“Will you carry a message for me?” the queen asked. “I can hardly decline, Your Majesty,” answered the prisoner. … “Tell your queen that I will not return her Thief a second time.” The prisoner just looked up at her dully. She couldn’t know how much he understood. How hard had the lieutenant kicked him? “What remains of his life, he spends with me, do you understand, messenger?” “I believe so, Your Majesty.”
“She thought of the hardness and the coldness she had cultivated over those years and wondered if they were the mask she wore or if the mask had become her self. If the longing inside her for kindness, for warmth, for compassion, was the last seed of hope for her, she didn’t know how to nurture it or if it could live.”
…Then he swung the kid out from under his arm and onto the table. It kicked, but he pinned it with his arm while he freed his knife. Deftly he slit its throat, and as the blood spilled across the table with no ceremonial bowl to catch it, he turned the knife and slid it into the body just below the cartilage at the top of the rib cage. Then he dropped to his knees. He rested his forehead against the bloody edge of the table and his forearms on the tabletop and waited. …
“Little Thief,” she said, “what would you give to have your hand back?”
Eugenides almost lifted his head. “Oh, no,” said the goddess. “It is beyond my power and that of the Great Goddess as well. What’s done is done, even with the gods. But if the hand could be restored, what would you give? Your eyesight?” The voice paused, and Eugenides remembered begging Galen, the physician, to let him die before he was blind. “Your freedom?” The goddess went on. “Your sanity? Think, Eugenides, before you question the gods. You have much still to lose.” Softly Eugenides asked, “Why did my gods betray me?” “Have they?” asked the goddess as softly.
“You have a choice now,” the Thief was saying. “Conscious or unconscious, you can go into the water. I have the boat pole to make certain you don’t come out again.” He nudged the pole lying at his feet. It rattled against the centerboard case, and hearing it, Attolia glanced down. The boat pole was five or six feet long and had two small hooks at the end. The hooks she could easily imagine catching in the folds of her clothes as Eugenides leaned on the pole to force her farther and farther under the surface.
She looked back at Eugenides impassively. She thought he had brought her a long way to drown her, but she knew that in his own field he was meticulous and supposed he wanted to be entirely sure of his results. He made no move but instead spoke again. “Or you can offer me something I want more than I want to hold your head underwater until the last of your air is gone.” Attolia had thought her choice was to be conscious or unconscious when she breathed in the black water that would kill her; she couldn’t imagine what Eugenides might want more than that. It was all she would have dreamed of in his place.
“I want to be king of Attolia,” he said.
Attolia blinked. She looked around the tiny harbor and had to clear her throat with a cough before she spoke. “You’ve brought me to a place rather spare of witnesses if you want me to declare you my heir before I die.”
“I wasn’t proposing to become your heir,” said the Thief. “Then what?” asked Attolia. “There’s an easier way for a man to become king,” said Eugenides, and waited for her to realize what he proposed. Attolia stared at him. “You think I would marry you?” she asked in disbelief. “If you object to marrying a man with one hand, you’ve only yourself to blame.” “And when did you grow into a man?” asked Attolia, lifting her eyebrow, her voice tinged with sarcasm. Eugenides didn’t rise to her bait.
“It’s your choice, Your Majesty,” he said quietly.
“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!
gen and attolia are enemies to lovers excellence. not rivals, not people who sort of annoy each other; enemies. irene hurts gen more than anyone ever has and spends the rest of the queen of attolia regretting it. it’s a dynamic that’s so hard to pull of, because how do you go from ruining someone’s life to love? but they do, and the ugly parts are not pushed aside, they’re not forgotten. irene keeps struggling with her guilt, gen keeps fighting to reconcile the woman he loves and the monster from his nightmares. “tell me you won’t cut out my lying tongue, tell me you won’t blind me, you won’t drive red-hot wires into my ears.” i love them so much.
I was rereading all the Kamet scenes in QoA because I was sure they would be more upsetting post-TaT, and this one in particular really got to me
“I hadn’t expected to see you fall victim to a pretty face” has like three additional layers of meaning once you know about Marin. There’s the implication of “I hadn’t expected to see you fall victim to a pretty face AGAIN, after what happened last time.” He still seems like he’s teasing Kamet here, but in a far more cruel and personal way.
And the fact that Nahuseresh just assumes that Kamet has a crush on the queen of Attolia gives Kamet a perfect excuse for feeling some sympathy towards her. Nahuseresh doesn’t find it implausible that he and Kamet would be attracted to the same woman, because it’s happened before, but he also doesn’t see it as a problem this time, because the circumstances are so different and because Kamet knows better now. It seems so obvious to the reader that Kamet has no romantic interest in Irene at all, but the fact that he and Nahuseresh have this history allows him to use that assumption to cover up his real, far more dangerous feelings.
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.
I have a confession to make. The first time I read The Queen of Attolia, I didn’t know what a philanderer was, but I recognized the first part of the word ‘philan’ from the word ‘philanthropy’ so when Therespides catches Eddis sneaking to Gen’s library, I wasn’t sure what the scandalous part was. I just thought he’d assume Eddis was being charitable or something.
You’re adorable.
To be fair, you’re actually not too far off. The literal Greek is…
Philanderer- a man who loves.
Philanthropist- someone who loves man(kind).
The root “philo” means to love, and is found in many words. Fun fact, the roots for philosophy are philo and sophos. So, you’re literally saying, love of wisdom or I ❤️ Sophos.
