It's a Trailer Park of Emotion!: A Caress of Twilight

They had been a couple for a hundred years, but their coupling had produced no children. Taranis had asked Maeve to become his next wife, and she said no. Merry remarks that turning the King down was not enough of an offense to be exiled from court. Maeve said that she had called Taranis out for being sterile – he and his wife, Conan, had not produced any children in their 100 years of marriage, but as soon as she was with another sidhe man, she almost immediately became pregnant. Taranis had been married to other women prior to Conan, and none of his marriages had produced any children. Taranis always blamed the women, but when Conan went on to have children with another sidhe male, it made Maeve believe it was Taranis who was sterile, not the women.

This revelation causes Merry to spill her lemonade all over herself like a giant clumsy doofus. Oh great, yet another “attractive, but not overly so, clumsy, relatable” female protagonist to add to our collection!

“You told Taranis this to his face?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re braver than you seem.” Or stupider, I added in my head.
“He demanded I tell him why I would not have him as a husband. I said I wished to have a child and I didn’t believe that he could give me one.”
I just stared at her, trying to think about the implications of what she’d said. “If what you say is true, then the royals could demand the king make the ultimate sacrifice. They could demand he allow himself to be killed as part of one of the great holy days.”

How – how has no one else realized this? If your society is based upon having more and more pure blood sidhe nobles, wouldn’t SOMEONE become suspicious when the King of your society goes for millennia without producing children, always blaming the women for being sterile, but then his exes go on to have children as soon as they get with another dude? Why is it only Maeve that mentions this?

Maeve says that she believes others have become suspicious of the King’s sterility, but apparently not enough of them to do anything about it? The nobles could force a vote to force Taranis out of his position, I guess, but no one does anything because apparently all sidhes are a bunch of apathetic jackasses.

“All of the children born to us in the last six hundred years have been mixed blood. Either rapes during the wars of Unseelie warriors, or ones like yourself that are very mixed indeed. Mixed blood, stronger blood, Meredith. Our king has doomed us to die as a people because he is too proud to step down from the throne.”
“If he stepped down because he was infertile, the other royals could still demand he be killed to ensure the fertility of the rest.”
“And they would,” Maeve said, “if they discovered that I told him of his little problem a century ago.”
She was right. If Taranis had simply not known, then they might have forgiven him and allowed him to step down. But to have known for a century and have done nothing … They would see his blood sprinkled over the fields for that.

Just then, there is a commotion behind Merry, so she turns to see a new man enter the pool area – Gordon Reed, Maeve’s husband. Merry could tell he was very, very sick by his appearance, all sunken eyes, sallow skin. Maeve holds out her hand to him, and he takes is, smiling, and Merry wonders what it must be like to grow old and sick while watching their loved one remain unchanged and beautiful. YOU’LL FIND OUT SOON, MERRY, YOU MORTAL LOSER.

Merry watches Maeve and Gordon interact and realizes that Maeve truly loves him, and she was truly terrified of losing him. Merry looks Maeve in the eye, and she sees that Maeve’s eyes are full of tears. She’s on the verge of weeping, but holding strong around the other sidhe.

Her voice was low, but clear. “Gordon and I want a child, Meredith.”
“How –“ I stopped; I couldn’t ask it, not in front of both of them.
“How long does Gordon have?” Maeve asked for me.
I nodded.
“Six …” Maeve’s voice broke. She tried to regain herself, but finally Gordon answered, “Six weeks, maybe three months at the outside.” His voice was calm, accepting. He stroked Maeve’s silky hair.
Maeve rolled her face to stare at me. The look in her eyes wasn’t accepting, or calm. It was frantic.
I knew now why, after a hundred years, Maeve had been willing to risk Taranis’s anger to seek help from another sidhe. Conchenn, goddess of beauty and spring, was running out of time.

But… you just explained that the only children born in faerie over the last several hundred years were children of mixed blood. So, by logic of this story, Maeve should be able to conceive a child with Gordon, a human. OH WAIT, DID I SAY LOGIC? HA HA HA I’m so silly.

A Caress of Twilight - Chapter 14