A perpetrator of great cruelty against innocent words. Yes, that's right! Author of IN OTHER LANDS, TELL THE WIND & FIRE, and the #1 Sunday Times and USA Today bestselling meta portal fantasy LONG LIVE EVIL and sequel ALL HAIL CHAOS.
I was listening to one of my fav history podcasts and they were talking about Peter of Castile, Spanish king from the 14th century and apparently his father conspired to have Peter's wife Inez (who Peter was completely devoted to) killed and when his father died soon after the first thing peter did as king was round up the 3 men who did it and publicly executed them by literally cutting their hearts out because 'thats what they did to him in killing her'.
Then he has his wife exhumed, placed on the throne with a crown, and has his courtiers kiss her feet and bow to 'their queen'.
I couldnt help but think of Key haha did you happen to use this story as inspiration? Either way, gotta love the unhinged devotion haha
yes I did!
(slaps the trunk of Time of Iron) you can fit so many historical and mythical and pop culture references in this bad boy
We all live in layers of stories. History becomes myth. Pop culture endures to become literary classic.
And I wanted to talk about the experience of desiring epic love as seen in stories - the monster loves only you - but to have that resonance of history behind it. Love is real! And terrifying.
Character A approached Character B in an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation but it turns out that no one has ever approached Character B for an alliance before and they are now super smitten with Character A and even more invested in being "allies" than in defeating their shared enemy.
Character A: we will make our enemy regret being born! 🥂
She knows not what the curse may be | Caracalla and the Lady of Shalott
The Lady of Shalott', is a 19th century poem by Alfred Tennyson, based on Arthurian legend of an unnamed woman* who is cursed to never be able to leave her tower, but who falls in love with Lancelot from afar. In the poem, she dies without ever meeting him.
The poem starts out by describing the area where the Lady of Shalott lives:
The lady's home calls to mind the four wings of Ancilley manor, as well as the clear demarcation between the life, and constant change outside the walls, and the everlasting doom within.
The poem tells us how far away the lady is from the city:
And what she spends her time doing, and why:
Weaving is a repetitive, appropriately feminine action that demands most of the lady's attention. The patient weaving and waiting in isolation also calls to mind Penelope waiting for Odysseus to return.
The poem also tells us that the Lady's circumstances discourage her from thinking too much about them, or from imagining a different life for herself.
The Lady must remain cloistered in her tower but her her heart's hopes depend on a faraway knight that she catches glimpses of in her magic mirror:
Said knight is desribed as... very shiny.
And eventually, comparing the knight's freedom to ride away, to her own entrapment leads to the lady admitting that what she's been doing up to now is never going to give her what she wants from life.
And to take decisive action to leave the tower.
And the curse rears its head in this absolute banger of a verse:
The lady decides to float down the river in a boat towards Camelot, despite knowing that she will face the consequences of the curse. By the time she reaches the city, she is only a mysterious, beautiful corpse, though Lancelot himself is drawn to her.
The Lady of Shalott 'knows not what the curse may be' and when you first meet Caracalla, you might be forgiven for thinking she doesn't feel the full weight of her family legacy. While her mother and Marius are preoccupied with propriety and inevitable doom, Caracalla is busy imagining the Cobra sweeping her away and all those bitches at court being jealous of her. She recruits Ink to be her best friend with the perfect self-obsession of a privileged sixteen-year-old. Eumenida and Marius may consider Valerius manhood as something that must be struggled against but is never overcome, but Caracalla believes in her brother utterly. As far as she's concerned, they're a happy family (bar her terrible dad) and the genre is coming-of-age.
But it doesn't take much digging to see that Caracalla is also not immune to generational trauma. The most she can hope for from the Cobra as a husband is that he will find her somewhat desirable and appreciate her company, not that he will ever be faithful to her. (He can have lovers, she's cool with it. She's trying so hard to be cool with it.)
And when she's talking to Lucius after the Cobra rejects her, it becomes clear that part of her knew she would never escape her fate through marriage. The Valerius curse is one of inevitable, gendered violence; the men keep killing until they are finally killed, while the women stay unobtrusive to avoid death at their hands. (Arguably Marius has taken the first step towards change by refusing to actually kill their father).
