[leaning over the back of my chair at a mid-range burger chain] so anyway bestie john’s subsumption of his lyctors’ personal identities is empire writ small. think of harrow and ianthe offering each other the comfort of using each other’s surnames
—
and knowing it’s a comfort
knowing how deeply harrow has always thought of herself as ninth, how much she sees herself as not just of her house but synonymous with it. knowing how ianthe shares a name with her sister—something rare and unique, as per the gt9 extra materials—around whom her life has always revolved.
and john takes that away from them! unless they are talking to each other in private, they are no longer Nonagesiums and Tridentarius, but the First. he has taken away their association with others and replaced it with association to him.
for his other lyctors, it’s been like this long enough that their names are forgotten!
cytherea wanted to be called ‘cytherea loveday’, but john wouldn’t even let her have that memorial to the grief she suffered in his name. to him she could only be cytherea the first. it’s mercymorn who asks him to honour cytherea’s wishes, after her death:
there’s just something about how cytherea’s choice in name, harrow and ianthe’s given names. these things that memorialize love and community and culture and family, and john takes them away and redefines them in terms of their association to him
and the disdain is even more apparent when applied to his enemies. awake remembrace of these valiant dead is even more obviously than ‘nonagesimus’ or ‘tridentarius’ a name that very directly represents a link to an extinct culture (very possibly extinct because of john)
he at first refuses to say it, calls it “genuinely sad, bordering on very funny”, then abjectively mocks it! wake’s name is explicitly a connection to a long-dead, near-totally extinct cultural tradition, and he entertains himself stomping all over it!
not to mention alecto: alecto, a name john also denies, a name he refuses to even speak. it’s her “real name” but he “buried it with her”
he instead calls her ‘annabel lee’, a totally passive figure that exists to be loved and mourned with no agency in her own story. a name that quite literally renders her inanimate. ‘annie laurie’ is less egregious, but it’s a love ballad. he’s defining her not by what she did (or what he did to her) but by his own emotional attachment and pain.
note that alecto was also the first one he called First. it comes full circle. he took her name and replaced it with her relation to him (“my Adam”) and now he’s done this to everyone around him
john devours everyone’s identity: he replaces them with his own, with how they are defined in relation to him, their opposition to him or subservience to him or his affection for them. harrow cannot be nonagesimus aboard the mithraeum because that would mean acknowledging that she is ninth more than she is john’s servant. cytherea cannot be loveday because that would acknowledge that the grief of what she did at his demand is greater and more powerful than her devotion. he must come first. he must always be at the center.
this is what empire does: it renders externalities internal. it creates new definitions of the periphery by erasing all meaning about it that doesn’t relate it directly back to the core. and john does all this too, only interpersonally, on a human level.
[i sip my milkshake for a weirdly long amount of time until im just making gross sucking sounds through a straw] so yeah fuck that guy
