#csethiro ceredin

His poems are published in three volumes. The first contains the poems which are neither part of the poetic conversation with Csevet nor have Csethiro as their subject or intended recipient (and though none of these are part of their poetic exchange, many of them are still about or for Csevet and the depth of Maia's emotion for him). The second has the poems that are about/for Csethiro. This volume is thinner than the other two, as Maia's poems about Csethiro are fewer in number and she hasn’t written any in return - as she’d later state, she'd appreciated them but had felt no desire to take up a pen herself as poetry is not her forte, thank you - but they’re no less devoted or caring, and the slim volume becomes a popular courting gift. The third book is the collection of all of the poems that he and Csevet had written as part of the exchange that had continued over their lifetimes. These poems are published in the same order as their writing to preserve the art of the exchange as a whole, and it's easily the thickest of the three. Over the years, the collection of these poems comes to be known as In Conversation with Csevet or Csevet’s Conversation Cycle, though they're frequently abbreviated to Csevet’s Conversation, the Conversation Cycle, or simply the Cycle.

Several of Csevet’s poems not to/for Maia were also published while he lived, under his own pseudonym. After Maia's death, they’re collected together and republished under his own name along with the poems that weren’t; the reasons for this varied, but among them were things like too-recognisable details, that they were for people who would come under too much scrutiny if identified, and that they were simply too intimate/intimately emotional for him to want to publish while he was alive.[2] Some of the ones that had been published also take on new meanings under the name Csevet Aisava. A line regarding the laughter of children, a glint through the grey as sunlight through roses, had originally been understood as a metaphor for the emotion upon hearing a baby’s first laugh and, potentially, a comment on new fatherhood being worth the sleepless nights. Now published under the name of the imperial secretary, it takes on a much more literal interpretation: of the Zhas’s children playing in the first bloom of the Alcethmeret’s famous rose garden.[3] The poems are arranged chronologically and sectioned by year, because Csevet’s habit of record-keeping and writing dates on everything had extended to his personal life. It was a practice for which both imperial/governmental archivists and historians and the compilers of this first truly complete book of Csevet's poetry found themselves very grateful.

The publication of the poetry shared between these two men creates a huge scholarly resource for the relationship between Edrehasivar VII Zhas and his imperial secretary. There had been some debate over whether Csevet Aisava was marnis,[4] but these poems hold each other so delicately, and with such intimate care and attention, that after their publication it’s undeniable. That’s not to say that people don’t try - but how do you read lines like '...calluses of his fingers against my lips,/my own, softly, entangling his/two more hands, there another hidden sight/are yet together, here, in the pre-dawn light' and not read that as marnis? There comes a point where it’s almost academic dishonesty to claim that they weren’t. They’re so clearly marnei, in fact, that there are rumours that the publishers are uncomfortable printing something so detrimental to the former emperor’s reputation and are considering changing some of the lines to 'protect his image'.

This idea does not, however, withstand the force of will that is Csethiro Zhasanai. When the possibility of removing or changing the more overt marnis lines to be less… ‘objectionable’ is suggested to her, she demands that all of their poems are published exactly as they are. The printers receive pointed questions about whether they ‘dare to argue that you know more than Edrehasivar VII Zhas himself regarding his own Person' or 'are declaring your Intention to ignore the stated Will of the Zhas'. Her comments in court are similarly sharp; though more graciously-worded they are no less forceful. One of the most notable is her declaration that ‘we have read every single poem and we find nothing objectionable to either my husband’s image or my own. If you read them and disagree, you are simply incorrect’.[5] In the end, they’re printed unaltered and uncensored, as are Csevet’s.

Once they are finally published, it is very clear that these were people who loved one another deeply, who were together through each joy and sorrow, during each day and - frequently - night. One of the greatest indications of the last is in a duology of poems titled The Search of a Knight.[6] The first of the two is called The Loss of the Zhasan, which - though no names are used - details the quiet comfort of Csethiro leaving Maia halfway through the night to go back to her own rooms: her hair across her shoulder, the soft shifting of the silk as she donned her quilted dressing gown, how she left him with a gentle kiss and a whisper about being unable to settle beneath the watchful gaze of night. This poem is followed by The Finding of the Zhasan, which shows her knocking on Csevet’s door just before midnight, dressed for bed, to interrupt his circle of light, my eyes convinced I’m still awake/while my heart and mind beg my fingers’ aid./The ink less black, my work for love, unpaid,/they're restless, still, across the page to tell him she’s going to her own bed, and Maia would probably be grateful to know that Csevet will also get some sleep tonight. This is followed by the poet retracing the Zhasan’s steps to the emperor and ends with the reflection of its beginning, with Csevet knocking on Maia’s door like Csethiro knocked on his.

