#felicity

felicity is strange. their whole relationship is strange. on one hand, caution is the love of her life, and on the other she is completely under her mother’s spell. and her mother’s plans require her to betray the princess in so many ways. yet she loves caution more than anyone or anything. her love is selfish and self-serving and she uses her dedication toward caution to justify that.

but also caution is a haughty asshole and i understand the need to rebel against her at least a little bit, at least privately.

"Your breath is foul with vomit! Are you ill?"

I shook my head and decided that night I would share my secret. "Only as ill as you are, my lady. The babe that grows inside me roils my belly."

"You?" She sat up in astonishment, letting the cold air of the room rush into our shared bed. "You with child?" She laughed aloud, but it was not a joyous sound. Her incredulous manner mocked me. "By whom?" she demanded, her mouth full of cold smiles. "What boy or gaffer did you waylay in a dark stairwell?"

I am not a beauty, nor even pretty. It is kind to say that I am plain. I am crook-toothed and thin-shanked and pock-faced. I know that the kitchen lads call me ‘Pig eyes'. I cannot explain then why her mockery cut me so deep, save that she had never before spoken to me so. Sometimes I look back and wonder, did she feel I had betrayed her? Had she secretly wished that my heart would always be hers and hers alone? Why else whet her tongue against me?

…

So I only smiled, showing my crooked teeth and said, "Perhaps the stablemaster is not as keen of sight as others, for he did not seem to find me uncomely when he took me to warm his bed."

i laughed, sorry.

felicity is wrong for lying BUT the romance with lostler was doomed from the start. it might have worked out if caution ran away to be with him privately, but she enjoys the privileges of royalty too much to forsake them, even for love. and given her treatment of him and her penchant for making him jealous, i’m not sure her love was a lasting one anyway. unless he was willing to kiss her ass like felicity has.

felicity attributes caution’s mockery to jealousy and a sense of betrayal, but i’m not so sure. i have no idea how far the princess’s love and loyalty extend. for anyone.

well, jealousy seems up her alley. not wanting anyone else to take her servant’s time (or worship) away.

Every time I felt the urge to confess to her, I stifled it, thinking, 'She will get over her pain, and if I tell her, I will be the one she abandons. I have saved her from going to him, saved her from anyone discovering the truth.’

this is partially true. a love affair with a former slave would be a disaster, but also it’s a thinly-veiled excuse to manipulate her friend and remain the one closest to her heart.

I would be about my tasks in her chambers and look up to find her staring at me, as if measuring my belly or comparing my form to hers to see why he might have wanted me. It was only later, when I looked back over that time, that I realized that she never doubted me. She never questioned me about my supposed tryst with her lover, never asked how many times I'd been with him or if he'd muttered fond words to me. She believed me. She trusted me.

I have to believe, then, that she loved me. Loved me more than she loved him, that she had such faith in my word. To my knowledge, she never even gave him the chance to claim he had been faithful to her. My hasty words had cut him from her heart.

i’m sure pride plays a big part in this. caution seems to have some level of affection for felicity, but she also views her as inferior. and ugly. so if her beau were to lower himself by having sex with felicity, how would she think that reflects on her? and him? why would he want felicity if he already had “the best”?

but yeah, it is strange that she never questions felicity. maybe it’s easier to believe because she didn’t take him very seriously either. but i’m not sure.

No other ladies were present, and I placed myself at her elbow and said softly, "I know it grieves you to look on that beast and know you cannot ride him. Soon you will be a mother and after that, eventually, the queen of all the Six Duchies. I know you can see he is no longer a fitting and proper mount for you. You should sell him now, just as you bought him. Send him out of your life and out of your thoughts. Once he is gone, you will not have to look at him and remember your wild adventures with him."

