#tigana

[xphaiea]

Mel Odom, cover art for 'Tigana' by Guy Gavriel Kay

[medic981]

Brandin's magic still running strong.

[halogenwarrior]

Alright, posting this in response to trolling around r/books on Reddit and them having a thread on most unintentionally unlikeable characters with Dianora from Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay getting listed with a bunch of upvotes, and seeing a lot of people on r/fantasy express a similar sentiment that the author failed to justify why she loved Brandin besides “oh, he’s charming and has good sex” in a way that just played into sexist tropes. All this made me really question my reading of the book and her character, because while I had other issues with the book (including how it treated women) and wouldn’t say it’s a favorite I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how her subtle motivations and internality made compelling and sympathetic what I would have normally dismissed as a sexist trope/premise, and while I assumed other people would read this complexity as well, finding they thought her motivations were poorly justified made me worry I was overanalyzing, but I wanted to write my analysis of her here to see if anyone else thinks I’m not reaching.

First of all, I think it’s crucial to her motivation that (well, up until a certain scene, which I will discuss later) should she have succeeded in killing Brandin, it would have been the end of her life as well – there’s just practically little hope to do so and not be apprehended and killed in revenge. And when she first set off to do so, that wasn’t a concern because she had lost everything. There is nothing left to hope for and nothing or no one to find the comfort in that she longed for in childhood (like any child, but shown with the flashback with her dream of drowning and looking for comfort from her parents). Fundamentally, the only thing she can do that matters is to die, in a suicidal attack to redeem the memory of her country. And then she’s given a life of peace, and the companionship of not just Brandin but Scelto as well (I think the fear of losing him plays a big role in her motivations as well). It’s very easy, at least for me, to read her reluctance to do the deed even before she would have had a chance to get to know Brandin, which I’ve seen people question, as being about how she is still that lost child looking for comfort and, well, you know that post that went around on Tumblr about characters who saw themselves as a vengeful ghost who isn’t really alive and thus only has the purpose of the task they must do, only to realize that they are human, that they are alive in this world and have warmth and light inside and around them? That’s what I think is going on, except a part of her knows that this very becoming alive is a horrifying and cruel thing.

It's a motive throughout her life story, how she’s not willing to quite accept that there is nothing left but despair and death, but in desperately crawling towards comfort she is drawn to things that she knows is an abomination, and because of her guilt the comfort is tainted. It’s foreshadowed in the incest scene with Baerd in a way I think people aren’t getting because of their tendency to go “ugh an incest scene that clearly must be gratuitous and unnecessary”. But it establishes that Baerd was equally desperate to believe there was some kind of comfort and hope and something worth living for amidst the wreckage, and equally willing to do something considered an abomination to find that connection. I feel including this scene actually mitigates the sexist implications that Dianora is uniquely weaker than the others through some innate trait of being a woman – in fact, they are two sides of the same coin. The difference is simply that Baerd, as a man permitted to be a soldier and constantly reminded of how he just missed out on being one, has the opportunity for seeking the redemption of Tigana in such a way where he has like-minded companions rather than being alone with his secrets, in such a way that he can meet the enemy on the field of battle and glory in the victory rather than an anonymous and suicidal assassination. And that he was constantly reminded of his failed duty due to being a year too young to fuel him, constantly told by society and the expectations of a man that it is a crime and tragedy that he lived instead of died, while Dianora had only her despair, and despair is inherently something that yearns to break, that can’t last forever. Her despair, and her shame at the depths she descends to escape it; she left not so much out of a pure determination for revolution or revenge but as a way to escape that shame, perhaps to punish herself for it by taking her brother away from herself and giving her only death to seek. But unlike with Bard who is constantly reminded by those around him, for her the shame is only in her own heart, in fact she lives in a world where no one knows of her internal conflict and she can’t let anyone know. The two really are alike in their hearts, with only the circumstances of their lives and the expectations of them given their genders giving them different paths.

But it’s also more than just that, because I think an interesting dichotomous aspect of her character is how her internal knowledge (which the readers experience) of how her life is defined by weakness and hesitation is contrasted by how to Brandin and his court she is known as the opposite – as the strong one, always thinking of ways to politically improve the life of their people and willing to stand up to Brandin if they disagree. And here we come to the crux of the desperate hope and illusion Dianora holds on to. Humans never only yearn for comfort, but to be able to matter to other people in the world, to help others and create a legacy that lives on. And I think what Brandin represents to Dianora is never about being “charming and sexy”, but about how he is defined by his vision of the world and how the world ought to be changed, a thinker, and offers her the opportunity to do the same while also offering her (along with Scelto) the ability to live and love as a human being – and all of this is still a rotten illusion, and she deep down knows it. She is trying to run from a horrible truth that the only way she can do anything that really matters to the world is to die and extinguish every hope and light in her life (thus the line about coming too late to the realization that there is no way for her life to be whole). That she doesn’t get the choice to be strong and noble in any way that also allows her to live and love, even though she has the intelligence and compassion for that to be a perfect path for her in another life (in another world, like the Finavir story). She doesn’t get to choose to die for a purpose, not really, only the realization of a cornered animal that every other choice she can take is an illusion. In this world, she can only be weak, she can only be empty. And it’s so easy for her to believe it’s not an illusion, to convince part of herself long enough to delay a little longer, when that illusion is right in front of her in the glory and splendor of a royal court and its art, and the duty she is trying to escape is so lost to the past that it is literally erased from memory and history. The irony is that she truly cannot escape it because the very vision of strength and beauty she has fallen in love with is linked inextricably to the crime done to her and her people, it is at the heart of his philosophy with every good deed he does framed through the logic of pride that demands vengeance. The irony is that in hoping for a world where she can do good in the world in a way that isn’t a sacrifice to pride and vengeful despair, she is only outsourcing that to Brandin who himself recklessly sacrifices everything to that cause. 

