I'm rereading gtn and so far Ianthe and Harrow have not really Interacted on page (I'm at the part where the Sixth and the Ninth finally enter a formal alliance), which for me means Ianthe's thing for Harrow is 100% "I saw you at the bar a couple of times and your vibes were RANCID. wanna make out?"
lmaoo literally! i think also maybe ianthe would consider harrow the only other one there who was impressive at necromancy. she’s like “first of all rancid vibes. second of all you’re the only necromancer in here who can handle me. lets get gay married”
I feel like the new nona excerpt gives some new and interesting context to the nona poem from tor
like this isn’t really new info but first of all, i think its really interesting that “Sleep” is capitalized in the first line, almost like a name. idk what it means, only that its interesting given the context of “the sleeper” and “Wake”.
but also i feel like it makes a lot of sense for this to be from the POV of John to Alecto. He’s putting her to sleep, either shutting her in the tomb or cryo-freezing her the way that they were gonna cryo-freeze the 11-billion. (still not convinced that the “you” in the nona excerpt isn’t BOTH alecto and the 11-billion. i think it works alongside the alecto-resurrection-beast theory.)
“what is morning?” just from the naivete here, this sounds a LOT like Nona, and also like the “she” that’s speaking at the end of the nona excerpt (who seems like Alecto but who John calls Harrowhark.)
“When everyone who fucked with me is dead. When everyone we loved has gone or fled.” This feels really reminiscent of the trillionaires who fled earth, and maybe of the people on earth who they couldn’t save. I’m not sure whether this poem is set at the time of the resurrection or at the time when Alecto was entombed, but depending, I think this could also be talking about BOE, especially given the other things John said about BOE in HtN:
When it says “let’s put this first-draft dream of mine to bed,” I don’t really know what it means except that it makes me sad! I don’t really have any evidence for this, but it feels like its talking about something like the failure to save Earth’s people, or like the failure to save the cavaliers, or something. A plan that was hopeful and wonderful and could save someone, but was naïve and couldn’t have worked, and now its time to let it go. This could also be literally referring to Alecto as the “first-draft dream,” because she’s been framed as like, a proto-cavalier who wasn’t quite right, a human who wasn’t quite human, and the poem already seems like its about putting her to sleep.
I have fewer conclusions about the next two stanzas, other than that the first one reminds me of some lines in Annabel Lee (in the last stanza of the poem it talks about lying down by her side in her tomb). The stanza after that feels more mysterious and potentially more ominous, and I don’t know what it means other than that it reminds me a lot of the conversations/themes surrounding when Mercy kills God in HtN (forgiveness, anger, graves, lies). That’s all I can think of there.
And as for the last two lines, I feel like its pretty overtly connected to the nona excerpt. She (Alecto? Harrow? Alecto+Harrow=Nona?) asks “When is the part when you hurt me?” and he says “Soon, it’s coming up.” then she says “I still love you.” This feels pretty obviously parallel to “You held aloft the sword/I still love you.”
I don’t really have any other good conclusions about this except that it makes me have lots of feelings. tazmuir why did you build your book series like a scavenger hunt
ok so harrowhark can definitely make whatever she wants out of bone. it’s just a crafting material at this point. she could make a little statue. or a knife or something. whatever. it’s like clay to her. BUT I think it’s an essential part of her character that she continues to really only make bonesout of it, probably because she thinks bones are super cool. they’re her favorite and why would she make something that wasn’t some kind of skeleton. and she’s right about that
ok now I can’t stop thinking about the soup scene. it’s SUCH a good scene, I think there’s nothing I love more than a character who is extremely, surprisingly capable, who everyone underestimates (the same reason why the “go loud” scene hits so hard in GtN, because nobody but us and gideon knows how good cam is, and it’s thrilling to see everyone proved wrong). but it’s not just that they underestimate harrow, they straight up dismiss her as like this useless, failed child. and the whole fucking book she doesn’t get a shred of respect, and the entire book we have to see harrow- our proud and sharp and clever harrow- reduced to this trembling bleeding ball of grief, and she has to endure that too. I think she knows that she used to be more. and finally when she’s pushed to her breaking point, lobotomized, hunted, six-days-no-sleep harrow still does what no one else can do, because she’s just that desperate and she’s just that good.
