Yep. Anyway, she's my cousin. Half-cousin. Our fathers used to politely tolerate each other but now they hate each others' guts and it's messing everything up. 

Great. Why do they hate each other now?

You'd kind of only be getting one side of the story. 

I will take it with a grain of salt.

My father was ten. His mother died. She'd been deeply unhappy and having a hard time wanting to be alive. The Valar will put you back. The King begged her to come back, and when begging didn't work demanded, and when demanding didn't work ordered, and eventually she told him to fuck off. 

And the King gets invited by his friend the King of Valimar to come to Valimar to cope with his grief, and who does he meet on arriving but the King's adoring and single and very pretty sister. Who tells him she's always been in love with him. And the Valar say he can remarry only if Miriel - my grandmother - agrees to stay dead forever, and he goes to her and says "I found someone who'll give me more children!" and she says "great, have fun" and they marry.

My father was not okay. He left as soon as he was old enough to make it and the King kept trying to make him love his wife and my father's half-siblings but they just are very different kinds of people and were never better than civil.

And then my father decided that he might want to leave Valinor one day, and his half-brother decided that this made him a reckless egomaniac unsuited to the throne and started trying to convince the King to throw my father out of the succession. And they both got steadily nastier to each other from there. 

If you were worried about being unfair to your father's half-brother that is not the person I'm coming away from this with a particular negative reaction towards.

I mean I don't want you to hate the King either, he's a shit father but a very good King. 

I don't hate him, I just--observe that he was being a shit father in that story.

Yeah. He realized what he did wrong and has been trying to make it up to my father ever since, but his other children just see it as hurtful favoritism.

That sounds--not unjustified.

No. But - demanding concessions from my father as compensation for the fact his father's still trying to make it up to him does not help. And I'm sorry they're sad, but I'm not sure that how we're supposed to react to calls to disown us changes if the people making them are really just feeling unloved. They are still powerful and still trying to get us excised from the family tree.

Is she not hugging him right now? This should be rectified.

Everyone's started carrying weapons in the streets. It's just stupid.

They--oh, hell, that is not going to end well.

Wait what are you worried is going to happen? It's paradise, they're just showboating.

People responding to hostility by carrying weapons only needs one idiot or accident to turn into a disaster.

We have idiots and accidents but we don't have anyone who'd stab another person.

Good. I guess Paradise really is better at that kind of thing, then.

People do die, but really rarely, in accidents. No one's ever hurt anyone else.

Good for you.

The current drama might end with us getting thrown out but it won't get anyone hurt.

I hope that doesn't happen.

I hate Tirion so I shouldn't even give a fuck. But it'd be hard on my family.

You should be not there because you choose not to be, not because you can't.

But we're irresponsible and unstable and an embarrassment, don't you know.