THAT'S PRETTY MUCH HOW LACE SEES IT, TOO, minus the part where she thinks Cardinal has Celeste beat out for combat strength because she habitually assumes everyone else who sees things through a more aggressive lens like she does is probably as strong as she is, and she hasn't talked to the new Celestes enough/at all to realize they're ... squishy. She doesn't trust Celeste either, but they have a concrete, agreed-upon alliance with terms and penalties and she does trust them far enough to keep to the terms, simply because both sides know that would end in mutually assured destruction if they broke it and at least in Celeste's case she doesn't think any of them are that stupid and/or insane. So long as the cost of breaking it is higher than the cost of maintaining it there's no reason for either side to call it off, but - well, as it shows in the current Cardinalpost she's still paranoid enough about it to aim for precautionary measures just in case.

(As a counterpoint she does, however, expect that Copper Rose is that stupid and/or insane, at this point, but when an alliance happens with them she'll still hold them to it anyway.)

Which is why I suspect there will be some interesting shenanigans afoot should it actually come to pass, like it's kinda looking like it might, that Cardinal goes for Mary. Not that Cardinal would see that as endangering their alliance, mind, but idk if Celeste would. If they did ... :'Da

Personally it's some of my favorite CR to watch happening and I wish I were around to do more of it, even though my favorite thing to do right now is tack against it for interesting friction reasons. The patronage issue and the fact that Celeste holds a justified grudge against Fawn vs Cardinal's loathing of Shell will make for some fun happenings somewhere down the road, I hope, but really, codependent alcoholic leperteams forever.

SO HOW ABOUT THAT SUDDEN SWITCH TO MEMORY-LOSS, MARCH