You know, one thing I don’t think I’ve seen almost anyone talk about is Fordola’s narrative role as the representation of Ala Mhigo’s stolen and indoctrinated youth.
This isn’t really a dissertation, or a hard thesis with cited sources, more just … some musings. Garlemald is a near-textbook fascist nation (by design) that constantly expands itself via colonization and occupation. Expansionist fascist nations need more soldiers to do this, so they indoctrinate the youth of the nation to serve their own ends and dismantle the rebellion before it even really starts. Youth are promised the world if only they’ll believe everything they’re told, and fight for the overlords when needed and pulled away from their roots. Garlemald is, like most fascist nations, enthralling and able to pull people in and keep them in. There’s a strong sense of purpose, a chance to feel as though conscripts are making “a real difference”, and a charismatic leader at it’s head.
The most overt of this is the Crania Lupi, made by van Balesar – a regimen filled with Ala Mhigan youth who are bitter and resentful that they’re still seen as “savages” and are willing to do anything to get the respect of the Garleans. They’re used as enforcers and rebellion-quellers, often by beating up their own kinsmen, who then ostracize them for their actions. It’s the perfect set up to drive a wedge between the younger and elder generations, and weaken any sort of uprising that might be brewing.
Fordola, being the commander of this unit, is more the symbol of what Gaius was trying to achieve than anyone else. She’s given enough power to feel important, but knows it comes with a cost, and dire consequences if she fails, much like her peers. She keeps digging herself (and the Lupi) deeper and deeper in a way to try and meet the moving goalposts, and hates herself and what she’s doing every step of the way. She knows that she’s betraying her people, her heritage, but she doesn’t see any other way out because she’s so thoroughly been pulled into this whirlpool of fascist ideology. Even her name is so overt about this – it’s a Garlean last name: Lupis.
In terms of her character, she’s extremely unlikable. She’s angry, she’s brash, she pushes people away and tries to goad them into hating her, much like how she hates herself. She hates the world for putting her in the position she’s in, but also she hates the powers that left her where she is, and has no frame of reference to move past it beyond simply following Garlemald’s orders. She isn’t nice. At all. She’s marginalized and oppressed, but given just enough power (with very specific rules on who she can use that power on) to leave her unwilling to completely leave the place she’s built up.
The most recent short story highlights how she doesn’t feel Ala Mhigan or Garlean, and also how she knows she’ll have to sign up as a Garlean soldier in order to allay suspicion on her friends or her family. She’s being looked down upon by her elders for going along with the Garleans, but then also looked down on by the Garleans for being “barely better than a savage”. She’s desperate for a place to call her own, to be accepted, wanted, relied upon, like so many of her peers.
She’s only nineteen, and has been coerced and reeled in by the people above her into this horrible meat-grinder of a system. Of course she won’t be easily likable or understood, or even a good person. There is so much that she, and by extension her generation, have to unlearn and relearn. At the end of the day, yes, she’s responsible for her own choices and the places that she’s landed herself in. I’m not denying that. But the level of which she, and by extension her generation, have been taught to follow Garlemald’s footsteps is … staggering. In a way, we never really need to see who her friends are, because she so thoroughly represents her entire generation of Ala Mhigan youth that never had the chance to leave, like Arenvald.
I’m not saying you have to like her. There’s plenty of reasons why not to do so. But… I dunno. It draws a little too close to home for me to just write her off as irredeemable or a complete failure of a person, because that’s essentially condemning an entire generation to doom and robbing Ala Mhigo of their future. The whole point of the Crania Lupi arc is that the kids that were supposed to be the future were stolen and pitted against their own people, and that means that they’re going to come out traumatized and ugly in how they react to things, which Fordola isn’t shy about showing.
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