#jamethiel

One useful angle to approach the Kencyrath novels from is as a superhero story in a high-fantasy setting. Pat Hodgell has talked about being a comics fan in her childhood and I think Jame shows that in many ways.

She is an amazingly physical heroine, whose exploits seem perfectly designed for the comics medium IMO. A lot of the plot tension comes from questions of the morality of using superhuman abilities, and that's an age-old comic book trope. Her powers are stupendous, equivalent to many superheroes at least. Given how much she avoids learning her limits, they're probably further out than she guesses, but she ranks at demigod level. And like a good superhero story, the plots show that powers don't fix the hard things.

“And I’ve paid him the compliment of taking him seriously, or as much so as anyone can.”

I wonder if we will ever get more about the Master’s Generation and the Fall, or if it will forever remain a mystery.  Who’s alive, now, who remembers?  Gerridon, Keral, a few of the other changers.  Terribend, albeit soulless.  Really damn few by now.  And I wonder how much the changers remember, twisted that they are by coupling with Darkling creatures back in the House’s past.

What permitted Gerridon to do as he did?  Clearly there must have been checks and balances in the Kencyrath, or in thirty thousand years they would have thought up a more flexible honor code that did not assume that Lords would always give honorable orders.  Treason from the top was never anticipated, or perhaps whose job it was to monitor that were sleeping.  I’m wondering if the Arrin-ken were tasked to do that and they let Gerridon slip through the cracks.  Somebody screwed up, not to catch his corruption.

Opposite-gender twins in the Knorth main line were supposed to rule jointly.  Were Gerridon and Jamethiel truly equal?  I don’t think they could have been.  He had power over her in some fashion.  Perhaps he blood-bound her, that’s the most likely possibility I think. Or maybe the power was simply that she loved him, and he did not really love her.  She didn’t doubt him until it was too late.

Or, at least, he only ever loved her as a possession, a tool.  Perhaps it was the realization of just how much power he held, having control of her, that captivated him.  Because she was a weapon he could polish and then use against his own people.  Who otherwise could so sacrifice their loving twin sister, their consort?  He knew what he was doing.  He knew that he would make of her a murderer, and make her captive in a dance unending.  He likely knew it would destroy her.  Did he hate her?  Was he envious that others, like Tirandys, loved her so much?  I fear she was too naive, too sweet, too innocent to guard herself against him.  From the small interactions with her we got in the books, she’s not got an evil bone in her body despite being a tool of evil for so long.  

And the dreaminess.  Was she like that before the Fall, so caught up in her dreams and the weaving of them for herself and others that she wasn’t paying attention to the real world?  Or is this her armor against what was done to her, tuning out, going through the steps of the Great Dance in a daze, hiding inside her own mind.  Maybe it was the only defiance she could keep, that her heart would not Fall despite everything, even if she could only do it by locking herself up in herself.

And poor Tirandys, who loved her and could not save her.  Who was duty-bound to obey Gerridon even when ordered to do evil.  I wonder if, cruelly, he knew before Jamethiel Dream-weaver what fate he planned for her, and could not tell it?  I hope not.  Watching her become more and more distant, more and more living in dreams inside her mind because she could not survive otherwise.  Realizing that the Void she had opened to feed souls into and harvest the life-energy of to keep Gerridon alive was now inside her, inescapably dooming her.  Dance or die.  Worse than die.  Be utterly erased, pass into nothing, leave no remains, no soul, no spirit.  Little wonder she became the dreamy automaton we see her as.

And Ganth, whose fate was sealed the moment he laid eyes on her when the Master came to do deals with Gerraint.  Poor fool, falling for the beauty of the dreamer, Gerridon’s prisoner and tool.  His infatuation doomed him.

And what a torment it must have been for Tirandys when Jame showed up at the Master’s doorstep.  The child of the woman he loved, and her exact look-alike.  And being ordered to train her.  And when he realized how strong she was, how defiant, that she would never go meekly into slavery, and he realizes that maybe, just maybe, if he trains and educates her properly, she can escape her fate.

He died seeing his victory.  That Jame was capable, strong and free.