Hey, anyone else think it’s super duper suspicious that the Reverend Parents kicked off their abominable baby scheme pretty much simultaneously to Gideon Nav, key to the Tomb, landing on the Ninth? Gideon’s more than a year but less than two years older than Harrow. So give it nine months gestation, a few months for prep and planning, and Gideon’s arrival lands at exactly the place on the timeline you’d look for an inciting event to the creche massacre
And like, the Revs didn’t seem shocked when they heard Harrow had opened the Tomb. They listened solemnly to Gideon spill the beans and then quietly shuffled themselves off the mortal coil, intending to take their pint sized single-serving generation with them. As far as we know they never pressured Harrow to continue the Ninth, either. They checked to make sure she was a powerful necromancer, and that was it. It’s almost like they’d been waiting for this.
It’s just a hell of a lot of coincidences piling up. Makes me wonder what they knew, who they’d been talking to. How much didn’t they tell Harrow?
This!!! Plus Mercymorn asking for Harrow’s age from comception and the Body telling her to lie…Honestly I’m still on board with this ancient theory I saw that Augustine and Mercy were in contact with the Ninth as part of Dios Apate Major. Maybe not in detail, maybe just sowing seeds…making false promises.
Sure Baby Gideon’s blood was needed but was killing 200 children intended to add to the tomb-opening thanergy bloom? Was creating Harrow important? A backup plan? Harrow may assume the Reverend Parents killed themselves out of shame and a desire to not outlast the apocalypse…but is that true or just her bias talking?
What was Cytherea’s role in Dios Apate Major? She was aware of it—Augustine mentioned at her funeral he’d seen her 19 years ago, right when they were doing it. And she clocked Gideon’s egg-amber eyes as Alecto’s immediately, without a crisis over how it was possible—importantly, she knew it meant Gideon was John’s child, not Alecto’s. Did she have a part to play for the tomb-opening plan? Did it involve talking to the Reverend Parents about infanticide, or maybe the unexplored portion of Canaan House, or even the mysterious jail floating above the Ninth?
Sorry just realized I’m actually only adding more questions to your post and not any concrete theories. Good luck smart people 👍