Having read you awesome Whumptober fic about her, I was wondering if you had any headcanons about Valiana? I love her to pieces, and I'd love to read your thoughts on her.
Have a wonderful day!
Oh shit yeah! hold on let me see if I can put some of these thoughts to words
After Saint's Blood she makes a point to have Kest teach her the Grandanza. (or whatever that dance is called. you know what I mean, right? cool. moving on).
actually no I'm not moving on. you know what? Valiana was/is a professional noblewoman and Kest is Kest, they're both trained in formal ballroom dance and they do make a point to dance together at least once. I like to dance, and that's fun to think about. I've mentioned my thoughts about her and kest before but I think they're buds. good pals. they have offscreen bonding moments and they're all great.
oh no, bad thought. at one point, she does ask him to kill her if the adorasia takes over again and she can't fight it anymore.
her handwriting is immaculate
She has to unlearn so much toxic shit she picked up from Patriana (who, I think we can all surmise, was absolutely not a good parent). I think body image issues were definitely part of that, Patirana would constantly nitpick at her appearance and that shit sticks with you.
again, i project, but there are so many practical skills she never had to learn in Princess Mode that suddenly are necessary as a Greatcoat. How to repair horse tack. How to build a shelter when sleeping out in the open. How to tie a clove hitch. Other basic combat/survival/travel skills. One of the other main greatcoats will say something like, "your sword's getting dull, make sure you sharpen it" and she's faced with the realization that no one ever taught her to do this thing which she never needed to know but is now the most basic skill for her new line of work. She tries to figure it out on her own and usually doesn't get it right, and one of the others has to come along and help her fix it and teach her how to do it correctly. It's an utterly humiliating and exhausting learning curve to have to go through and she hates every minute but takes it like a champ.
TYRANT'S THRONE SPOILERS BELOW]
After Aline dies, she's afraid to let herself even think about it, because she worries that if she lets herself experience emotions too strongly it will weaken her defenses and let the Adorasia in the driver's seat again. This isn't so much a headcanon as much as "I will kidnap sdc and hold him hostage until he releases the Valiana POV chapter from when Aline is killed until the Trial cause my girl must have been Going Through It and I need to know someone was there for her please" there was a time she made Aline her entire reason for living she must have been fucking devastated when Aline died but unlike Falcio, she couldn't allow herself to go apeshit for so many reasons.
part of me says she's bi/aspec cause I'm bi/aspec and I say so. I do know she had a huge crush on dari. the nonsense with pastien (FUCK that guy) sets her back a ways in the whole "exploration of sexuality" department, as she intentionally distances herself from any kind of attraction or romantic feelings for fear of being betrayed again.
Adorasia means she's suffering from some level of mental fatigue constantly.
stimming helps. she stims cause i stim and i say so. but she can't let herself do it much in front of people cause everyone knows shes mad and is looking for the slightest excuse to declare her incompetent.
She gets lots of unflattering nicknames. Madwoman, Crazy Bitch, The Stark-Raving Duchess of Rijou.
But she's not the queen's iron for nothing and never gives them a goddamn inch.
also do you ever wonder if her title as The Queen's Iron was intentionally a contrast to the Iron Duke of DeMaris? cause I do.
I've never thought of her as a cat person before, but in knight's shadow her love language seems to be "you're in distress so i'm going to come over here and be quiet and just sit next to you" and that is very cat like.
her and darriana never stop being an absolute force of nature when they're together. They're similar enough to share a braincell in most matters but different enough in method of execution to balance each other out. sometimes they have "girls nights out" which sometimes involve getting wine drunk and complaining about everyone else and sometimes involve masked vigilante justice.
In a modern au her superpower is deciding to pick up a new hobby and proceeding to follow through actually excel at that hobby in the long term. my half-finished abandoned sewing projects hate her
so, yeah!
that's what i have darling and thank you so much for this ask, that was very fun to have an excuse to write this all out. I might think of more stuff later but honestly I have Things To Do Today and have to get going. cheers!
This feels very three musketeers to me but as I've never read the book, only watched the many movies and couple TV shows based on the book I'm not sure if that's actually a good comparison.
Regardless these books are great. I didn't look to see how many there were and after the first couple I thought they might just be different adventures the greatcoats go on but no. Just the four books.
Review: Sebastien de Castell, “Traitor’s Blade” & “Knight’s Shadow”
My name is Falcio val Mond, one of the last of the King's Greatcoats, and if you listen very carefully you might still be able to hear me screaming.
