Chapter 15:
When we last left Romilly, she was being mortally offended by the idea that she might not be the center of the universe. Ruyven’s minding the sentry-birds, and tells Romilly that Orain wants the birds to be ready to fly and spy on the EVVVIL KEENG’s armies. Romilly essentially, has a skulking fit:
Orain had admired her and trusted her, and when he knew her a woman, all that went into discard and she was just another nonentity, another woman, perhaps a danger to him. But that was Orain’s problem and not hers; she had done nothing to deserve being ruthlessly cast out of his affections like that.
And he is the loser by it. Not I. (Pg. 677)
So…because he doesn’t love you, he looks down on all women and every single possible slight must be fixated upon. All right. Whatever. I don’t remember Romilly being all women in the world, but then again, I must not be able to grasp the amazing wonderfulness that is MZB. But wait! There’s still more:
She said steadily, “I value Orain’s gifts better than you know; I travelled with him and worked close to him for many moons. I do not think he should look down on me simply because I am a woman; I have shown I can do my work as well and skillfully as any man.” (Pg 677)
Ok. All right. I’d rather have this shown, but since someone is determined to tell me things instead of showing me them and making me loathe instead of like Romilly, I’ll just roll with the punches. So Romilly and Ruyven have a small discussion about their lives, followed by a small argument on how good and noble the REEL KEENG must be if he lets women be oppressed:
Why is Ruyven the king’s hawkmaster and I regarded only as his helper? I am a professional Swordswoman and it is I who have the greater skill. Ruyven would rather be in his Tower, and this work is life to me. He says himself that in the Tower woman are allowed to hold high offices, yet it never seems to occur to him that I, his little sister, should be treated with that kind of fairness. Carolin’s armies, then, are ruled by the old notion that a man must always do any work better than the most skilled of women? (Pg. 678)
Nom nom nom, om nom. I won’t deny it; this whole chapter is essentially about Romilly complaining that she’s a special snowflake and how people aren’t treating her with the respect she deserves. Not that they aren’t treating other women with the respect they deserve, because that’d involve her caring about other people and as we know, she is the center of the universe and people who don’t bow to her are horrible and evil and those who do are good, as when she’s taken to meet the REEL KEENG, who’s hooded and cloaked in the traditional fantasy fashion of people who’re trying to be inconspicuous.
And who who should King Carolin turn out to be but Dom Carlo? Wow, I never saw that coming! What a great plot twist! So Romilly presents Sunstar to him, and he sings her praises up and down:
He said to Romilly, “I thank you, and the Sisterhood, for this magnificent gift, and for your loyalty to me. Both are precious to me, believe me. And I have heard too, that you are to continue with your handling of the sentry-birds whose lives you saved when we met with you on the trail to Nevarsin. I shall not forget, my—” he hesistated a moment, smiled and said, “Swordswoman. Thank you—thank you all.” (Pg. 679-680)
And so because he personally praises Romilly, he’s Good:
Sunstar, then, does not go to a brutal or insensitive man, but to one who will reckon him at his true worth. (Pg. 680)
All right, miss judge of the whole world. There’s some more whining about how she can’t talk or relate to people anymore, and we get this comment:
I am closer to that horse than to anything human; closer than I have ever been to anything human. (Pg. 681)
I have a really hard time buying them when MZB basically Fails Animal Care Forever. How am I supposed to believe that she knows the ins and outs of a horse’s mind when she can’t even get horse/bird care and training down right? Then again, suspension of belief went out of the window a long time ago, and…ugh.
But that’s STILL not enough. It’s time to sleep, and Romilly wants to sleep amongst the men to be close to the birds. Jandria reminds her of the Sisterhood’s rules when outside hostels, and Romilly argues with her. Yes, a new initiate argues with her mistress over the EVILS OF SEXUAL SEGREGATION, and GETS AWAY WITH IT because SHE’S JUST THAT SPECIAL.
“I should sleep here with the birds,” Romilly said with a shrug. “No hawkmaster goes out of earshot of his trained birds—I will roll myself in my cloak, I need no tent.”