YES this scene and the pages immediately after (aka her finally sleeping and then replacing Ianthe’s arm) gave me a visceral reaction the first few times I read them, at this point its been over 200 pages of Harrow being constantly stressed and paranoid, treated like a useless child by everyone around her, having to bottle every feeling and reaction in front of her god. The reader has the constant knowledge that something is very wrong, but not knowing exactly what. We go back and forth from the constant stress of the Mithraeum to the Canaan House memories where it just denies the fact that it is wrong, that it goes against everything we read in GtN. Neither us not Harrow get a moment to rest or relax or any catharsis, until this moment. Its been 6 days since any amount of safety or calm we may have felt was utterly destroyed, and she has not slept, and is progressively getting more stressed and paranoid. But despite that, we finally see the scheming, insanely skilled and powerful Harrowhark we remember, she tears through a Lyctor within a second using diluted bone cells in his stomach. Harrow finally gets a win, or at least something close to one. Then she sleeps! I literally got chills when she woke up feeling rested, because the entire tone of the book changes. She is herself again, she is cool and can think properly and her mind is clear, and she regrows Ianthe’s arm out of just bone, which is insane. We are shown that Harrow is still a force to be reckoned with, she is not the non-functioning child that everyone sees her as. And while she doesn’t get to ride the high for too long, she isn’t as constantly stressed and paranoid for the rest of the book. She immediately has a plan to kill G1deon, with the help of the other Lyctors! She isn’t being hunted anymore, she is the hunter. Of course the plan doesn’t go perfectly, but G1deon does almost die that night. And his other attempts to kill her are just footnotes, barely mentioned.
Even the Canaan House scenes get less stressful after this, we immediately get a somewhat domestic scene with Abigail and Magnus, and are presented with the fact that Harrow is haunted. Doesn’t change the sense of everything being off, but presents Harrow and the reader with direction, a possible cause for everything going wrong.
The soup scene marks such a massive pivot in the book’s tone, I cannot read it without an actual physical reaction
damn I wasn’t even thinking about the emotional impact of the scenes that happen right afterwards but ur so right. tbh I feel like it’s a super similar shift to when Gideon comes back. cuz not only has harrow forgotten Gideon the whole time, she’s kind of forgotten who Harrowhark was before, and after 200-odd pages, we’ve almost forgotten too. and then for a moment she wins, and then she sleeps, and for the first time in a while, the power dynamic between her and ianthe is reversed (all book, she’s needing ianthe’s help, and in the bone arm scene we finally see ianthe helpless and at harrow’s mercy) and finally she’s reverend daughter harrowhark nonagesimus again
so we’ve spoken about the Annabel Lee references in Harrow and Gideon the Ninth, but there might be more allusions to poe in the series?
“The Sleeper” is a poem by edgar allen poe
and we literally have a character called “the sleeper” in Harrow the Ninth. i have to look into this more & update the post with some analysis tmr
ok my friend read GtN and before she read ANY of HtN i mentioned there were a lot of literary references and she was like “yeah like to edgar allan poe’s the sleeper!” and of course i was like. lol excuse me?
but i read the poem and tbh its kind of hilarious that we don’t talk about it more often
like, i pray that which was buried remains buried and all that. insensate and in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain etc etc
Thinking about Harrow’s perspective on the conversation after the avulsion trial. I suspect when Harrow decided to go through with avulsion it was on the assumption that, if it came down to the wire, Gideon would slap her greedy little necromantic hands off and let Harrow die rather than kill her. The assumption that Gideon’s stong sense self-preservation—which she definitely does have, having survived growing up on the Ninth—would assert itself, and therefore the life most at risk in the trial was Harrow’s.
I think the aftermath of this trial is the first time Harrow realises that she can’t necessarily trust Gideon to look after herself first. But…
ALT
….does she realize to what extent?
The avulsion trial was the first time Gideon was given the choice between her life and Harrow’s, and the first time she threw herself into choosing Harrow. Did Harrow know?
