koda

Patience and Chivalry commission for @aporeticelenchus, with a little Fitz as a bonus because it made me feel nostalgic :D Thank you!

but also i don't think "mage" is a term used anywhere else in the series and that's so hilarious to me. magic is such a definite, carefully limited force throughout the story and so i'm left to imagine that a "mage" is someone you would only see in literature, just like in the real world

Sketching Beloved on the computer : D

I want to do a full fanart of them, considering how the series have plagued my mind for more than a year now. Yet it feels so intimidating. How do you create a prophet with many faces, so alienated and ethereal, yet also is the person that Fitz - the central character, our point of view - know so intimately about? There is warmth and closeness, and lighthearted humour of a childhood friend, but then there is the gravity of fate. The Fool was not created to be Fitz's friend. Arguably, if it were another story, a prophet that need the character to suffer in order to achieve the vision he dreamt of would rightfully be a terrifying antagonist.

Yet the prophet was in love. In spite of fate, in spite of their position and in spite of the writer herself, Beloved's character was apt with his name: he loved his Fitz, but not in a way that is (just) personal or possessive. He loved the Catalyst, and the world that he saw, with him in it. Everything Beloved touched, there is beauty and warmth and life, to be traded with his own beauty, warmth and light. He draws no boundary. To Fitz, to the future they'd envision, Beloved is completely devoted.

Fitz never believed in evil, so the world they created was a world with the evil forces erradicated. Fitz's childhood unfolded the way it did, was due to the conflicts between the Six Duchies, and the Outislander, so the new world they mended had the conflicts resolved. Fitz's detachment to everything stemmed from forging and his assassin work in the dark. In the new world now, with Kelsingra and the dragon revived, and the pirate island united, Mountain Kingdom, the Six Duchies and the Outisland allied by marriage, there was no longer a need for another Chade or Fitz. Each of Fitz's children took up a piece of his dream, or a life that could have been his. Dutiful as the King, who is outright Witted and be accepted and celebrated for it; Nestle as a Skill mistress, who live with the love of her life, never have to choose between her duty and her love; and Hap, who lived as a free, traveling bard, loving his art and telling his stories, whole heartedly, never forged, never hiding.

And Bee. Bee who is orphaned, and is lonely in court, but would grow up amongst love and protection regardless. Bee who witnessed the killing and the chaos, who was a prophet and a catalyst at the same time, yet would never have to tread the path that Fitz had to walk on. She would grow up under Kettricken, learn the Skill from Thick, surrounded by family and friends who look at her as equal, and loved her for who she was, not as a tool to be wielded. And when time comes, she will love who she love, and pursuit whatever she desires. Never a pawn. Never a commodity.

I think my flaw in the initial reading of RoTE is that I get overwhelmed by the individual stories, and characters. From the point of view of Fitz, it looks grim, and he thought of himself worthless. When you look as his and Beloved's love from his personal perspective, it is sad, and it felt fruitless: what was the point, they were apart more than they were together, each of them were tortured beyond recognition; and they could not even acknowledge their love until both of them meet their end. The Stone Wolf felt like a let down. A suicidal tomb, in a way. Undeserving of what they have been through, to be together.

But as I stepped out and looked at the whole story, the real scenery of what unfolded throughout 16 books, I realized that it was just them. The overwhelming force that overturned the wheel of fate in the story was their love, and as the fish cannot see the water around them, their love was never be able to be defined. There was no confession of love, or a romantic end game, because the whole story and the world that they walked in - Beloved's future, was their love confession. At every turn, Fitz and Beloved acted on their mutual love. They chose each other, again and again, so the dragon was revived, so Clerres was destroyed, so Bee was borned.

아아...... 그린건 있는데 요새 올리기 민망해서 안올리게됌....

wip....

“So. So love and hope blind us all. I thought the flowers were from you, Fitz."