a love that wends its way

23 | she/her realm of the elderlings sideblog beware of spoilers! main @belovedsword

[foolsjustice]

you would think that shrewd would have kept an eye on galen’s skill lessons given how desperately the six duchies needed a functioning coterie and the fact that shrewd knows galen is a half-trained skillmaster, but nope! like before fitz started his training, burrich warned fitz that he heard galen was ‘a very hard teacher,’ even he had an idea of galen’s brutality! shrewd knew about galen’s use of privation and pain when the reasonable method was guile, and he let galen have complete control over the skill lessons?? knowing that galen didn’t have the best track record in teaching since he hadn’t initiated anyone into the skill in his 15 years of being skillmaster?? the majority of the skill training was literally during winter when there were no raids and verity didn’t have to be vigilant 24/7; if shrewd couldn’t keep an eye on the skill training, he should’ve made verity since they would be his coterie. but sure, cede any say in the training of the kingdom’s defensive force!

shrewd just watched how miserable and broken everyone was in their silent table in the dining hall and was like they’re going to make a great coterie😆 their battered bodies means good team bonding the isolation is working🩷 remember when burrich saw a welt on fitz’s face but couldn’t do anything and that’s when fitz realized he was galen’s now, and galen knew it. like um. shrewd gave fitz to galen on a silver platter fully aware of how galen despised fitz and how vulnerable fitz would be in his skill training. but of course it’s not surprising that shrewd didnt give a fuck about fitz. you know what was surprising? that shrewd didn’t give a fuck about AUGUST. his nephew. his dead sister’s only child. actually on second thought that’s typical shrewd behavior, but wow. shrewd let august be physically and emotionally abused by galen. he didn’t bother to realize something was deeply wrong with august after the skill training, shrewd’s folly caused august’s skill-burn and eventual death. do you think merry farseer had asked shrewd to look after august. do you think shrewd thought about how he failed his sister. august was the youngest child in galen’s lessons :( he was polite to fitz before galen :( and verity also failed august because you’re telling me verity saw how galen crippled fitz’s skill ability and didn’t think hmm let me check in on august…“August was Skill-burned and never recovered. For him, I sometimes thought it a mercy. The Skill was leading him down a path ill-suited to him. I think I suspected then that Galen had done something to the coterie. But I had so much to do.” <- words from verity’s mouth. a mercy, he says. when it literally didn’t have to be this way.

[foolsjustice]

chivalry farseer you are never far from my mind…

[foolsjustice]

A Wizard of Earthsea • Farseer Trilogy

[foolsjustice]

chivalry makes me so sad because what do you mean in an old forum thread, robin hobb confirmed that ‘the other one’ chade is referring to is chivalry and that in the past queen desire would fabricate situations to paint chivalry as disloyal to the farseer family. shrewd testing chivalry and fitzchivalry, shrewd breaking his son and then his grandson…and both times due to queen desire’s machinations. it’s so bleak! i think of young chivalry losing his kind mother and infant sister then his father marrying someone who is cruel to him and strives to corrupt his father’s image of him and relentlessly undermines his place in his family. of course, chivalry fighting to marry patience allowed him to break the cycle that shrewd set; although chivalry had a hateful stepmother who killed him, he was able to give fitz a loving stepmother who saved their life.

(hobb’s comments in the thread under the cut)

hobb's response to the question who is 'the other one':

Chivalry. In events that are not told (and probably never will be) Queen Desire puts quite a torque on him in terms of his loyalty to his family. She creates situations in which no matter what Chivalry does, his actions can be interpreted as 'disloyal.' The discovery that when he was much younger, he fathered a bastard is just the pry bar she needs to get him out of her way. In many ways, the heir is driven out, and not just to make more room for her son. The action isolates Chivalry and makes Chade and Verity both more vulnerable to her plotting. Queen Desire is a nasty piece of work. It's no wonder that Chade keeps Fitz away from her and out of her sight as much as possible.

hobb's response to whether this conversation is between queen desire, shrewd, and chade:

I always wonder if you REALLY want to know these things, or if it isn't more interesting to puzzle and come up with your own explanations. The overheard conversation is between Chade and Shrewd. Chade would never speak that bluntly to Queen Desire. For that matter, he would never want to clearly confirm for her who he is or how/where he exists. She suspects a lot of things, of course. Fitz 'overhears' the conversation because he has worked himself into such a state worrying about what Chade and King Shrewd think of him that his walls are completely down, his focus is on them, and his inherent Skill talent is beginning to work erratically.

hobb's response as to why chade would tell shrewd to 'break him like you broke the other one':

It's all about tone. When Chade, in anger, suggests to Shrewd that he 'break him as you broke the other one" he's being sarcastic, or inviting someone to make the same mistake all over again. Imagine a husband and wife quarreling, and one saying to the other, "Go ahead, lie to me again!" and you have the tone of the comment. (I'm a bit chagrined that the tone didn't carry in the context.) Chade and Chivalry were extremely close. Later in the tale, he divulges to Fitz that he could never convey to Chivalry that his existence was supposed to be extremely secret. Chivalry immediately brings his little brother Verity into it, delighted to meet an uncle he didn't know he had. When Chivalry 'accidentally' dies, Chade takes it very personally, and tries to keep Fitz closer to him than ever. There is a conversation in which Fitz dances all around asking Chade if Chade knew or was a party to his father being taken out. Chade says that no one would come to him for that, because they know he wouldn't do it, just as he wouldn't take Fitz out if asked to do it. Queen Desire is, indeed, behind the whole 'test his loyalty' thing. Chade obeys his king in this request, up to a point, and then he can't stand it any more. Okay, back to work for me.