ALT
How was Harrow looking at Gideon? How much insight did she have on her in this scene, and how much did it scare her?
okay also though…there’s something about the chain that is a mystery still. like there’s chain-related clues that are yet unrevealed. i’m sure of it. in almost EVERY one of harrow’s brain AUs, the chain is mentioned. not to mention “the favor of the chain” that Harrow owes Ianthe. I feel like there are some other mentions but BOTH my GtN and HtN books are lent out to friends rn so i can’t check :(
I forget if I’ve posted about this before but I think my best locked tomb theory that I have actually zero evidence for is that the tridentarii were originally triplets and ianthe ate one of them in the womb.
the circumstances of harrow’s birth support the logic that would explain why ianthe would be a necromancer but not coronabeth. also ianthe’s WHOLE thing is that like, she’s been eating people from the get-go. she’s the only person at canaan house who had it in her to ascend to lyctorhood willingly, and that’s bc she’s been eating her cav from the start. it comes naturally to her. I feel like it would track with her character, given all that.
most of all though, it’s because the tridentarii lean into their aesthetic like nobody’s business. tridentarii from the third house, the trident knife, three of them (counting babs) showing up to canaan, etc. if they were TRIPLETS too? my main argument here is that it would be sickeningly on-brand in a way only ianthe could do
she’s a three but her arm is made of bones and she has a frighteningly codependent relationship with her twin. she’s a three but she looks like a wet rat
had a dream that gideon and harrow died for real in alecto but they would spend eternity being reincarnated and falling in love over and over again but this was only to spite ianthe specifically who was the only immortal person left. she couldnt do shit
this gave me whiplash lmao the first half of this scenario is so heartbreaking and the second half is so funny
Fanfic writers really said “in any universe, in any scenario, despite any obstacle, these people would love each other” and I think that’s very cool of us
collecting a list of ways that mercymorn and harrowhark parallel each other. the way that they’re bitter and unlikeable, both VERY good at what they do (arguably the best), probably because the guilt they have from the cost of their creation is too enormous for them to be anything but the best. how mercymorn hates harrow from the start, I’ve seen lots of people arguing that it’s because she reminds her of herself, and I kind of agree. their names are the only ones in the series that follow the conventions that they do (mercy-morn, harrow-hark. no one else’s names are like that.) both of them are trapped for essentially their whole lives in a place with people who despise them, but who they are bound to by necessity and resentment and a lifetime spent despising each other. mercy and augustine HATE each other, but who else do they have? no one has seen what they’ve seen or been through what they’ve been through, and no one will ever feel as strongly about them as they do about each other. I think until canaan house, the exact same thing applied to harrow and gideon.
and the thing I just thought of yesterday that I can’t BELIEVE it took me so long to realize- both of them are so consumed by grief that NEITHER allow themselves to hear the name of their cavalier. mercy treats names as sacred and HATES when people use cristabel’s name. harrow rewires her own brain so that she can’t hear gideon’s.
I think mercy functions as a version of harrow, one much older and like, much more trapped in her grief? I think she would have lobotomized herself in an instant if she’d thought of it, or if she’d had anyone to help her, or who knows if she even could do that sort of necromancy so soon after she ascended. instead all she has is this bitter, myriad long revenge plot.
this post is getting away from me and I’m just kind of waxing on about mercymorn now. I think they’re versions of each other but they’re living in different narratives.
I think it was @swordrogue that made a post about schizophrenia in the locked tomb, and how maybe The Body is a hallucination that harrow’s mind supplied because she needed a reason to live.
I’ve been thinking about this more and it makes SO much sense. Over and over again in HtN, it’s reiterated that harrow does not want to die! she wants to live!! and while that’s framed as a result of her wanting to live for whatever’s in the tomb, I think it’s a good reflection of her character outside of that. when she opened the tomb and saw the body, it makes a lot of sense that as a mentally ill, extremely traumatized child, her mind would give her exactly the thing she needed to see.
also, it would make a lot of sense how John reacted to people trying to break into the 9th house tomb! When he asks Wake why she was at the ninth house 19 years ago, he says “There’s nothing there.” (this ties into the theory that I’m still convinced of, that the 9th house tomb is false and Alecto’s real tomb is at Canaan house).
especially because like, idk, The Body is almost too beautiful to harrow. how beautiful would a sleeping stranger have to be that you dedicated your life to them on the spot? unless maybe you were desperate for your life to mean something, unless maybe your mind provided you with the perfect person to live for. I think it makes a LOT of sense given what we know about The Body- it looks REALLY similar harrow (especially with the details about her philtrum and how they match the descriptions of harrow from gideon’s POV), and it wears what Harrow wears throughout HtN. (and I’m not gonna start on how horribly sweet and sad it would be that Harrow hates herself, but when her mind comes up with the perfect person to love and to live for, it looks almost exactly like her).
I’m also wondering if there’s any functional difference between a ghost and this sort of hallucination. a soul who cares about something SO much that it manifests in the world, and attaches to something that matters to it? a hallucination created by the mind of a little girl who was desperate for something to live for? symbolically, at least, it could function similarly.
