Intro, TT, and QoA thoughts here and here.
King of Attolia is still probably my favorite book in the five published, though QoA & TaT are close close seconds. There’s so much going on in the background, so much going on in the foreground, and even knowing somehow Gen has all of this in his capable hand/s doesn’t keep us from some incredibly tense moments throughout the novel.
The first time I started KoA, I really, really missed the Gen from Thief. There’s a distance through Costis’s eyes even greater than the sudden 3rd person of QoA; not only because he is an unknown guardsman who’s only known Gen for a few months, but because he hates him. They all do! It’s so hard on the first read because we the readers know how good a person Gen is, how he truly wants the best for the queen and her country (not particularly because he loves her country but because she does, and he loves her), and it hurts to see someone we love bullied, isolated, mocked, and despised for no reason. (The irony of that given the beginning of Gen’s & Irene’s relationship is not lost on me.)
It’s emphasized in every interaction. Not just by the disgust dripping off every one of Costis’s words, internal and external, but even in the narrative. For 99% of the novel, Gen is “the king” to Costis. The king sighed. The king lowered his sword and was standing still, looking exasperated. The king turned his face away. It makes it all the more jarring when we see a section from Ornon’s perspective in the first third of the novel where he is only called Eugenides, not “the king.” It makes it even more poignant and painful and perfect when, at the very end of the novel, Costis watches the sparring bouts and thinks of him as Eugenides as often as he does the king, and even once at the very end, just slipped in as if no one might notice, Gen.
It’s not even entirely Costis’s fault, either! He makes an observation at one point that in the king’s eyes there were things hidden that he chose not to reveal. This is as much Gen’s doing as it is Costis’s; for most of the book he chooses to be king without being king, and so to reveal his capability (with the sword, with his cleverness, with the wielding of power) is to--in his mind--usurp power from Attolia and undermine her authority. Only Relius understands that it can only make her stronger, and even that understanding comes only after he is tortured for betraying Attolia. “Betraying,” perhaps.
(And on that note, I could spend another thousand words on Relius and Teleus and their relationship to Attolia alone, but again, this is getting longer than I want it to. Suffice it to say that these are some beautifully complicated relationships in a book already brimming over with them, and I love how painfully different each one of them is and how similar they are to Gen--all of them at the root bound by their love for the queen.)
I did wonder for the first time on this reread if Gen could have prevented the torture of Relius and chose not to, rather than intervening as soon as he felt he could to rescue him. Perhaps because he knew that Relius would not have believed Gen could still love Irene after the loss of his hand until he himself still loved Irene after his own failure and betrayal; that Gen knew Irene still needed Relius for the security of her throne and for her own humanity, and the only way to gain Relius’s trust would be to show him by example that even in the most abject, broken moments of their lives they would both remain devoted to her service. (Those nighttime meetings with Relius are so precious to me as a reader. They are so small and so perfect.)
And before I leave Gen’s relationships in this book altogether, I want to talk for just a second about how important it is that he and Attolia fight. They get angry at each other a lot in this book, especially Attolia. And it’s all justified! She’s angry when he is publicly humiliated by his attendants & the court--not because he is being humiliated but because he is choosing to allow it, and she knows he could be so much more than he is--and when he places himself in harm’s way, either out of deliberate design (Costis) or rare carelessness (Sejanus). She is toweringly enraged when he denies her the justice she believes is needed after the assassination attempt (”you prefer his mercy to my justice?”), not because she wants to kill Teleus, but because she has held her throne by doing the ruthless things necessary to keep it, and when Gen denies the authority of the kingship it undermines her power, forcing her to become almost more ruthless in her rule to compensate. Better no king than a weak one, as Ornon says, and until Gen publicly shows himself willing to do what is necessary to keep his power, Irene is forced to continue being the exceedingly effective scythe she has been most of her adult life. We know Gen hates and fears the public eye, that he is most effective in the shadows; and yet he married a queen, and there is no choice left that won’t offend the gods but becoming king in the process. And yet, at the same time, we are given the small moments of peace (the gift of stillness, the reveal of the passage between rooms, the conversation in Attolia’s rooms) that remind us at the heart of it they’re just two babes in love, which is why we’re all here to begin with.
(Last thought before I wrap up: I continue to adore the portrayal of the gods in these books. I love that they are manifestly real and manifestly limited in their power, that Gen is allowed a direct and tangible connection with his god, that Costis is allowed that glimpse in turn, and that of all mortals Gen is saved from falling by his god of thieves and told directly, “Go to bed.”)
Okay! You know who we’ve been missing? Sophos. Let’s go read about Sophos for a bit!
