Like. To Gideon, love is sacrificing yourself for someone else. It’s violence, especially violence enacted upon the self for another’s benefit. It is objectifying oneself, making your body a tool of another. Love is a baby having oxygen its mother doesn’t have. It’s the Ninth’s endless devotion to Harrow. It’s Jeannemary screaming for Isaac, even though he’s already dead and going back would only kill her. It’s Palamedes blowing up to kill Cyth. And that’s why she makes the choice she does, why she has to go nuclear. She can’t express love except as violence, as sacrifice. And then to have this sacrifice so universally rejected is to have her love rejected. She feels dumped.
But Harrow didn’t feel loved when Gideon did it. She felt alone, and vulnerable, her parents swinging for the greater good. Her house’s future destroyed, all to keep Alecto in her tomb, a tombkeeper necromancer of Anastasia’s line. The first flower of her house, dead, for Harrow, again, who has said that she can never be enough to justify it. Harrow feels too keenly the injustice to be able to accept that sacrifice. She can never justify what has happened, so her work must be to remedy it, however poorly. Thus, the puppets, the need to be a lyctor, and thus, the lobotomy. They’re all too-small measures, they don’t solve the wounds, but she must do something because she can’t bear the weight of the entirety of fucking Pluto on her shoulders.
Anastasia is THE ghost haunting the lockedtomb narrative. Failed the lyctor trials because she could not bear to ask her cavalier, someone she loved, to die for her. Her punishment for that act was to be asked to guard the tomb and die for Alecto, who swore a cavalier oath to her quietly in the cold dark. Anastasia was too human and Alecto wasn’t human enough and so they got sent into the dark together to waste away. And she died. But she’s the only Cavalier whose name is remembered by her house!!!!! The Ninth was never supposed to exist but carried on and on for a Myriad because of the resilience and love and devotion Anastasia, the only human on the Mithraeum, had for the world.
All of her descendants have to be necromancers because that’s what love is, and that’s what god is: someone has to pass the candle to the next one forever. Anastasia died for Alecto, so now all her descendants have to LIVE for her. That promise is too much to ask of anyone. It’s what kept the Ninth House and their memory alive in the face of the negligence of god himself, but it’s also a curse. Anastasia’s oath is what dooms Harrowhark into being a war crime since her birth, it’s Gideon dying for Harrow because she doesn’t know how to live for her, but it’s also what made baby Harrow sneak down into the tomb and see Alecto and decide that she wanted to live…..love is god and love is a curse and god is a promise to endure made between a fallen angel and a failed disciple sent to languish in a tomb ten thousand years before the story even began. and they were both girls
I think the reason Gideon Nav, Jod’s only begotten son, lesbian Jesus, doesn’t fall into the much-maligned character archetype “ordinary man facing extraordinary odds becomes hero–jk, turns out she’s the universe’s specialest princess after all!!” is because being special in this case sucks so so bad. She’s the daughter of God and she got her soul stapled to her bedazzled & betoothed corpse for her troubles. What if you’re the universe’s specialest princess and it makes everything worse
such a good point, and honestly, this applies to the rest of the cast. harrow is the greatest necromancer of her generation - because her parents murdered 200 children. gods chosen disciples get unlimited power - because they kill the person they love the most. even ianthe, who sidestepped that little wrinkle, ends up losing her sister anyway, both in terms of proximity and ideologically. john was chosen by the fucking earth - and he fucked that up royally and has just generally been having a bad time ever since.
in the world of tlt, being chosen or special is explicitly a bad thing and makes your life worse. very fascinating inversion of the usual trope.
Does anyone else think about how the nicknames Pyrrha gave Nona and the way she acted around her in general probably had something to do with the fact that there was a good chance Nona was Gideon, at least at first?
Pyrrha ended up loving Nona as her child regardless of who she ended up being, of course.
But the books aren’t exactly shy about the fact that Pyrrha wanted Gideon (which is a concept that in itself would probably make Gideon explode if she let herself realize it). I think the first thing we ever hear her ask Wake, way back in Harrow, is why she brought the baby when she came to the Ninth.
Pyrrha thought Gideon was dead for eighteen years, and she was still thinking about her. She was still grieving her.
The last coherent soul she’d met inhabiting Harrow’s body was Gideon. What does it matter if she’s technically John’s kid? She’s still Pyrrha’s. And Pyrrha came out of that situation okay, but Gideon didn’t.
But the body is okay. And the body might have amnesia, and the girl in it might not know what she’s doing, but someone is alive in there, and there’s a good chance that it’s still the baby she grieved for eighteen years.
And so Pyrrha cooks her breakfast. She braids her hair. She goes to work for her. She kisses her forehead when they say goodbye. She shoots marbles off the roof just because the girl asks her to.
She gets to do all these things that she thought she never would, because the baby died eighteen years ago.
And she sees the girl’s body, and she’s her mom’s spitting image, and Pyrrha wants her, wants to take care of her, so much. Even now that she’s dead. Even now that she’s undead. Even when she’s acting weird, when she’s all grief and anger and takes her frustration out on everyone.