So did harrow need a reason to live so badly that she created a version of herself that was important enough to her that it manifested into a real soul? I feel like it’s possible; she’s got souls to spare. John says that her parents essentially committed a kind of resurrection, he says he knows because he did the same thing and paid the same price. Bear with me, because I’m also tying in my Alecto-is-Earth’s-RB theory, but I think that that would set a precedent for all of those dead children dying at once and coming together to form a kind of pseudo-resurrection beast, a kind of collective revenant.
I know it’s far fetched but hear me out, I think maybe The Body is a sort of resurrection beast, maybe formed from all those souls killed at once by the creche gas, funneled into harrow and then given a purpose by her desperation. AND I think maybe that is the soul that’s in Nona.
Nona is like a child, she knows nothing about the world, but she is characterized almost entirely by her love of being alive. Her name is Nona, which means nine, and what better name for all the souls of the ninth? She loves herself and her body (Harrow’s body), and thinks she’s beautiful. Sure, it could be an amnesiac Gideon or Harrow, but we know from the narration that Nona knows it isn’t her body (she talks about being on borrowed time, not as if she’ll regain her memories soon, but as if she’s a different person entirely). And if you bear with me on the idea that Alecto is actually buried at Canaan house, then Alecto has no reason to be in Harrow’s body! But The Body does—its been there the entire time.
getting friends to read the locked tomb is excruciating because 90% of the most memeable content comes from like. the last 30 pages of harrow the ninth. so they’re like making their way thru GtN and barely starting HtN meanwhile i’m straining at the LEASH i’m CHOMPING at the bit to send them things like that mercymorn spermjacker 9000 meme
I love Mercy bc after ten thousand years she’s still extremely sensitive and emotionally vulnerable and wears her heart on her sleeve. And not in a constructive communicative way, or a bullshit “weaponsied feminity” way. She’s just incapable of not expressing what she’s feeling, and most of the time what she’s feeling is angry. She plows through life three rounds no filter. The most interesting Mercy moments for me are the ones where she’s relieved or sad or guilty because those are the moments that prove she isn’t putting up an angry front to hide behind, she just lives like this—as an exposed nerve. She can regulate her norepinephrine at will, but so help her she can’t regulate her emotions.
I’d like to know what she’d be like if she were happy
It’s such an interesting contrast to Augustine as well. Harrow describes him as
It was as though ten thousand years had built up a shell and left a space at the centre. Nothing seemed to touch Augustine. He was effervescent and charming in a way you found a little tedious and flip […] But there was never any real emotion, or reaction, or opinion—his mouth said one thing, and his face could contort itself into any number of silly expressions, but those eyes were devoid of substance.
Which is the exact opposite of Mercy, who has zero emotional filter and is therefore always tensed for a fight. She’s like a raw nerve, and he’s a dead nerve - they have basically polar opposite coping mechanisms for all the shit they’ve done/seen/experienced over the past ten thousand years! It’s no wonder they hate each other!
Augustine’s mask does break at a few key points (when he recognizes Gideon’s eyes, immediately after Mercy kills John, and when fighting John in the stoma), but wearing it is so reflexive that he falls back into it almost immediately. The best illustration is John’s death, because his immediate reaction is “There’s hours … if we drop through the River now -” (referring to trying to save the Nine Houses), but then in his VERY NEXT LINE flips to acting calm and saying there’s nothing they can do.
Their dysfunctional emotional reactions are what helps them hide their betrayal from John. Both of them have been operating with such a skewed emotional baseline for so long (Mercy feeling rage, Augustine feeling nothing) that John can no longer tell what motivates them. Surely there was a time, back when Mercy and Augustine would have genuinely considered all the Canaan House crew friends, that John would’ve been able to understand that. (After all, he understood it well enough for them to see the deaths of the people they loved the most and continue serving him). But now they feel the same emotions whether they’re killing insurgents or working with BOE.
So Crown Him With Many Crowns is 100% Coronabeth. I’m very interested as to how she got to her current position and how Cam/Pal and Pyrrha slipped away to theirs.
thinking about how we only ever see the aftermath of the scene where ianthe killed naberius. was corona there? did she try to stop her? try to get ianthe to kill her instead even after babs was dead? did she find them later, after ianthe completed the eightfold word without her? idk just thinking about it
