[rotelurker]

On Verity-As-Dragon (spoilers for Everything)

This line from Kettricken in Tawny Man really stands out as a masterpiece of dramatic irony. In it, she is offended that the Six Duchies dragons are not "true" dragons. And she retorts by claiming Verity is "truest of them all". She means noble, brave, wise, etc. but based on what we learn about dragons later, she is right in many ways that she certainly didn't intend.

Repeatedly throughout the series we are intentionally invited to make comparisons between dragons, traditional ships-of-the-line and of course, liveships

When we first see Verity's dragon, it's immediately compared to a sailing vessel in two ways:

When he takes off for the first time, another nautical simile is employed (and a common one, the wings of dragons and the sails of sailing vessels are repeatedly compared to one another - pay attention to the number of times a dragon's wingbeats are described like the "snap of canvas from a sail" or other similar comparisons.):

Icefyre is also compared to a ship when he emerges from his slumber:

It's important to note that he shares one clear cut obsession (hunting) with true dragons already, dragons are constantly compared to his other obsession (shipbuilding/ships) and his third obsession (cartography) is based on an accumulation of ancestral knowledge, with information depicted from a dragon's-eye-view of the world. But why ships? Why dragons?

Verity is a Taker, and why Ships Matter.

Verity is true to the namesake of the Farseer line - literally King Taker. He was an Outislander who chased against their traditional matriarchal society and established his own kingdom in what is now Buck. We learn based on the Outislander creation myth and Outislander cutlure that the basic way of things is: women rule the homestead and ensure the survival of the clan, men go out and raid and occasionally come back to earn the right to mate. King Taker conquered Buck, and in the process married an Elderling woman who was probably responsible for his descendants possessing the Skill, despite her importance being ignored for most of Six Duchies history. He subsumes her for his own glory.

Makers (Mothers, Women, Homemakers) vs Takers (Fathers, Men, Breadwinner). The Makers grow, cultivate, grant life and handle the thousands of boring mundane tasks that make up daily life, while the Takers must go out and extract wealth from somewhere else, indulging their own desires in the process. Robin's depiction of the traditionally masculine Breadwinner role as the more selfish, transient and less necessary to the survival of the species, the family, the culture, etc. than the Homemaker role is one of her most recurrent themes. We see this dynamic everywhere (Ronica and Ephron, Tintaglia and Icefyre, Eda and El, Chivalry and Patience, Verity and Kettricken, Keffria and Kyle, Elderlings and Dragons, etc.)

The Farseers are literally the result of a Taker, breaking with a Maker society and building a new society ruled by Takers. The Skill is the Magic of Taking (using other people as batteries, entering the bodies and souls to change or remove things, healing via burning of other resources, possession, torture, sealing) while the Wit is the Magic of Making (fomenting new bonds, healing via a communication with natural processes, empathy, life sense). Verity uses Fitz to power his Skill, he uses Fitz to make his child, he uses other people (August, members of his navy) to achieve his goals, he subsumes Kettle to complete his dragon.

Why the ships by the way? For one, they, like the sea serpents, are a sea-bound lesser form of dragon. More importantly, the dream of a ship in ROTE is the dream of a powerful being that directs the energies and memories of multiple smaller beings to a greater purpose. The Crew are subsumed as individuals and become secondary to the will of the Captain and the needs of the Ship. To orchestrate all of his "little people" to form greater wholes that will achieve his goals is the whole point of Verity's navy, and he pours that same obsession into the dragon. And the liveships are literally made by destroying embryonic life for the purpose of molding it to acquisitive and extractive purposes.

Interestingly, although this next passage illustrates a matriarchal perspective from a female dragon, Dragons are essentially the Takers in their relationship with the Elderlings.

The dragons go and hunt, fill their bellies and sate their own desires, but often need to return to the cities of the Elderlings for grooming, for Silver, for the luxury and nurturing this race of Homemakers provides for them.

