultimate loneliness being a punishment! That was the whole thing! She was offered companionship in Camelot, and love from Hort, and she said no to both, because she chose solitude herself, and rewarded herself with it. It makes the originally less-than-ideal Paradise Alone into something she can like, because that's what Sophie does; when classic Evil isn't fit for her purpose she changes it to make it work for her! That's why she has to be Dean! She is New Evil! She is the advent of Evil relevance and progression! And that's why it's ok that she's also doing dumb shit like building statues of herself and making kids do menial tasks for her; it's funny, and it's making a point of her triumph. She's not punished; she's rewarded, with power and purpose and friends that love her. Why wasn't that enough?!

(Not to mention that Manley undid everything, so her brief stint as Dean was literally completely erased. Ugh.)

This is a mad ramble, but the point is; the OTK ending is so messy, and I genuinely am a little bit surprised that Soman's editors let it get through with so many holes in it? Just on a narrative level; no School Master, no Deans, no relevance for Nicola, no follow-through on most quests. I know that Soman clearly thought he couldn't rehash the ending of TLEA in OTK, which to some degree I agree with, but the ways he chose to differ were not ways I liked, and he didn't even tie up the things he'd set up in earlier books. If we do ever get that 'adult' third trilogy Soman keeps going on about, (which I sincerely doubt we will, and also hope we won't), perhaps we'll have a final 'official' ending, again... but I sincerely doubt it'll be anywhere near as good as the original ending, and the one I still like to consider the 'One True' ending. ha ha. alright go away I'm done