I don’t have very deep Takes about this yet, but it Makes Me Think, how ferociously Harrow clings to her lobotomy when she has no idea why she did it.
Like. Listen. Original Harrowhark, kicking and screaming and clawing, and being ready to die rather than fully eat Gideon, I get that. But Lobotomy Harrowhark? Has no idea who Gideon is!
All she knows is that she told herself to Do This, and so she Does This. No matter how miserable it makes her, no matter how much scorn and bullshit and MUDER ATTEMPTS she gets for it, Harrow holds herself fast to her past self’s promise. When she doesn’t know WHAT it is! Why she did it! She has no idea why this was important at all!!
I can’t quite articulate What This Mean or What This Says About Harrow, but isn’t it… fucking something. She is naked on the floor after almost getting killed (again) by the Saint of Duty, she has no idea why or what she did to herself, but in no moment does she ever consider undoing it. Man. MAN. HARROW!!
i think it speaks a little bit to how overwhelmingly she has only ever had herself to trust (and gideon, depending on how you cut it). harrow pre-lobotomy is cocky and arrogant and confident that she’s the best necromancer of her generation, and she’s not even really wrong. i feel like post-lobotomy, she doesn’t know why or how she’s different but she does know that she can trust that other harrow to be clever and know what’s most important. although it is kind of more of a gut-punch that post-lobotomy-harrow has no idea that the most important thing to pre-lobotomy-harrow could ever be something other than necromantic prowess, like her cavalier’s life.