Lovely Little Liora

We’ll be talking about Liora, her backstory, her stepfamily and family, today, so spoilers ahead for Cinders of Glass!

Or as Gisele calls her, Lovely Little Lady Liora of Cindrilan.

Oh, Liora… She is a little different from the heroines I gravitate toward when writing. Characters like Aurelia and Aerona are the kind of heroines I usually gravitate toward. Angrier, harsher women who struggle with growth. Characters like Eirwen also come up, heroic to the core with determination in spades. Characters like Liora, however, are much rarer for me indeed, sweet and soft. But Liora does have what I always look for in a character; she is tremendously flawed.

At first glance, Gisele’s description of Liora is accurate. She’s kind and lovely and perfect… on the surface. Liora’s biggest flaws all relate to her family. It all relates to the approach I wanted to take with her stepfamily.

The sinister, subtler abuse.

One of the hardest questions to answer in a Cinderella retelling, in my opinion, is why does she stay with her stepfamily when they treat her so terribly? It can be hard to come up with a truly compelling reason (even though abusive situations are incredibly hard to escape no matter what the circumstance), and it often times is dependent on the world and society around her. If it’s possible for Cinderella to leave and just go work for someone else who won’t beat her, why doesn’t she? Sometimes it’s attachment to the family home or the staff. Sometimes it’s a magical or plot reason. And those are all great.

I’ve read plenty of Cinderella retellings where she’s longing to escape.

I wanted to write a Cinderella retelling where she didn’t want to.

I think the most compelling reason answer to why doesn’t she leave the abusive situation is because she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t think there’s anything to escape. Further, she wants to stay. She loves her stepfamily; she would never think of leaving them no matter how hard their lives are.

That’s one of the reasons why her stepfamily isn’t living a life of luxury or trying to despite having meager means. Liora doesn’t think she’s being treated any differently. They’re all poor, and they’re all working hard to get by. Every little thing factors into Liora’s mindset, into the manipulation Vesma has been doing for eight years.

The stepmother’s abuse isn’t calling Liora names or hitting her in order to make her do what she wants. Vesma controls Liora by saying all the right things to make Liora want to do what Vesma wants her to do. Vesma saw that it was going to be much easier to control Liora if she gave Liora the family she wanted.

Vesma calls her ‘dear girl’, just like Liora’s father did. She tells Liora she has to stay out of things for her own safety, because Vesma cares about Liora’s safety. She makes it Liora’s job to sell matches, knowing Liora can’t sell water in a drought. Liora’s father made her stepfamily her responsibility, and Vesma uses those words so carefully to enforce that idea, so subtly Liora thinks it’s all her own thoughts.

Vesma has spent eight years wearing Liora down so slowly, so subtly, Liora never even noticed. For example, if you try to put a frog into boiling water, it will jump out immediately. If you put a frog in a pot of normal water and then slowly increase the heat, the frog won’t notice, and you’ll be able to boil it alive.

This all works because of Vesma’s character. Instead of the greedy, social vulture, I wanted a stepmother who was calculating, who had bigger, more sinister goals. Since she’s a plant there to assist a conspiracy to break an alliance, it works perfectly that she has the same subtler manipulative approach to Liora. Vesma needs Liora, and she needs Liora docile and depressed and a shell of herself.

Of course, there’s only one reason Vesma was able to abuse Liora in such a softer, subtler way.

Liora’s father.

In the Little Match Girl, her father is the abusive figure in her life. As I’ve mentioned, there are some versions where Cinderella’s father is alive for the abuse. We don’t know why he lets it happen, what kind of a person he is, but I knew I wanted to incorporate this element of his participation or participation via passivity.

Remember that flaw I was talking about?

Liora’s biggest flaw is her commitment to the toxic mindset her father instilled in her when she was a child. The ‘family above everything’ mantra. It’s the foothold Vesma needed to manipulate Liora. It nearly gets Liora killed, multiple times. It costs her everything.

Of course, Liora’s father didn’t do this to her intentionally. He genuinely loved Liora. He genuinely believed family mattered above everything else; he lived by it. And he lost everything for it. But that doesn’t make it any less damaging for Liora. It just makes it all the more powerful, and so much harder for her to break past.

Liora’s biggest flaw is intrinsically connected to how she ended up in her situation, one she doesn’t even know she’s in. Vesma is a problem, her subtle manipulation has damaged Liora deeply, but Liora’s biggest problem was never truly Vesma, it was her own toxic belief system. As soon as Liora breaks past that belief system, Vesma loses all her power over Liora, which is why she then resorts to physical and magical power.

As for my approach with the stepsisters? I knew I also wanted that to be subtler and more nuanced than typically portrayed. There are retellings out there with more morally gray stepsisters, more nuanced relationships, and sometimes outright kind relationships, so I’m not pretending like I broke any new ground. I just knew I wanted something, like Vesma and Liora’s father, that still has the spirit of the original abusive, toxic relationship while still being subtler.

