The bit of fandom I stuck my toe into recently seems to pretty much agree that King Jonathan’s concession to Wyldon, to have Keladry on a probationary year when she began page training was hypocritical & unfair, but also likely politically necessary, that as king he has to make unsavory political choices, that you have to make concessions to advance other parts of a given cause, etc.
I see these points, and now I’m going to list out all the ways I can think of that it was a bad political decision too:
1. Alienated his long-standing allies (was there anyone who trained with Alanna when they were all kids that wasn’t pissed about this choice?).
2. Undermined the other progressive policies; he made the decree that girls could openly try for their shields ten years before First Test begins, the training master at the time agreed to it, and Wyldon accepted the decision when he took the job. Stepping backward as soon as it’s put to the test invites other such decrees and programs to be attacked as well.
3. Insulted the Mindelans, who are valuable diplomats, quite badly.
4. Potentially undermined Alanna in her job as King’s Champion; yes, she acknowledges that people often credit her success to her Gift and being god-touched, but she did go through the same official training as all her peers. To make the next woman knight leap more official hurdles is to throw Alanna’s qualifications into question.
5. Nearly lost them Keladry as a knight. She almost makes the decision to wait a few years and apply to the Queen’s Riders instead, because a probationary year for only her was blatantly unfair.
6. Potentially lost them other knights as well. We don’t hear of any other girls starting page training during the rest of Protector of the Small, which spans over eight years. How many other girls, or their parents, looked at that probationary year, and refused to let themselves be so insulted? How many wondered, if the year was lifted for future applicants, if some other humiliation would be sprung on them instead?
Jonathan could have mitigated some of these problems by having Wyldon place all incoming pages under a probationary year, by officially declaring that this was simply yet another change to the training program they were making. Even if rumor went that this change was because of Kel, without it being officially so, it would be less insulting to her & her politically important family, leave less room for open attacks on the other progressive policies, and not raise the stakes so high for future girl applicants.
But he didn’t. The probationary year was a political mistake, as well as being hypocritical and unfair.
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