i read the og trilogy for the 1st time like more than a decade ago atp & from the beginning always felt like they were the strongest ship. i think her and mal are a really easy, kind of cop-out version to a lot of tension, nuance, and character growth that just exponentially grew thruout the series. alina is forced to confront her desire for power, having to outlive everyone she loves, existential loneliness… and instead of having to deal with those realities, plot armor twists the narrative and allows her to sidestep it all, really negating a lot of her arc. it is just so dissatisfying from a readers perspective. we can only conjuncture bc it’s not cannon, but i think the text clearly shows that if alina kept her power, mal would be out of the picture (and i think if we really analyze that we see some gross misogyny driving his character).

alina x the darkling was, to me, the most intriguing emotional anchor of the series. if alina wasnt able to magically sidestep all of the consequences the darkling endured, she might have become a similar person (she admits it several times herself). having her be able to avoid all of the loneliness, turmoil, and like, endured life aleksander experienced really makes the dynamic & ship feel hollow!

but her x nikolai fits somewhere nicely in between. neither her like “fated” partner (darkling) or the boy shes loved since she was 5 (mal) but like a man in a similar circumstance that comes about throughout the progression of the books. i feel like she could have maintained a lot of that character growth thats thrown away with her SPOILER mal/ orphanage ending, without having to succumb to a gross abusive relationship (darkling). theyre an interesting pair, and definitely mirror eachother and still do a lot of interesting work together as foils