#daine

Not The Super Powerful Mage Numair and Daine.

Not the mage Numair and his lover Daine.

Not even Numair and his lover Daine the wildmage.

Also Susan, of Discworld

Okay, I have 5 asks (more than half of which have 2 characters) so will be working on these bit by bit. But I'm putting work into it.

The ask meme is "Pick a character and I will try to dissect the core lie that they believe about themselves"

My beloved asks me for Veralidaine Sarrasri from Tamora Pierce's Tortall series (specifically The Immortals quartet) and Susan Sto Helit from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (specifically the DEATH anthology).

Both are mortal descendants of gods who discover their heritage after their parents die and they find themselves torn between the world of mortals where they were raised and the immortal world of divinity that they feel alien from.

Let's hit them one by one

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Name: Veralidaine Sarrasri or Daine for short.

Daine is a wild mage who was raised by her mother and her mother's family, not meeting her father until her late teens. As a young child her village was attacked by bandits and her family was killed. She was already looked down upon by the community for being a bastard and her preference to spend her time with animals instead of humans. The orphaned child was labeled as mad and repelled from human society. She went to live with wolves and her mare, Cloud.

Daine can speak to animals. She is excluded from the world of humans and much of the first half of The Immortals Quartet is her finding a place within human society, particularly in her connection to Numair, an absurdly powerful mage trained in the warring nation of Carthak.

During her childhood Daine's family constantly tested her for The Gift, her ability to use magic and was always disappointed when she was displayed as not having it.

So early on in the books we have some overt lies that she believed. That her wild magic was not magic because she was constantly tested and rejected for not displaying more traditional and detectable forms of magic.

That she was mad.

That she did not belong with humans.

Then you have moments like when her caregivers in the first book tried to get her to open up about her life, she believed that being honest would cause people to reject her and push her away. That being undesirable would ensure people exiled her, as happened in her village.

Later still she had it displayed that not being in control of her emotions would lead to disastrous effects and people she cared about being hurt. She also takes a lot of responsibility in trying to keep her animal family from getting involved in human politics and pushes herself to exhaustion in trying to avert her two worlds colliding.

I feel it is a bit of a cheat to say it but Daine's core lie is "I am responsible for the bad things that happen to/around me" at every avenue she, an orphaned child, is attempting to assert her agency while refusing aid and mistrusting others because of the way that she has been treated.

Her first book begins with her as a homeless young teenager who is regarded as a wild child. She is not domesticated in the slightest and it takes several books worth of continued kindness and care to get her to let go of the reigns and allow someone else to take care of her for a change. In her second book she is asserting herself as responsible for brokering an end to the conflict between her wolf family and the noble who was disrupting the habitat and building power to make a bid for the crown of the kingdom.

It's a lot more nuanced, but I'm trying to be brief.

It's this core which allows the relationship between Daine and Numair to blossom because Numair is a man who is teaching her magic and allowing her to control the wildness of both her magic and her heart.

Daine is not quite a lone wolf (unlike our next contestant) but she is prideful and refuses to be coddled.

Tamora Pierce is exceptionally gifted at writing the connection between mage apprentice and tutor. It shines in this saga (though I understand if you disagree with the outcome in this quartet) and helps Daine overcome that all encompassing need to control every single situation. Though I fear she may still struggle with it, she tends to live a quiet life after The Immortals War. Well... she at least does not become central enough to The Plot to be a focus on any book after her quartet and seems to live a happy life in Tortall in service of the king. She is still a reckless creature with a tendency to be wild. But a lot of her abilities are used for spying and training horses.

I'll note that the entire conflict of her final book is that she is unwilling to be patient and wait for a safe passage back home because she fears that if she is not able to return immediately then the worst will happen.

I would argue that she never overcomes her core lie. She just builds better support systems to help her cope.

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Name: Susan Sto Helit

Susan is one of our favorite characters in all of fiction.

Susan is the daughter of Ysabell (Death's adopted daughter) and Mort (Death's apprentice) and thusly is the grandchild of Death. The grim reaper.

There may not be blood involved but when we are dealing with Anthropomorphic Personifications of aspects of reality concepts hold a much higher degree of power than genetics.

She is Death's granddaughter. She is part of Death's lineage.

Much like Daine she discovered her divinity in her early adulthood after her parents died and struggled with reconciling the oddness of unique experiences. Also like Daine she has a prideful streak that causes her to reject the privileges that her lineage offers. Within the mortal world she is the Duchess of Sto Helit and within the metaphysical world she is untouched by the concepts of time or death.

Yet she insists on living as normal of a life as she can manage. In Hogfather as a nanny (Goth Mary Poppins) and in Thief of Time as a teacher (Goth Ms. Frizzle).

She doesn't want to be special by birthright.

That's not the lie though. Because she knows she is not normal. She knows that she cannot maintain the lifestyle that she meticulously attempts to hide within.

She views adults as pointedly silly and unserious and views Concepts as ridiculous and bothersome.

She loves her grandfather but rejects him continuously. She doesn't want to be involved in the family business. She does not want the family oddity ruining her sense of normal.

I feel the lie with Susan is complicated and is entirely built around the second half of our favorite book of all time, Thief of Time.

Susan constantly asserts that cold harsh pragmatism is the only way to handle situations. That silliness is a distraction and a weed upon her life and attitude that must be rooted out. When she finds Lobsang, literally the only person in all of reality who could understand who she is and what she goes through, she takes a mentor position and assumes him to be her equal. She attempts to coach him on being a pragmatic bastard to get results and to not try to be a hero because heroes end up dead.

She learns that she was misguided as the situation evolves. In the timeless war between death and taxes (Death vs The Auditors) she is taught the same lesson two times.

To be human is to be guided by belief. To be lead by emotion. To be irrational. Because faith and love are what make humans human.

In Hogfather we get this through the iconic speech

(The full scene has Death describe that small fantasies are required to sell the big ones like justice, mercy or righteousness being aspects of the universe and not just human inventions to make sense of the chaos of reality)

In Thief of Time we get her witnessing the madness of Moira LeJean/Unity and seeing how the concept of self was the thing to save the disc from The Auditors and that Unity, a soulless facet of The Auditors found individuality enough that when she committed suicide by diving into a lake of chocolate, Death was there to collect her. Something that none of the other Auditors wearing human skins were granted the right to.

Unity was a direct proof that Susan's core belief is a lie.

Susan's lie is one that is repeated in dialogue often. that she is "mostly human", that she is not a member of humanity. That she is neither human nor god. That she is alone in being rational and sensible, things which humans are not. That she is exempt from silliness and irrationality and emotion.

Something she proves wholly untrue when she devours an entire tray of chocolate ammunition during the climax of Thief of Time.

She is quite capable of being a silly human, because she is a silly human. She views herself as excluded from both humanity and her place within her grandfather's family. She sees herself as neither human nor deity.

The final page of Thief of Time she, within the only other person who has the same background between humanity and divinity that she does, learns that silly little things like love are what make life worth living.

She's quite human. She is also a demi-god in the line of Death. She just doesn't internalize it.

She is both.

She is. She is a member of both families. Humanity and Death.

My hope is that with Lobsang (who is Time by the point of that scene) they get to enjoy being both. Even if Lobsang is more god than human and Susan is more human than god.