radioactivesupersonic:

Sometimes I like to think about how completely cool Allura played it when Matt went into elaborate gymnastics of being utterly floored by her beauty. Just. She didn’t even blink. “Ah, yes, I am, in fact a radiant being, you are correct, do continue.”

And then I also think about how in s5e5 when walking together with Lotor she just casually and completely smoothly threads her arm through his. In s5e3, she also just sidles right up to Lance to ‘adjust his stance’ and then as soon as he’s predictably flustered and distracted, she playfully trips him. 

It makes me think of the idea that… Allura was clearly well-liked on Altea and I doubt that was just her parents and Coran. Especially being literally a beautiful princess, she probably had a lot of suitors. Allura’s played the flirting game before, and the implication would sure seem to be she does it quite well. Her attention was probably pretty highly sought after before the fall of the kingdom and with her emerging as a public figure she’s getting that way again. It’s an understated, but nonetheless very canonical fact that Allura is a great beauty and an awful lot of people are charmed by her, romantically (Lance, Matt, depending on how you read Lotor’s fondness he could go here too) and otherwise (most of the coalition and leaders regard her very highly; Kolivan actively genuflected meeting her)

Allura’s charisma and beauty are often not given enough credit by fandom, where her resolve and commanding will tend to be played up in their absence- which, sure, Allura’s tough, but that’s not all she is. Even her fighting style- with the staff or with her bayard- has considerable grace and elegance to it as well as raw power.

This is, after all, a modern reimagining of a classic princess character who in the original series was introduced amidst a cloud of sparkles. And in VLD, she considers “presentable” to be her full length dress and even at her most practically clothed, wears her paladin armor with jewelry and her hair pinned up and braids framing her face.

And that’s not a hangup on VLD when it comes to femininity- there are plenty of female characters who aren’t shown to be dressy in this manner- consider Pidge, Olia, Zethrid, Ezor, and Narti. It may be an Altean cultural thing considering Alfor and Coran’s fairly ornate armors and Hira’s curled hair and beauty mark, but even then, Allura clearly occupies the high end of the spectrum. It’s a statement on her character more than anything else.