call me trusty rusty

G1deon character thoughts

G1deon as we know him in HtN is likely very different from the man he must've been 10,000 years ago. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he changed significantly between the start of the Wake affair and the events of book 2.

More so than any of the other Lyctors, Gideon and Pyrrha seemed to have had this strong synergy going on. Unlike most necros, Gideon is a buff beef jerky man, and we see two rapiers in G&P's room. The winnowing/construct trial is also referred to as "Pyrrha's trial," which has always struck me as a curious detail and suggests to me that Pyrrha knew more about necromancy than cavs generally do. We know that the saintly epithets refer to the cavs, in general, but I don't think that was exactly the case for G&P; based on the previously stated, I believe they were both equally dutiful people, willing to throw themselves into each other's studies and share each other's skills.

Aug and Mercy were forced to rush their Lyctorization process because of their reckless cavs, and G1deon was next, but the fact that Pyrrha compartmentalized suggests they were closer to figuring it out than Aug and Mercy were--which I think is greatly due to the harmony of their relationship.

We know from what the other Lyctors & John have said that Gid loved and respected Pyrrha deeply. I wouldn't be surprised if the ferocity with which he threw himself into his saintly work over the 10,000 years emerged--at least partially, if not primarily--from his devotion to her. There's Pyrrha, the most spectacular cav and an all-around badass, and Gideon--having taken her to fuel his ascension--acting as John's attack dog with an intensity that would make her sacrifice worthwhile.

It's difficult to gauge how much Gideon actually enjoyed any of this; John seems to think he did, but I wouldn’t trust John for shit, and I'm sure John's understanding of G1d is heavily skewed in his own favor.

I think it's also important to consider Pyrrha's side of this story as it relates to G1deon’s current state, as well as the Wake affair. Her actions raise several questions. First of all, how long did it take for her to realize that she could take control of his body? How exactly did it happen, the first time? And how aware is Gideon? Does he have any inkling at all? Is there something more to his forgetfulness, something purposeful?

I have to imagine that in any case, Pyrrha must have gone through a lot over those 10,000 years. 10,000 years of odd sensory deprivation, which was probably hell for a fiery badass like P. 10,000 years of watching Gideon put up with John's bullshit, of watching the other Lyctors die off one-by-one and accumulate a host of mental, physical, and emotional scars. I'm convinced that Pyrrha's relationship with "duty" changed over the course of the years as she watched from this disembodied perspective, and that her "treachery" against John (her affair with Wake & possibly feeding intel to the BoE) was just a natural progression of that change.

When Wake factors in, I'd bet good money that the driving factor in both Pyrrha and Gideon's attraction to her is that she reminds them both of Pyrrha. Hell, Pyrrha even says this outright: "She was the most dangerous woman I'd ever met who wasn't me." I imagine that P's attraction to Wake, beyond this cool display of cockiness, also emerged from a sort of nostalgia--maybe Wake reminds her of what life used to be when she had a body, when she could fight and command, when she had a cause to occupy her energy. On G1d's side, he sees a woman who's dedicated and dutiful, even if it's for an enemy faction, and a woman who would undeniably make one hell of a cavalier (I think someone says this in HtN, although I'm forgetting who, so correct me if I’m wrong). I'm sure there's nostalgia in it for him, too.

Then, there's elephant in the room: Wake's fiery red hair and Pyrrha's name, meaning "flame-colored." I'm convinced that at least some of the similarities were physical. And at the bottom of it all is the inherent sexiness of finding a worthy opponent who's also hot. Lol.

Gideon Prime Lobotomy Time(?)

Here's where things get squirrelly for me, and the main reason why I have a theory that G1d's current state might be partially self-inflicted.

G&P were having discrete affairs with Wake, which inherently brings up logistical questions. First of all, how? And how exactly did Wake come to "kiss" Gideon "before she realized what they were?" How long were the durations of time in which Pyrrha kept his body under her control? In any case, after Wake & Gideon initiated their leg of the affair, it continued throughout the two years up until Gideon Jr.'s birth, which implies that Gideon Prime had some agency and willfulness in all of it. It's difficult to imagine the permanently-spaced-out-thousand-yard-stare man we know in HtN actively participating in such an entanglement.

Of course, I’ll acknowledge that it's entirely possible that I'm wrong, and that Wake just jumps his bones when she feels like it, and he's like "ok I guess," so take this as you will; but I'd like to put forth the suggestion that G1d's memory loss and overall lack of lucidity might be self-inflicted, to the tune of Harrow's lobotomy. We don't know how aware Gideon is of Pyrrha's presence, but it does seem to be the case that Lyctors having an awareness of the cav is dangerous for the cav. Being an accomplished necromancer, I'm sure Gideon was/is a smart man. Pyrrha mentions that she was "able to go underground" from him, but what if Gideon started to catch on to Pyrrha's presence through the double-affair? What if Wake let something slip? What if the thing that Wake didn't realize about them was the fact that Pyrrha's survival depends on Gideon's lack of awareness?

What if he lobotomized himself at some point, after catching onto Pyrrha's presence, at the expense of his sanity?

What really strikes me is the post-incinerator scene (HtN ch.31, pg. 292 in the hardcover):

The Saint of Duty turned his body toward you. He was clutching his rapier; but it was idle ... His eyebrows were very slightly drawn together, a sort of exhausted crinkle. He looked at you, and he said in a voice you had known since you were eight years old: "I sometimes--forget."

It was the tone--clinical, enamelled, half-defensive, half-endangered--the tone of someone admitting a final fraily. It was familiar because you had used it yourself. Understand I am insane.

It's his quiet resolution that does it for me; he knows something's missing, and he's accepted it. He's being set up as a parallel to Harrow in this particular moment, and it just makes me wonder if the parallel goes beyond his understanding of his own “insanity” and extends to the means by which he has become "insane." 

Pyrrha's already being set up as a parallel to Gideon Jr., both in terms of her formerly-skewed sense of duty and her compartmentalization, so I think this sort of dual-parallel between G1d and Harrow would work nicely, if only from a meta perspective.

In short, I think Gideon the First's feelings on everything that happened are complex, fraught. I think "duty" is what defined much of his personality, and I think what we see of him now is the result of split senses of duty having torn him apart:

he's torn between his devotion to Pyrrha (and by extension, ironically, his devotion to John) and his interest in (and perhaps love for) Wake;

torn between John's command to kill Harrow and whatever it is that caused him to pull punches (I'm guessing a combination of basic decency and solidarity); and

at the end of it all, he's quietly accepting of his own "frailty," understanding that the current situation is the shitty result of everything that's happened over the past myriad, and that there's likely no way to set himself straight, even though his shortcomings put him in direct conflict with the man he's "supposed to be," according to this awful religion, and according to what others think of him.

Anyway, for those who’ve stuck around, that’s all I have to say for now! I’m just so fascinated by the Saint of Duty/the Pyrwakeon story that’s going on behind the scenes; there’s such an understated intensity to it, and honestly, it didn’t even hit me until months after my first read-through.