six of crows + “you can never go home“
originally i was going to write this in the tags of this post, but i hit tag limit before i even got halfway through. so i’m making it its own post.
the idea of “you can never go home” is core to each of the six crows which is why it’s such a jewish story. if you don’t want to read through my long rants, here’s the short version:
kanej can never go home because the children who belonged in their homes are dead.
jesper can never go home because to him, home represents shame. wylan does go home, but his homecoming is born from being set adrift much the same way as the other crows are.
helnik can never go home because their loyalty to their homes has wavered, and they can never come back from that.
ok rant time. first: kaz. kaz can never go back to his original home outside of lij because the boy who belongs there is kaz rietveld, and kaz rietveld is dead. maybe you could call ketterdam his new home - he probably would - but that’s even more tragic in a way, isn’t it? he’s so tied down to ketterdam. he’s unable to return to one home and unable to leave the other. (shameless self promotion time: my wip the sower explores this; it probably won’t be published on ao3 for a long while but if you’re interested to know what that’s about and get progress updates + teasers you can check out my fanfiction sideblog @tealquills, everything related to that wip should be under the tag “the sower”.)
now inej. my favorite diaspora girl. inej can never go home because of who she’s become - “a suli girl who had become a killer”. she can’t unbecome the dangerous girl, the girl with claws who names knives after saints. she can’t unbecome the wraith. and the wraith doesn’t belong in the suli caravans. the girl who did “died in the hold of a slaver ship”. she loves her family deeply and wants to be with them and still be loved by them, but she cannot go back home with them. the wraith can’t settle, especially because she always seeks justice. she’s no longer complacent, and she could not bear complacency. she feels purpose and drive to save others from what she endured at the menagerie. between these two things, is it any wonder she takes to the sea?
jesper can’t go home because his home is too entwined with feelings of boredom and shame. after aditi’s death, the monotony of farm life became unbearable. the shame and guilt associated with his durast abilities became unbearable. most of all, the grief became unbearable. it was no longer viable for him to live in novyi zem, at home with his father who loved him so much and failed him so profoundly. and so he went to kerch, and there was no going back.
for wylan, too, home is a place entwined with shame. jan van eck made him feel ashamed for his disability, building up intense feelings of worthlessness and guilt. wylan’s story is interesting in that he does go home, quite literally. he ends up living in van eck’s manor with jesper. in this way, he’s not really living a “you can never go home” story arc the same way as the other crows. but that idea is still core to his character, because for awhile, it was true. after the attempted murder on the boat, wylan had no home. he was set adrift in the same way kaz was after using jordie’s corpse as a raft, in the same way inej was after her time in the menagerie, in the same way jesper was after aditi’s death. wylan can only find his way home again after he experienced what it was to be without a home, and he will always carry that with him.
nina can’t go home because she’s realized she wants a life beyond that of a soldier, and ravka will never give her that. through matthias, she learns to aspire to peace and betterment rather than being a cog in the machine. she loves her country, but she can never quite be loyal to it in the same way again. the world but specifically ravka and fjerda will never let her and matthias be more than grisha and drüskelle, and she can’t accept that. even in king of scars and rule of wolves when she’s working for the ravkan government again, she can’t stay long. she goes to fjerda, and while she’s there, she takes up matthias’s mission. she starts building bridges. she tries to end the war. she falls in love again.
and finally, matthias. oh, my tragic boy. matthias can never go home because… well. you know. after coming to love nina, he can never be truly loyal to fjerda again, but it’s still his country. he spends all of six of crows and crooked kingdom trying to find a way to reconcile the truly awful parts of the country he calls home with everything that he believes makes it worth saving. he wants to go home so badly in a way that even inej can’t quite match. but in the end, he can’t go home because his wants are not enough. because one man’s personal journey cannot save an entire nation. because his love redeems him, but it can’t redeem fjerda.