“But you cannot sleep amongst the men,” said Jandria, “it is not even to be thought of.”
“The king’s hawkmaster is my own brother born,” said Romilly, impatient now, “are you saying that he is likely to damage my virtue? Surely the presence of my older brother is protection enough!”
Jandria said with a touch of sharpness, “you know the rules for Swordswomen outside of their hostels! We cannot tell everyone in the army that he is your brother, and if it becomes known than oath-bound Swordswoman has slept alone in the tent with a man.”
“Their minds must be like the sewers of Tendara,” said Romilly angrily. “I am to leave my birds because of the dirty minds of some soldiers I do not even know?”
“I am sorry, I did not make the rules and I cannot unmake them,” said Jandria, “but you are sworn to obey them.” (Pg. 681)
So Romilly’s “fuming with wrath”, but obeys.
Oh, wait. Then what about everything that happens in Falconsward? I don’t remember the idiot being there all the time—oh wait, that was an excuse to argue, wasn’t it? And educate us on the evils of sexual segregation? But of course, Romilly’s convenience is more important than the reputation of the entire fucking Sisterhood, isn’t it?
She’s more important than whole organisations. She’s so special that a king who can amass a massive army apparently has to be dependent on a sixteen-year-old to fly his birds, and she does it better than anyone not because she’s studied hard and trained rigorously for years, but because of something she was born with. She’s so deserving of praise that anyone who doesn’t praise her is misogynistic because apparently she is representative of all women, and that no one can possibly dislike her because she’s a self-centered twat with an overinflated ego the size of a planet. No. The only reason anyone might dislike Romilly is because they are misogynists. Romilly is the ultimate ideal of a woman; any woman who begs to differ is a brainwashed pawn of the evil patriarchal regime.
Self-harm is not the answer here, folks. Self-harm is not the answer here. So Romilly skulks back to the hostel, and there’s a huge long stretch of whining:
And then she thought, resentfully, that she had been more free when she travelled in men’s clothes through the Hellers with Orain and Carlo—Carolin—and their little band of exiles. She had worked along with the men, had walked alone in the city, drunk in taverns. Now her movements were restrained to what the rules of the Sisterhood thought suitable to avoid trouble or gossip. Even as a free Swordswoman, she was not free.
Still grumbling a little, she made ready for bed. It struck her again; even these free women, how petty their lives seemed! Jandria she loved, and she could speak freely with Jandria without stopping to censor her thoughts; but even Jandria was trammeled by the question of, what would the men in the army think, if the Swordswoman were not bound by their rules to be proper and ladylike as any marriageable maiden in the Hellers? Clea, too, she respected and genuinely liked, but still she had few friends in the Sisterhood. Yet when I came among them, I though [sic] I had found, at last, freedom to be myself and still let it be known that I was a woman, not the pretense of male disguise.
I do not want to be a man among men, and hide what I am. But I do not care much for the society of women—not even Swordswomen—either. Why can I never be contented, wherever I am? (Pg. 682)
1. Know-it-all.
“First, you must be convinced of your own self-importance, and you must be under the delusion that everyone else is an idiot except for you. It helps to be a college student, so you should all do just fine.”
2. Spoiled
“Second, you must be obsessed with your own rights and freedoms, have a sense of undeserved entitlement, and suffer from a disease called ‘I-can-do-whatever-the-f***-I-want-becau
se-I’m-convinced-that-there’re-absolutely-no-consequences-for-any-of-my-actions’.”
3. Despises authority
“And lastly, you must fancy yourself a rebel who stands against all forms of authority, and thinks that the government, corporations, and ‘the man’ are responsible for all the woes in the world, which of course isn’t very rebellious at all; it’s what every other twenty-something moron who thinks that he’s an individual with an original thought believes.”
…What the fuck. Is the bitch ever going to stop whining? What else does she want? What MORE does she want?
