#grainne

I’m too lazy to make a big organized essay on the subject but regarding Grainne I just want to say: Yes, her relationship with Diarmuid was unhealthy and even toxic and at times, abusive. But I also think she gets unfairly vilified given her situation. I think she gets hit with most of the blame when Fionn 1) had arranged for him to marry his grandson but she finds out at the last minute she has to marry him, 2) went chasing after Diarmuid and Grainne for years so they couldn’t even settle down and were on the run the whole time and 3) leaves Diarmuid to die after claiming to have forgiven him and does not show a hint of remorse after the fact.

Y’all are letting off Fionn way too easy and making Grainne out to be some blood-sucking harpy whom Diarmuid never loved. Have you considered this story, which was written in the early Middle Ages in a Christianized Ireland at a time when courtly love and female romantic agency were considered taboo, might be purposely portraying a woman who shows romantic agency in the worst possible way? That maybe, at least some of Grainne’s actions are colored by very sexist attitudes of women who want to marry someone they’re actually attracted to?

I’m by no means claiming Grainne was a saint. But then, no one truly was in The Pursuit. It’s an ugly, messy story, where there are no winners and everyone to different degrees had a hand in it (if Fionn hadn’t decided to marry Grainne and also be sneaky about it, if Grainne hadn’t put a geas on Diarmuid and run away with him, if Diarmuid had just communicated with Fionn about the geas and not been a dramatic binch throughout his time as a runaway, if Fionn hadn’t been a bitter binch and pretended to forgive Diarmuid only to stab him in the back later and leave him to die).

Also Diarmuid makes every indication he loved Grainne. I know it’s very easy to think otherwise because we see very little of how he actually was with her but we do see how he was with Sola-Ui, and he wanted to get away from her as quickly as he could. But the few bits of him and Grainne together we do see he seems to have some genuine affection there for her.

In FGO, he even says he truly loved her, and he’s never said anything negative about her in Fate canon. He does clearly hold a lot of remorse and regrets of his life, and it would be very easy for him to just pin the blame on Grainne, to claim he only pitied her and was roped into running away because of the geas but he doesn’t. (Some have claimed he’s a perpetual victim who blames everyone else for his problems but if that were true, he could so easily put all the blame on Grainne but he literally is never shown doing that).

To be clear: I’m not pretending this relationship was at all healthy. But also this is a story where Diarmuid runs off with the king’s wife and has kids with her while they’re on the run and she’s under a (granted, very weak) charm spell and he’s under a geas so dubious consent on both ends. Idk find a Heroic Spirit whose legends didn’t involve something problematic, I’ll wait.

Until such a time as I have artistic talent and/or cash for commissions, I’ll ostentatiously drop these here. 

The Remorse of Nero, John William Waterhouse. 

The Farewell of Hector and Andromache, Sergey Petrovich Postnikov. 

Diarmuid and Gráinne are the legendary lovers, the main heroes of an Irish prose narrative ‘Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne’ (’The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne’).

Diarmuid and Gráinne moodboard