The only logical contradiction i find is that Winter keep pushing this "Rowan gathering his own power structure" with her.
With all due respect to Elf Wench what power she has except nice ass?
She is submissive but she will be submissive to anyone who apply enough force to her.
I don't disagree that she screams of being a Jez spy- it would fit the general trajectory of Jezera's manipulations- and while Liu may have started out like that I rather expect it to backfire if that is the case.
There is one piece that confuses me as to if this narrative will be the case though. We already have two narratives in which Jezera tries to get someone to be her spy by turning them into a whore. Namely Alexia's NTR pathing and Shaya. Will Winter lean into that narrative and give it to us again in another iteration with Liurial to reinforce that narrative or does he think it is established enough already and will try to give us a new flavor of narrative with Liurial. Maybe a little of both? I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it in Jan for the Steam release at any rate.
Liurial helps quite a lot by taking clerical duties off of Rowan's plate- freeing him to complete other tasks- such as bullying his Elf
But she also does have narrative of helping Rowan obscure sensitive information to help people- in addition to other loyal moves. They usually rely on her cleverness instead of her strength though.
I think her physical powerlessness is exactly what makes her interesting. The whole narrative sets her up to look weak, but bravery from a place of weakness in many ways is far more heroic than bravery from a place of strength.
I fully expect her to subvert every expectation about her weakness in her Arc finale. She will do something reckless to help Rowan and either bail him out of a tough situation or help him fight through a tough situation together.
It should also be noted that political / administrative strength is also strength and it is often more powerful than raw might in tons of vectors. At minimum Luirial bolsters Rowan's ability to exploit this type of strength- at maximum she has enough understanding of politics / administration to generate that sort of clout on her own. Viewing her as not adding power to Rowan's movement to rebel feels like an oversimplification of power dynamics.
Not sure how much detail you want here:
1) Hel 2) Cla-min 3) Liu 4) Amerine 5) Patricia
Heartsong and Cla-min Jr could jump up a lot of places if they got more content. I really love Heartsong's narrative so far- and Cla-min Jr is unbelievably cute.
