by marathemara

Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom, a princess lived in a beautiful palace at the bottom of the sea. The palace was guarded by a terrible monster which the princess had to work hard to feed, but the princess was never unhappy. She spent her days collecting colorful fish, exploring the ocean with a handsome prince by her side, and dreaming of the day when she would be free from her tower and become queen. She would protect the world, the way she protected her fish, and the way the terrible monster outside protected her. One day she would be the mother of the world.

When we first meet Feferi Peixes, we see her living this fairytale. She is the heiress to the Alternian empire; her lusus, which she shares with the Empress, is the monstrous Emissary of the Horrorterrors to Alternia; and she has big plans to make life on her planet much more pleasant and less deadly than the society she grew up in. But it’s not to be: she is destined to play SGRUB, to leave her empire behind to help build a new universe, and to eventually be murdered by her handsome prince.

In fact, Feferi’s dream of a perfect world, of a happy ending for everybody under her benevolent rule, had always been doomed. We realize this quickly once we learn that Alternia is a post-Scratch session whose pre-Scratch counterpart is a world where Feferi was empress. That world, Beforus, stagnated culturally and genetically. Empress Feferi’s mandate that the higher castes should care for the lower castes led to the Beforan players being a generation of spoiled brats, too petty and indecisive to finish the Game, not to mention that Feferi’s heiress discovered SGRUB while running away from her royal duties. Feferi had her chance to become the mother of the world, and that world had to be Scratched to keep the Game going.

But in spite of being a doomed princess in a fairytale that can have no happy ending, Feferi is decisive and pragmatic. She makes a deal with the Horrorterrors to create the dreambubbles which become the afterlife for the Beforan, Alternian, and Earth session. She knows her own heart and does what she believes is right: ending her emotionally draining moirallegiance with Eridan as soon as she no longer had to rely on him to feed her lusus, rushing to revive Sollux after the Vast Glub (with a fairytale first kiss, no less), and standing up for her friends against Eridan.

Feferi doesn’t appear much in Homestuck. But when she does appear, she’s dreaming of a better life, sacrificing herself for her friends, and protecting them, even after her death. That’s the kind of princess I have to admire.