Her father sent her to Luna-Vaxor after the coup, and I think it only made her more paranoid. The Vath have no love for her, you know. She is a half-breed, so far as they are concerned, and those who do not outright hate her for her heritage resent her for being the presumed heir to the imperial throne. But they bred a deep mistrust of us in her—she believes if I am allowed freedom I will take up arms against her.”
Maram's character continues to develop complexity, despite her monstrous introduction, and I love that she becomes so much more layered as Amani gets to know her, not just in Mirage but in Court of Lions (which I have also read). And Maram's complexity is inextricable from the political complexities at work here-- she is hated by the people she was taught to prize most highly (the Vath), and hated by the people she was taught to denigrate; she occupies an impossible space between two groups. I sometimes see her characterized as a typical spoiled princess in reviews of this book that I stumble across-- I feel that those reviews fail to acknowledge the impossibility of her situation and the limits of her understanding of herself, and the fact that while she is a perpetrator of the violence done to the colonized, she is also a victim of the same violence, simultaneously. Which isn't me trying to excuse her behavior, but there is undeniably more to her than "typical spoiled princess", which is what makes her such an interesting character.
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