Pride of Princes - Part Two, Chapter Two
May. 5th, 2023 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i_read_whatSo last time we caught up with Brennan. It's been about a month since the brothers split up. We also saw some ominous hints of racial tension in the country.
So we rejoin Brennan as he finally makes it to the Keep. Or, as Sleeta calls it through the link, "home". But there's something interesting here:
Home. To Sleeta—to any lir perhaps—it was the closest thing to a home any of them claimed. And yet Brennan knew a brief inward stab of guilt. Clankeep was not home to him. It was a place of dreams, of his past and his future, the womb of his race, the security of his kin, and yet it was not quite a home, because he had not made it so.
This kind of touches on something I've noticed in Chapter One. For all that Brennan and Hart look more Cheysuli than Niall did. For all that the boys got their lir sooner and happily wear leathers and gold, they really don't "feel" Cheysuli in the way that Niall and Ian did.
Culture is complicated when you're of mixed heritage of course, and I might be overstepping myself considerably even touching on this issue, as a white person. It's just the impression I have.
But Brennan seems to agree here. A few paragraphs earlier, which I didn't excerpt, Brennan thinks about how in Clankeep, he's nothing more than a fellow warrior "though that was more than enough".
But is it? A Cheysuli warrior is significant within their culture, sure. But an heir to the throne - a throne of a country that until a few generations ago was trying to wipe out your race...that's a pretty heavy responsibility. And it's understandable, then, that Brennan has focused on that responsibility to the point where he feels disconnected from his racial identity.
And the disconnect may be mutual:
"Well," said a quiet voice behind them, "which of the royal get is it? Corin? No—the color is wrong. Hart, perhaps—no, no, as you turn I see your eyes are yellow, not blue. Well, then, it must be—Brennan?" The tone was eloquently ironic, and yet it lacked the note of friendly raillery someone else might have used to underscore the words, if only to make certain Brennan understood it was a jest. "I see any of you so rarely, it is difficult to know which princeling is which."
This is not banter, we're told. Teirnan, Brennan's cousin, means it in deadly earnest.
It's a complicated relationship here:
"What is it this time. cousin?" Teirnan forbore the Old Tongue, as if to emphasize Brennan's frequent separation from the clan. "Do you require additional assurances that you are indeed the man intended for the Lion?"
"No. You require those," Brennan said bluntly. "Teir, are you still convinced that you would do better than I? I thought the last time I came, when the shar tahl spoke to us both, we settled all this nonsense of bloodlines and legacies."
"I am no more convinced you should inherit than you believe I should," Teir answered flatly. "Why should I be? Shar tahl aside, facts are facts: I claim all of the rootstock bloodlines you do, but mine are untouched by Solindish or Atvian taint. There is Old Blood in me, and Cheysuli blood, and Homanan. Enough, I think, to fulfill that part of the prophecy pertaining to proper heritage."
So, here's the issue. Teirnan is the son of Ceinn and Isolde. He has the Old Blood (though not incestuously recursive, like Brennan and company). Remember the a'saii? Yeah.
Ceinn and Niall had made peace, when Niall finally got his lir. But that peace apparently hasn't lasted to the next generation. And where Ceinn supported Ian as an alternate candidate, based on his ancestry, Teirnan has the same ancestry through Isolde.
Basically this is all Donal's fault.
But it does sound like the peace made didn't last through Isolde's death:
"I think not," Brennan said gently. "Solindish and Atvian taint notwithstanding, it is required." Gritting his teeth, he managed to smile with infinite patience, though he was fast losing his share. "We have been through this time and time again, Teir—even when we were children! Look to the clan for your legacy. The Lion will be mine."
"My jehan says—"
"Your jehan is an empty, embittered man," Brennan declared shortly, forgoing his usual tact. "Ceinn worked against my Jehan just as you work against me, and all out of a perverse desire to be someone he is not meant to be. Since he no longer has the option of thwarting my jehan through a disbanded group of Cheysuli zealots, he uses you. He twists you, Teir, like a green willow bough. And one day you will break."
