So with the Nona cover reveal on Thursday (so excited! What does she look like?) I’ve been thinking about the Locked Tomb. So perfect lyctorhood, theoretically, allows both necromancer and cavalier to survive, while still gaining lyctoral abilities. And if Jod is the norm for perfect lyctorhood, the lyctoral abilities are far beyond imperfect lyctors. But lyctorhood isn’t just getting a boost in the necromantic department. You also gain your cavalier’s skills, hence why cavaliers use rapiers, so the lyctor can lift a weapon with their wimpy necro arms. In a perfect lyctorhood, the cavalier probably gains necromantic abilities as well.
So, my theory. John Gaius is not a necromancer. He was Alecto’s cavalier. We already know they were the first necro-cav pair, but I think we’ve got who was the necromancer and who was the cavalier wrong. The story I’ve got in my head is that John is the only normal human to survive whatever wiped out the Earth. You can say Alecto was already there and somehow changed by the Earth’s destruction, but I think a better explanation is that she was created from whatever happened. We know from Harrow that large thanergy bursts at the time of conception create powerful necromancers, and the death of the ten billion would have created a lot of thanergy. So born from that thanergy burst, Alecto is the first necromancer. If John is responsible for the world ending, this would be why he says he created her, and calls her “My Adam” (I.e. Frankenstein‘s Monster).
Now Alecto’s a powerful necromancer, but even she can’t preform the resurrection alone. So she and John figure out perfect lyctorhood, to increase her power and give him the same power. So they do, and that’s great. They preform the resurrection as a team, and recruit some of John’s personal friends and their loved ones to become their disciples. (John mentions he knew Augustine before the Resurrection, so I’m assuming he knew all of them.) But Cristabel and Alfred are too hasty. They think lyctorhood requires a sacrifice to work. So they kill themselves to allow Augustine and Mercymorn to ascend. John doesn’t wanna say they were wrong and make their deaths pointless, so sacrificial lyctorhood becomes the norm.
Now Alecto’s not human in this theory. She’s a byproduct of the death of the ten billion. So she disturbs the other lyctors. John’s afraid of them discovering perfect lyctorhood, and also likes that power and doesn’t wanna share with Alecto, so into the tomb she goes. She was buried with the cavalier sword to sell the lie that she was John’s cavalier. Then the second generation of lyctors show up. What’s important is this theory is Anastasia and Samael. Anastasia and Samael figure out perfect lyctorhood, but don’t know John is a perfect lyctor. So they’re like “Hey God, we may have discovered a new method for lyctorhood. Wanna observe the process?” And John’s like “Yes, I would like to see that. (You can never know about that cause my empire would fall apart and if other people knew about perfect lyctorhood I wouldn’t be God-Emperor of Everything anymore)” Anastasia and Samael actually get the process right, but John kills Samael mid process, and claims they didn’t get it right. Anastasia is sent to the tomb, where she can do no harm.
Where’s my evidence? Well, first of all, we know John’s original eyes are uncommon, but not anything mystical, just a lipochrome mutation. However, nobody’s got eyes like Alecto. The white on black look with solid sclera? That’s magic baby! Also, necromancers are born with their abilities. Necromancy didn’t exist before the world ended. And why would you fear your partner so much unless your abilities that make you so special were stolen from her? Why can God defeat Alecto once, but never again? Because she knows his game now, and is equal in power. Anyway, there’s the theory, feel free to help me workshop it.
[Image description: a coloured drawing of characters from the Locked Tomb series.
The left side is labeled ‘If It’s Harrow’ and shows Gideon in Harrowharks body climbing Harrow in Gideon’s body with her sword in hand and a tear running down her cheek, saying:
“Oh thank fuck, you crazy, evil bitch I am so angry with you and you’re fuckin’ paper skin and glass bones and scrawny necro arms and also I’m so fucking glad you’re not just gone, never do this to me again and also did you like having my muscles you better have taken better care of them than my fucking sword I fucking hate you and I’m never letting go of you ever, ever a-fucking-gain.”
The right side is labeled 'If It’s the Body’, and shows the Body in Gideon’s body with a sword through her midsection, holding back a furious Gideon in Harrow’s body with one hand. Gideon is saying:
“You creepy, meat-napping, cockblocking corpse fuck if my adept’s stupid wrists weren’t so fuckin’ flimsy I’d sock you right in my beautiful, apparently immortal face!”
Camilla is reaching out to Gideon with a tired expression, saying “Nav, please.” while a skeletal hand with little glasses is clinging to Gideon’s ankle. End description]
So on her Reddit AMA, Muir said that Alecto the Ninth would feature a heist “undertaken by idiots”. Assuming this is performed by only the living characters (which is actually a big assumption since death doesn’t seem to prevent most activities in this series), who are the biggest idiots in the books?
GIDEON AND IANTHE. Dumbasses both of them.
What if Gideon and Ianthe are forced to team up for the shared goal of rescuing Harrow?
Like, how amazing would it be if Ianthe and Gideon had to set aside all their loathing and animosity to rescue the one person in the universe who they both like?
See, I assumed at first that said heist would be performed by BoE dumbos, but then Camilla would be involved and Camilla Hect is the opposite of idiot.
So it has to be Ianthe and Gideon. I so badly want to read about the terrible and reluctant adventures of Gideon Nav and Ianthe “The Worst” Tridentarius.
There’s been a lot of wild theories about Alecto the Ninth (the book and the character) being thrown around, and I’d like to throw my own theory hat into the ring.
At the end of HtN, Mercymorn vaporizes John. And yet he comes back, completely unscathed, after about a minute. He tells Augustine that he can’t be killed, at all, period. John is actually immortal.
Obviously this can’t be true, simply for plot reasons: if John can never die, then there’s not much point to the third book. In order to have a remotely interesting plot, your main villain must be defeatable.
We know that Alecto is John’s weakness, somehow. Otherwise he wouldn’t have entombed her on the Ninth. But why is he so afraid of her? Is it because he pissed her off so bad that he’s afraid of her revenge? Or is it because Alecto is his weakness?
I propose that John can only die if Alecto dies. His life is tied to hers. (And yes, Alecto is often described as dead, but she also wakes up, so she’s either not really dead or not that dead.)
There’s a common fairytale trope that the villain has hidden his heart in a secret location (sometimes an object inside of an object inside of an object etc.) and is therefore ‘immortal’ unless his hidden heart is destroyed. It shows up in the Russian fairytale Koschei the Deathless. The horcruxes in Harry Potter are a version of this trope as well. And Muir likes fairytales. She’s already written her own Sleeping Beauty spin-off with Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower.
Is Alecto John’s heart? When John says that he cannot die, is that because he assumes that Alecto will always be safe and entombed in the Ninth? John’s perception of Alecto’s security is his blindspot; despite Harrow presenting excellent evidence that she broke into the Tomb, John refuses to believe her on principal.
If Alecto’s death equals John’s death… That could be a very interesting pickle for our heroes to solve.
JUST realized that this isn’t really Harrow on the front cover… It’s Gideon. Harrow’s body only gets Gideon’s gold eyes near the end, when Gideon takes the reins. ANYWAYS, curious how they’re going to fit Gideon into the cover of Alecto the Ninth. Maybe she’ll be creeping in the background?
[Id: watercolor-ish drawing of Alecto, face of the woman, she has very pale skin, yellow eyes and black hair. It is a bit blurry and dissolves in the white background . end id] alecto alecto alecto when’s the cover
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