She doesn't, really, but she does anyway.

So.

The poetry is so bad that, even though she's not particularly religious, she feels that it's kind of offensive to Shelyn herself. Both on an artistic front, and on an 'emotional understanding of love' front.

She has the grace to not immediately burn it, but she's sorely tempted. She'll just have to leave it where Linzi can see it, and she'll do it for her.

Once the terrible statue is hidden under a large blanket, and the affront to poetry itself is in prime destruction-by-bard territory, she does get to properly thinking about it.

Highly questionable artistic tastes aside, it's not the worst possible match?

Pitax is her western neighbor, and its capital city (if not its countryside) are comparatively older and more established than Rivenholm's downright provincial capital of Ivoria. They have access to the Yhalt river, which connects to Kallas lake, which itself connects to both Lake Encarthan and the Inner Sea itself. The closest alternative is through Mivon, which, yes that is one of the reasons why she makes a point to get along with them, but their river also goes directly through, and is primarily controlled by, Galt. So. Since they do not particularly look kindly on those who give themselves crowns, even tasteful silver ones that were only accepted after literal years of cultural pressure, that is not in fact the safest export option available to her or anyone working for her.

Sivetrys is many things, but one of them is a wand-maker. This makes her a businesswoman, too. Teleporting her wands of Endure Elements, Fireball, Grease and Entangle all the way to Lastwall and Absalom (yes, in that order of importance, yes she is taking a loss by not going with Absalom first, Lastwall is both closer and also aligned with Good, they get first dibs, especially for the dangerous wands) is expensive. Having reliable river access to both, protected by another powerful adventurer and a whole lot of merchants and warlords and whatnot who have a vested interest in trade being reliable, well. ... That's a pretty good deal, actually.

Admittedly, it's sort of... selling herself to a guy who is distinctly not on the upper end of the alignment spectrum... who is hated with a passion by at least one of her friends, and who is at least rumored to take whatever he likes from anyone he finds attractive that he has power over, and who at the very least definitely okayed some truly distasteful artistic works, but...

Access to Kallas. That she didn't have to kill anyone over, that everyone can agree is very legitimate and above board, and forward-thinking and really definitely not anything like Razmir. It gives her a solid and firm ally against Cyprian, if he makes it further north, instead of Mivon, who is an ally in some senses but then also distinctly elects a mayor, and Brevoy, who she just spent the better part of the last year personally pissing off. This would be both the form of Irovetti himself, and the established council of Pitax, who really just want to make money, and an item crafting sorceress with teleportation is actually really useful for that. It would neatly cement her as not just a puppet of Brevoy to the rest of the River Kingdoms, having gone very obviously native, and maybe get them thinking about not just petty power squabbles, but coming together for larger, more ambitious power struggles.

It's - look, she agreed to be a monarch, so she's thinking like one, it's her responsibility to do so.

She wouldn't have accepted this thankless job and its and its nest of headaches and hornets if she didn't think she could do some good with it. Some Good, as Pharasma sees it, too, but mostly just. Stability and safety for people that want to live their lives. The River Kingdoms are objectively a flaming disaster, petty warring banditry masquerading as monarchy, killing people and redrawing lines every campaign season. She came here specifically to circle up, because it sucked, without being quite so dangerous and soul destroying as the literal Worldwound, because she was only barely second circle. And then she killed a terrible guy who was making people miserable, then stayed a bit too long in a reliable location, with access to Fly and Fireball and the desire to not leave people to suffer, and - people started to rely on her being there. Sivetrys is not, actually, Lawful. (She does not see how it is viable to be Lawful in the River Kingdoms while in charge of a country, and dealing with the people she has to deal with.) But that doesn't mean she just wants to abandon the job she's picked up, either.

If she wanted - what, a quiet life, a pleasant husband, to pop out half a dozen kids that are well fed and loved, to have a comfortable retirement in some nice place that didn't have fucking trolls trying to make their own troll kingdoms where other sapients are for food, she could have it. She could have had it for a while now. She is a powerful sorceress that crafts wands and magical trinkets, and she can teleport. Instead, she fought the lich. (Technically, Vordakai was a demilich. However, Sivetrys is not Lawful, and does not have to be perfectly accurate in her rhetoric. Lich was in the name, therefore: it is lich in explanations.) She risked a fate worse than some afterlives, being bound to her own corpse working for said lich, enslaving everyone else he could touch until he ran out of power to puppet them, until someone killed him. Instead, she put the party together, talking people she loves like family into something incredibly dangerous, she wrote to Lastwall to lend her a paladin for a really just cause, she hit sixth circle and tore his gods-damned sanctuary down with a barrage of Greater Dispel Magics, and then she (along with her party, and that very nice paladin) killed him, permanently, completely, such that he will not be coming back.

What kind of danger is an asshole mortal husband, compared to facing a potentially infinitely torturous existence, being forced to ruin the lives of people she'd fought for?

Not much of one, is what. Not really. Not long term. And that's - how she thinks, now, most of the time.

But, also, it might just be a dumbass decision that she's talking herself into because she's too Good for her own good, and has more splendor than sense when it comes to making arguments. She knows these things about herself. She tries to compensate for them.

So she'll be sensible about this.

".... ssssssooo not that I'm not thrilled to see my old schoolmates again, and rub in their faces how incredibly awesome I've become, but..."

"This is a foolish, naive, and doomed endeavor that will end only in sorrow and bloodshed, or perhaps poison in the night?" offers the resident critic.

"Yeah. That."

"Hey, it's a tournament for adventurers. If my nascent aspirations of a River Kingdom dynasty are all actually in vain, there will nonetheless be some really nice magical items to buy." And maybe copy the design ideas of. What? She's not Lawful, she doesn't have to play fair.

"Ew. Ew, ew, ew. Literally anyone else, Sivi. Troll king. Stag Lord. Some guy you met at the tavern. Ekundayo. You don't know yet, but you'll see."

"I think it's very noble, to want to try and turn an evil man from his dark path," says their cleric of Sarenrae.

"Nope. Nope. Nope. You haven't met him, I have. You don't know how wrong you are, but you are so, so, so wrong, and you will look back on this day, and you will wince."

"I don't think he can be worse than the statue and poetry," says Sivetrys, and then off they teleport.

He is so much worse.

So, so, so much worse.

He specifically asked for the statue, in all of its - itselfness. He is himself something of a bard, and he wrote the damn poem.

"NOPE," she says, the minute they're back in Rivenholm, under her Mage's Private Sanctum and away from prying ears and eyes. "Nope, nope, that's, nope, nope nope nope nope ew Prestidigitation is not enough I need a bath -"

"I told you," says Linzi, who is being very strong and containing her smugness about how right she was. (She was very right, though.)

"You did! You absolutely did! I apologize! I should have listened! I was foolish and dumb and did not realize how he's - just -"

Sivetrys requires snuggles with her kitty, a normal and rational way to deal with upsetting things.

"Gross? Handsy? Self-absorbed and narcissistic? In desperate need of a laundry wizard, and a bath? Like twice your age, which is pretty impressive considering you're a half-elf?"

"Yep. Those. All of those. Ugh." She buries her face into leopard fluff.

"I do think you acquitted yourself fairly well," offers Tristian.

"If by 'well,' you mean gave every petty two-bit gossip columnist some juicy material for the corner scrivener's to copy, then yes, certainly."