"Disbanded, are we?” Teir retorted. "I think not, cousin. I think the a'saii live again!"
...um, okay. So why aren't we arresting them for treason?
Honestly, Teirnan's a'saii are, if anything, even stupider than Ceinn's. Putting Ian on the throne was at least theoretically plausible because Donal, Ian's father was king. Though there was no way that Homana, who could barely tolerate Niall, would accept a king that was a) a bastard and b) far more overtly Cheysuli.
Brennan looks Cheysuli, sure. But he's a legitimate son of Niall, who has ruled peacefully for twenty years. Aside from the scary racists at the beginning of the last chapter, who appeared to be a secret sect, there's no indication that anyone on the Homanan side is challenging Brennan's claim. Teirnan's claim comes from being a grandson of Niall's predecessor, through a female bastard. That's flimsy at best.
Teirnan's scheme here seems pretty absurd:
"Without bloodshed, we intend to take the Lion and give it over to the warrior whose blood best deserves to rule."
"Without bloodshed." Brennan wanted to spit. "Do you think any of us would politely step aside and let you have the Lion?"
"Aye," Teir said, "if Clan Council told you to."
"Clan Council—" Brennan stared. "Have you gone mad? Cheysuli Clan Council supports our right to rule!"
"Only so long as the members believe that right is yours," Teirnan said. "But if they no longer believed it, cousin, and bestowed that right upon another branch of the bloodline, what would you do? Fight? Become kinslayer in the name of greed and power?" Teir's voice was steady and quiet, lacking the fanaticism Brennan might have expected. In its place was a calm matter-of-factness as he spelled out the consequences of such an action. "You would divide the world, cousin, and make it a place of two races yet again. Cheysuli-Homanan. Set again at each other's throats."
"The Homanans would have nothing to do with it," Brennan threw back. "This is a thing between Cheysuli factions—"
"Is it?" Teir smiled. "So easily you dismiss the very people you intend to rule. Have you forgotten how we are outnumbered? We always were, always have been—and Strahan's Ihlini plague twenty years ago stole half our numbers again. It leaves the Homanans with a vast superiority, cousin. If we took to fighting for the Lion in the name of the prophecy, what is there to stop the Homanans from declaring a new qu'mahlin and stealing it back for themselves? Would you risk that?"
Sorry for the long excerpt, but let's look at Teirnan's logic here. Teirnan seems to believe that he can get the Clan Council to back him. And that Brennan would yield or be forced to yield to avoid a civil war.
But that ignores two major things:
1) The Prophecy EXPLICITLY mentions the bloodlines that Teirnan wants to exclude.
2) The Homanans are probably not going to accept this.
The Homanans already had a civil war over a Cheysuli monarch. If they're going to start a qu'mahlin, than it's far more likely to happen if Teirnan wins than if he loses. All things being equal, Brennan is still Niall's son, and they like Niall now. (Teirnan also is NOT a descendant of Carillon. Brennan might not have the looks like Niall does, but he IS.)
It had looked like Teirnan wanted to supplant Brennan, but now it's starting to look like he wants to completely overthrow Niall.
"Would you?" Brennan was so angry he wanted to knock Teirnan's teeth down his throat and make him choke on them. "If you throw down my jehan—even if you set him aside through action of Cheysuli Clan Council—you destroy the prophecy. You leave the Lion to the Ihlini."
Teirnan's eyes narrowed. "At this moment, we are less concerned with the Ihlini than with the proper disposition of the throne. Strahan has been in hiding for a very long time. Who is to say he is not dead?"
