Would you mind to elabora te in the 'Hennessy is going to die' thing? Honestly it makes sense to me but it makes me too sad ajskskksdks. Also, do you think if she dies Jordan will die as well?
oh i actually Don’t subscribe to this theory! there’s a popular fandom theory right now that hennessy is going to die and jordan is going to go into a coma, and the plot of book 2 or 3 will involve needing to wake jordan up, and it’ll be bittersweet because OG hennessy will have bitten it but now the jordan hennessy who’s actually Worth Living can take her place
which. i don’t agree with
a big long post of Evidence would take FAR too long to compile but the gist of my reasoning is that it doesn’t make thematic sense. dreamer trilogy’s established themes so far are all about community and self-actualization and the places those two things intersect. hennessy’s arc, which is about learning to dream and finding the strength to go on and beginning to build a community and realizing that she wants to live, is arguably the MOST emblematic of these themes.
i’m sure that somewhere out there is a story that could be thematically served by killing off the suicidal girl who’s just started putting her life back together & irreparably breaking the hearts of a good number of the main cast in the process. i don’t think dreamer trilogy is that story. i think denying hennessy the chance to heal - and denying her and ronan the chance to solidify their relationship / build a bigger community / draw the lines about who Belongs with them - would shit on the currently established themes. it’s not a satisfying conclusion. hennessy needs to live
👋 i love the implications on either ronan or declan burning the barns down (i'd still mourn the house 😭) but here's a very random idea: what if it's MATTHEW the one who does the burning? 💛
oh god matthew doing it would be a cultural reset idek how else to describe it bcos he would be the unexpected one! like ive been playing with the barns burning down theory for months and i’ve ranged from declan doing it (if it has to burn down declan deserves this) to ronan to adam (i for one think adam burning down the only place he has wholeheartedly felt at home in is something that can be so personal) to even hennessey and/or jordan (which ngl doesnt really hit) but matthew didnt even occur to me! matthew is going to have his own entire arc in the coming books (!!) and i’m assuming they’re all going to baby him/try to keep him away and protected from the whole mess and then one day matthew just? lights it on fire? maybe the moderators got too close and the only thing matthew could think of to protect everyone was burning the place down and getting rid of any evidence? idk but if it the barns HAS to burn down (i would be very sad if it does) it has to be for some profound character development.
Like i was trying to finish the book and tell myself I can wait for book 2 this is fine but then i saw people on twitter talking about after Adam left the barnes (AFTER THE MOTHERFUCKING LACE SAW HIM) no one has spoken to him and he isnt reading or responding to Ronan's text and calls.
I'm this close on commiting scooter to ankle here people!!
(alternately: what i want to happen in book 2 but i’ll probably be wrong abt eveything)
OK folks so let’s get into this:
so i think most of the second book is gonna take place during school break for adam, and i have a strong feeling hes gonna have POV chapters bc he’ll be able to be more involved w the conflict this time around.
i want some adam and declan team ups tbh!! that would be Good Content and i think it’ll happen
i think ronan’s gonna be on the run w hennessy and bryde, and adam’s gonna go to the barns and be hangin with jordan/declan/matthew. it’s also possible that ronan might take bryde/hennessy to the barns but i just... i have a feeling theyre gonna be on the run and separated from the rest of the main cast for a while
i think adam’s DEFINITELY gonna be screwing w magic and shit at the barns (or wherever he is really) and that we’re gonna get some shared dreamscape scenes w him and ronan (pls let me have this i will cry) but maybe it’ll be too dangerous bc of the lace?? hmm idk we’ll see
i want a 300 fox way appearance. we got a Gray Man cameo this time, give me my psychic ladies!!! they’ll definitely be able to help and give some insight.