And the thing is, with a mother like the stepmother in Cinderella, why should she be any better to her own daughters? Of course, they’re hers, and a way for her to elevate her own status often, but I wanted to lean into that, especially with a character like Vesma. She is… ruthless. She has no qualms using Petrina and Marlena to meet her goals.

Petrina and Liora don’t have much of a relationship. Petrina tends to stay away, mostly because she’s not as good at manipulating as Vesma. Also Petrina is the same age as Liora, so Liora’s natural protective and caring instincts were always focused more on Marlena, especially since Petrina has always been able to take care of herself in Liora’s eyes.

Marlena. I wanted Liora to have a good relationship with one of her stepsisters, but I also didn’t want to diverge from the original completely. That’s how her relationship with Marlena happens. On the surface, it’s the best familial relationship Liora has. It doesn’t appear to be toxic at all. And when it starts to look toxic, it’s all on Vesma’s end, putting the pressure to take care of Marlena all on Liora’s shoulders. But it’s not all it appears to be. Vesma’s abuse takes its toll on Marlena, contributing to the toxicity of her relationship with Liora. Vesma isolates Marlena from Liora, using the band on Marlena to keep her from confiding in Liora, and while Liora is absorbed in solving the conspiracy, Marlena is more and more isolated. All of this feeds into Marlena’s mindset that Liora is completely unaware of until it bursts forth when after Liora is banished from the castle.

That’s when the problems in their relationship are all dragged to the surface. Because Marlena doesn’t have the same family first toxic mindset Liora does, and Liora is desperately trying to hold onto it because if she believes for even a second she might be wrong, she’ll have to face up to what she did. Marlena believes maybe now Liora will be willing to run away with her. Marlena is the one who has wanted to escape. She’s made plans, saved money, created a match to help her. But she has also been sitting in that house watching Liora run off to help everyone but her. She’s tired of waiting for Liora to choose her, so when Liora has the chance to go the palace and stop Vesma and Petrina, Marlena doesn’t care. She wants Liora to put her first. She doesn’t believe Vesma and Petrina can even be stopped. And she won’t risk her chance to escape on the tiny possibility Liora might succeed against insurmountable odds. Marlena would rather protect herself. So she makes Liora choose.

And that’s what makes their relationship toxic.

Marlena’s also a thirteen-year-old who has been used as a battery and production line for most her life as well as having spent the last year practically locked up in a house and isolated from the world. Liora learned toxic beliefs and behaviors from her father. Marlena learned them from Vesma.

I just love Marlena as a character. And it really did break my heart for her and Liora’s relationship to go the way it did, but it was what the story needed.

And of course, we can’t forget about Eran, the surprise blood relation. In Cinderella retellings, I always wonder, does she really have no other family? I thought it would be interesting if she did, and if she did, why can’t she go to them?

Eran was my answer.
He also serves the role of showing blood family as having the ability to be abusive, controlling, and toxic. He immediately tries to take control of Liora’s life. He tries to use her to accomplish his goals, and when it comes down to it, while he also has strong familial values, he will not put Liora above his goals.

Eran solved a lot of problems for me in terms of the plot. He was another side of the coin so to speak. All of these familial figures in Liora’s life end up being toxic and abusive. With the exception of Vesma, they aren’t doing it knowingly. Sometimes people and relationships are toxic and abusive no matter both sides intentions. It’s because there’s something internal that needs to be dealt with. Eran genuinely cared about Liora because she was family, but he did not have the same toxic mindset Liora had from her father. He had a lot of guilt. And he had a lot of anger. So similarly, that made it very easy for him to be manipulated by the Castians, Firmin, specifically into becoming their scapegoat. And like Liora, he didn’t realize he was being manipulated too. It doesn’t make him innocent. Just like Liora wasn’t innocent. Their actions were still their own, and there were still consequences to suffer. But they weren’t the same either.

Eran believed he always knew best. He wouldn’t listen to anyone and barged into Liora’s life ready to take charge and manage it since she so clearly couldn’t in his eyes. The main difference is that Liora was able to step back and recognize the damage her toxic mindset and the abusive relationship in her life had done not just to her, but that she had used to justify her actions, and she was able to take action to start to make up for it. Liora’s not a bitter, angry person. Eran is. He couldn’t let go of his anger and bitterness toward the royal family to realize he was being manipulated, and that anger still led him to do what he did. He’s what Liora could have been.

So that’s Liora’s family and the reasoning for how I approached each relationship with the context of the original fairytales! Poor girl can’t catch a break, but you all can’t be too surprised given Aerona’s backstory! Liora, however, is about as opposite of Aerona as one can get. Liora never lost her light even when she was drowning in abusive relationships and toxic mindsets. That’s what I think makes a Cinderella figure and a Little Match Girl. No matter how tragic, she doesn’t give up and she doesn’t let it turn her into someone who is consumed with anger and bitterness.

Which of course drives characters like Gisele insane.

And up next, we’ll be talking about our Prince Charming. The Master Manipulator. Cynrik himself! I’m so excited to talk to you all about my approach to Prince Charming! If for some reason you read this without haven’t read Cinders of Glass, you can grab it here!