2023-03-02 4:56:38 ¶ ● ⬈

voyaging-too:

> ‘Children as fists! Infants as gestures! Yuck! Pfaugh! I live in the worst of all possible worlds!’

> Mercymorn thinks Harrow and Ianthe are too young to be Lyctors, and she complains about this loudly and often. But she is also voicing the core thesis of the series. Children as fists. Infants as gestures. A child conceived, carried and birthed only for her death to serve as a weapon. Two hundred children murdered to create a single heir, one who is never valued for herself, only as a prop to uphold her failing House. Eight pairs of young people sent to Canaan house to do what sixteen others did ten millenia ago, and reduce their very selves, their friendship their trust their love, down to ever so much nuclear fuel. And in the background, thousands and thousands of young people sent out to the frontlines to kill and die in service of a malignant, metastasized empire. Yuck. Pfaugh.