sine lucro friget ludus

Here is my promised missive about RC! Like I said before, I found this one a little hard to get into coming off of PiF, but honestly, the ending was as gutting as every single other of her books, and I was grateful that at least we returned to the subject of the two infants, because I seriously thought Dorothy was going to end the book without addressing them at all.

Because Francis’s reasons for saving Kuzum did make a lot of sense; after the end of PiF, my shippy heart was like—did he do it for Philippa’s sake, saving the boy she had come to love? And even if it was more from the opposite direction (he saved the boy that knew how to love, and more specifically had a place of love to rest in), it is interesting that it’s confirmed at the end of a book where Dorothy’s own insistence about the lack of sentimentality kind of breaks down. Lymond isn’t a machine, and we watch him crack twice (when he falls in love, and then when he confronts Gabriel’s corpse again); he’s outwitted for the first time through the power of love and loyalty; the more he tries to control, the more you can feel his control slipping.

As I touched on before, I did really like the relationships between him and Ivan (partly because Ivan is as much of a freak as he is) and between him and Diccon (partly because Diccon is one of the sanest people in the entire series). I also liked Güzel because she felt like the non-toxic version of Margaret Lennox (who is such a good villainess, by which I mean, I hate her).

I guess my biggest question is about the very final page, where it says that both Ivan and Güzel were still waiting for him (pitch-perfect tragical tone for the book to end), even though it seemed indicated that Ivan was prepared thoroughly to shun him and Güzel had already moved on (either to the Baida, or just in her own mind, prophesying that Lymond would never return to Russia). Did they sincerely hope Lymond would go back to them? Or was it less hope as expectation, as they both had figured out enough of Lymond’s nature to know that he would have gone back if not forcibly prevented, no matter the consequences?

I do kind of feel a little bad for him that he was prevented from returning to Russia, even though I know that was just an escape mechanism and he really does have to come face to face with himself at last. I may have more thoughts as I let this one percolate, but I'm also diving headfirst into Checkmate, so there may not be enough time for that lol.

Your delighted correspondent, @no-where-new-hero

Dear no-where-new-hero,

I think his reasoning for which boy to save is a combination of both of the reasons you listed. It does also explicitly say in the book that he also does it for Philippa, but not for shippy reasons (he sees her as a child at that point, unlike my girl Marthe, who does immediately notice how well she cleans up lmfao), just because it's also an overall net benefit to also not traumatize Philippa too much if he can manage it. Basically he takes everyone's feelings and needs into consideration except his own: he sees himself as a sort of emotionless god/devil floating above them all and making perfectly rational moves, which is exactly what RC sets out to break down. He didn't make a sentimental decision in PiF, he stayed the perfect utilitarian actor throughout, but it destroyed him psychologically, and now Dorothy is gearing herself up to point out that living that way is unsustainable and that true utilitarianism means also taking into account that you're a soft human animal as well :) (and this is also why I insist on people interpreting Lymond's decisions in the previous books correctly - if you don't understand the extent to which he's trying to be an impersonal moral and political actor while sort of dehumanizing himself then the deconstruction of this tendency in the final books makes less sense and hits less hard)

On a very related note, he never would have been able to help Russia like he wanted to, so I don't feel bad about him not coming back. His logic is that having to make hard, rational decisions almost annihilated him psychologically because those decisions involved people that he loved or that were otherwise personally connected to him, so he'll just go to a place where he doesn't know anyone and doesn't connect to anyone and doesn't have to feel anything. But the book spends so much time describing exactly how both Mary and Ivan are slowly going insane because that's what happens when you have only power and no one to address your human needs and emotions or be human with... Note how desperate for any sort of connection both of them are, to the point where they can be alternatively led around by the nose over it and expected to lash out with disastrous consequences.

Also, it's very hard to make permanent changes to a country or society if you don't connect to its mentality or people and aren't really part of its society, because you'll just be superficially imposing your own method without bothering to be a leader to the people. You won't really understand how to make the changes stick, which is why it all implodes as soon as Lymond leaves. What he wants is not sustainable or realistic. The outcome of Lymond going back to Russia isn't, as Lymond likes to believe, him saving and reforming Russia, it's him going insane and his judgement becoming compromised, dropping dead, or both. Which is what the people around him understand as well and why they prevent him from going back.

It's funny because of all the Lymond books, this one is basically... set out to underline the inherent flaws of white saviourism, while also being the most, er, orientalist one of the bunch? Because the Russian characters barely felt human to me, which, ok, is also a question of POV (compare Turkey through Jerott's POV and Philippa's, for example), but probably also a consequence of the time period the book was written in haha :')

Also, Güzel non-toxic? Did you miss the part where Lymond is sort of blackmailed into sleeping with her so she'd stop molesting the underaged servant boy? I love her character and find it really fun but non-toxic she is not and that was also part of Lymond's plan btw, attaching himself to a woman who, even if she ends up suffering because of him, sort of had it coming. Anyway, I think she made her play as she always does and I think she had plans B, C, and D as she always does. If it looked like Lymond wasn't coming back, Baida was option B, but she'd have preferred Lymond and screwed over Baida to rejoin him had Lymond come back.

Ivan is very erratic, so he'd have taken Francis not coming back very personally and childishly, but Francis believed that he could turn him around if he came back, and jury's out on how accurate Francis's assessment is. A little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B, I guess.