she has not remembered her end

An idea I had for Blood of Eden propaganda/recruitment posters featuring some of our favorite guys - combo of digital-print cyberpunk graphic design style with oldschool Saturday Morning Post covers like you'd see Leyendecker paintings on

I was gonna post these ahead of tabling at a small con and selling prints of them but ended up not tabling because turns out grad school is hard

Magnus Quinn's tenure as Seneschal of Koniortos Court predates both his role as Cavalier Primary of the Fifth House and his marriage to Abigail Pent. Judith specifically warns about the power and influence that he wields as a Fifth House bureaucrat. He may exist in a domestic orbit, but it's sure not as an aspiring house husband.

It's unclear whether his role as seneschal is more akin to a contemporary senior civil servant, or something more classically feudal, as with Crux. But the most modest interpretation of Magnus' job would invovle him administering Abigail's presumably fairly substantial estates and their workforce (some of whom are likely indentured), and almost every interpretation deeply entwines him in the workings of the Houses' imperial machine.

While we don't have insight into Magnus and Abigail's thought process, it doesn't seem too off base to assume that Magnus became her cavalier in part because it supported their existing personal and political partnership. Magnus may not be on Gideon's level as a duelist, but his preference would seem to be for a softer power: he is friendly and affable... and before the punchline about cavalier middle names hits, his comments about bringing the Houses together has made the room so tense you could hear a hair drop. Cytherea makes a pointed comment about House unity, and how some Houses have profited from the empire more than others, just hours before she will go on to kill the Fifth.

In HTN, we have a moment where I suspect we get a rather more complex glimpse of Magnus:

“You need Ortus the Ninth to read a piece of paper with you?” said Magnus Quinn, with broad good humour, the type that was as resolute and inflexible and polite as a summons. She had been stitched up. She was a fool. She had lost her fear of the Fifth House, and now she had been boxed in as only the Fifth House might box you: smiling the whole time, and acting as though the whole thing might be a bit of a joke. (ch 28)