Hands down, the funniest thing to come out of my Locked Tomb reread is the fact that Gideon the First is very obviously Going Through It in HtN and literally no one gives a fuck. Aside from the fact that Pyrrha periodically takes control of his mind without his knowledge, so he has probably believed heâs insane for the past ten thousand years, this poor bitch knew ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL about the Ninth House Operation. Gideon and Pyrrha both fully believed that they had murdered their own child along with their girlfriend twenty years ago.Â
Like, without context, itâs easy to miss when youâre reading it for the first time. I just kind of assumed that they had figured out that baby Gideon wasnât theirs sometime before they shot down Wakeâs shuttle, BUT NO. These absolute sadsacks had NO FUCKING CLUE why their batshit girlfriend brought their newborn baby on a suicide mission and were living with that shit for TWENTY YEARS. And their closest friends literally couldnât give less of a shit. Like, Harrow had good reason to not care, but Mercy and Augustine were fully on board with Harrow murdering Gideon, no questions asked. Gideon was very obviously seriously upset about the whole Wake situation, and they clearly exploited that to get him out of the room during Dios Apate Minor 2.0. THEN, when Wake is infecting Cytherea and Harrowâs bodies and fully tried to murder them, Pyrrhaâs only reaction is to stroke her face and ask the question obviously plaguing her for two decades; âWhy did you bring along the baby?âÂ
AND NOT TO MENTION, poor Gideon the First literally died without ever learning the answer. Pyrrha eventually found out, sure, but the Resurrection Beasts killed Gideon before the whole thing was revealed.
So this poor bitch was walking around fully believing that he had murdered two whole girlfriends and his newborn kid, probably nearing Harrow-levels of insanity due to botching the lyctor process, literally only wanting answers for whatever the fuck is going on in his brain, and his only friends could not give less of a shit. And to top it all off, he died before ever getting those answers.
Absolutely iconic. If heâd shown a modicum of backbone ever, I might feel a bit worse for him, but as it stands: fucking hilarious.Â