Pupa's playdate with her cousin Morphin goes horribly wrong when he hits her in the face for touching him when she tries to push him away. Although he gets punished for it, the story shows that in changeling society, expressing your displeasure with someone of lower rank by hitting them in the face is normal, such as a servant explaining her black eye as her husband hitting her for putting on a dress he didn't like, or the palace's head groomer hitting her daughter for accidentally cutting the wrong lock off Chrysalis' mane. That's probably where Morphin picked it up from, not to mention that his mother Danauria uses the same method of discipline on him. Adults sometimes forget that children are more observant than they think...
The anecdote about the servant's husband hitting her, even though it was made up to avoid explaining that Pupa accidentally kicked her in the face for tying her obi too tightly, also implies that Domestic Abuse might be considered normal in changeling society, given that nochangeling seems disturbed by the explanation.
Pupa's mental disability means that she will probably never be able to function as well as a normal adult. She is expected to marry Morphin (who is neurotypical) when she grows up, in order to continue her family's bloodline. This raises several disturbing questions:
It is very unlikely that an adult Pupa would even have the ability to understand the concept of sex, much less consent to it. If Pupa can't consent to sex, but the Roachanov bloodline has to continue with her no matter what, will Morphin be pressured by his family into impregnating her anyway "for the future of the Roachanov dynasty"?
With other members of the Roachanov royal family having similar inbreeding-related defects, it is very likely that there have been previous family members, and possibly even other royal heirs, who also suffered from mental disabilities. Have any of them been pressured, coerced, or outright forced into having sex with whatever partner their family chooses for them in order to continue the bloodline?
Assuming Pupa can even conceive and carry a pregnancy to term, how high is the likelihood that a child of two closely related individuals, one mentally impaired and both severely deformed from centuries of inbreeding, would themselves inherit their parents' defects? (Let's just say "very".)
Why does Chrysalis keep her distance from Pupa and bury herself in her work? She's lost so many children already, it's likely that she's (subconsciously or otherwise) afraid of getting attached to Pupa and then losing her too. Not to mention Pupa's many illnesses mean that her dying early is a strong possibility.