All of this is behind the tragedy of her saving his life on instinct, the scene I mentioned I would get to. This is a moment where rationally, having the time to realize what is going on and think through her decision, Dianora would have definitely left Brandin die, because she didn’t have to sacrifice nearly as much – not her own life, not her new home, not Scelto, only Brandin himself. It would not be easy, but it would be a far easier version of the choice that haunts her. But it happened in a moment, and she could only act by instinct. And instinct can’t differentiate between how much life and love it would be willing to sacrifice for a greater good, it can’t make surgical incisions, all it knows is that someone she loves is in danger and reacts accordingly. And this connects to her realization that the truth she was hiding from is that she cannot be truly whole; a part of her imagined that if she just waited, an opportunity would arise where she would only have to make part of the sacrifice, that she’d be able to do it even in the moment, but that understanding in a single moment would be impossible, and she realizes that now all that is left for her is to give up everything, even her life. To slowly say goodbye to this world, her humanity, such that in those moments Scelto said he could tell it is as if she is not of this world anymore. And it’s the second time she gave up a path that could have made things not easy, but easier, out of still dreaming she could have resolution, peace, she could have everything – the first being when she refused promotion and happiness at the establishment she was working at to get to Brandin, feeling that would be a betrayal of her duty – and now likely looking back on it in part with regret because though it would have been a betrayal to find happiness there it would not have been quite as large a betrayal as finding happiness with the very person who committed the crime that ruined her life. And the last irony is that, in an inversion of her previous dynamic of being praised for her strength and assertiveness doing the very thing that she saw internally as weakness knowing the truth about her life, her last, sacrificial action that she sees as the strongest, most difficult decision she can take would look to the rest of the world as a pathetic failure to accomplish her apparent goal. 

Just as a note: where I would criticize her writing is that to be honest, I would have personally preferred for her to have gone through with failing the ring dive the end, as I feel her realizations that there is no real escape or hope of happiness for herself are more powerful and tragic if they lead her to this end after having, as I said, messed up the opportunity to do it the “easier” way, rather than having all of the wonderfully poignant introspection be pointless and irrelevant to the story in the end. I get what the author was going for with the tragedy of ultimately not being able to bring yourself to it no matter what you realize about yourself and however many times you try, only to lose your point in living anyway when someone else does the heroism for you, but  if he was trying to subvert the heroic narrative I feel like the way this sacrifice is presented as a realization she can’t be “whole”, the sheer amount of time she had already waited and done nothing, the way it appears to the world like a failure while her inaction appeared as strength, is enough of a subversion that the rest wasn’t necessary. And just for my own preferences I was far too compelled by her internal narration around the ring dive and those soul-crushing realizations she had to be happy about taking the direction of it not mattering at all. But still a character I found way more compelling than I would expect from the basic character premise, even if how controversial she is on places like Reddit makes me severely doubt my read on her that makes her actions make psychological sense with how many people saying it wasn’t convincing/believable that she would act the way she does…

[mrkapao]

“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”

– Guy Gavriel Kay 'Tigana'

[desdasiwrites]

–Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

[brightwaterforarainyday]

Tigana isn't one of GGK's books I usually list among my favorites (that honor goes to the Sarantine Mosaic and it's not-sequels) but there's an intensity of emotion right off the bat in Tigana that I don't get the same sense of with his later works. I don't think the development of this restraint is a bad thing, the intensity of Tigana can also come off as overwrought or mauldlin to some people, which is part of why I don't generally recomend it as a first book for people who haven't read anything else by Kay. But if you enjoy writing that revels in the beauty that can be crafted out of language and also want to experience ten different emotions you didn't know human beings were capable of within the span of fifty pages I think Tigana is still the way to go.

[christophernolan]

Oh good god 😭

[lizziestudieshistory]

25.05.2022 - I actually have a structure for my thesis?! This is a relief! I no longer feel like I'm sitting here on a pile of stuff to do with communion and I can actually start constructing a nuanced argument. This is the best feeling - I actually really hate* research but I LOVE writing/constructing arguments, so I'm now feeling a lot happier and more motivated to work.

I've also been working on my Tigana review, it's REALLY hard to review a book I love so much (especially when the reason I love it is so difficult to explain...) I've finally got a plan/set of notes that I'm happy with but it's 11 pages, 5 of which just talk about Brandin and Dianora 😅 So this will be fun!

*Hate might be a bit strong but I dislike aimless research around a topic, it's the lack of structure that drives me insane

Currently reading: How Novels Work by John Mullan; A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin; The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets