just spent an hour flipping through each of my tlt paperbacks and noting down which house crests come up at the start of each chapter. made a spreadsheet. likely will earn me nothing in meta/theories, but has earned me so many tism points
THE FOLLOWING DATA ANALYSIS/BREAKDOWN CONTAINS TLT SERIES SPOILERS
(key: orange highlight is for GtN; blue highlight for HtN; pink highlight for NtN; a * indicates where a crest (or symbol) has been sliced through completely, where a # indicates it has only been cracked/sliced through incompletely; NGS stands for New Green Shoot aka a small sprouting plant)
i’ve done the math, so lemme break it down for you
in 1st Place, with the most uses across the series so far, is the Ninth House with 27 uses (7 of which were sliced)
in 2nd Place, with 13 uses each, is a tie between the Second, Third, and Sixth Houses. The Second House’s crest was sliced 3 times, the Sixth House’s sliced 2 times, and the Third House’s sliced just the once.
in 3rd place, with 10 uses each, is another tie between the Fifth and Eighth Houses. The Fifth House’s crest was sliced 4 times, while the Eighth House’s was sliced only once.
in 4th Place, with 9 uses each, is yet another tie, this time between the First and Seventh Houses. None of these House crests were ever sliced.
in 5th Place, with 6 uses, is the Fourth House. None of these House crests were ever sliced, however 2 of them (CH 8 and CH 42 of HtN) were cracked on the upper left side. these are the only House crests to ever appear cracked. it should also be noted that (in the series so far) the Fourth House is the only House that is yet to produce a primary character of any sort (vv sorry but the teens are tertiary to me & i’m rooting for a Ulysses Hell Reprise in AtN)
in 6th Place, with 5 uses, is the Tomb symbol. this symbol was unlocked/opened 2 times.
in 7th Place, with 4 uses each, is another tie, this time between the Gideon Skull and the Herald symbol. The Gideon Skull was sliced 2 times, while the Herald symbol has never been sliced.
in 8th Place, with 2 uses each, is another tie, this time between the Tree symbol and the Tower symbol, both featured in NtN. neither symbol was changed or altered in either iteration it appeared.
and finally, in a very fitting 9th place, with just one use, is the New Green Shoot symbol (NGS), which was used at the start of CH 17 of NtN.
If what you feel is new, That’s just first bloom (Who are you? Where are you growing to?) As you inch towards the clues Bless whatever brings you here and to…
this started off as a quick companion sketch for my Nona (& Friends) playlist, but of course became something much more involved. If she’d had a portable tape player, I feel like Nona might have taken some moments to relax like this.
(fanart for the book Nona the Ninth, from Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series)
when harrow is reading out the summons from the first house at the very beginning of gtn the letter says the following:
“The Emperor calls now for postulants to the position of Lyctor, heirs to the eight stalwarts who have served these ten thousand years: as many of them now lie waiting for the rivers to rise on the day they wake to their King, those lonely Guard remaining petition for their numbers to be renewed and their Lord above Lords to find eight new liegemen.” (paperback p. 39)
which on first read sounds like pretty standard catholic-esque language about a second coming and New Life, etc etc, but upon reread it’s like. hang on. “rivers to rise” sounds a lot like The River. the passage implies that the lyctors who have died fighting the resurrection beasts will be resurrected (again, for some of them) a la second coming.
are we going to see some more og lyctors in alecto????
