She had been my party's ally in a previous game where I was a player and my Paladin had been the only person to talk to her and fold her into the group. hard? for me was the slow-burn falling in love with Ez. That aside, I feel like Ez is (rightly) a fan favorite and I love her so much. I think she's overdue in my game for a blow up or break down that they're getting along with Strahd. They are working with the man who tormented her family so much her father died! She's apprehensive and putting the party's needs ahead of her own, but I guarantee that when she has a moment alone with her husband, she'll tell him how stricken she feels about going to Ravenloft and seeing Strahd again. This is the place she was going to be imprisoned for life, this is the place she watched her brother die once (he got better!). She's only willing because Patrina is Dorinn's crazy aunt, but she very much does NOT want to go to Ravenloft and pretend everything is okay. right now they've teamed up with Strahd (temporarily?) to fight Patrina Velikovna. In my Saturday/Remix game, she shed Tatyana's soul for a chance at a life with her (now) husband, Dorinn, our fighter, so it's been less central that I know how she's feeling at all times, but you can bet your ass I try to pulse check her every story beat and it really does give a read on the PCs. In many ways, Ireena is the heart of CoS, the closest thing to a protagonist we are given besides the PCs, and a good barometer of how the plot is going. However, I saw a good rule of thumb for RAW campaigns and campaigns that follow more traditional modules: If you don't know how Ireena feels about a situation, you don't know how your PCs feel about it either. I've heard interesting theories about Ireena/Tatyana from different DMs over the years and have seen her importance to campaigns wax and wane over the years. The only real problematic thing with that is, you know, being preyed on by a vampire because marginalized women are already preyed on by men in power so it's not exactly escapist fantasy.
Representation matters and whether you play Ireena as the demure, Disney princess or the sword-slinging badass, it might be a woman of color's turn to get to inhabit roles that we so often give to white heroines. I actually feel that as someone who walks in both the White world and the Mexican/Chicana/Latina one, I'm in a perfect position to call people out for this because I like to think I have the sensitivity to say what needs to be said without being cruel as well as the social positionality to be "an authority" on erasure. I don't know when I should speak up and when I shouldn't on this issue as a White Latina. The book art uses a woman of color for Ireena and I've seen a lot of fanart of her that's really beautiful but that isn't IReena because it's a white woman and it leaves me conflicted. Another way the fans have done her dirty: whitewashing her.
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