MATTHEW POV. i am very excited for his character arc. i love him, and i think soending time with jordan is going to help him realize/reaffirm for him that he IS a person, and he IS real. i can’t wait to read some scenes w them :)
liliana and farooq-lane are gonna switch sides. not early on, but i def think they will sometime in the second book (or third idk) also they’re totally lesbians >:)
declan and jordan are gonna have their first kiss!! i’m typing it into existence
bryde is bad. i don’t like him, i don’t trust him, and i wish ronan didn’t. he’s gonna do some shady ass shit in book 2. but also he’s gonna teach hennessy and ronan more abt dreamers
i don’t want this.... i really dont....... but idk i think the visionary!adam theory might come true :( like... where is he right now? why couldn’t he answer ronan’s texts if it’s established that he’s a quick responder? he was probably having a vision or is in danger. i really hope he just like... broke or lost his phone or smth though
ok that’s it for now? i don’t wanna even get into the mor o corra/new fenetian shit bc honestly i have no clue what’s up w that. it’s all so icky. fucking niall lynch. smh
EDIT: ok yeah i’m not sold on visionary adam? i think his psychic abilities are going to be a major player and that he’s gonna have a bigger role in the next two books but the more i think abt it ... yeah visionary adam would be almost Too high stakes or smth (but this is me just not wanting anything bad to happen to adam looool)
Alternatively: if Gansey is the Arthurian knight in the shining armor type or hero Ronan is the tragic one.
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR CALL DOWN THE HAWK
“Once the spear was uncovered, it wouldn't matter if the hero's truest love or family was in the room with him; the spear would kill them anyway. Killing was what it was good at, and so killing was what it did...The spear, Dad told me, was him...He told me to make sure Ronan was the name of the hero, and not the name of just another spear.” – The Raven King
As we all well know, Maggie’s books have a lot of mythology and history in them. Varying from Glendower, Gwenllian and Boudicca to some less obvious ones, like king Arthur and his knights, the holy grail, to Fionn Mac Cumhaill, Fintan mac Bochra and finally, the one that I would like to talk about, because this is the journey that Ronan mirrors.
Cu Chulainn.
Before we start, beware that this will be quite long and I’m going with The Raven Cycle and Dreamer Trilogy timeline, more or less.
Cu Chulainn is part of the Irish/Celt mythology in the Ulster cycle. Cu is a demigod, son of a mortal woman – Deichtine, the sister of Conchobar, the king of Ulster and one of the most important gods in the Irish mythology - Lugh. In a very very very short version – this is the most popular version, there are others –: Deichtine was missing for three years with fifty maidens with her. They were turned into murderous birds that devoured everything on sight, so Conchobar and his warriors hunted them but were hit by a snow storm. They found a house and asked for shelter. In this house there was a woman and a man. The man was Lugh and the woman Deichtine. Lugh fucked off as soon as the morning his, leaving Deichtine with a child to take care of. A very powerful child.
It all depends on the source you’re reading really, but the most common version (at least that I know of, please keep in mind that mythology has different interpretations/versions depending on the source material) is that Lugh wanted an avatar to bore his power on the mortal real. In certain ways, we can say that Cu Chulainn is, in fact, Lugh reborn. Here is a Wikipedia small passage of him: “Lugh is portrayed as a warrior, a king, a master craftsman and a savior. He is associated with skill and mastery in multiple disciplines, including the arts. He is also associated with oaths, truth and the law, and therefore with rightful kingship.”
Does this story sound familiar?
Be it as it may, Lugh won. He got what he wanted in the end, an avatar on earth that bore the same power he had and then he is gone. Which is exactly what happened with Ronan. Niall got his dreamer, Niall is gone. Ronan was left to whoever wanted him and had the patience to be there for him. Who turned out to be just like Cu in the myth: Cu had Deichtine, Conchobar and Deichtine new husband, just like the warriors that where with Conchobar in that day. Ronan had Aurora, Ronan had Declan, Ronan had Matthew and later on, the Gangsey.
Well, speeding up ahead:
Just like Ronan wasn’t born Greywaren, Cu Chulainn also wasn’t born Cu Chulainn. His actual name was Setanta. Cu Chulainn is actually a title-kind-of thing. Cu Chulainn does in fact mean “The Hound of Culann”. Almost like Ronan “Gansey’s dog” Lynch.
The name was given to him because, at six years old, Cu Chulainn – part of the boy-corps at the time and already better them they all together, thanks to Lugh’s heritage – was invited to a banquet at one of the most famous smiths at Ulster, Culann.
Conchobar, who was the one to invite Setanta, forgot he was coming. So, Culann ordered that the hound of the house - who he said had the strength of a hundred men - to be freed to patrol the outside. As Setanta arrives the hound attacks him. And the boy, at the tender age of six, kills the dog smashing his head into a rock after throwing a ball so hard into the dog’s mouth that he mortally wounded it. As gruesome as this one is, Ronan’s new name is considerably less bloody. He too could have the power to do miracles that comes from heritage.
