“Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House,” she said hoarsely, “you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.”
going insane thinking about the paralleled relationships of palamedes’ fondness for harrow and camilla’s fondness of gideon. and their respective simularities! harrow being jealous of gideon mooning over dulcinea. camilla being jealous of palamedes being in love with dulcinea since he was 8. camilla being fond of gideon after realizing gideon also has a melodramatic necromancer. palamedes and harrow’s “necromantic pissing contest”. gideon and camilla’s love of swords. palamedes “I’m the greatest necromancer of my generation”, harrow “like hell you are”. palamedes suiciding detonating himself to take out cytherea. gideon suiciding throwing herself on spikes to send harrow full lyctor to take out cytherea. palamedes “i miss harrow terribly” sextus. harrow “i can’t envision a universe without you in it” nonagesimus, camilla “life is too short and love is too long” hect. gideon “you’ll know what to do” nav, palamedes “she knows what to do” sextus. crazy! crazy insane! thinking about them
me when the emotionally repressed character is revealed to have had something happen in their childhood that was completely out of their control but changed them in a way they can never come back from
me when the emotionally repressed character is revealed to have had something happen in their childhood that was completely out of their control but changed them in a way they can never come back from
she still didn’t understand what she was meant to do or think or say: what duty really meant, between a cavalier and a necromancer, between a necromancer and a cavalier.
i’m still emotional about the stupid bit from GtN where harrow leaves gideon some bread in drawer for when she wakes up after the avulsion lab, because like. harrow gets overwhelmed by tea and biscuits, the idea of eating for pleasure is entirely alien to her, but she understands it’s something gideon might appreciate so she makes her best effort, she’s really trying to understand her
we see it from gideon’s perspective as another baffling harrow moment, but from harrow’s perspective, what a touching gesture? when harrow asks gideon what she has to do to earn her trust and gideon asks to get some sleep, she clearly takes to heart that she’d not been conscious of gideon’s needs
when gideon is recovering, harrow, believing her house is at stake, can’t afford to waste time waiting for her, but nonetheless before leaving takes the time to make an attempt to make gideon feel cared for, even though she doesn’t really know how. just like the sword in HtN, harrow has no idea how to properly take care of gideon or express her love but she tries in her own little autistic bone gremlin way and i think it’s really sweet
“I hated Harrow so much at the beginning” could NOT be me. She has flair, she has panache. She stays up all night scrabbling in the dirt burying bone fragments just for the drama of the reveal. She stabs herself in the cheek so she can sign in blood. She is a control freak who puppets her dead parents around and bullies Gideon into a vow of silence. She is a singleminded swot who maps out all the doors in a massive decaying mansion the very first night. She makes herself a bone cocoon before passing out. She leaves bread in a drawer. You don’t see a grimy little freak and want to put them in a blender??