I spoke so carefully, and looked only at the horse, but I knew how she would hear my words. I felt her hesitation as she said, "Perhaps I should."

it’s crazy how one comment set off such a crazy-ass chain of events. felicity suggests sending him away-> caution is petty and sends away only his wit-beast, knowing how it would hurt him, and commands one of his enemies to do it-> lostler defends himself and his horse-> both die-> caution is shocked and heartbroken, goes into labor-> dies

Stablemaster and Spotted Stud were both dead.

Sounds ebbed to one instant of silence, then rose in a roar of shrieks, shouts and exclamations. But I heard only the Queen-in-Waiting's shrill scream, which went on and on and stopped only when she crumpled, senseless, spattered and soaked with blood from both horse and man.

much of her behavior suggests a strong bond with lostler, but she was so flippant and vindictive otherwise. but i guess anyone would be devastated by such a brutal death even if he wasn’t Husband Material.

I was gaping at her. When I found breath to speak, I asked, "Why? Why must my child be born this day, and why must I conceal it from everyone?"

…

She lowered her voice and beckoned me closer, speaking in a whisper. "All new-born babes look alike. I will tell you that is true, no matter what anyone says. As they grow, they may reflect the looks of their mother or father or both. But in this situation, no one save the Queen-in-Waiting is in a position to say what the father of her child looked like. And thus, when you carry off one infant to nurse, and return to put another in his place, no one will be the wiser."

I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT.

too bad her son had red hair lol

Her pain tore through me, slicing a new torment of my own. For she cried out for him, the man who had caused her all this trouble, rather than me, who had always helped her.

let’s be real, felicity. you have also been a pain in the ass.

"No knife shall touch me!" she proclaimed. "Let my child come out as he went in. Enough blood has been shed over him!"

And all who were near gasped at her words, but none defied her, for all know that in this, the woman has the final say.

i loved this little pro-choice addendum. thank you robin hobb for this woke piece of fantasy

I cut my hair to mourn her, shearing it off shorter than even the king cut his. My mother rebuked me for this, and I heard gossip hissing and sputtering whenever I passed, but I cared nothing then for any of them or what they thought of me. My queen, my sister, my daughter, my lover, all were gone, as if the sun had vanished from the sky, leaving me with nothing but two squalling children.

But when she spoke, her eyes were not on the stallion, nor on his Chalcedean owner, but instead on the young man who gripped the Spotted Stud's halter. There and on that spot, she declared that she would buy the beast. When the deal was closed and the gold passed, she had bought not just the Spotted Stud, but the man who held his halter, and this despite the laws of the Six Duchies against the buying or selling of a man. Slave he had been to the Chalcedean, but she in that moment raised him to free man and servant.

…

Only I observed them: I knew what others only guessed at. When Caution stroked the muzzle of her Spotted Stud, or traced her fingers down his neck, Lostler was the one who shivered with pleasure. When she mounted the horse and rode him, it was as if she embraced the man. Beast and man were alike under her spell, and I began to see in my lady a sensuality that I had only suspected in all our years together.

clearly lostler is witted. caution may or may not be—my guess is that it’s just as kettricken seemed able to sense nighteyes at times. felicity frames the situation as completely in caution’s control, which, systemically, it is. she gifted him his freedom and a powerful job, and she seemed hellbent on claiming his affections while still making him jealous to see her with other more highborn men. the traditional narrative is that lostler/sly corrupted the farseer line with his evil influence, but the opposite may also be true.

Oh, a hundred ways have their secrets been gossiped about and yet what really happened remains their secret to this day. Did Caution deliberately lose herself in some foggy vale, knowing that Lostler would come to seek her?

Did Lostler whisper to the Spotted Stud to bear her astray and keep her hidden until he could come to claim her as his own? Some will say that he whispered to Queen-in-Waiting Caution as he did to the horses and dogs in the stable, and so bespelled her with his voice that she scarcely knew what she did. Some will say that he took her roughly, with no regard for her high birth, as a stallion will take any mare he pleases. Others will say, no, she could not wait to lift her skirts and pull him down upon her. Many say that it was her first time to do so, but by no means her last.