Pyrrha still calls her kiddo. She still tries to look out for her.
Gideon is Pyrrha’s kid in the same way that Nona is, but Gideon doesn’t know what to do with that, because she doesn’t know what it’s like to be a child that is wanted.
Thinking really intensely about what would have been if Nona had been Gideon, if she’d gotten to realize that she has friends and a parent who love her without any need for sacrifice, or any need to prove herself. Who love her just because she is.
And idk. I’m hoping she still gets to realize that. I’m hoping Pyrrha gets to call her stupid nicknames, too.
Honestly I think that one of the main reasons for the animosity between Mercymorn and Augustine, aside from what happened with Cristabel and Alfred and simply not having the most compatible personalities, is the radically different ways they handle their grief, their emotions generally and their immortality. Augustine is all carefully cultivated charm, hollow humour, a genteel mask of nonchalance and elegance. Very fifth. And as Harrow points out, its all farce!! This man is an empty shell!! He avoids any earnest emotion, any genuine affect, like the plague. Now, Mercy is the stark opposite - she’s all affect, all earnest emotion. She looses her composure, she says what she thinks. She’s almost painfully blunt.
And I think they absolutely hate each other for how the other handles their grief, general emotions and life situation. I think Augustine is repulsed by how terribly earnest Mercy is - she carries her bitterness, her immeasurable grief, her fury and hate, on her sleeve. No filter, no mask. Mercy who yells at John, Mercy who flies into a rage at the mention of Cristabel, Mercy who never even attempts a personable, charming facade. Augustine cannot stand this - perhaps he resents her for how cathartic her approach seems to be, compared to his. She can be a fine enough actress, he knows, so why can’t she put any effort into suppressing her emotions like him a normal person? Now, Mercy!!! She explicitly reacts upset at Augustines carefully crafted compartmentalisation, his fake cool composure. She’s irate that he has gone through the same pain and grief as she has and yet plays at being so cool and unaffected over it. How dare he! How dare he casually talk about their cavaliers so calmly and jovially! Mercy is done masking her grief, her anger and frustration, done with making herself likeable and palatable. And yet Augustine made exactly that his whole personality, and it seems to work, at least on John. She is repulsed by his cooler-than-you attitude, which makes her seem emotional and unrefined next to him.
I have way too many thoughts about these old bastards
Op you’ve perfectly outlined the reason why this interaction during the diosapate scene absolutely breaks my heart. Like Mercymorn’s desperation is so palpable but also so feigned- the only reason why she says “Say it again” is because she knows she can get away with it because this is all a lie. Whereas Augustine’s response tries so hard to be untrue, tries so so hard to keep with the facade of dios apate, but it’s also so overwhelmingly obvious and this completely breaks his calm, collected, debonair act in half.
Yes!! They (especially Mercy in this scene) are seeking a sort of comfort, or catharsis, or absolution, in artifice. They both know its all show, that they are, as you said, lying through their teeth for John. And yet, this is the only way in which Mercy will get to hear these words, that one of the only remaining people in her life doesn’t hate her beloved Cristabel, that things are fine, that millenia of hate and resentment are resolved. This theatre is the only time she gets to hear these words, indulge in this idea. And Augustine as well, to a lesser extent. He definitely finds comfort in the bitterness and hate (towards Cristabel and Mercy) he made his routine, but I think he also finds some kind of relief in playing semi-funtional family, even if just for a bit. Pretending like they all actually get along, because pretending is the only way he’ll ever get a glimpse of that.
Something something a trace of the true self exists in the false self
something something alecto needing to know what forgiveness feels like + john as her counterpart and locus and he’s never forgiven or been forgiven by anyone in his life + you can’t take away loved ie how will the experience of forgiveness have transformed her in atn
abigail mentioning “home” and harrow’s instinctual thought being of gideon,,,,,,, im going to launch myself into fucking dominicus
additionally! (i was just gonna put this in the tags but i changed my mind.)
chapter 37, pg. 432, Gideon the Ninth – Gideon refers to herself as Drearburh right before sacrificing herself so Harrow can live
chapter 2, pg. 44, Harrow the Ninth – in conversation with John, Harrow’s memory of Gideon is overlayed with the memory of hearing the doors of Drearburh close, before she gets confused again.
along with the repeated theme of “we can’t go home again” from both books, harrow saying “i cannot concieve of a universe without you”, it could be that Harrow has never seen Drearburh or the Ninth as home unless Gideon was there too, therefore conflating the two
so. keeping the ball rolling, the first line of this:
ALT
is a quote from Psalm 137. The “you” being referred to in the song? Jerusalem, the homeland. But Harrow is using it here to mean Gideon.
obsessed where stories where it is like. the mistakes are unfixable and the worst thing that could happen happened and nothing can go back to how it was. but there was still love in this and love will continue after this and love endures always.
ALT
