Wings of Fire Rants

Glory

Glory is an ACTUAL queen.

In more ways than one actually (look at me pulling a funny).

Tbh, Glory may or may not be responsible for my entire personality at the moment. Sarcastic, snarky, grumpy, curt... Yeah, sounds about right.

In case you couldn't already tell... I LOVE GLORY WITH MY ENTIRE HEART.

I'm not even exaggerating when I say I would quite literally lay down my life for her without a moment's hesitation. I would happily serve Glory for all my days if I was a RainWing or NightWing under her rule. Like fr fr I actually look up to her-

And when Morrowseer was talking about killing her I was like "Excuse me??????" Like bestie I'm about to throw HANDS at that rotten cucumber of a dragon like ACTUALLY come at me!

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself... Lemme backtrack a bit.

So Glory has a very sarcastic personality. She can be grumpy at times, especially when deprived of her suntime. She's much like Tsunami in the sense that she can and will fight dragons that attempt to hurt her friends, and they both share the same ferocity, though Glory's better at controlling it. She's determined and does not give up easily, as we can see when she participated in the RainWing Royal Challenge to become queen to help save all the RainWings. If she was in a Harry Potter house, she'd probably be a Gryffindor.

I personally love her "Fine, I'll do it myself" mentality. It helps her get things done, and I relate with her a lot in that regard.

This mentality basically originated because of how the guardians treated her when the Dragonets of Destiny were still under the mountain. It was especially fuelled by Kestrel and Morrowseer, who always acted as if she was stupid, lazy, and useless, just because she was a RainWing and not a SkyWing.

(All the guardians also collectively blamed Webs for this since he brought Glory's egg in the first place when it literally was the only option after the SkyWing died, which just goes to show how toxic the guardians are. But more on that in another chapter).

Due to the discrimination she recieved, Glory basically promises herself to never become the stupid RainWing everyone assumes she is, therefore leading to her "Fine, I'll do it myself" mentality that is actually, for the most part, a very good thing.

This mentality reinforced her steely determination, which is what helps her to be such a good and fair queen later on in life.

However, one thing about this philosophy she has is that it leads her to believe that she MUST do everything alone. She has difficulty asking for help since she has this intense need to prove herself and show the world that everyone's wrong about RainWings.

(Tbh I honestly feel the same way. Sometimes, I feel as if I need to prove my worth by overachieving and being the best in everything, and it feels as if asking for help takes away from that).

That's why she was so angry when she found out that, for the most part, the stereotypes about RainWings were true.

For example, she was particularly frustrated with the queen system the RainWings had, which just allowed anyone who felt like it to rule the tribe each month. And when she learned about how the RainWings were disappearing and the queens weren't doing anything about it, her "I'll do it myself" mentality immediately kicked in.

She quite literally said, "If these queens won't do anything, then I'll become the queen."

And then she just... did.

I dare you to look me in the eyes and tell me she is NOT the coolest dragon you have ever seen. I actually dare you.

Glory has a really well written character arc, even though she started off as a good character already. As time went on, she learned to trust others more, which helped her realize that she didn't always have to be so self reliant. She learned she was able to depend on her friends (the rest of the DoD), Deathbringer, and some of the other RainWings that she had once considered silly, like Jambu and Kinkajou.

The RainWing Royal Challenge also helped with this, because it forced her to put her faith in RainWings she didn't know so well. And though she initially doubted them, she found that some of the other RainWings were just as capable as she was, and she wasn't necessarily the only one bothered by the bad stigma around the tribe.

Like when Tamarin was taking so long to find the flower in one of the challenges, Glory assumed she would fail because she was blind. But when Tamarin successfully found the flower and won the challenge, it showed Glory that some dragons had skills that she didn't, even despite physical disabilities.

I think the fact that some other RainWings had skills that Glory didn't have actually ended up helping her in the long run. She probably felt there was a lot of pressure on her, since it looked like she was the only RainWing who cared about anything at all. She felt as if she had to save her tribe from the NightWings and get rid of the RainWing stereotypes all by herself.

However, when she realized there were others who did care and had good skill sets, it helped relieve some of the pressure on her, which in turn helped her to trust other dragons more often.

She's also beginning to realize that she doesn't have to constantly prove herself. I think she still struggles with this, even after she became queen. I imagine she has a hard time dealing with some of the other queens who look down on her because of her age, and even more pressure was put on her shoulders when she started ruling the NightWings as well.

(But okay can we just talk about how impressive that is? Other monarchs like Blister and Blaze would have quite literally killed for an opportunity like that, and Glory just??? No violence necessary??? Like actually slay-)

I don't think Glory's development is over yet. Although we don't see her as often after the first arc, there is definitely a difference between Glory in The Hidden Kingdom and Glory in Winter Turning as she figures out she doesn't always have to worry about proving her worth.

This is great writing because characters don't stop changing just because we've moved on to different stories and plots, so I'm happy that Tui has the ability to pay such good attention to details like this.

So, put simply, Glory's mentality went from "Fine, I'll do it myself," to " Fine, I'll get my friends and together, we're gonna kick your butt." She still retained a bunch of her independence and is still very capable of fending for herself and her friends without any help, which I lowkey respect her for.

But it's also good that she's learning she doesn't always have to prove herself by working alone and it's okay to accept help when she needs it.

Glory has been one of my favorite characters in Wings of Fire for a long time, and as I did more research on her and really examined her character, I realized how well written she is. At first I just liked her for her personality, but now I love her for her personality, depth, relatability, and development.

Finding things out about your favorite characters is actually so much fun lmao-

In modern times, she would 10/10 become a businesswoman and be the CEO of like, three different successful companies.

Also, sorry if this chapter didn't make a lot of sense lmao. I just made a lot of observations about a character I really love, so obsession and fangirling kind of mixed together to create this mess of a commentary...

Alright, that's all I have to say for the amazing, beautiful, wonderful Glory. Next character :D