[foolsjustice]

A Wizard of Earthsea • Farseer Trilogy

[ithilienns]

Having finished Liveship and now Homecoming and The Inheritance there's still something bugging me about the settlement of the Rain Wilds and Bingtown. And that's that at the end of the day the Trader origin story reads like a colonial fantasy, the sort of founding myth that settler states toy with consciously or unconsciously when they tell their histories. Only, there's no in-world counter to this. These real-life settler myths have been recreated in ROTE as fact.

Liveship and the short stories touch on tropes that feature prominently in settler myths: the hostility of the environment (as if the land itself wants them dead), the heroism of the pioneers that are able to hack a life out of the wilderness and essentially assert their authority over this otherwise ungovernable land, and the idea that this land was more or less uninhabited prior to colonisation. Now it should be noted that Homecoming does counter at least one of these, with Carillion being warned in dreams that if she tries to gain 'mastery' over the the land then it will consume her. The others are not. The Rain Wilds is a land emptied by a catastrophic event that occurred thousands of years ago and was importantly a natural disaster not triggered by any human action (as opposed to, say, devastating influenza or small pox pandemics). Consequently, we get the nostalgic and exotic imagery of a lost civilisation without the grubbier business of land theft, forced assimilation and genocide that real-life instances of settler colonialism actually entailed. The Cursed Shore is even more troubling as a place that is in fact totally devoid of life before the settlers established Bingtown. Consequently, these sanitised settler myths we see in US or Australian history, for example, are made real in this fantasy setting. When characters like Ronica reflect on the first Traders in language reminiscent of the 'pioneering spirit' and 'heroism' that used to riddle discussions of first settlers, the reader is given license to romanticise colonialism alongside her as the human harm is totally removed from the equation. Homecoming further encourages this.

I'm undoubtedly overthinking this. Had there been another people and culture present in the Rain Wilds or the Cursed Shore when the Traders first arrived then that would necessitate a thorough consideration of colonialism and its legacy, something that would thematically alter the trilogy significantly. That's not the story Hobb wanted to tell. That's alright. Besides, I do have 10 books left to go and maybe all this will be undermined by lore I encounter there. Authors can (and should!) draw inspiration from history without writing direct parallels. Considering Liveship's lengthy examination of chattell slaver and the general willingness of US-based fantasy authors to write the practice into their secondary worlds in order to confront its moral and social implications, however, it is striking that the horrors of settler colonialism are completely sidestepped. Moreover, it is uncomfortable that this evasiveness results in Liveship taking myths that have done lasting damage to the way settler states think about themselves and their colonial histories and making them true.

[pizzazium-infinionite]

how do YOU (like your idea, not official pronunciation) pronounce Burrich's name?

burr-ick (hard c)

burr-itch (as in church)

burr-ich (as in German ich)

other

Voting ended onJun 25

[silverlemonad3]

no little monk boy, don’t seek the approval of the evil pirate man!! don’t become infatuated with the evil pirate man’s controversially young girlfriend who is also controversially old in comparison to yourself!! don’t let them change you little monk boy!!!

[altbery]

Realm of the Allegations

[altbery]

LMAOOOOOOOOOOO

[offonaherosjourney]

The day their coteries learn about/invent unions is the day the Farseer line falls, and... honestly, they'll have it coming

[dreamofmourning]

i’ve been trying to figure out why the line “i have understood everything.” from malina means so much to me and it’s the exact opposite of the reason why the speaker in myxomatosis must justify killing the rabbit by imagining its confusion: “what trap is this? where were its teeth concealed? you seem to ask.” 

[dreamofmourning]

also: “The child knew nothing. I had done nothing to her.” after humbert’s first assault

[dreamofmourning]

[foolsjustice]

gathering all the six duchies religion crumbs as much as i can, tell us about the priests that worship eda!!!

[foolsjustice]

when you have to develop seizures for your parental figure to stop hitting you

[foolsjustice]

fitz counting the loves in her life and they are all animals. she’s literally the six duchies’ princess snow white. btw i wince to think of the price willingly paid for loving me. my fitz…

[foolsjustice]

head in my fucking hands. chivalry would be so happy to know how far his diplomacy reached…he should have been able to witness this :(

[aluaidh]

everyone in farseer: fitz you're so fucking stupid and ignorant and childish, how could you not have known *piece of information they withheld from him*

[foolsjustice]

shrewd’s stupidity amazes me genuinely mind-blowing amounts of stupidity