These dragons, much like deadbeat dads, leave half-finished Elderling babies everywhere that their Elderlings often have to shoulder the burden for, hoping their dragon will 'wise up' and take responsibility one day.

Just before Verity enters his dragon, he displays the same, cold draconic lack of remorse shown by Mercor above:

Verity literally consumes a woman and possesses Fitz' body in order to complete his process. Even his great works come at a cost to others, who are often forgotten by history in the telling of 'his' deeds.

Kettricken is right, Verity was the truest of all dragons as we come to know them: Aloof, inattentive, detached, unconcerned with the 'little' people, enormously powerful, someone who could grant great boons at an often steep price to the receiver, a user, a taker, a hunter, a 'Great Person' whose legend is upheld by the many people who sacrificed so much to see their dream fulfilled. This is dragons as we come to know them over the course of 16 books, and Verity already was one from the beginning. He simply physically becomes what, on some level, he always was at the end of Assassin's Quest.

Takers, Makers, Maternal Fathers

Ultimately, Verity, Dragons and the great Takers of the story (no matter how well intentioned) illustrate Hobbs' basic idea: the Makers are more important. The people (usually depicted as women or homemakers) who build and maintain the home, the city, the society, the species are the most important and the adventurers, pioneers and plunderers are selfish at worst, a necessary evil in dire circumstances at best.

When Verity goes on his pipe dream quest, it is Patience and Kettricken who maintain the stability of Buck society. When Ephron dies, it is the Vestrit women who must keep the family and Bingtown proper alive. It is Tintaglia who works to keep dragonkind alive, not Icefyre.

Fitz has two Fathers: Chivalry (with Skill, the Paternal, Male, Taker Magic) and Burrich (blocked from Skilling, strong in the Wit, the Maternal, Female, Maker Magic). Chivalry disappears from Fitz' life against the advice of everyone and leaves him nothing. Burrich remains in Fitz' life and ultimately is the vessel by which Fitz is reborn via the Wit. He teaches Molly how to handle children properly and builds their homestead. Burrich's Maternality is ultimately his most redemptive quality and his status as Maker is the reason Chivalry is just a ghost and Burrich is actually a pivotal part of Fitz, Molly and their children's lives. Much like like Fitz remains a part of Kettricken and Dutiful's lives after Verity is gone.

Dutiful has two Fathers: Verity (truest of all dragons, Taker, enormously powerful in the Skill) and Fitz (erratic connection to the Skill, strongly Witted). Verity enters Fitz' body and uses him as the vessel with which to create life. Fitz ultimately fits into the Homemaker role in his relationship to Hap (arguably his most well-adjusted and happy child) and Starling (deadbeat philandering Minstrel mom)((we love her)) and is more responsible for raising Dutiful and protecting him then Verity ever was. His finest, most redemptive quality in his relationships with his children is his Maternality, his desire to be Homemaker.

This Paternal Father enters and changes Maternal Father (Chiv blocks Burrich's skill, Verity possesses Fitz, Fitz enters the Fool) -> who is forced to give up their most important relationship (Burrich leaves Patience to serve Burrich, Fitz is forced to leave Molly by Verity's command, The Fool leaves Fitz to let him have the life he wants with Molly) -> and somehow as a result of those two actions the Maternal Father grants the gift of life to the Child of the Paternal Father and the Mother (Burrich "rebirths" Fitz, Dutiful is conceived, Bee is made possible by the blending of Fitz & Fool) dynamic repeats in nearly every one of these doomed throuple/parental triangle relationships.

This is why Tarman and the other dragons recognize Fitz as being claimed by a dragon. Because Verity is one, mind and now body. Despite the nobility of many of his goals, his obsession, his single-mindedness, primacy of his own perspective, his subconscious need to use and consume others, his detachment from the finer details of mundane daily life turns him into a Dragon eventually. As these books say so often: We are as we are meant to be. Verity is the ultimate dragon, in both his range of positive and negative qualities. Hunter, explorer, adventurer, destroyer, user, abuser, Taker, Great Man, Hero. The difference between ROTE and many similar series is that we see the true cost such a person has on the people around them.

