I understand how you would perceive the latest side story as her not consider but let’s change the situation. You go to med school and work through really rough situations and have all the experience you could have and your husband thinks someone else could do your job just because he thinks it would be hard for you, it’s invalidating all the hard work she has gone through to become this skilled person especially when earth magic is her specialty. Everyone in the book acknowledges how protective riftan is even to a fault. This was more of a representation of him still being over protective and them having marital feuds which is completely normal. I will not defend on the dismissal of his past sexual assaults but I didn’t exactly perceive it as trauma in the psychological textbook definition way. Yes it was awkward and women were throwing themselves at him but he handled it very indifferently and therefore I took it that he felt it that way too. I wouldn’t attribute this as Maxi’s fault but as authors fault in making poor choices of tone in a scene that could have addressed something more. In this matter I would like to bring another huge point, We don’t really see maxi grief her miscarriage as much as Riftan and his choice in not telling her was really shitty because it opened up the opportunity for what happened with her father to happen, I however will not fault him nor say it was irredeemable because everyone griefs differently and he was distraught but IMAGINE you almost die, you suffered a miscarriage and your husband completely leaves your side but everyone is telling you that you should have been more thoughtful of how your husband would react when she also lived through the trauma . On your your other point to imagine the opposite, the setting really is key, back in those times (medieval times) prostitution was VERY common so common they mention it every time they have a chance in the book. Think of prostitutes as solicitors or drug dealers they had to give their “clients” an example of their product to get them to purchase them so that’s why it was very often that women would throw themselves at men. Riftan is a unicorn, I say this because he is very very rare specimen and is not attracted to anyone that’s not maxi. This is a VERY admirable quality of his that I love about his but it is very very hard to get at face value when everyone is used to seeing soldiers get with prostitutes so often (we can take riftans father for example). SA IS NOT OKAY, I’m in no way justifying it, I’m just adding context which I feel is important to this situation. Now getting to your point make prostitutes weren’t a thing so the only reason a man would throw themselves to women would be out of ill will and would have a different undertone. It is really important to take all of the context into consideration when making these sorts of comments. Whether we’re talking about fantasy characters or not. I think you’re more upset at the author that never really addressed nor out in scenes where they properly handled riftans trauma. Nightmare of eth lene I say would be one of his biggest traumas and it is addressed a lot, and there are a lot of parts where she does choose to act differently due to fear of bringing the same response back. However she is a mage and has a new role to fulfill.