#gisela

-> For The 10 Years of The Last Kingdom

Some full sprites for witches that interested me

We get jewel and lina witch in full, plus a good view of the 10^gisela witch thing from yuma's story (i dont know if she appears anywhere else)

I was randomly thinking about this after this post of mine about why Fintan is a good character.

Because from what we know, 90% of the Neverseen have incompatible beliefs with 2/3 leaders. Half the Neverseen wants the matchmaking sys abolished and the council ended, are very anti-eugenics, and are victims of at least systemic (if not domestic) abuse.

Gisela is a abusive evil human being, who abused both her son and husband and is fine with actively practicing making "the prefect version of the elvin race."

Vespera mainly just wants revenge on the Vackers, which aligns her with literally only Alvar. Then she also believes humans are scum, which aligns her with Fintan. The issue is she's also abused, tortured, and murdered people simply for her own enjoyment, then covered it up. This would put her at odds with almost every member of the Neverseen (for reasons talk about in this post), especially people like Umber, Trix, and Fintan- Who while we don't know what exactly was done to them, we still know that something fucked up happened to Umber and it's implied to be human experiments (a sadly dropped plot point), and Fintan, while he is an arsonist and criminal, generally doesn't seem to enjoy killing people for no reason. Or even doing so where he has to watch. (If we follow my line of logic Brant did Sophie's kidnapping due to Fintan being watched, and that Kenric's death was an accident)

So, why tf are the Neverseen still together? They literally don't agree on shit.

Coming back to why Fintan is the best: Its him. That's why the Neverseen feel so dumb recently. He's the reason they haven’t ripped eachother apart.

The people who know were recruited by Gisela are Glimmer (confirmed), and implied to also be Umber and Trix. BUT we also NEVER see Umber or Trix interact one time with Gisela, only Gisela calling Umber "her shade" and it being implied Trix joined with Umber.

Fintan recruited Gethen, who recruited Ruy and Alvar. I believe that Umber and Trix, no matter who recruited them, stayed because of Fintan's goals.

Why? Well compared to Gisela, Fintan not only has actually agreeable goals but also is charismatic and a decent leader. This group of people have wildly differing goals (and all kinda hate eachother) so they need someone who can actually lead to, you know, lead them

This theory also hinges on:

1. the fact that everyone but Ruy hated Alvar and Gisela (which is basically canon)

2. And that meant Keefe (who was recruited by Alvar) and Glimmer/Tam (recruited by Gisela) were kept semi-detached from the group, because they weren't trusted. Because they weren't Fintan's.

This could also be why Fintan allowed Keefe to have a bit more contact with him and the Neverseen, as he was testing the waters with Keefe first. Him being Gisela's son meant he immediately lacked any trust behind him, but him not being recruited by her meant he had a chance. Fintan just never believed he was actually willing to turn

I think this is also why the main group chooses to follow Vespera and not Gisela after Fintan's capture. Because Fintan broke Vespera out and Fintan was willing to co-lead with her (which she definitely didn't like lol). Fintan HATED Gisela and didn't trust her motives, so when Fintan is forced to give up his position, the Neverseen follows Vespera (to the point they literally leave Gisela for dead once reinforcements show up in Legacy). Why they never argue or try to overthrow Fintan when he gets Gisela chucked in an ogre prison. They don't argue with Fintan's means, motives, or choices, they just do it. They CONSTANTLY argue about Gisela and Vespera's.