god i love lesbians and dragons

roots of chaos sideblog owned by sapphofinch // icon by sleazyjanet // he/they lesbian // nayimathun i would do anything for you

[the-milk-lagoon]

hi, welcome to the priory of the orange tree/roots of chaos sideblog for @sapphofinch. im deeply unwell about this series. this will mostly be analysis/reblogs as every reread i notice something new and lose my mind. my favorite characters are tane, eadaz, dumai, nikeya, and every single dragon.

[skaianbruja]

Please help a queer Mexican-USAmerican struggling to make payments as a result of a sudden knee injury:

I randomly dislocated and fractured my knee back in August and as such was unable to work for four months. While I have been working again since January, the fact that I have missed out on four months worth of income means that I am still struggling with payments

My original goal is $3,000 of which I have so far raised $800

If you are able to donate, my cashapp, venmo, and paypal are all @avangel93

If you can't then I ask that you please reblog this

[skaianbruja]

I am now at $960/$3,000!

[felicity-worthington]

me reading the summary of tpotot: hmm sounds like ead and sabran might have an interesting relationship

me, after having read about 50 pages: That is not what i expected, thought they might have liked each other, guess i was wrong

me, about 200 pages later: Harold…

[randombookposts]

Reading the Priory first and then reading a Day of Fallen Night adds a lot of context for some characters. Like when we’re introduced to Glorian Shieldheart, she’s been a legend for centuries, a force of nature, a warrior who carried her baby on her hip as she led her people to victory. However when she appears in a Day of Fallen Night, it’s like she’s a child, she’s loves sweets and playing in the snow with her friends, she loves horseback riding, she loves her papa, she’s scared of her mom, she just wants her mom to be proud, she wants to be a good queen, there’s so much burden on her, she’s a child who just lost her parents and now needs to bear a child herself. She’s a child and she now must lead to country to war. She’s just a child.

[wlrsna]

noziken pa dumai.

playlist.

[ilveaheart]

anyone up thinking about glorian berethnet and immediately start bursting into tears

[the-milk-lagoon]

god DAMN does aubrechts death hit harder with the context of among the burning flowers. losing so much of his family with only his sisters left as his closest relatives. the way everyone sneers at his previous bethrothal to marosa.

"i doubt he liked her overmuch, he must have been able to tell she had evil in her heart." (page 41 of priory)

"i believe that we are abandoning her to her doom, and that i am failing her by ending this bethrothal." (page 188 of burning flowers)

how he feared marosa on the childbed the same way sabran feared the childbed for herself.

the griever becomes the grieved.

[mithartu]

i don't ship them i just think they could get ragebaited into having sex with each other

[theguywiththewhitespot]

Halfway through The Priory of the Orange Tree and the funniest thing about the queerness of the book is that the world is generally not homophobic except for one person who needs to be straight in order for her religion to work, and folks you’ll never guess who’s gay.

[the-milk-lagoon]

actually obsessed with this description in adofn when dumai and kanifa see the soldier with the red sickness on the way to brhazat

"Nayimathun got there first. Taking Dumai and Kanifa by the pelts, she picked them up with her teeth, like kittens by the scruffs of their necks, and placed them next to Furtia."

nayimathun my beloved

[sleazyjanet]

(speculative)

cleolind onjenyu, mother of the priory of the orange tree, and neporo of komoridu banishing the nameless one for a thousand years

[justsomecrows]

Can't stop thinking about Kalyba. No one's doing it like her. She's an ancient legendary witch. She can appear to you in dreams and take the form of your greatest desires. She has absolutely no game. The woman is so un-insightful that she fumbles every attempt at seduction She's ever made. She's trying SO HARD to get some. Can't score Ead, can't score Tunuva, got betrayed by the saddest, wettest dog of a man BECAUSE she took the form of the love of his life. Galian destroyed every image of her in the country and then himself when he realized he'd been with her. She has EVERY tool at her disposal to be a legendary seductress and still cannot overcome her complete lack of game. I can't wait to see my favorite problematic immortal failwoman get rejected in even more time periods.

[awesomesauceme05]

I think something interesting about ADOFN is the fact that the book as a whole is about people staying in toxic systems and the reasons they do. This makes sense because it is a prequel, and you can’t have people rebel too much before TPOTOT in order for the timeline to make sense.

Like for instance, Glorian stays with Virtudom because she knows no other way and the only people who tried to introduce ways outside Virtudom to her were very untrustworthy. She feels terrible for subjecting her daughter to the same fate, but because she genuinely believes her line will keep back the Nameless One, she can’t do anything about it.

The Priory characters have this too. Tunuva is somewhat aware that the Priory is very flawed and partially responsible for the grief she experiences. But her sense of duty when it comes to keeping people safe from wyrms and her love for Esbar keep her rooted there and somewhat content. Siyu, on the other hand, is not content at all, but eventually chooses to stay with the Priory despite how terribly they treated her because she went through the trauma of seeing Anyso’s family killed by wyrms and wants to protect other people from that. She also likely wants to keep her daughter in a place where she’ll be protected, even if she does feel like it’s a cage.

Even Wulf cannot stay in the Priory because as a man, it has no role he would be content with within a matriarchal system, despite his love for Tunuva. He goes back to Virtudom, a system he knows is false, not only because of this, but also so that he can be closer to his daughter and the boy he loves.

Dumai arguably is the one who rebels against the system till the end, and she is rewarded with her demise (?) and existing in an ambiguous state (at least until Wild Winter comes out). Nikeya does change the system, but really she creates a new status quo that lasts until the present timeline.

I find it interesting because a lot of TPOTOT is about rebelling against systems for the purpose of achieving a greater goal, and many of its characters are descended from ADOFN characters who stayed in systems because of their duty.

[amore-c]

[the-milk-lagoon]

man i love prequels that make me want to eat glass when i reread the other books

(glorian shieldheart, so revered as the greatest berethnet queen, she who banished fyredel and won the grief of ages, and she was a child. igrain brings her up as reason for sabran to marry a 70 year old man the same way robert pressed glorian to marry guma. both igrain and robert were pushing them into marriages for their own gain. glorian only married him for the fortune he brought.

her daughter sabran XI, technically a bastard the same way sabran the magnificent is. her daughter, who glorian never wanted but still loved with all her heart, who wed a lady of her bedchamber when she abdicated.

the first warlord of seiiki, so mysterious, so strong, so brave, a grieving woman who lost every family member close to her and the woman she loved. a grieving woman who was determined to avenge everyone she lost. a grieving woman who rose from the ashes of her father determined to be better.

marosa, who wanted to get out so badly, only to have her wings clipped. only for the man she loved to be killed before she could even tell him that he was right, and she never betrayed him.)

[the-milk-lagoon]

i want to write analysis on this series but i keep just typing RJAJHFDSUOHFHSDJLFDJLGHJSEHOUYHZGHDFLGDLF

[the-milk-lagoon]

yknow, reading atbf, i wasn't prepared for melaugo pov, much less the reveal that shes also a lesbian, but it's a samantha shannon book and also melaugo so idk what the fuck i expected