Caracalla's mother has taught her that this is not a cycle that can be broken, and Caracalla knows she cannot abandon her mother, or persuade her mother to abandon her duty. The Caracalla who died in the previous two iterations of Time of Iron was only able to change things inasmuch as she chose to die like a male Valerius (with sword in hand), rather than waiting passively for death.
In the conversation where Caracalla agrees to help Lucius with his plan, there's an undernote of bitterness that she can't pretend any more. All the work put into propriety and weaving is useless; the mirror breaks because illusions are no longer enough. She's lived her whole life 'imbowered' in a house with a monster in the basement and the blood of dead women staining the walls. The Valerius curse has come upon her, and the only way out is to destroy the manor and the patriarch that uphold its traditions.
The Lady of Shalott dies without ever meeting her knight, but she chooses the possibility of the curse over the certainty of never getting what she wants. In response to the Valerius curse, Marius has taught himself never to want at all, but Caracalla has taught herself that she can fantasise all she likes, until the time comes to face the curse, and pack her childhood dreams away. When she's told her destiny is to burn with the manor, she's ready to be brave.
But in the end it's Eumenida who faces the god, and wrenches the cycle out of joint by dying like a male Valerius. Caracalla may not have everything she dreamed of, the knight may never be hers, but she gets to live, and to keep wanting.
*the Lady is unnamed in the poem but the story is that of Elaine of Astolat
Two other bonus classic lit references in chapter 17:
Eumenida is frequently referred to as the Last Duchess, a reference to the gothically creepy Robert Browning poem 'My Last Duchess', about an aristicratic man who totally didn't kill his wife.
And the internet informs me that this reference is frequently attributed to Shakespeare but is actually from Walter Scott's 'Marmion'.
(All screenshots from the poems mentioned, or from chapter 17 of All Hail Chaos)
This is SUCH a lovely post! Thank you so much for the thought and time put into it.
Sometimes I feel a bit gloomy seeing other works have their metatextual nature recognised and mine dismissed as fluff. I want my readers to be able to read the books without needing to know literary references, I want it to be an enriching element, but when readers think it simply isn’t there and the book isn’t trying to do complicated things, I find myself muttering ‘If people think a sentence that blends the Lady of Shalott and Marmion to convey the sense of both hope and doom for an Austen-aspiring heroine trapped in a gothic narrative is easy…’
But then I get to read a post like this, and feel highly seen and complimented. Yes to all of the above highly intentional references, and there’s more!
Cut to spare you my volubility and extreme spoilers for All Hail Chaos…
I’m cagey around certain details of what happens in Eric’s book vs Rae’s book, because I know it can get bewildering and other versions of the tale are now on the table. (This is another reason I don’t do the Cobra’s POV, because having him refer to a book that isn’t Rae’s book but has the same title plus the tangled murder board he has in his mind of what he knows of Rae’s book, oooof, a mess!)
But one thing I wanted to make clear was my doomed triumvirate of ladies - Lia, Rahela, and Caracalla. All of these women die in both Rae and Eric’s version of the books. They die in every version. They are doomed through many story configurations - fairytale, Arthurian legend, poetry, swords and sorcery fantasy. They are fantastically, mythically, epically doomed.
Lia and Rahela are stepsisters and foils. Caracalla is the sister of the Arthurian-coded knight figure, who doesn’t appear in the first book but who Marius writes to and thinks of, in a way meant to echo Darcy and Georgiana in Pride & Prejudice. (They’re both trying hard not to be gothically doomed siblings, but unfortunately… the curse…) In Eric’s version of the story, Marius does not die and Caracalla still does. When Marius is most positively inclined toward Lia in Long Live Evil, he gives her a dress he intended for his sister, except Caracalla didn’t make it to the capital. In Eric’s version of the story, Marius is textually romantic with Lia and kisses her. In Rae’s version, he is not, but she is the queen he defends and fights and dies for. (The knight forever kneeled.) She is also the girl who made it to the capital. She is, in Eric’s version, the girl the knight can still save. And then he doesn’t.
Caracalla is also paralleled with other doomed characters: Torhell and Ivor. We meet all of them in the same way - first through the narrative of the earlier version, in their death scenes. The manner (manor) of their deaths informs us about their characters, in a way that belies the way they’re introduced in the narrative proper: only Rae and Eric, like the rest of you readers, know how these characters face the end, at the beginning.
It is no coincidence that Torhell storms into the Emperor’s court demanding to see the Golden Cobra. Rae has a predetermined shape in the narrative, the voluptuous villainess stepsister trying to get her man. Eric, who stepped into a nameless character, carved a place for himself in the narrative. Different positions with different problems, but it’s worth noting how people look to Eric as an off ramp to the doom, especially in All Hail Chaos where Eric - influenced by Rae - is making active moves to change the course of the story. Caracalla thinks she can save herself by marrying him, even though marriage is clearly an instrument of doom for Valerius women, leading to death in childbirth or death by domestic violence.
(And Ivor and Torhell, the king and the general of the icelands - paralleling Key and Marius, victorious emperor and general, parallels all the way down - are doomed to be consumed by empire. One of the big themes of Time of Iron is who is doomed by the narrative, and why and when.)
Caracalla is resigned to her doom in her death scene - the curse had come upon her - but not in the present narrative. I also love a character out of place in their own narrative, so she wants to be in a novel much more like Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer. The hopeful striving makes her cheer tragic, as we can see that endeavour is already doomed. Trapped in the Gothic manor, women’s tears freezing on the walls, Caracalla wants to escape the doom of her family - by marrying her brother’s best friend? The knight she’s waiting for is her brother. Neither Marius nor Eric is going to save her.
It is only through another story reshaper carving a new place for herself in the narrative that Caracalla is saved: Alice, Rae’s sister, who recruits Caracalla’s mother. The duchess finishes the Gothic tale, dying as a sacrifice in place of her child in a reversal of what the Great God did, as the manor of her death burns. And only in that moment having broken out of her role can Eumenida fully love both her children.
Caracalla never escaped the manor. Caracalla never made it to many-towered Themesvar. Until this version of the story.
As soon as Caracalla leaves the manor, she becomes aware people can be queer (escapes the hyper-paternalistic structure). She thinks she’s massacred people in a berserker fury (the Valerius curse has come upon her) but she actually has not done so. The doomed gothic maiden who always dies watches the Oracle perish, who has never before died until the world ends.
Then the Great God, who created Eyam in blood, takes control of the narrative. A dragon seizes Caracalla and carries her off, a classic fantasy maiden’s fate. She’s back in her father’s house - but it’s not quite her father anymore, and this isn’t Ancilley (ancillary...) Manor that always burns, but the Palace on the Edge.
You parallel characters through differences as well as similarities- Caracalla is textually bad at weaving, and weaving as with Penelope in the Odyssey means both femininity and scheming. Lia’s good at it. Rae is mixed (big swings, big misses). Caracalla is, like Key, Marius and Emer, all of whom have supernatural martial prowess, brutally straightforward, and at least Key and Emer have experience serving schemers. Caracalla and Marius, highly socially privileged, do not serve or scheme. Lucius, undead schemer with shades of Austen’s Wickham and Milton’s Lucifer, has a hard time manipulating both Valerius siblings because they steamroll over every subtle hint. Like the Cobra’s attempt to hint at romance with Marius, the Valerius siblings do not hear you and they will not know! (Poor Lucius ends up just yelling that he wants to eat their dad. Guys can you please allow him to finesse. This is so embarrassing.) As a woman Caracalla knows she should try, but she isn’t good at it. By the manner of her death, in the manor of her death, we know her: she’s the Valerius lady who would pick up the sword.
If you are more a ‘cut the Gordian knot’ type than a weaver type, your experience of palace intrigue is going to be interesting. Especially as a woman.
And Caracalla is now at its heart, with the Great God, the Emperor, the god’s chosen prophet, the wicked Prime Minister and his scheming niece. She finally made it to many-towered Themesvar.
Hey, do you like Sarah Rees Brennan and her Time of Iron series? Do you like making things to show your love? Do you like seeing things that other fans have made?
Then join us in the Eyam’s Vipers community as we plan an event for Long Live Evil’s anniversary this August!