- Knight’s Shadow
I’ve always had a soft spot for reluctant heroes. Their hesitance often speaks to a kind of endearing humility that you don’t find in either the earnest Chosen Ones of high fantasy or the slippery antiheroes of grimdark. It can also be an “emperor’s new clothes” situation, where they initially refuse the call to adventure on the grounds that they have too much to lose – what sane person with people to protect, after all, would agree to subject themselves and their loved ones to anything like the hero’s journey?
[Right you are, Rocket.]
Falcio val Mond, protagonist of Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoat series, is the epitome of the reluctant hero. Falcio has no reason to be humble, though he often is – he’s perhaps the best fencer in the world, the handpicked right-hand man of a once-powerful king, and the leader of a far-flung group of warrior-magistrates who categorically bow to no one and whose meager goal is to restore peace and justice to the land. He also has little to lose – by the time the first book picks up, both his saintly wife and his beloved king are long dead, killed horribly in ways Falcio was powerless to avert. Instead, from the very first of over two thousand pages, Falcio wants nothing more than to die, and the events of the series – plucky rescues, daring escapes, and hair-raising duels choreographed as tightly as neurosurgical procedures – are minor speedbumps on his path to rejoin those he loves in the afterlife. To Falcio, death is the carrot on a stick that he chases unwillingly through the hoops of herohood, and against all odds, it’s an absolute joy to watch.
For a man more or less constantly on the lookout for ways to die – especially, in Falcio’s case, for ways to nobly sacrifice himself for king and country – the world of the Greatcoats series offers opportunities around every corner. The kingdom of Tristia, an Alexandre Dumas-esque land which it seems almost compulsory to call “swashbuckling,” was once steered towards socialistic utopia by the benevolent machinations of the idealistic young King Paelis. Five years ago, the local Dukes, from whom Paelis was trying to wrest power, banded together to have him killed. All that remains of Paelis’ legacy are the Greatcoats – musketeer-like magistrates and masters of fencing, singing, and law who roam the land settling disputes between the common folk and their cruel overlords. Their secret weapon? The “greatcoats” from which they draw their name – uniforms, Bags of Holding, and bulletproof vests all in one thanks to hidden pockets and bone plates sewn into the leather – which along with their skills make them nigh-unkillable. In the years since the king’s death, however, Greatcoats – or “Tattercloaks,” as they are derogatorily called – have become the political scapegoats (or “scapecoats,” if you will) du jour, blamed for everything from the current plight of the poor to the suspicious deaths of powerful Dukes.
[Some people even respect the Greatcoats as opponents, but that doesn’t stop them from wanting or trying to kill them at every opportunity.]
Hunted and/or hated by everyone from the Dukes and their retained knights to a mysterious order of world-class assassins to the average guy on the street, for Falcio, the so-called “First Cantor of the Greatcoats,” life is an endless procession of narrow brushes with death, usually the result of some barely-eked-out victory in the face of impossible odds. It’s a good day for the First Cantor if he doesn’t end it by passing out from blood loss for the next week (the punchline of more than a few chapters in first book Traitor’s Blade) after a fierce fight or a bout of torture. In sequel Knight’s Shadow/Greatcoat’s Lament, Falcio spends most of the novel slipping irreversibly into death as a slow-acting poison gradually paralyzes him. By Saint’s Blood, the third in the series, Falcio’s tendency towards being very nearly killed – and his equal propensity for jumping back into the fray only half-healed because the world is on line and there just isn’t time – is a running joke that almost everyone in Tristia is in on. What impresses me most about the series is that, despite Falcio’s tendency to fail or nearly fail at almost everything he does, he never feels underpowered as a character – instead, the compelling antagonists against whom he faces off are developed in such a way as to create the sense that Falcio is an extraordinary protagonist whose bare and often pyrrhic victories are nonetheless admirable in the face of very capable villains and almost certain disaster.
[Just another day at the office for Falcio val Mond.]
If Falcio sounds a bit unbalanced as a character, he is, but purposefully so; as with the Greatcoats’ musketeer models, he constitutes just one third of a triumvirate of lead characters who together make up a single semi-functional human. Serving as counterpoints to Falcio’s passionate idealism and suicidal spontaneity are the stoic, logical, and fiercely loyal Kest, whose mastery of the sword rivals Falcio’s; and Brasti, who eschews the seriousness of the other two for persistent sarcasm and practical joking and trades the typical fencing foil for a trio of imposingly-named greatbows that, in his capable hands, may as well be sniper rifles. The friendship between the three is one of the series’ greatest strengths, and plot points which occasionally separate them left me counting down the pages until their reunion.
Seeing as the series’ main trio of men are characterized as the embodiment of certain traits, it’s perhaps unsurprising that their female counterparts start out equally archetypical. Unfortunately, however, without the additive and complimentary relationship shared by Falcio, Kest, and Brasti, the series’ scattered archetypical females tend to come across (at least at first) less as timelessly heroic and more as two-dimensional. Falcio’s wife, whose honor was besmirched in a Braveheart-esque turn before her untimely death, initially codes as an impossibly good “angel of the house” and little more than a motivator for Falcio, fueling his homicidal anger at ne’er-do-wells and his underlying desire to die. His new love interest begins life as a pretty stereotypical female healer support character to the mostly male movers and shakers. Several teenage damsels cycle in and out of the plot of Traitor’s Blade at regular intervals as big strong Falcio selflessly rescues them from certain death again and again. Most egregiously of all, the female villains who (spoilers) eventually emerge as the puppeteers of each book’s grand conspiracies are primarily characterized as evil through their sexual aggression and kinkiness – a particularly ironic case of the pot calling the kettle black considering the novels’ seeming obsession with keeping Falcio bloodied and half-dead at every turn.
[At one point, Falcio is literally crucified and tortured for over a week, during which the novel toes the line between whump and something more… vindictive.]
Luckily, however, many of these characters make great strides over the course of the first two books. Healer Ethalia shucks the angel’s endless patience, holding Falcio accountable for his choices and actions and refusing to support him unconditionally. Falcio’s female wards become deadly warriors and serious political players in their own right, similarly stepping out of Falcio’s shadow and finding their own priorities. The series also introduces memorable female characters who work against other stereotypes – the supernatural sage who guides the heroes on their quest, for example, is a morally dubious, scheming old woman who spends more time scolding the Three Greatcoateers for running afoul of her plans than she does actually helping them, undercutting both the classic male sage and the mother-figureness of female spirit guides. Marking this great progress over the course of a couple books, I’m crossing my fingers the rest of the series will undergo a similar evolution with regards to sexuality. The way the novels develop the trio’s bromance and import a lot of seventeenth-century social norms has kept the world pretty firmly heteronormative thus far, though a few hints here and there have opened a fissure in this facade that I’m holding out hope is expanded in installments to come.
[Because we all know manly devotion doesn’t always have to be totally definitely 100% straight.]
Perhaps my greatest initial reservation about the Greatcoats series was its meticulous focus on fencing in its many, many fight scenes. I had read in a blurb that the author was a professional fight choreographer and feared that, just as the linguistics-obsessed among us have a tendency to undertake pages-long fights of fancy about the etymologies of invented words, the fight scenes would devolve into extended chunks of jargon that the average layman wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of, let alone enjoy. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found the deft and precise explanations of combat maneuvers to be some of my absolute favorite parts. Narrator Falcio balances the clear and evocative explanations of a patient and experienced teacher with snappy humor and rapid-fire pacing to create not just the image of a fencing match, but the emotional rollercoaster and the rhythm of one on the sentence level. As such, these sequences move the plot forward thrillingly rather than forcing it into an eddy (a.k.a. Naruto syndrome) and further characterize Falcio and his friends as knowledgeable masters of their respective martial crafts. It almost makes me miss my high school fencing lessons… almost.
For anyone already eager to jump into Falcio’s tempestuous adventures – or even those on the fence – I can’t recommend strongly enough that you check out the audiobook versions of the series. As an auditory learner, a compulsive multitasker, and a grad student with waning eyesight, I seek out audiobooks at almost any cost, up to and including suffering through stilted narration and dubious character voices if it means not having to subject my eyes to 500 plus pages of tiny paperback print. Greatcoats narrator Joe Jameson is not only perfectly cast as Falcio, but a joy to listen to. At 1.75x speed (a leisurely pace compared to the 2.5x or 3x I usually aim for when reading for work), his cadence and inflection are engaging and lifelike, capturing especially well the main trio’s personalities and mannerisms, and even his soprano-pitched female voices hold up to the chipmunk test. Armed with the audiobooks and a lot of menial labor I needed distracting from, I tore through the first and second volumes of the series in just a few days and have happily started the third. Falcio may be itching for the Great Beyond, but here’s me hoping he, his companions, and their collective hijinks stick around for many, many books to come.
ON THE FAVES SHELF | greatcoats by sebastien de castell
“gods, man, don't you start now,” i said softly. “we're going to get a terrible reputation if we just keep travelling across the countryside crying all the time.”