Teirnan is a fucking idiot. We can see which grandson really takes after Donal here. But he's also, as yet, afraid of a direct confrontation:
Teirnan looked at the cat. Briefly hostility and acknowledgment warred in his face. And then he masked himself again, all civility. "I mean you no harm." he said. "We are bloodkin and more, being children of the gods, but you must understand that it is only a matter of time. While Niall sits on the Lion parceling out his children to this realm and to that, dividing Homana's strength, there are those who will come to see there are better ways of serving the Lion. Of serving the prophecy."
That said, Teirnan does have a trump card:
"You are a fool." He spoke without heat, knowing only that he could not allow Teir to comprehend how very real was the threat of the a'saii. "A fool, and if I could do it, I would spill from my veins the blood that makes us kin until I was free of you."
"Would you?" Teirnan smiled. "And what would Maeve say, to lose me yet again?"
Poor Maeve.
So here's the thing about Maeve that makes Keely's antagonism so particularly annoying. Keely resents Maeve for not being legitimate. Maeve doesn't get forced into an arranged marriage. That's true. Maeve is, politically speaking, invisible. But invisibility is not protection.
The last time Maeve came to Clankeep, per Teirnan, she agreed to be his meijha. That's enough to spur Brennan to actual violence.
He was conscious only of clamping his hands around his cousin's throat and driving him to the ground, where he nearly crushed the fine bones beneath the flesh so like his own. Ku'reshtin—"
"Ask her!" Teirnan rasped through Brennan's assault. "Ask her, cousin! Do you think she would lie to you?"
Brennan pressed him against the ground. "She would never—she would never—not with you—not with such as you—“
"Ask her," Teirnan challenged. "But also ask her why she will not come to Clankeep. Ask her why she will not honor her vow."
I'm not a fan of brothers violently attacking their sister's suitors. But it is worth remembering Maeve's behavior last chapter. She was unhappy and upset about something. And she did NOT want to go to clankeep. It's pretty clear that she's hiding from Teirnan. Something changed.
Brennan says he'll release her from any vow she made, but Teirnan gloats that the vow is freely made and only Maeve or he can break it. He refuses. And why?
"Because you want me to." Teirnan's laugh was torn from a badly bruised throat. "She never will. She is too honorable to do it. I am not. For a good enough reason, I will. But—for now it serves me ... it serves me to see how angry and helpless you are—"
"By the gods—" Brennan choked. "By the gods, I swear if you ever harm her, by word or by deed, I will soil my hands with your blood. Kinslayer you may make me, but that is a burden I would gladly bear for the sake of my rujholla—"
"Bastard," Teirnan mocked. "The Homanans call her bastard."
There's a pretty great exchange between Sleeta and Brennan here:
Lir. It was Sleeta, quietly intruding. Lir, if you mean to do it, do it. If you do not, then let him go. Do not be irresolute.
You would like me to slay him, he said. I can tell.
No. But the tone was distinctly reluctant. If you slay him, you take on the responsibility of a fool. And you deserve better than that.
So Brennan lets Teirnan up. Teirnan continues to gloat, telling him to ask Maeve if she was unwilling or forced when she came to his bed. Brennan says that if she was, Teirnan is dead.
I can understand why certain readers don't like Brennan, but I appreciate the novelty of a protagonist who wants to kill a rapist rather than be one. And consent is complicated. Maeve may not have been "forced" per se, but that doesn't mean she clearly consented either. Only she can tell us that.
I do like that while Teirnan's plans are idiotic, he is an effective antagonist in terms of the damage that he can do.
The chapter ends with Brennan and Sleeta leaving, to head back to Homana Mujhar.
So we rejoin Brennan as he finally makes it to the Keep. Or, as Sleeta calls it through the link, "home". But there's something interesting here:
Home. To Sleeta—to any lir perhaps—it was the closest thing to a home any of them claimed. And yet Brennan knew a brief inward stab of guilt. Clankeep was not home to him. It was a place of dreams, of his past and his future, the womb of his race, the security of his kin, and yet it was not quite a home, because he had not made it so.