After all, what is Cabeswater if not a miracle that gave Ronan his new name?
But this is not exactly how the name “Hound of Culann” is given. Do you know why is that?
Because Setanta promised to guard Culann’s propriety until they could get a new dog. And so he did.
Many thieves, one greywaren, right? Many guard dogs, only one worth of Culann’s hound title.
Life went on, Cu Chulainn keeps getting more and more impossible things done until the point that some people just… got quite enough of him.
The thing with Cu Chulainn is that even with all the demigod fuckery, there were still warriors that could match him, in one way or another. Just like there is more than one dreamer and they all excel at different things.
What made Cu special on itself is a different thing. Ríastrad – the battle frenzy berserker mode that had his body contort in unnatural shapes and distorting him to the point of being unrecognizable as a human. This alone doesn’t seem much but when you put it along a few lines in Call Down the Hawk that I found specially interesting, it can be something else.
“It was The Dark Lady, the painting that had taken them hours upon hours upon hours to copy for the Fairy Market, but with Hennessy’s face and throat and knuckle tattoos. A perfect and cunning forgery, as good as theirs. No. Better. Because it oozed with the same magnetic, otherworldly desire that the original had and that their copy had missed. This was not a real-world copy of a dream. This was a dream of a dream. Perfect. Beyond perfect.”
Now, I’m not sure if the wording here is intentional or not but it seems to me that it means to be taken as Ronan’s version of The Dark Lady is a better of version of Nialls.
And then:
“And how would you know? Did you see the painting he did? Out of his head? It took him no time at all, maybe even better than the original Dark Lady. He said he might be able to do something just for you. You didn’t even let him try.”
Ronan might very well be a better dreamer than Niall. Is a better dreamer than Hennesy until this point – this can change along the series, so I’m not putting my hand on the fire for it yet – and is also an arguably better dreamer than Kavinsky, if you take in consideration the amount of tries he needed to get the Mitsubishi vs amount of tries that we are shown that Ronan needs to get the Camaro as stated in The Dream Thieves:
“Yours. I practiced, man!” Kavinsky gestured broadly to the field of Mitsubishis. “You see all these losers? It took me months to get it right. Look at that bitch!”
Now, this doesn’t mean in any way that Kavinsky is a bad dreamer or inferior dreamer or anything like that. Kavinsky actually is possibly on par with Niall but sadly we won’t be able to measure if because they are both so very dead. Niall exceled at the originals, like Robobee, The Dark Lady and another myriad of dream objects we see him with at some point or another. Kavinsky exceled at copies. He prided himself as a forger, as it also said in The Dream Thieves. I would even go a little further, maybe, and say that they also have another point in common in their dreams – creating life. BUT Aurora is not a perfect copy of Mor O Corra (and I can’t even say if this is deliberate or not so let’s leave this one open) while Prokopenko, on the very little we saw of him on The Dream Thieves, seems perfectly human. He is K’s favorite forgery, after all.
The thing with Ronan is that he can do both /and/ more. The thing with Ronan is that he had Cabeswater and then Lindenmere.
Which, tied with K, are the next point here.
Now, going back to Cu Chulainn’s story, Cu fell in love with a woman called Emer. Emer’s father, Forgall, wasn’t very happy with the idea that they could come to marry and probably would if he didn’t do something. Which is, in fact, very fair because Cu isn’t exactly a nice guy. He killed quite a lot of people, he is cocky, he is young and he is arrogant because he knows he is gifted and nothing will stand in his way if he puts his mind into it. Forgall calls him “the madman from Emain Macha”.
It does sound kind of familiar, doesn’t it? Even if it’s in a less tragic/dramatical way. Cu is in a path that has absolutely no other outcoming than self-destruction if he goes on like this. Here is why:
Another nice or not so nice thing about Cu is that at seven, Cu overhears the magician Cathbad – it’s nice to notice that not all scholars seem to agree in the term magician, some use wizard too. The important fact is that he is a druid and he makes prophecies. He is also the guy who gave Setanta Cu Chulainn as a name/title thing.
Anyway, Cathbad makes a prophecy for his students: any warrior that decided to pick up arms and armature would have his name to transcend all other Ireland’s youths BUT this warrior would also die really young. Can you guess what Cu, at the peak of his seven years do right? He goes on to Conchobar and asks for arms and armor. Now, Cu at seven was already a fucking menace and no arms were match to his strength. So Conchobar goes ahead and gives his own arms to Cu.