This relationship between Maia and Csevet doesn’t appear to be a surprise to Csethiro Zhasanai when she reads their poems to each other prior to their publication, however, nor when she's arguing against their potential censorship. Indeed, as seen in The Search of a Knight, there are signs in the Cycle that she'd known about it for decades, if not for its entire duration. Upon her own death a few years later, historians also find numerous references in Csethiro's own diaries that heavily imply that she had known for decades. The code used is simple[7] and is especially clear if you already know that there is a relationship. For example, to keep track of her husband’s schedule, her diaries use the abbreviations ‘VII’ for Edrehasivar VII Zhas and ‘CS’ for Csevet: ‘Csevet, Secretary’. [8] The references to ‘Cs’, then, seem like an occasional mistake or disregard for capitalisation, but closer examination of the times and patterns of use show ‘CS’ used alongside ‘VII’ but ‘Cs’ alongside ‘M’ (one must recall here that before he took the name Edrehasivar, the Zhas was the Archduke Maia). The change in abbreviation from ‘VII’ to ‘M’ suggests that ‘M’ was used for Maia in his personal capacity rather than as Edrehasivar Zhas; the drop in formality together suggests that ‘Cs’ is the abbreviation used for Csevet, himself, not Csevet Aisava, Edrehasivar VII’s secretary. Her knowledge and ease with this relationship of her husband’s is further supported by the fact that 'Cs' is seen more frequently in her diaries than 'CS'; often in the evening, almost all of them are for intimate, social reasons (like ‘tea M, Cs’ or simply ‘evening with M, Cs’), with very few attendees other than Csevet, Maia, and Csethiro herself. The only other people ever mentioned in these contexts are ‘V’ (known to be Vedero) and another initial that appears with great frequency alongside Vedero’s ‘V’.[9]

In Conversation with Csevet becomes one of the most-read poetic works in the Ethuveraz. Its final poem is from Maia to Csevet on the topic of Csevet’s death and Maia’s grief.

It ends like he still expects a response.

Footnotes

[1] After his death, it's discovered that all of the money he would have received from these publications was donated anonymously to schools across the Elflands, enabling the education of children who otherwise wouldn't have received one. Sometimes this meant paying for the schools to stay open and for the teachers; other times this meant paying the student the same wage for attendance that they'd have earnt working, allowing them to continue education past the point they'd have had to leave without it. The general impression when a newspaper figured this out and printed it was basically 'yeah, you know, that does sound about right for Edrehasivar'.

[2] A lot of this intimacy was about or regarding Maia. Much like the decision they'd made about the poems that would become the Cycle, Csevet didn't want to invite too much speculation into the subject/recipient/focus of the poem, whether under a pseudonym or under his own name, while Maia was alive.

[3] A closer reading of this poem reveals that the rhythm Csevet used in this one evokes Maia’s own poem about the Alcethmeret roses at the beginning of his reign. Then, the roses were the good thing, the breath of air in Maia’s life. Now, joy begets joy: an even greater good is found among these roses because of the greater number of people experiencing joy within their garden. As one critic writes, ‘By evoking Edrehasivar’s early poem, written at a time he still felt he alone in the court, Aisava’s shows us all an underlying truth: that the greater the extent of the love one gives and receives, the less alone one feels, the greater the extent of the joy that can be found - even in the things that are already good’.

[4] Pre-publication consensus: probably, because he never married, but it’s never been confirmed, and there’s a vocal group of scholars basically going, ‘yeah but would the Emperor have accepted a marnis secretary? Really?’ and another group going ‘ok, but did he not accept his sister?’ in response. A third thinks that the second is too certain that he definitely would, but who point to Edrehasivar VII’s record of support of marnis, marno, and marnu rights - from delicate public comments and a mildly worded (but deeply impactful) statement of his expectations regarding the treatment of marnis/o/u people under the law to courthouses just a few years into his reign (to brutally summarise a well-crafted statement: that being marnei should not impact the acceptance of a person's testimony or complaint nor impact the level of trust their testimony receives, that being marnis/o/u should not impact the person’s acceptance as a witness or Witness, that abuse of marnei - including by their spouses - should be treated like abuse of any non-marnis/o/u person, and that a person's marnis/marno/marnu identity, actions, or relationships, suspected or otherwise, should not prevent the proper application of justice), to the laws he’d pushed for and passed regarding marnis/o/u rights as his reign continued - as evidence that he probably would. Then the poems get published and everyone saying that he wouldn't shuts up almost immediately. The ones who continue to say that he wouldn't start arguing that Edrehasivar VII and Csevet Aisava were ‘just friends (who write loving poetry to, for, and about each other in a friendship-only way)’ and become scattered proponents of a fringe position despite the still-fairly-hostile attitude to marnei at the end of Edrehasivar VII’s reign. It’s very clear that these are people whose love for one another is deep and abiding. Would the Emperor have accepted a marnis secretary? Obviously he would. He did. He was.

[5] This is a direct quote. We know this because the Zhasanai said it during an educational salon in the presence of several scribes who were taking notes for various attendees. The notes of all seven accounts are interrupted where their scriveners abandoned their note-taking to write it down, attribute it to Csethiro Zhasanai, and make a note of its context. Five of them return to the original subject of their notes almost immediately afterwards, but two abandon the lectures entirely, recording the immediate reactions and responses instead.

[6] This is part of the Cycle but it’s so popular that it’s frequently printed alone in little pamphlets. It’s also often included in the smaller chapbooks that collate their love poems to and about each other, printed by small marnei presses and distributed hand to hand through marnei communities.

[7] The Zhasanai was known for her complicated codes, so it is presumed that the ease of this one was for the benefit of her secretaries rather than for herself.

[8] As her works were for public reading, she was always much more careful in those. Any arguments based on her published work alone rely on textual silence and maybe three instances across two decades that might indicate something. A slightly greater understanding of the marnis interpretation of a famous poem, for example, or a just little more knowledge of different relationship structures than would have been expected for a Zhasan who’s only ever had one, very public, relationship. All of them are things which could be explained away fairly easily by her well-known scholarship, if it was noticed at all.