This kind of touches on something I've noticed in Chapter One. For all that Brennan and Hart look more Cheysuli than Niall did. For all that the boys got their lir sooner and happily wear leathers and gold, they really don't "feel" Cheysuli in the way that Niall and Ian did.
Culture is complicated when you're of mixed heritage of course, and I might be overstepping myself considerably even touching on this issue, as a white person. It's just the impression I have.
But Brennan seems to agree here. A few paragraphs earlier, which I didn't excerpt, Brennan thinks about how in Clankeep, he's nothing more than a fellow warrior "though that was more than enough".
But is it? A Cheysuli warrior is significant within their culture, sure. But an heir to the throne - a throne of a country that until a few generations ago was trying to wipe out your race...that's a pretty heavy responsibility. And it's understandable, then, that Brennan has focused on that responsibility to the point where he feels disconnected from his racial identity.
And the disconnect may be mutual:
"Well," said a quiet voice behind them, "which of the royal get is it? Corin? No—the color is wrong. Hart, perhaps—no, no, as you turn I see your eyes are yellow, not blue. Well, then, it must be—Brennan?" The tone was eloquently ironic, and yet it lacked the note of friendly raillery someone else might have used to underscore the words, if only to make certain Brennan understood it was a jest. "I see any of you so rarely, it is difficult to know which princeling is which."
This is not banter, we're told. Teirnan, Brennan's cousin, means it in deadly earnest.
It's a complicated relationship here:
"What is it this time. cousin?" Teirnan forbore the Old Tongue, as if to emphasize Brennan's frequent separation from the clan. "Do you require additional assurances that you are indeed the man intended for the Lion?"
"No. You require those," Brennan said bluntly. "Teir, are you still convinced that you would do better than I? I thought the last time I came, when the shar tahl spoke to us both, we settled all this nonsense of bloodlines and legacies."
"I am no more convinced you should inherit than you believe I should," Teir answered flatly. "Why should I be? Shar tahl aside, facts are facts: I claim all of the rootstock bloodlines you do, but mine are untouched by Solindish or Atvian taint. There is Old Blood in me, and Cheysuli blood, and Homanan. Enough, I think, to fulfill that part of the prophecy pertaining to proper heritage."
So, here's the issue. Teirnan is the son of Ceinn and Isolde. He has the Old Blood (though not incestuously recursive, like Brennan and company). Remember the a'saii? Yeah.
Ceinn and Niall had made peace, when Niall finally got his lir. But that peace apparently hasn't lasted to the next generation. And where Ceinn supported Ian as an alternate candidate, based on his ancestry, Teirnan has the same ancestry through Isolde.
Basically this is all Donal's fault.
But it does sound like the peace made didn't last through Isolde's death:
"I think not," Brennan said gently. "Solindish and Atvian taint notwithstanding, it is required." Gritting his teeth, he managed to smile with infinite patience, though he was fast losing his share. "We have been through this time and time again, Teir—even when we were children! Look to the clan for your legacy. The Lion will be mine."
"My jehan says—"
"Your jehan is an empty, embittered man," Brennan declared shortly, forgoing his usual tact. "Ceinn worked against my Jehan just as you work against me, and all out of a perverse desire to be someone he is not meant to be. Since he no longer has the option of thwarting my jehan through a disbanded group of Cheysuli zealots, he uses you. He twists you, Teir, like a green willow bough. And one day you will break."
"Disbanded, are we?” Teir retorted. "I think not, cousin. I think the a'saii live again!"
...um, okay. So why aren't we arresting them for treason?
Honestly, Teirnan's a'saii are, if anything, even stupider than Ceinn's. Putting Ian on the throne was at least theoretically plausible because Donal, Ian's father was king. Though there was no way that Homana, who could barely tolerate Niall, would accept a king that was a) a bastard and b) far more overtly Cheysuli.