It’ll be a week long event online where we create and post different fan works based on daily prompts. Fanfics, fanart, mood boards, and whatever else you can get creative with are welcome!
This isn’t a competition. It’s just our way of celebrating the books. Like a little fandom potluck of sorts.
So join us! We are currently coming up with a list of potential prompts, and if you would like you can add to it.
117 members, 204 posts about #long live evil #sarah rees brennan #time of iron • A community celebrating Long Live Evil/ the Time of Iron se
i've said this before and i'll say it again: i think lestat's empathy and capacity for forgiveness is a core part of his character and if you remove that, like, what character are you even writing.
Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.
Anyway I miss him and hope he's doing better with his mental health 🙏🏾
Like say what you want about "bad queer representation", but this was the song that made me openly and happily accept that I was bisexual. To see him up there Black and beautiful, making music that I love, absolutely killing it? Yeah. You couldn't tell me shit. This man made me proud to be out. "This will make them think we're evil for being gay" hey newsflash dawg-
You are a hundred per cent right to do so! I was thinking about him as well. Both his dress sense (I mean, behold the fan) and general attitude.
There is also a reason I have Eric gracefully deploying a literal fan Rae is unsure about holding - and he’s the one who has in-depth correct knowledge about canon, though he’s working with an outdated text.
Lil Nas X ran a popular Nicki Minaj fan account on twitter back in the day. People have a notion in their mind about who fans are, what they look like, that they can’t be creators themselves, and I wanted to build a character who was all those things - cool, Black, queer, gender non-conforming, genre savvy, an intense fan, a celebrated creator and supporter of the arts, someone who embraced the villain aesthetic out of exuberant defiance but always went his own way. It is rough to be loudly joyfully yourself in a world that doesn’t want you to be even quietly yourself, and artistic depiction is discussion, not endorsement.
The week in which I did nothing but read up on the origins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and gnc fashion spanning from the 12th to the 19th century to find overlap was not Lil Nas X’s fault.
I just finished my 4th? 5th? Read-through of Sorcery of Thorns and Mysteries of Thorn Manor. I have middling memory issues and with books I forget enough that I can reread them every once in a while and a lot of it is brand new to me. That being said, every single time I read these they just get better and better. Silas just permanently lives in the back of my brain, I think about him so often. To love something that cannot love you back, but does all the same in its own way... There is nothing more that I love about being a human than this, and I adore how much of it is contained in your writing.
Deepest respects
Hi anon,
Thank you so much for taking the time to send this. It's the kind of message that keeps me writing in my darkest hours. If you haven't seen already, there's a short story from Silas's POV available here, because he lives permanently in the back of my brain too. I doubt it's any secret at this point that his character is the reason why I wrote Sorcery, and for me, he's the book's soul. For some reason I never expected so many readers to agree, and it always means a lot to me to hear.
Since @sarahreesbrennan is on my mind right now, I want to give her a shout-out for her Demon's Lexicon series, which fertilized the soil in my brain that eventually gave root to Silas. I read the books during college, and one of the many things I loved about them was that I had never before seen an author write a demon (or similar looks-human-but-isn't character) who legitimately isn't capable of feeling emotions like love, guilt, etc, and explore what that might look like in the context of close relationships with humans, without ever copping out and softening that character for the sake of making him more conventionally relatable or sympathetic. The way Sarah wrote him was formative to my personal taste, and I'm not sure I've seen anyone do it better in my many years of reading since.
While some time later my beloved Holly would put Sorcery into my hands and say ‘you have to read this. This character is SO your bag.’ Said character was Silas, and lo, it was even so.
Stories are our bridges to each other and the moving waters below. Stories are connection. I wrote a book about the kind of thing I like to read, and in time a book came to me that was my kind of book. I did feel pressure to cop out, but I didn’t, and if I had I wouldn’t have received this sincere honour. We never know whether the ripples of change we make might become waves.
lestat having a musical written about his life by elton john which got negative critiques all across the board and only had a 2 month run on broadway before closing is the most lestat thing that could happen to him
sometimes I think about the fact I am one of very few people who watched it in the flesh
sometimes I think about how many people left during the interval because let me tell you it was easily half the audience and that theatre was not full to start with
