also tqt was just like…yes our protagonist has plot armour (the plans of the gods) and BOY is it heavy! boy does it chafe! He survives everything by divine ordinance but he did NOT opt in! This lazer-like focus on one mere mortal is wholly unnatural and unbearable despite its perks!
“He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon’s promises than in the word of the Theif of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies”
- Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia
I know this quote doesn’t match up with the scene but it’s so sweet and one of my favorite lines from this book which is truly one of my favorite books and I have read more times than I can count!
FURTHER POST to say that even though it’s tragic that we didn’t get any gen pov in the final book, the fact that the last of gen’s pov that we DO get is at the end of the queen of attolia, and the last scene of that book is when irene finally accepts his proposal.. like literally the last time we are WITH gen is at the moment he becomes king… and so like of course we can never have his pov again, because the fate of kings is to seen always through the eyes of others, to never be alone with their own thoughts, to never be free of the distorting powers of rumor, myth, and legend…. and so we are with costis as he learns the king, and then sophos, and then kamet and then pheris… but all of them have different relationships with the king and different stories to tell about him… and even when, as in pheris’s case, their accounts are specifically about the king, they are also using the king as a mirror through which to reflect themselves… it’s so interesting how mwt plays with gen’s power and agency throughout the series bc like. yes history is written by the winners and so return of the thief is written by the king’s historian because gen ultimately succeeds in uniting the nations of the peninsula, but the king’s historian is not the king himself… the only time gen tells his own story in his own words is when he is the thief… whereas when he is king he has the power to shape nations, to command armies, but he can no longer give his own account of himself, because he has become something more than a person, and his office and his mythos are both co-created with people outside of himself,,, and so he gains all this power but he is no longer his own person and as such cannot tell his own story…. and how the fact that we never return to gen’s pov implies that whatever he gave up in becoming king he can never get back….. loving it here
Once upright, Eugenides was facing Nahuseresh, who stood looking on, much amused. White-hot hatred burned through Eugenides. If he was still without hope, at least he could think clearly again.
one thing that i LOVE about the queen’s thief series is that MWT really took the time to make sure that we all understand that the protagonist is a weird, whiny little shit. like, she could have said “oh gen was just PRETENDING to be whiny and insufferable in The Thief, he’s actually cool and suave!!”
but no. she establishes that he’s a genius who’s been running a con the whole time, and ALSO he’s whiny and insufferable.
anyway i finished a conspiracy of kings last night and woke up thinking about sophos visiting nomenus in his cell after imprisoning him because he ‘wanted to have a very clear idea of what he had done to him’ vs eugenides in the king of attolia visiting relius in the hospital after convicting him of treason and pardoning him against the will of everyone else in court and keeping him company and telling him stories while he recovered… thinking of eugenides being taken to visit eddsian soldiers who had lost limbs in the war and going outside to throw up vs sophos opening the box to find the second gun, knowing he would have to kill someone, and putting his head down on the table to cry… thinking of both gen and sophos being disgusted at how easy it was to kill when they first had to do so… like it’s not necessarily that they never wanted to be kings, because they both chose the throne in their own way even if their choices were limited, but neither of them ever wanted to be fighters or hurt other people, and you can’t rule a kingdom without doing harm… but it’s really the way that even as they feel forced to do things that go against their very nature, they both make a point to see with their own eyes the suffering they’ve caused… they don’t look away even as they disgust themselves with the things they do in the name of being king….. im not well