Brennan looks Cheysuli, sure. But he's a legitimate son of Niall, who has ruled peacefully for twenty years. Aside from the scary racists at the beginning of the last chapter, who appeared to be a secret sect, there's no indication that anyone on the Homanan side is challenging Brennan's claim. Teirnan's claim comes from being a grandson of Niall's predecessor, through a female bastard. That's flimsy at best.
Teirnan's scheme here seems pretty absurd:
"Without bloodshed, we intend to take the Lion and give it over to the warrior whose blood best deserves to rule."
"Without bloodshed." Brennan wanted to spit. "Do you think any of us would politely step aside and let you have the Lion?"
"Aye," Teir said, "if Clan Council told you to."
"Clan Council—" Brennan stared. "Have you gone mad? Cheysuli Clan Council supports our right to rule!"
"Only so long as the members believe that right is yours," Teirnan said. "But if they no longer believed it, cousin, and bestowed that right upon another branch of the bloodline, what would you do? Fight? Become kinslayer in the name of greed and power?" Teir's voice was steady and quiet, lacking the fanaticism Brennan might have expected. In its place was a calm matter-of-factness as he spelled out the consequences of such an action. "You would divide the world, cousin, and make it a place of two races yet again. Cheysuli-Homanan. Set again at each other's throats."
"The Homanans would have nothing to do with it," Brennan threw back. "This is a thing between Cheysuli factions—"
"Is it?" Teir smiled. "So easily you dismiss the very people you intend to rule. Have you forgotten how we are outnumbered? We always were, always have been—and Strahan's Ihlini plague twenty years ago stole half our numbers again. It leaves the Homanans with a vast superiority, cousin. If we took to fighting for the Lion in the name of the prophecy, what is there to stop the Homanans from declaring a new qu'mahlin and stealing it back for themselves? Would you risk that?"
Sorry for the long excerpt, but let's look at Teirnan's logic here. Teirnan seems to believe that he can get the Clan Council to back him. And that Brennan would yield or be forced to yield to avoid a civil war.
But that ignores two major things:
1) The Prophecy EXPLICITLY mentions the bloodlines that Teirnan wants to exclude.
2) The Homanans are probably not going to accept this.
The Homanans already had a civil war over a Cheysuli monarch. If they're going to start a qu'mahlin, than it's far more likely to happen if Teirnan wins than if he loses. All things being equal, Brennan is still Niall's son, and they like Niall now. (Teirnan also is NOT a descendant of Carillon. Brennan might not have the looks like Niall does, but he IS.)
It had looked like Teirnan wanted to supplant Brennan, but now it's starting to look like he wants to completely overthrow Niall.
"Would you?" Brennan was so angry he wanted to knock Teirnan's teeth down his throat and make him choke on them. "If you throw down my jehan—even if you set him aside through action of Cheysuli Clan Council—you destroy the prophecy. You leave the Lion to the Ihlini."
Teirnan's eyes narrowed. "At this moment, we are less concerned with the Ihlini than with the proper disposition of the throne. Strahan has been in hiding for a very long time. Who is to say he is not dead?"
Teirnan is a fucking idiot. We can see which grandson really takes after Donal here. But he's also, as yet, afraid of a direct confrontation:
Teirnan looked at the cat. Briefly hostility and acknowledgment warred in his face. And then he masked himself again, all civility. "I mean you no harm." he said. "We are bloodkin and more, being children of the gods, but you must understand that it is only a matter of time. While Niall sits on the Lion parceling out his children to this realm and to that, dividing Homana's strength, there are those who will come to see there are better ways of serving the Lion. Of serving the prophecy."
That said, Teirnan does have a trump card:
"You are a fool." He spoke without heat, knowing only that he could not allow Teir to comprehend how very real was the threat of the a'saii. "A fool, and if I could do it, I would spill from my veins the blood that makes us kin until I was free of you."
"Would you?" Teirnan smiled. "And what would Maeve say, to lose me yet again?"
Poor Maeve.
