May 26, 2025
My 2023 adaptation of a scene from the fourth Earthsea book, Tehanu, now with alt text!
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My 2023 adaptation of a scene from the fourth Earthsea book, Tehanu, now with alt text!
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tehanu
The Books of Earthsea Illustrations from the complete illustrated edition, Illustrated by Charles Vess [X]
My hot take about Tehanu is that "farther west than west beyond the land my people are dancing on the other wind" is one of the most important lines in the book. For context, the line is referring to a song sung by this woman who is a dragon, or perhaps a dragon who became a woman (epic daoism reference by le guin btw), and she talks about how there is a myth that dragons and humans used to be one. The people in question who are dancing are ones who are both part human and dragon, living in peace in other side of the world So in Tehanu there are two strong binaries, the one between men and women, and the one between man and dragon, and this is the first instance we see someone breaking that boundary. This is important because I think these two boundaries are meant to mirror and foil each other. For example, the line between man and dragon is also the line between women and men, because magic in earthsea (the art and study) is the strict purview of men. But the line between humans and dragons is also in it's literal sense. In earthsea, men gain magic through learning, but dragons are born magic. All men, man and woman, Tenar and Ged, learn their gender and how to be their gender, and in that, power; the whole book is very focused on how gender is socially taught and upheld. But there's this metaphorical alternative: what would it be like to be born having power in selfhood and identity? The magic of making and of words.
Which is why Therru is so so important because she breaks both of these binaries! She is strongly implied to be the next archmage (breaking the boundary of men and women) and is kin to dragons! The book has a lot of depressing stuff but there's such a strong through-line of hope: The ring has been returned, there is a king of the throne of havnor, and the world that Therru brings in will be one that breaks binaries.
"And was she to hide all her life? ... Was the child to be hidden at a loom in the dark and never have a ruffle to her skirt?"
Rereading Tehanu for the first time in a long time, forever obsessed with Tenar, and Therru with her red dress and little dolphin figure
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therru/tehanu ⋆｡°✩
I did actually draw Therru as well but I didn't like the way the whole illustration turned out to be. Maybe I'll redraw her sometime
P.S. I gave her a bit pointy ears to highlight her magical dragon nature
“Now, then, you look beautiful!” said Tenar in her seamstress’s pride, when Therru first tried it on.
Therru turned her face away.
“You are beautiful,” Tenar said in a different tone. “Listen to me, Therru. Come here. You have scars, ugly scars, because an ugly, evil thing was done to you. People see the scars. But they see you, too, and you aren’t the scars. You aren’t ugly. You aren’t evil. You are Therru, and beautiful. You are Therru who can work, and walk, and run, and dance, beautifully, in a red dress.”
The child listened, the soft, unhurt side of her face as expressionless as the rigid, scar-masked side.
She looked down at Tenar’s hands, and presently touched them with her small fingers. “It’s a beautiful dress,” she said in her faint, hoarse voice.
When Tenar was alone, folding up the scraps of red material, tears came stinging into her eyes. She felt rebuked. She had done right to make the dress, and she had spoken the truth to the child. But it was not enough, the right and the truth. There was a gap, a void, a gulf, on beyond the right and the truth. Love, her love for Therru and Therru’s for her, made a bridge across that gap, a bridge of spiderweb, but love did not fill or close it. Nothing did that. And the child knew it better than she.”
- Tehanu, Ursula K. LeGuin
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Man, the way this quote has lived rent free in my brain ever since I first read it. I just knew I had to try and illustrate it. It took me far too long to get it done but, I'm glad to see it done at last.
Process [X]