I just finished the Djerba sequence of PiF (misery and anguish, I had my doubts about Marthe because the last time we had a doppleganger for Lymond he turned out EVIL and she's also provoking Lymond the way Joleta did, which is all not great) (also RIP to Jerott and his gay repressed homophobia) and remembered you said there was a clue in here about why it couldn't have been Lymond with Oonagh in Tripoli! Very curious about what that was, if you would like to reveal!
All in all, I'm loving this book most of the series so far; it's hilarious and traumatic but still less stressful than DK was, somehow. Also I would die for Philippa Somerville.
Sincerely, your sister in suffering,
Dear Sister (platonic) (needs to be said explicitly in this fandom),
I actually didn't mean to imply that the Djerba sequence has a clue about who it was that slept with Oonagh in the tent! I just remembered that you thought Oonagh might be the endgame love interest and didn't want to spoil the fact that she dies brutally halfway through the story. Which happens in Algiers, not in Djerba, I now realize - I had them mixed up lmfao.
The actual clue I was referring to is in Queen's Play - during the sex scene Dorothy says something along the lines of, "it was the first and the last time they did it" - I think you once asked me to what extent these books were preplanned and, well, while some people have pointed out some early installment weirdness with GoK, QP contains clues to the central mystery of books 5 and 6 (which helped me almost solve it!), so I don't think she'd have written that if she meant them to have sex again in the next book. I didn't want to spoil things for you by saying they never have sex again!
Having just finished my DK reread a couple of hours ago, I can also sort of comment on my other theories:
Oonagh is not a character that's intuitively comprehensible to me, so I spent a loooot of time trying to understand where her seemingly irrational and erratic actions are coming from. One aspect of her is that she's deeply idealistic - she's looking for a Grand Leader to fall in love with and be led by as he embodies her own ideals that she, being a woman, can't independently exercise - she had hoped O'Connor and Renaissance IRA might be that but turns out not. This is super relevant within the themes of DK. The other aspect of her is that she's an abuse victim with a cripplingly avoidant attachment style, so the notion of not being in control and being in someone's power are anathema to her. So she fears what she craves and resents what she doesn't fear and that's why she ends up rejecting everyone at the end of QP - O'Connor was threading a thin line with her by sort of managing to look like both if you're delusional enough, and the events of QP made him fall off.
Gabriel the master manipulator understands this - a lot of time and care is used in DK to describe how much effort he's making not to crowd her, to respect her boundaries, to leave her with her own sense of independence and autonomy and privacy, and how well she's responding to that. Lymond, when they meet, while being flirty, also makes sure that she knows that he's doing it in a friendly way - he also sets a firm and honest boundary because he understands that this is what she'll respond best to. After that, despite all of Gabriel's talk about how she mustn't interrupt Francis's Great Destiny by hitching her wagon to him, she seems ready to go with him, because his behavior makes the boundaries between them clear and comprehensible and honest and that feels safe to her.
Oonagh thinking that Francis came to the tent then could then have two effects:
Falling prey to her feelings and submitting to the ideal all over again once again annihilates her own sense of control and independence. Having sex with "Lymond" brings her back to the humiliating state that she's trying to avoid and escape, so she'll feel unsafe and out of control and rather doom herself than stay trapped in said state. Oonagh craves relinquishing control (and finding a companion who's an equal partner) but does NOT want it consciously and tries to avoid it if she can. Especially if she feels that what he's expressing is not genuine - awareness of it is part of why she didn't stay with him in QP and her knowing that he's not in love but still came to her perhaps makes her perceive him as unsafe in DK as well.
"Francis" coming to have sex with her makes her think that he's succuming to his own impulses instead of following the path of leadership and righteousness that she's hoping he'll follow, so she decides to take herself out of the equation before that happens, especially considering (1) (she can't trust herself to really leave him once she's free).
TBH I was vacillating between the two and I'm still unsure of which one it is, exactly, but I'm leaning towards more 1 than 2, since she already thinks he's throwing away his grand destiny before he comes to the tent and seems relatively fine with it. In this interpretation Gabriel, who spent enough time with her to understand her, wants her to feel threatened by her own feelings and follow her worst and most avoidant impulses, so that's why he does it, in addition to just finding her hot and deriving pleasure out of pulling one over on someone so staunchly independent.
Also, in a way, Gabriel's giving Oonagh the choice between Francis the man and Francis the intimidating yet appealing ideal, and she chooses Francis the ideal, and anything that sort of flaws this ideal (like him shallowly coming to her to get his rocks off) makes her distance herself from him in an effort to maintain it. If he refuses to embody the ideal she'll MAKE him embody it by removing all other choices from him. Between saving herself and having an honest friendship with Francis and feeling like she's the one who brought the grand ideals of the prefect leader to fruition, she'll choose the latter. And it also maintains her own self-image as important yet independent kingmaker.
But I may be overthinking it and he just did it on a whim because he was attracted to her, the way he told Meg Erskine about Tom's death with no ulterior motives.
Another more practical consideration is that Gabriel needs Dragut to think they're lovers (or so he thinks), so Dragut doesn't connect the dots and figure out the potentially blonde child is Lymond's and not his. Since Dragut's guards are constantly watching them.
Anyway, PiF is IMHO the best book in the series, and the very stressful parts are yet to come! This is the fun chill part!
I feel in love with Philippa the first time I saw her in GoK so I get you completely <3 She's my blorbo <3
-- @mala-taste (my formatting got fucked when I used the numbered list so I can't make the font fancy... Sorry!)
EDIT: Another thing that comes to mind is that a man who's had sex with her could probably tell that she's pregnant. While she can trust Francis to not throw his mission away for her, she knows he would for the child, ergo she needs to "die".
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