So here's the thing about Maeve that makes Keely's antagonism so particularly annoying. Keely resents Maeve for not being legitimate. Maeve doesn't get forced into an arranged marriage. That's true. Maeve is, politically speaking, invisible. But invisibility is not protection.
The last time Maeve came to Clankeep, per Teirnan, she agreed to be his meijha. That's enough to spur Brennan to actual violence.
He was conscious only of clamping his hands around his cousin's throat and driving him to the ground, where he nearly crushed the fine bones beneath the flesh so like his own. Ku'reshtin—"
"Ask her!" Teirnan rasped through Brennan's assault. "Ask her, cousin! Do you think she would lie to you?"
Brennan pressed him against the ground. "She would never—she would never—not with you—not with such as you—“
"Ask her," Teirnan challenged. "But also ask her why she will not come to Clankeep. Ask her why she will not honor her vow."
I'm not a fan of brothers violently attacking their sister's suitors. But it is worth remembering Maeve's behavior last chapter. She was unhappy and upset about something. And she did NOT want to go to clankeep. It's pretty clear that she's hiding from Teirnan. Something changed.
Brennan says he'll release her from any vow she made, but Teirnan gloats that the vow is freely made and only Maeve or he can break it. He refuses. And why?
"Because you want me to." Teirnan's laugh was torn from a badly bruised throat. "She never will. She is too honorable to do it. I am not. For a good enough reason, I will. But—for now it serves me ... it serves me to see how angry and helpless you are—"
"By the gods—" Brennan choked. "By the gods, I swear if you ever harm her, by word or by deed, I will soil my hands with your blood. Kinslayer you may make me, but that is a burden I would gladly bear for the sake of my rujholla—"
"Bastard," Teirnan mocked. "The Homanans call her bastard."
There's a pretty great exchange between Sleeta and Brennan here:
Lir. It was Sleeta, quietly intruding. Lir, if you mean to do it, do it. If you do not, then let him go. Do not be irresolute.
You would like me to slay him, he said. I can tell.
No. But the tone was distinctly reluctant. If you slay him, you take on the responsibility of a fool. And you deserve better than that.
So Brennan lets Teirnan up. Teirnan continues to gloat, telling him to ask Maeve if she was unwilling or forced when she came to his bed. Brennan says that if she was, Teirnan is dead.
I can understand why certain readers don't like Brennan, but I appreciate the novelty of a protagonist who wants to kill a rapist rather than be one. And consent is complicated. Maeve may not have been "forced" per se, but that doesn't mean she clearly consented either. Only she can tell us that.
I do like that while Teirnan's plans are idiotic, he is an effective antagonist in terms of the damage that he can do.
The chapter ends with Brennan and Sleeta leaving, to head back to Homana Mujhar.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-07 06:04 am (UTC)Basically this is all Donal's fault.
No better way to show that the previous books sucked more than the new ones than potshots at the past protagonists.
"Your jehan is an empty, embittered man," Brennan declared shortly, forgoing his usual tact. "Ceinn worked against my Jehan just as you work against me, and all out of a perverse desire to be someone he is not meant to be. Since he no longer has the option of thwarting my jehan through a disbanded group of Cheysuli zealots, he uses you. He twists you, Teir, like a green willow bough. And one day you will break."
Man, that was a brutal little speech!
Teirnan looked at the cat. Briefly hostility and acknowledgment warred in his face. And then he masked himself again, all civility. "I mean you no harm." he said. "We are bloodkin and more, being children of the gods, but you must understand that it is only a matter of time. While Niall sits on the Lion parceling out his children to this realm and to that, dividing Homana's strength, there are those who will come to see there are better ways of serving the Lion. Of serving the prophecy."
Honestly, a good way to make me hate someone is to have someone do terrible things in the name of fate.
Well, at least Teirnan is an antagonist, while Donal was a protagonist. The morality is no longer fucked up enough to mock. Must be why you and I still mock the previous books more.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-07 11:53 pm (UTC)The incest is still pretty bad though.