Since I was closer to her than any other and even I do not know the truth of any of it with certainty, I know that all the gossip and whispers are mere speculation, some of it more out of jealousy and hatefulness than any concern for the truth.

it’s another rhaegar/lyanna situation! sorry i just keep noticing parallels to asoiaf.

Cold with dismay, I turned my horses head and quietly withdrew. What I had seen sickened me. For I loved Queen-in-Waiting Caution and desired no harm or scandal to come her way. Had I not raised her, at the expense of my own childhood? Had I not stood at her side, shielded her from punishment and, as often as not, claimed her misdeeds as my own? Had I not offered her my own body for her pleasure, to help her to stay virginal for her wedding bed? If I had offered her my heart as well, then I had done so freely, knowing that she could never reciprocate what I felt.

the mommy sex slave thing really freaks me out. yes they’re very similar in age but she did raise her. even the sex stuff can be an allegory for motherhood, the way a child is grown in the womb and birthed painfully at its mother’s expense, and the way felicity was groomed to perform sexual favors for her boss/best friend to “protect” her virtue at the loss of her own heart and autonomy.

But it was him she chose. She loved the stablemaster, a man born a slave and a Chalcedean, not even an honest Buck-born servant like myself. To that common man she had given her heart and the body that I had cared for and cherished since she was born. Another might have felt jeal-ousy, but I write the truth that Redbird bade me keep clear: I felt only fear for what might befall my darling.

And yes, I feared for myself as well. I knew that if my knowledge became public, I would fall just as swiftly as the princess, for although no one had ever said I was her chaperone, I knew that was what they had expected of me.

…

When I had told out my woe, my mother shook her head. "You must keep them apart," she counselled me, and When I said I could not, she scowled. "Then you must be ready. I will tell you the herbs you can mix with her drink that will make conception less likely, but none of them are certain. Sooner or later, if she is with the man, she will get with child. And if that happens, there is but one path for you. See that you, too, are quickening with life."

classism from felicity is so funny because she herself is a nobody. her value lies in the family trade, which is suckling the children of the rich. in many ways she is just as vulnerable and expendable as lostler. maybe their similarities are the reason she resents him so much.

her own heraldic symbol?? for shame

By day and in public she gave polite excuses, saying she was too young as yet or that she wished to know herself better before she chose a mate for life. But in the evenings, as I brushed out her hair, she spoke her mind bluntly to me. That one was too fair, and the next one too dark. The Farrow lad giggled like a girl when he laughed and the one from Tilth brayed like a donkey. That one was too thin; nights with him would be like sleeping in the kindling pile.

"What, then, do you want in a man?" I dared to ask her. A thin shard of green jealousy stabbed my heart but I took care not to show it. I was unlikely to marry well and when I did, my duties to my husband would likely take me from Caution's side. Once wed, my future would narrow to a swelling belly and a future as a wet-nurse, forever pregnant or tending children not my own. A husband I would have to find, eventually. But my heart did not cry out for a man. I drew the tortoiseshell comb slowly through Queen-in-Waiting Caution's sleek black hair, savoring the soft threading of it through my hands. I had all I needed there at my fingertips, for I loved her with all my being.

She had been pondering my words. Now she smiled. "Away, away with all of them! I shall choose my own man when the time is right, and only to please myself, for what else truly will matter? I will be queen, Felicity! Queen! I will know all I need to rule, and the decisions will be mine. What is the use of being queen if I cannot even choose my own mate? For now, while I have you, I need no man to share my bed." And she laughed as she turned to smile at me, and I smiled in return.

From my mother, I had learned that although all noble ladies must be virgins when they first wed, it did not mean they must be strangers to pleasure. And in that duty I had served my queen well and willingly since before we had been women.

OH????

i was not expecting an explicitly homosexual love affair. thank you ms. hobb

Only the Duke and Duchess of Buck were silent in these things. For the Duke of Buck was the king's own younger brother, Strategy Farseer, and…