#pennyfeather

In some cases, it’s more obvious. Bartimaeus clearly loves Ptolemy; this is the most defining relationship of Bartimaeus’s life. Objectively his love didn’t do much for Ptolemy, other than presumably give him some happiness when he was alive and the kind of immortality that comes from being remembered when he was dead. Bartimaeus’s love couldn’t save Ptolemy from early death or anything like that, but it does hugely impact Bartimaeus.

This love is what saves him from the bitterness that consumes Faquarl to the point where he would conduct a plan to destroy billions of innocent lives and betray the spirit of the ideals he works for. Bartimaeus’s love for Ptolemy echoes in how he views Nathaniel and Kitty, and without it, there is no way the three of them would have been in the position to do what they do at the end of PG. Without it, the world would have ended.

This holds similarities with Nathaniel. He loves Mrs. Underwood and Ms. Lutyens. That love doesn’t keep the former from dying, nor does it keep the latter from living life as part of a group that Nathaniel and his class oppress. But Nathaniel’s love for Mrs. Underwood is the thing that makes Bartimaeus hold out hope for him. It’s the sign that maybe Nathaniel actually might not be as bad as all the other magicians, even as he goes further down that road. And Ms. Lutyens is one of the major contributing factors to Nathaniel’s realization in PG that he and his government are not good. The thing that makes Nathaniel a character that you can’t dismiss as evil and be done with, even when he makes mistakes and acts cruel, is his love for these two people in particular.

Bartimaeus and Nathaniel both exhibit love on a personal level, but love in this series also manifests in a more generalized way.

Asmira and Kitty both show this kind of love well. As an assassin sent to kill the king and an actual terrorist, both would be villains in another story, but readers never doubt that they are at least trying to do the right thing. This is in part because we see their perspectives, but also because of major aspects of their characters.

In Asmira’s case, her love is for her kingdom. Even though she obeys and respects her queen, the biggest reason she goes to kill King Solomon is because she thinks it will save Sheba. She talks about this towards the beginning of the book with Bartimaeus, but it really shows in the end. Her love for her people overpowers her idolization of the queen, and when she learns the truth of the situation, she goes against her orders to do the thing that would actually benefit the whole region, and this is what makes her the hero.

Kitty also loves the people, but her story is more complicated. Unlike the other characters, she doesn’t really explicitly state her love for anything, and maybe “love” isn’t exactly the right word to describe what she feels. But out of all the pov characters, she holds the most compassion and trust for others, and that’s pretty close to love.

She can be seen in comparison with the rest of the Resistance. Although they fight an oppressive government, the movement as a whole never tries to help anyone unless it might benefit them. Mr. Pennyfeather talks about the commoners just as dismissively as the magicians do, and the Resistance spends most of their time attacking petty officials and seeking power for their own selves. They separate themselves from the commoners, fighting back in ways that only they are capable of, instead of trying to organize strikes or protests or any of the other coordinated efforts that are seen in the third book.

While Kitty follows along in this, she doesn’t stay like that. The reason she joined in the first place was her strong sense of injustice, and that stays with her the whole time. Only days after the fall of the Resistance, she risks her life to save Nathaniel, her enemy, simply because it was the right thing to do.

Despite spending years of her life dedicated to attacking spirits, the moment she learns they don’t willingly serve the magicians, she factors them into her ideals and spends several more years working on a plan to free both spirits and commoners from the magicians’ rule. She holds a compassion for spirits that, other than Ptolemy, is completely unmatched by basically every human Bartimaeus has ever encountered. Even nicer humans like Asmira never wanted to free spirits from their slavery. Of the three main characters, she is the first one to make a gesture of trust in PG by going to the Other Place, which is what allows the three of them to work with each other to save the world.