who is marienna vale
in an episode where a lot happened i feel like this is a huge question a lot of us walked away with and why did primus tachonis go after her and kattigan's daughter but seemingly spare and forget him.
if the visions in tyranny's knife are to be believed, we know she has freckles. and if i remember correctly, it is implied that she is the woman calling for her daughter esme (unless that was ulbid's wife). i wonder if the nature of the knife has to do with the visions since tyranny was able to potentially see marienna in the knife and the knife does harm to those how hurt the ones who love them, if that is relevant to marienna's backstory.
and this is where i need to get out there in my theories. we know that kattigan has been staying to the north to timmony lately and he has been staying to the wilderness and avoiding cities and has unintentionally "given up" on looking for the sorcerer. he has a great deal of familiarity at dealing with undead. he stopped asking people about the mysterious man and has just been ranging about until he heard about thjazi, but what with all thjazi has going on, i doubt he was unaware of the news that a former compatriot of his was traveling about for six years asking about his murdered wife and daughter by a necromantic sorcerer, especially with all the purported connections he has.
and i know not everything is going to tie back into thjazi, but thjazi thus far has been acting as a foil to the sundered houses and their intentions and is a member of the cloak, a mysterious network that exists in some degree across araman to oppose the rule and intentions of the sundered houses.
my balls to the wall theory is the marienna was a member of the cloak/thjazi's network. that she had some knowledge or skill that made her essential to undermining the work that the sundered houses were doing. and it had to be at least a little bit sorcerous in nature. whether she was a descendant of a bastard line of a sundered house or a secret surviving branch of a long thought dead line of obridani sorcerers, i think there was something about her blood that was important. because i think it wasn't just about who she was, it was about her daughter too.
and i don't know what i think primus did. but i think it was probably one of the earliest tests towards...something. i think she's dead, but wasn't killed simply. i think she was killed as part of a larger plan, an earlier plan that was a test towards the larger thing the tachonises have going. because i also don't think their plans start and end at the deva vindicta. i think they are still doing wild shit in the underworld they didn't admit to under zone of truth. primus is in check, not checkmate.
i feel like primus went himself because she was a key component and it was personal. i think the speech about how thjazi was royce bait is a half truth. i think primus fucking hated him. he was a thorn in his side and undermined him for decades and was a fly in the soup of his life. and even in his death he evades him still. i think that marienna was also personal. he laughed and licked blood off his face. that's not the primus who brushed julien aside. he reveled in it.
it was personal. marienna did something that would count as hurting someone who loved her. there is something unique to her and her daughter that does not apply to kattigan. primus was not worried enough about being seen that he felt the need to kill kattigan, meaning marienna was probably not a prominent figure in and of herself at that point that she would be largely missed. so i don't think she was a noble in and of her own right. but she was somehow memorable to primus.
i think the hurt marienna caused was the double life with the cloak. i think it was kattigan leaving behind the danger of rebellion to be with her and her leading danger back to their doorstep. i think kattigan blames himself for what happened, but i think it was marienna who brought primus there.