When we learn that the Mountain Kingdom was initially founded by two notable women in the final trilogy, it ties together this theme with an almost too-neat bow. A Matriarchal ruler (on a smaller scale, the homemaker) sees themself as Sacrifice. A Patriarchal ruler (smaller scale, the breadwinner) as Taker. Fittingly, the most Patriarchal ruler of them all, the Duke of Chalced, has destroyed his own bloodline and must sup from the blood and flesh of Selden (bonded to a female dragon, often considered gentler and softer than other men), an Elderling (the Maternal or Maker species in their dynamic with dragons) in order to sustain his own life.

I have no idea how to end this, other than saying I will write more on this and am currently working on a video.

[rotelurker]

My fundamental problem with the way Robin Hobb writes queerness is that it she is clearly so much less curious about it than she is about her (allegedly unintentional) Queer Allegory Magic and it results in most of her queer characters being uninteresting and often mean-spirited stereotypes. The Witted characters and their struggles to navigate society and relationships are so much better realized than the canonically queer characters, who for the first 9 books are depicted mostly as a series of rapists, pederasts, stereotypes and one (1) selflessly voluntarily celibate queer martyr character who pines forever for their One Straight Love. This of course wouldn't bother me as much if she didn't state that queer interpretations of her characters were akin to "mutilation" and "rape". Why is queerness seemingly so inexplicably linked to rape and violence for her? Why does that come out everywhere in her writing, be it book or blog post?

We have the perspectives of two different sentient sailing vessels and multiple sea serpents before we got a single gay person and he is - another wealthy foppish abuser (the twist is that he is also a victim and simultaneously enabling his abuser). Every instance of same-sex sexual contact we witness until book 10 has been abusive (rape, unwanted groping, pedophilia, etc.) and initiated by someone in a position of overwhelming power, and nearly all of the queer-coded characters (Regal, Cosgo) have been outrageously wealthy evil fops.

Having our first gay character after all that be yet another privileged foppish gay man who was coerced into a sexual relationship with an even more privileged, foppier gay man borders on self parody. We get the details on another group of wealthy, evil gay elites, but close to zero examples of how queer people outside Hest's League of Gay Evil exist within and struggle with wider society. We meet Davvie and Carson in a context in which we are not shown what it is like being a poorer queer person in their culture, we meet them in a context in which basically everyone already accepts them, so there's no actual tension or demonstration of the difficulties they legitimately must have faced until now. The closest we get is Carson off-handedly relating that he had to save Davvie from the consequences of his own cruising once.

There is zero explanation or curiosity for how homophobia manifests in the Six Duchies, Bingtown, Jamailia, etc. It just exists. Because Robin doesn't seem to care. We know every angle and convolution for how Witted people are oppressed within the Six Duchies, the history of Witted culture, a spectrum of examples of Witphobia (from lynching to fetishizing the Witted as sexual partners), how and why people closet their Wit - we don't even get a splash of this level of interest or detail into queerness beyond the odd "ohohohoho, lord golden fucks BOYS" (Soooooo interesting the number of times Robin depicts 'being gay' as 'wanting to fuck BOYS', always that language, always that framing, queerness is like inextricable from pedophilia in the way it's depicted in the series, I'm sorry but it is, I'll make an entire post about just that if I have to).

Our only real example of Sedric supposedly interacting with Bingtown's innate homophobia is when his father wants him to work on a sailing vessel but that's dirty and Sedric likes things to be 'clean and nice and pretty'. This is 1930s cartoon level stereotyping and it's the way Robin chooses to depict her first gay character supposedly grappling with homophobia. Arguably the biggest victim of homophobia in the series is Fitz, whose struggle with queerness is how awful and inconvenient it is for him that everyone thinks he's gay and his subsequent efforts to dispel that vile rumor. I just. Fuck.

