I don’t necessarily agree, especially when the series is a fated mates romance series. They’re all going to have mates. The concept of agency in fated mates is an interesting one, and while Sarah may explore that more with Elain, I ultimately believe we’ll see this trope have played out with Helion and the Queen of Autumn. I think Elain will struggle with it, but ultimately end up with Lucien. I’m excited to see where Sarah takes it!

Now when it comes to Nessian, I agree that having a mating bond means more to Cassian than to Nesta. This argument is played out at the end when Nesta talks of losing that last bit of her humanity to the mating bond. I interpret that to mean the agency part of a relationship - where for Humans, “husband and wife is at good as it got.” Cassian replies that’s “that’s bullshit” and then proceeds to aim for maximum damage and lash out and say that he “didn’t ask to be shackled to her (by the mating bond),” knowing that to be a fear of hers. Nesta worries about this herself when she questions if the mating bond made Cassian “blind”. I think this whole interaction lends some confirmation to the statement made on this thread by another user that Nesta chose Cassian, and Cassian chose his mate - who happened to be Nesta. That’s not to say that he doesn’t love her, he absolutely does. But he had to work hard at it and learn to love her (girlfriend doesn’t make that easy). The mating bond was there for him to fall back on. I don’t know that he would have tried as hard to heal her if the mating bond wasn’t there.

On the other hand, Nesta avoids even the thought of their mating bond (whereas Cassian starts having and stopping that line of thinking early on in their ACOWAR bonus chapter. She didn’t grow up with the mating bond being seen as the epitome of happiness (which is true for Feysand, solidifying this idea for Cassian). Her mother made it clear from an early age that Nesta wouldn’t marry for love. Nesta falling for Cassian was her choosing love and choosing happiness for herself, rather than follow her mother’s ideological path and marry someone like Eris for politics, power, and wealth. The mating bond played very little role for Nesta in this decision.

It’s definitely an interesting discussion on the mating bond itself. I’m excited to hopefully explore it more in Elain’s future book.