Though her words may be sharp, she has your best interests in mind. She is not here to look you in the eyes, tell you that everything is fine—no, she is telling you that your path is this way. She is here to help you find your north star once more, painful though it might be.
u/bacchianrevelry:
The Queen of Swords to me represents wisdom from painful experience. This is the same woman who was trapped in the 8 of swords, but she escaped on her own (no one in the castle was coming to help!) and kept the sword as a reminder of what she has been through. Queens embody water (kings as fire, knights air, pages earth) and swords are air (wands are fire, cups water, pentacles earth), so she is the water of air, which makes me immediately think of melancholic, rainy days. She is intuitive and emotional (water), and so she needs time to think (air) and process her sadness in order to spring forth as the butterfly imagery that surrounds her. The caterpillar, in its cocoon, digests itself down into a genetic soup, and then reforms itself, slowly. When it is ready, it bursts forth, but not too soon. The II of SWORDS, I feel, is related to this process, but that’s another discussion entirely. In summation, she has been THROUGH IT, and is stronger/wiser for having done so.