Leafiara (prime)/Melodies/Freedom in the Underground

I'm gonna be the Landing's Queen
So, Rysus, be on guard
Your reign is coming to an end
The Rooks will love my charge

I'm gonna lead the mob boss scene
Like no one could before
No looking back, just moving on
To better, brighter, more!

It's time to end Rysus' failure of a dream
Oh, I just can't wait to be queen

No one saying "be good"
No one claiming "law rules"
No one crying "justice"
No more goody-two-shoes!

Freedom in the underground
Freedom from the laws of town

Context:

Toward the end of the mayoral campaign season in 2018, I felt pretty confident that Lylia was going to win it, so I started making plans for what Leafi would do with herself instead. I had at least half a dozen options, but the most fun of them was what if she plotted to kill Rysus and become Queen of the Rooks, and so a song parody was born.

If you fast forward two and a half years, Thadston's been advancing the narrative that it's exactly what she did and you've got Malluch, the Daily Darkstone, and Thadston all running around calling her the Rook Queen, but ironically, it wasn't the path she chose. By the time she delivered the poison that killed Rysus, she was hoping it was a cure (and had given warning to test it thoroughly since she suspected it wasn't) because she wanted him to be instrumental in providing opposition to the Vaalorian outpost.

Having said that, just as Leafi killing Rysus was an accident, Thadston saying she killed Rysus in an attempt to take over the Rooks is also, like, 25% correct by accident.

The reason Praxopius identified Leafi as a possible messenger to deliver the poison in the first place is (I assume) because his agents must have spotted her going to Burrow Way and attempting to get word to the Rooks that if Rysus would just come forward into custody, then the town could find a cure for the curse Naimorai had placed on him.

Her primary goal was to glean information on undoing curses since that might be useful against Raznel, but it certainly wasn't lost on her that if Rysus actually took the offer, it had the potential to create a power vacuum in the Rooks--and it likewise wasn't lost on her that they might want her to lead them.

So technically she did execute a plan that she knew had the potential to result in her leading the Rooks, albeit that wasn't her primary goal. And technically the plan ultimately resulted in Rysus' death, albeit that wasn't an intended outcome and was instead the result of the Alchemist stepping in as an interfering third party who introduced elements of his own plan to throw things off...

Look, it's complicated. Heh. Far more complicated than this unfinished, silly song from before the Praxopius wildness happened!