I'm sorry, she just doesn't really write us like we're complete people. What I love about so much of her writing is her curiosity and ability to dissect the complexities of the human mind and relationship dynamics. That all kind of shuts off when she starts writing queer characters. Hest and Redding are Evil Fops, Davvie is Horny & Gay, Lecter Exists, Sedric is Redeemed Evil Fop and Carson is Pushy Creepy Bear Who Wears Sedric Down. It's dire.

If I had read Rainwild Chronicles first? I'd have less of a problem. But up until Dragon Haven, it'd been nothing but Men Raping Men, Men Groping Men, Men Abusing Boys, etc. (Sapphics just don't exist in the Realm of the Elderlings until the Willful Princess, by the way. Trans characters? Forget it. We get the Fool and Spark so we should all be happy.) And these are issues to be discussed! Yes, marginalized communities can produce a lot of abuse, yes women can and often do suffer from being their more powerful husband's 'beard' (Alice + Hest), but I'm sick of the exact same song and dance.

Having SO MUCH of Sedric's story be about how his queerness negatively affects Alise just felt. Idk, it was our first gay character's narrative arc and it felt completely dominated by how inconvenient (Sedric is a bitchy queen who annoys everyone and harms Alise's relationship with the crew) or traumatic (Sedric is complicit in deceiving Alise for years) Sedric's queerness was for his straight bestie. It feels like Robin attempted to write queer characters as an 'apology' for Tawny Man and accidentally ended up revealing how little she thinks of us.

Carson pressuring Sedric into sex after a suicide attempt (!!!) is never discussed. At all! The main gays fucked and are together now, so we should all be happy. Davvie and Lecter's relationship of convenience is never explored. They fight (allegedly), they make up (allegedly). I just see so little interest from her in the way she writes us, to the point where I truly think her best depictions of queerness are unintentional. The Wit as Queer Metaphor seemingly becomes less prevalent once she was aware that other people saw it that way.

"But what about the Fool!" What about them? They're a Magic Ethereal Alien Gay. They're above our petty rules. Their desire is unconditional, single target, aspects of it can be turned off and on like a light switch, and their experience with their gender identity is mostly discussed in the framing of how it benefits them materially to be genderfluid. It is NOTABLE that the most positively portrayed queer character in the series is depicted as 'honorable' ("I felt the honor in the Fool's touch", etc.) because they can so safely, so neatly manage and control their unrequited desire for the object of their affection and never have to navigate any pesky feelings of queer desire that might be external to their One Straight Love. It also NOTABLE that said character is implied to have been raped a bunch as a youth. And then is implied to have been raped a bunch after the events of Tawny Man. Almost as an aside. Can't have a queer character in this series without rape and pederasty being a major part of their backstory, thems the rules.

I'm not asking for Good, Safe, Painless Multi-Quadrant Queer Rep. It just felt SO QUEER as a narrative when I started reading it, and then we got so, so many books of truly awful, stereotypical depictions of evil gay rapists, charmless canon het relationships and simply no discussion about what others actually think about queer people or how multiple people from various cultures might interpret queerness beyond the odd vague homophobic remark. The Outislanders are a matriarchal culture with a strong raider-homemaker divide! The women spend most of their time with other women and the men spend most of their time with other men! There must be relationships between women and relationships between men that we as the reader might interpret as queer! What do those look like? How do they fit into their society? The answer is we don't know because the author doesn't care about that subject matter, plain and simple.

I know she wrote the "merely plumbing" conversation. The problem is she really didn't do anything interesting on that subject matter until the final trilogy, which was a lot of weak sauce "Fitz and his new crop of kids get gentle-parented into understanding gender fluidity." conversations. Which is good I guess. But too little, too late, too lacking in substance, imo.