You can probably guess what I’m equaling Conchobar’s arms with right? Yeah, you guessed it. This is Cabeswater. A very dangerous thing in the hands of a teenager.
Now, going back to Cathbad prophecy, we know that K and Ronan are mirrors yeah? And that Kavinsky is what would have happened to Ronan if he didn’t choose different yeah? (Also correct me if I’m mistaken but I think it’s also said somewhere that dreamers tend to die young.)
But Kavinsky is a lot more than Ronan 2.0, he just has the same formula of a teenage dreamer with lots of trauma. They are not even close to be the same person. So, I present you the idea of Ferdia.
As I said before, Forgall didn’t really want Cu to marry his daughter so he proposes a plan to Conchobar – why Cu Chulainn doesn’t go ahead and train with Scathach? He would come back stronger and better right?
This is the time where you’re very welcome to slap me for giving this much information in a back and forth way but please bear with me I’m trying very hard to it all understandable without seeming too crazy. Just crazy is actually ok, thanks.
Now, Scathach is also part of the Ulster Cycle just like Cu. Known as the shadow maid, she is a warrior who excels at martials arts and in the use of the lance. She is, in fact, one of the most fearsome warriors of the Ulster Cycle and known to be a really good teacher. Scathach lived in Dun Scaith which more or less translates as Fortress of the Shadows/Castle of the Shadows. For you to be taught by Scathach, the first trial was to get in her home and then survive her training. It wasn’t even remotely unheard-of people dying under her tutelage and this was Forgall’s hopes for Cu.
Now, here I think it’s one of the most interesting parts. Cu has A LOT of fuckery going on in Scathach’s training that doesn’t matter much on the meta so let’s get to the parts where K is:
Kavinsky kind of fills a double role here – he has a little of Scathach as in: just like Cu kicks out her metaphorical door and demands that she teach him. (Among other things, but those are not important and this is already LONG).
Which is what happened with K yeah? Ronan learned what he needed with him and then fucked right off to nicer places.
Another interesting bit is that at the time she was teaching Cu, Scathach, as the warrior she is, was at war with her twin sister, Aife. Fearing for Cu’s life in the war, she gave him a sleeping potion so he wouldn’t go around and get himself killed.
While K motives weren’t nearly as nice as Scathach this happened too. Kavinsky repeatedly puts Ronan to sleep in order to teach him how to properly dream. Even if his properly dream is Kavinsky style – which we learn latter that his not the best way to dream for Ronan but that’s not the point I’m going for.
Long story short, Cu wakes up, defeats Aife, makes a son on her (this will be important afterwards, I promise) and fucks off to keep learning with Scathach.
Fits of parts of what happened between them yeah?
So here comes the next role K fills and this one he fills fully and not just partially – Ferdia.
Ferdia was also under Scathach’s tutelage and was the best friend – also depending of the source lover too – and during to the circumstances of the war with queen Medb which again, are not important here – he ends up battling against Ferdia. For better or worse, they were there for each other for quite a long time and loved each other a lot, until Ferdia’s and Cu’s circumstances and choices differed and they end up in different sides of battle.
Now, they battled for three days, until Ferdia got the upper hand, even with Cu Chulainn in his battle frenzy monstruous state. Ferdia had the advantage of an armor that was impossible to pierce so he called for Gae Bolg (which we will, again, talk later about) and as Ferdia heard of it, he made a mistake – leaving his chest open. Cu throws a spear at him which makes him distracted and then impales him with Gae Bolg,
While the situation is not exactly the same, Ronan and Kavinsky had a battle that was a lot like that. Kavinsky had Matthew, who Ronan loves more them himself and they battle for the right of it. Until Kavinsky gets tired. Until Kavinsky let things get out of control and commits suicide. As in:
“A second later, the fire dragon exploded into Kavinsky. It went straight through him, around him, flame around an object. Kavinsky fell.”
Again, I think Cu and Ronan are mirrors, so they don’t follow the exact same path neither the exact same formula. But I still think this is the right path to think about his journey.
Then we get to the demon, to being unmade, to Matthew, to Lindenmere and how both Ronan and Cu Chulainn hold the war for enough time until the enemy can be defeated.
This piece of Cu’s story happens both before and after Ferdia’s battle so please bear with my lengthy explanations.
