further thoughts on intergenerational interaction & shifting genres from my Protector of the Small reread:
Every time Daine or Numair appears—well, 80% of the time Daine appears and 100% of the time Numair does—they really do just drop in, do some Strange and/or Powerful Magic that makes every other character say softly but with fervor, “What the fuck,” and then leave again, and it’s funny every time.
The funniest thing about Kel’s righteous grudge against Jon is that he’s clearly actively trying to charm her, and it still doesn’t work. He smiles winningly. He carefully listens to & vows to act on her anti-classist concerns [in fairness I do think he’d do this for others, too]. When he witnesses her terror of heights, he offers a sympathetic anecdote, a dad joke that falls totally flat, and a complex little bit of magic to help. He’s trying so hard! And every time, Kel’s like, “😐 Stop smiling winningly; you did A Wrong and I will Not forget.”
Raoul’s speech about the types of skilled warriors is truly such a savage indictment of his peers. “Heroes, like Alanna the Lioness. Warriors who find dark places and fight in them alone. This is wonderful, but we live in the real world. There aren’t that many places without any hope or light.” And then, “Commanders… Good ones, like, say, the queen, or Buri, or young Dom, they’re as rare as heroes.” Note the TOTAL LACK of Jon in that list, even while referencing Thayet—and Thayet surely doesn’t have that much more time for literal warrior-ing than Jon does, so it’s not just that he’s listing kinds of warrior “at our level” and not including politicians. He’s just not including Jon. It’s possible he’s deliberately listing people who are better role models and/or better known to Kel specifically? But, given his irritation at Jon throughout the Progress, I’m not sure that’s why.
And I’m…not sure how fair that is? Tortall is in trouble, internally and externally, trouble that the story doesn’t always dwell on but does show in the margins. It’s not just angry/hungry neighbors like Scanra and the newcome Immortals, or even Jon’s monologue about the many factions to balance in trying to change a single law. It’s Jon’s offhand, “if a member of the old nobility kidnapped a member of the new nobility, it would cause a civil war.” It’s the prevalence of bandits, a sign of unpaid soldiers and/or desperate poverty. It’s General Vanget’s harsh, “And if you think the realm won’t go to pieces if you’re killed, sire, then you don’t know you’re people…. Roald doesn’t command the Dominion Jewel, with its power over each pond and leaf in this kingdom. People think if you fall, the land falls.”
We don’t see any actual common people asserting that, but maybe the general, himself “old nobility”, is projecting; and it 100% fits real historical trends. A primary advantage of monarchy as system of government is that it’s supposed to be stable. Tortall is undergoing a time of drastic change, of which women warriors are the smallest part—though a key symbol. Immortals have returned, many of them dangerous, and there ARE war-eager border neighbors. The middle class and below is steadily rising, some to join the nobility (Kel’s own grandfather; in Jon’s reign, Baron George Cooper, Coram Smythesson taking over the ancient Barony of Trebond), and some no doubt just wealthy. And the current king & queen are furthering this, with the integration of the Bazhir and with schools and a new military organization, the Queen’s Riders, open to all social classes!
So it’s hard to say, I think deliberately, how well Jon & his government is doing at managing All Of That. In certain ways, he’s arguably making it worse—with the aim of making it better & more stable for everyone long-term. Raoul complains about being used as a show pony, but a purpose of the King’s Own IS clearly to be not just a strong military unit, but one which publicly exerts the king’s will—in their flashy Conté-blue uniforms. And, in addition to marching in the “look at our stable monarchal succession & unified country!” royal progress, Jon has them deliberately connecting with & integrating the Bazhir (while also, perhaps, being a pointed reminder to the Bazhir of the Tortallan govt’s might in arms), and running around the realm not just fighting monsters and killing bandits, but providing manual labor in natural disasters. And if the hallmark of a “commander” is “know[ing] where someone will shine and where they will collapse”, well, Raoul grumbles but he’s clearly THRIVING as Commander of this King’s Own, and so is the KO is thriving under his command. (I AM willing to headcanon that it was Raoul’s idea to add “natural disaster response” to their mandate.)
All this musing is making me wish Pierce had continued moving forward in Tortall’s timeline, instead of jumping sideways geographically for the Trickster’s books and back from Provost’s Dog and Numair’s book. PotS does feel like it’s grounding things so much that you can’t tell the sort of epic story in Tortall that you used to (SotL, Immortals)—there aren’t that many places left without hope or light! But the later series aren’t that kind of epic high fantasy anyway. Provost’s Dog is exactly the sort of commoner-focused, commoner-empowering story that would feel natural coming after PotS, and which I think would be fantastic with the PotS generation in the background as the SotL generation is in PotS. Maybe a little further in the background, as it’s pointedly NOT focused on the nobility, but doing the same job of showing the worldstate that the previous characters managed to build. And the Trickster’s books are exactly the gritty, violent political upheaval drama that is clearly going to result the next time the Conté royal heir does NOT have enough Gift and/or strength of will to wield the Dominion Jewel, or at least is viewed as such. (Which is inevitable, because “the next heir is an idiot” is the inevitable failure state of would-be stable monarchies.)
