The line of questions was long for Ben Barnes and Jessie Mei Li during their panel at the convention entitled A Storm of Crows and Shadows! A very expected question was inevitably asked: are you team Malina or Darklina? For those who are not familiar with “ship” or for whom even the word “ship” doesn’t mean anything, here is a little explanation.
A ship is the relationship between two characters. Fans often associate the names of the characters to form one. Malina is thus a contraction of the characters of Mal (Archie Renaux) and Alina (Jessie Mei Li) while Darklina represents the couple formed by the Darkling (Ben Barnes) and Alina (Jessie Mei Li).
To come back to the convention, a fan asked the two actors, first if they would like to change something for their character in Shadow and Bone and then to choose their favorite ship among these two choices.
Ben Barnes first joked that he wasn’t “even going to bother answering the question” and then admitted that even he would choose Ship Malina. As for Jessie Mei Li, the choice between the Darkling “or the other guy” was more difficult. We let you discover the complete answer in video and in particular the mention to Archie Renaux who should have been attending the convention but was contrained to cancel his appearance:
Ben Barnes 
Jessie Mei Li 
Shadow and Bone 
Empire Conventions