First of all: the demon and how it ties to being unmade, to Matthew and the similarities is bores with the ríastrad. When the war with Medb started, the Ulster warriors were cursed – for the lack of a better word – and they couldn’t fight.
So, Cu Chulainn fights for them. During months he invoked the right of single combat with Medb’s warriors. Which is basically what he does with the demon during quite some time. And in the process he ends up being unmade. Now, the process of being unmade is described to being gruesome and violent into Ronan’s body.
He is dying after all.
And it all happens because he is special. To Ronan, it happens because he is very deeply tied to Cabeswater, he made it, he is the first one that needs to go if the demon wants to win the war. Which is basically what happens to Cu too. Medb’s warriors tried every dirty trick in the book to take Cu out and he fought until he couldn’t to hold them.
Ronan (and Adam, but this meta is about Ronan) hold him down until they all can come up with a solution, until their win is possible. (The nightwash is a similar thing to being unmade, which also, again, happens because Ronan is Ronan, because Ronan is a dreamer, because Ronan has a big gift, sometimes too big for him.)
He is special, his gift is special, they both can do it.
So they did.
Which leads to Matthew and Conla, Cu’s son. While Ronan didn’t really meant to dream up Matthew and Cu for sure did meant for Aife to become pregnant with his son, the similarities are quite lengthy.
Cu Chulainn killed his own son and it was his fault. There is no way around it. He himself made Aife promise that Conla wouldn’t identify himself, that he wouldn’t deny any battle and that Conla would search for him. Conla did search for Cu and in a truth “the apple doesn’t fall far from the three” fashion he goes around wreaking havoc exactly like young Cu did, until Cu himself comes to battle him. As he couldn’t refuse any duel, Conla and Cu battled until Cu killed him with Gae Bolg,
Ronan, during a very long time, also didn’t know Matthew was his dream. They were brothers, how could Matthew be a dream? But Matthew is and Ronan almost kill him too in his battle with the demon. And now in Call Down the Hawk we see Ronan, once again, for some reason or another, is influencing his dreams. They all search for the riverside yeah?
Do you all know what else had a deep connection with rivers?
Gae Bolg.
How Gae Bolg is used depends a lot of your source material but the most widely known version is that Gae Bolg is a spear made from the bones of a sea monster. It’s a spear that divides itself in thirty barbs and it’s thrown with a foot. It’s a terrifying weapon that if it strikes you, there is no chance of getting out alive. But it has a condition: it can only be used in streams.
Now, if Cabeswater was the first weapons Cu Chulainn used as a young boy, Lindenmere is Gae Bolg. Lindenmere is dangerous, it’s wild and it’s unpredictable.
Just like Gae Bolg, there is little chance of you scaping alive if it strikes.
As Ronan himself put:
“I let Lindenmere be more of itself, whatever it was in that other place.”
“And what it is over there is dangerous.”
“Dangerous things can protect themselves,” Ronan said.
Now if Ronan and being unmade and unmaking Matthew where tied to the first weapons Cu wielded, doesn’t seem too farfetched to say that Lindenmere and the riverside problem with the dream things is connected yeah?
Another similarity is the geasa. But this one is already on CDTH:
Even the most invincible heroes could be trapped by conflicting geasa. The mighty Hound of Ulster, one of the boys’ favorite heroes, had a geis to never eat dog (“Shame,” Niall said, “it’s very tasty.”) and a geis to never refuse hospitality, and so when he was offered dog meat by a host, what other choice had he but to spiral into tragedy?
One of Ronan geis is that he can’t stop dreaming. And what is the other? Adam? Declan? Matthew? Geasa means taboo, so what is that Ronan needs to do? Or can’t do? I’m dying to know.
Also you all want to know another funny thing? Cu Chulainn was so ferocious in battle that absolutely no one dared to go ahead and verify is he was really dead. Do you all know how they knew?
Because a raven sat on his shoulder and drank his blood 😊
Please take this meta with a grain of salt, because this is my own interpretation of the story, of Ronan’s journey and my own studies in mythology in general. It’s totally possible I’m reaching a little bit too far too but who knows, right?
Also, I have absolutely no idea of why I wrote this or where I wanted to go with it. I just think the parallels are quite neat, if they are indeed true to Maggie’s (quite numerous, that’s what tipped me off) discreet mentions of Cu Chulainn along her books.
So yeah, hit me up if you wanna talk or something?
