I'm somewhat confused about how Jadina and Halan's engagement was supposed to work.
First off, Orchidia is a matrilineal monarchy and, as explained by professor Vangelis, this means that the current king is merely a royal consort whose duties are more in line with those of an ambassador than a monarch; Jadina was the only (known) princess of Orchidia and had to go through the Eagle Staff ceremony to prove her legitimacy as heir to the throne, which she eventually succeeded in doing. Then you have Halan, crown prince of Sabledoray who as far as one can see has no siblings, who eventually becomes king Halan the Great. What was queen Adeyrid thinking when she and king Salim decided to affiance her daughter and his son, the one and only heirs to their respective thrones? From the political alliance angle I kind of get it, but there's a snag: Halan can't be consort of Orchidia because he is to be king of his own nation, and Jadina can't be queen of Sabledoray because she has already proven herself worthy of leading and protecting her own people. Knowing what we know of how things work on their end, Jadina's parents were supposed to find her a consort, not make her consort of someone else's kingdom. Jadina's father king Kinder was most likely a lesser aristocrat or a second prince of a foreign nation when he was arranged to marry Aderyid. How on Earth was this intended to work with Halan and Jadina? Were they meant to conduct their business separately, rule like a divorced couple? Were they planning on taking the alliance further by conjoining the kingdoms? What if Halan and Jadina had had children, would the succession work the Orchidian way or the Sabledoran way? By all accounts, it doesn't make any sense.
It's possible that they were meant to each rule their own kingdom separetely and that the only goal was for their union to bear heirs from both dynasties. If it's a girl, she goes to Orchidia to be formed as the next candidate for Jadilyna's trial and if it's a boy, he goes to Sabledoray as the heir to the throne. Admitedly, it's a strange arrangement but Orchidia and Sabledoray are shown repeatedly to be two of the most powerful nations on Alysia so linking the royal families was probably seen as very important by the queen and king at the time, especially with the threat of Darkhell rising in the background.
Weirdly, even though Anathos has taken over Danael's body and completely overridden his host's personality (ie, Danael is full-on dead), he seems to have some trace of... admiration? For Jadina, to the point where her villainous clone is markedly his favorite of the four Hellions, and the villainous clone on her part is quite obviously enamored with him. Given that Anathos created the Hellions from the Legendaries' blood and tweaked them to his own requirements, this means he must have purposefully kept Jadina's love for Danael. Not loyalty, love. Why? What would have been the point? What does he need his underling to be in love with him for? How does it benefit him? Mightn't he just have made her irreproachably loyal to him and called it a day? Or is the implication that Anathos being "perverted" by God standards would include stooping to something so human as love/sex, and worse, defiling its very concept and exploiting it to his own ends? It gets worse when you consider that Dark-Jadina, much like her "blood donor" Jadina, has the physical appearance of a twelve-year-old girl. Let that sink in for a moment.
Considering he shows zero hesitation to destroy her body just to make a surprise attack on Jadina, it's fair to say that the relationship is 100% one-sided. It might be his way to toy with the real Jadina by having her duplicate swoon over him just to twist the knife over the loss of Danael, or he simply didn't feel the need to change something that was already there when he created her because it suited his needs anyway. In both case, it's just another reminder that he is a Complete Monster.
Did Queen Adeyrid really not notice anything different about Vangelis?
Adeyrid and Vangelis have known each other since she was twelve and he was fifteen. They presumably grew up together, and somewhere down the line they fell into a love they couldn't openly act upon because of their respective stations (not that it stopped them from doing anything in secret). It is reasonable to assume that Adeyrid is probably the person who knows Vangelis the best, yet when he was killed and replaced by Abyss, she never noticed that anything was off. Granted, she was recovering from a pretty bad flare-up from the Lerdamer disease and had just been given the news that her days were numbered, add to that that she needed to keep the kingdom running, but she didn't get the slightest bit suspicious that Vangelis didn't show as much regard for her as he previously had, not to mention that he very abruptly focused his attentions on Tenebris? I get that she most likely has been holding herself back all these years, but you'd think she'd realize something was amiss.
Abyss took over Vangelis right after Adeyrid's diagnosis was pronounced so it's quite possible that she interpreted any change of behavior from his part as his way to deal with the situation. As the reader, we never actually see the real Vangelis since Abyss has already took over his body when we meet him but by all accounts, the parasite was doing a fantastic job at impersonating him since Jadina, someone who knew him since she was a child didn't notice a thing either.
