Remember him like this, happy and smiling.

TY WITH RESTING BITCH FACE IVE PRAYEDDDD FOR TIMES LIKE THISSSSSSSA

My question is: Will Kit ever find out what his mother was like? I mean something beyond just descriptions—perhaps a photograph?

I’m also curious about Kit’s opinion of his mother. It feels like, considering all the sacrifices Rosemary made for him, Kit doesn't really know much about her; he doesn't even own anything that belonged to her—nothing to keep her present in his daily life (except for the heron necklace, but Ty has that, not Kit). It's like Rosemary’s presence in Kit’s life has been somewhat sidelined, which I find a bit sad. Will we see him thinking or talking about her in TLKoF?

Thanks for your answer! ♡

Hi! ❤️

As of right now what Kit's relationship to Rosemary's memory will look like in TWP seems a bit spoilery! — but it's an interesting question (though indeed when you are in a fantasy adventure and always running you don't get to introspect as much as you might like.)

Rosemary’s story intersects with Jem’s, and with Tessa’s — they only go looking for Kit when Rosemary dies, and they don’t immediately tell him about her because it would be devastating to find out your mother had been alive without you knowing and then died extremely recently. At that point Kit is not ready to hear it. It becomes clear in TWP though that they've discussed Rosemary with Kit and he is aware of her story.

It's worth keeping in mind that these are Kit's own thoughts regarding his mother, before he really finds out much about Rosemary. "Maybe there was something wrong with him, Kit thought as he followed Alec into the hallway. Maybe he didn’t have the right kind of feelings. He’d never wondered that much about his mother, who she was: Wouldn’t someone who knew how to feel properly wonder that?"

So in some sense the issue is what Kit thinks of his own emotional capabilities. It is clear to us he doesn't have the "right kind of feelings" because that would be too painful. And that becomes more complex for him when he learns the story of his mother. The fact that she sacrificed herself for him would make him more likely to want to hold his feelings at a distance, not more likely to want a photograph or a keepsake. She is also tied up in his mind with him being the Heir which he hates and regards as something that has almost ruined his life.

We do know now that he has blurry memories of her singing to him. But that isn't the same as knowing her. What Kit would be mourning, if he let himself really mourn Rosemary, isn't the loss of someone he remembers. It's the loss of the chance to ever know her at all. For someone in that position, being surrounded by reminders of a life that barely intersected with their own might be comforting, or it might simply emphasize what was lost before it could ever exist.

“It's like Rosemary’s presence in Kit’s life has been somewhat sidelined, which I find a bit sad.”

You’re not wrong; it is sad, and that's okay, because the situation is sad in a way that cannot be undone. Tessa cannot have Will back. Will could not have Jem back. Julian can't have Livvy back. Jocelyn never got her son back. The Merry Thieves don't get Christopher back. And Kit does not get to have a life with Rosemary in it. That is one of the recurring themes throughout the Shadowhunter books when sad things happen and cannot be reversed. The question the books keep asking isn't, "How can this be fixed and made not sad?" It's, "How do we go on after loss and how do we understand that it can be part of our history without becoming our entire present? How can we understand that moving on is not a wrong done to the people we lost but is rather what they would want for us? How do we understand that acceptance is not erasure, and how do we, as Shadowhunters, keep doing what needs to be done instead of being ourselves undone by sadness?”

These are all things that Kit needs to think about and has deliberately not thought about. Rosemary’s presence is minimized in Kit’s life because he never really knew her and he doesn't want to think about her or really about Johnny either. Whether he can keep all that up without cracking is the part that seems spoilery.

I would address one thing about the heron pendant, though, because I think it's interesting that people might look at him giving it to Ty as him sidelining Rosemary. I think about it the opposite way (and this does come up in TWP) — Kit’s mother’s legacy was one of sacrificial and protective love. Kit has given this necklace to Ty as a gesture of protective love. Ty having that pendant is the thing — the first thing in TWP — that Kit thinks of as connecting him to his bio-mom. When he sees Ty with the necklace, he thinks that his mother protected him and in turn he has honored that legacy by giving something that symbolizes her to the person he most wants to protect. He thinks she would be pleased. It's pretty much the only thing he's let himself think about as regards her. So I think of it as connecting him to Rosemary rather than putting her aside.

My reaction to this snippet went pretty much like this:

Realising that for the first time in YEARS we get a glimpse of Ty’s PoV:

Realising that It feeds into my “Ty’s secret is that the necromancy is killing him” theory:

Source.

🚨🚨🚨

Also Kit during the mission:

Election day: misery, stress, hair-pulling, at least for Americans (and a lot of other people around the world affected by our politics!) So I thought I'd post a distraction; I hope it helps and doesn't annoy!

A while ago I posted the beginning of a letter from Kit to Ty, created for a Kickstarter backer. Here's the full text:

A letter from Kit to Ty, never sent.

Ty, Ty, Ty.

Your name looks strange written out like that. Like an abbreviation. But Tiberius would be so formal. I never think of you that way. Or, I suppose I should say, I never thought of you that way. Tenses matter in these situations, I guess.

It’s late, past midnight, and I’m sitting on the windowsill in my bedroom at Cirenworth. Jem and Tessa gave me one of the best rooms. Of course they did. It has a view out over the gardens. Sometimes I see the ghost of a dog there, a golden retriever I’m pretty sure, running in and out of the flowerbeds. He seems like a pretty happy ghost. I think about how much you like animals and how much they love you, because of course they do. But it’s too late; this dog passed away a long time ago. You probably couldn’t even see him. It’s too late for a lot of things, now.  

I’m still mad at you, and I don’t feel good about that. Maybe if I could forget, I could forgive. But I can’t forget that night you brought Livvy back. I’ll suddenly remember even when I’m thinking about something else. I’ll be in the middle of helping Tessa in the garden and suddenly I’ll turn around and I’m back in Idris. 

I remember I told you I loved you. I remember I told you I would help you, but not if you raised Livvy from the dead. Not if you did necromancy. But you wanted that more than you wanted me.

And I understand that. I’m not angry about that. Here’s what I’m angry about: when you brought Livvy back, you changed yourself. You made yourself a different person than the one I loved. I don’t know the person you are now. You took yourself away from me. I can’t forgive that. And you made me someone who has to keep a secret I never wanted to keep. I was raised by someone who had so many awful secrets, and when I started my life as a Shadowhunter I wanted to do it openly, and honestly. But now I’m just someone else with secrets I can never tell. Just like my dad.

It makes me angry, so angry. I want to yell at you. I wish you were here so I could yell at you.