#rote readthrough

Of course there’s some sort of pogrom of people with Wit magic. The universe can’t go too easy on Fitz

“You could have been someone. Regardless of how you were born, they gave you every chance of making something of yourself. You could have mattered. But this is what you chose. Remember that. You chose this.”

Starling does not take rejection well

Starling having the audacity to act like Fitz is the one in the wrong for breaking off their affair after learning she had married is some pretty breathtaking shit

“He was intrigued by some wild story that Bingtown was hatching dragons and that soon towns could buy a Bingtown dragon for a watch beast. I assured him I had seen real dragons, and that such tales were not to be believed.”

Oh Fitz, there is so much that you don’t know

Woah Starling is now Fitz’s lover? I guess with the people he’s closest to all gone from his life he’s going to seek out comfort from someone he is fond of

I assumed Fitz would give in and go back to Buckkeep with Chade, but it looks like him and Nighteyes are going to travel the Skill Road back to the Elderling city in the mountains instead. Having learned who the Elderlings really were in Liveship Traders, Fitz could be putting himself on a much more consequential path than he realizes

Fitz as skill master of Buckkeep training has a lot of dramatic potential given his traumatic experience with Galen. In many ways, what happened to him there was what sent him on the path to becoming the broken man he is now

“‘And Prince Dutiful?’ ‘As like his father as he can be,’ Chade observed, shaking his head. I watched him closely, wondering how much the old man intended the remark.”

It continues to be very fucking weird that Dutiful was conceived with Fitz’s body while Verity was occupying it, and I wonder if Chade is subtly commenting on that

Fitz is obviously uncomfortable with how he was used to create Dutiful, and I can’t say I blame him

Fitz walked the Cursed Shores and experienced all sorts of psychological symptoms. That makes me even more curious about what happened there with the Elderlings

Fitz apparently went to Chalced and of course he didn’t like it. It only exists to be full of evil misogynists and slavers

“When last you saw me, I was just approaching adulthood. All sorts of new feelings and ideas were blossoming in me, so many that I scarce could keep my mind on the tasks at hand. When I recall how I behaved, well, even I am scandalized”

I am desperately curious both what was going on with the Fool during Assassins Quest that distracted from his mission so much and what he did that he finds so embarrassing

“The wolf has not fared so well. He still slept heavily, a healing sleep. I felt a twinge of conscience over that, but pushed it aside. Whatever I had done to his heart seemed to tax the resources of the rest of his body, but surely that was better than letting him die.”

I have a nagging feeling that there are going to be negative consequences for what Fitz did to Nighteyes. Death is a natural part of life, and by using the Skill to interfere with it, he may have made a huge mistake

Of course Fitz had a negative relationship with his Old Blood teacher. After Galen, I think his ability to trust in any authority figure was permanently damaged

I knew Fitz would go back to the village of other Witted people. I’m only surprised that he wasn’t still living there at the beginning of this book

Fitz after seeing Chade: “I’m not going back to Buckkeep ever and you can’t make me”

Fitz after seeing the Fool again: “looks like I’m going back to Buckkeep”

FITZ IS ASKING THE FOOL TO KEEP WEARING HIS EARRING

️‍

So the Fools evil lady counterpart is dedicated to trying to make the world as horrible as possible so the apocalypse will come and the slate can be wiped clean. I actually find this hilarious; a villain whose whole MO is just “find the worst people and get them to do bad shit so everyone’s miserable” certainly drives the plot

“He leaned over suddenly and set his gloved hand to my wrist. He gripped my wrist for only an instant, and our skin did not touch, but in that moment I felt a flash of binding. I can describe it in no other way. It was not magic at all, as I know magic. It was like that moment of double recognition that sometimes overtakes one in a strange place. I had the sense that we had sat together like this, spoken these words before, and that each time we had done so, the words had been sealed with that brief touch.”

This is further fuel for the new theory that the White Prophet (and maybe the Catalyst?) gets reincarnated over and over again

The Fool was raised at a special school for prophets. I am highly amused to know that there are enough albino children who can see the future in this world that this needed to be established

“For truly, there is another who would love to claim the mantle of the White Prophet, and set the world into the course that she envisions. From the beginning, I have struggled against her pull. Yet in this turning of the world, her strength waxes.”

THE ROOSTER CROWN LADY FROM THE VISION (I think?)

“If it was made of wood, it was not safe from his sharp tools and clever fingers. The activities of the water sprites on my rain barrel would have made a guardsman blush.”

I love that the Fool is straight up carving pornographic art into Fitz’s stuff