Because the problem is always with other people, not with her. Because it’s not that she’s a bitch, it’s because other people are close-minded and misogynistic. Because it’s not that she’s a shallow, self-centered person with an entitlement complex, it’s because the patriarchy is out to get her. Because it’s not that she gave her word to obey the Sisterhood’s rules and wants to disregard them now, it’s because even the lesbian group is close-minded because they care about how others might see them in a society of y’know, PEOPLE.
Maybe if Romilly stopped being such a stuck-up whiny shit who refuses to count her blessings, I’d like her marginally more. Not likely, though. So she wakes up the next day, and goes to check on the birds. There’s a young officer by the birds, and apparently he’s there to look for his cousin, Lady Maura, who’s donated most of the birds to Carolin’s cause.
So Romilly takes her anger out on him. The reason? He calls her “Hawkmaster” instead of “Hawkmistress”. And that makes Romilly go apeshit all over him because he’s an “arrogant lowland lordlet”, and he just sits there and takes it until Ruyven comes on the scene. So Romilly’s still fuming as Ruyven calms down the situation, but explodes again when he asks her nicely to wake up the Lady Maura and tell her than her cousin’s here:
“Romy, you are ready for riding? Awaken the Lady Maura that a kinsman seeks her?”
His offhand assumption of authority nettled Romilly; so for this arrogant lowland lordlet, she was to become errand-girl to some plains lady? “It’s not that easy,” she snapped, “the birds must be fed, and I’m nae servant to the lady; if ye’ want her fetched and carried for, me lord, ye’ can even do it yerself.” She realized with horror that her strong mountain accent was back in her speech when her year in the plains had almost smoothed it away. Well, she was a mountain girl, let him make of it what he wanted. She was a Swordswoman and no lowlander to bow and scrape before the Hali’imyn! Ruyven looked scandalized, but before he could speak a soft voice said: (Pg. 684-685)
So essentially the Lady Maura’s been woken from her tent, and the issue of Romilly being a rude bitch to an officer for no reason is whitewashed away. Oh, and she didn’t have an accent, even when she was speaking all the way at the start of the book. Why one now? Oh wait, it’s just another convenient way to give her more angst, and vanish when not needed. Hurrah hurrah.
So the next two or three pages are about introducing the Lady Mauria. Essentially, she sends away her cousin, telling him that she’ll be ready within the hour. So the introduction is essentially:
-She’s from one of the Towers and deals with birds.
-She learns of Romilly’s laran and is shocked that it’s so strong without even being trained.
And that is…pretty much it. The rest is just filler. So Lady Maura goes out and feeds the birds, and Romilly has this to say:
“So she is not some soft-handed lady who wishes to be waited on hand and foot,” Romilly said, grudgingly approving. (Pg. 687)
What? She needs your approval? She’s a trained sorceress of considerable power, and you’re just whiny sixteen-year old bitch who thinks that you know the wildernesses of the human heart well enough to be able to judge people correctly with a single glance. What the F—- makes you think she even gives TWO SHITS what you think of her or whether you give her your approval? Do you really think that highly of yourself Romilly? Really, are you so arrogant to think that the only right way for a woman to live is as you do?
Fuck. I can’t take any more of this. I’m going to bed, and damn right I am going to have nightmares.
Nate Winchester on 30 March 2010, 15:16 said:
Or it’s the fact that she’s a soldier now and Orain is maintaining a measure of distance because of military protocol, etc etc.
Oh I don’t know… SENIORITY??????????
You know, the king might one someone in power that’s traveled with him the longest and proved themselves more than just some random stranger that’s appeared which seems to have greater skill.
GAH! Maybe it is being fair, what with you a recent recruit and the other a proven servant. Sounds fair to me (regardless of the sex).
Fixed!
Hey falconempress, what do you estimate is the average sound-range of most birds of this type? I’m willing to bet Romilly isn’t going to be out of ear shot.
Man, if Lady Maura puts the smackdown on Romilly like Brom did to Eragon in the movie… THIS WOULD BE THE GREATEST BOOK EVER.
Asahel on 30 March 2010, 16:54 said:
@ Nate: “Man, if Lady Maura puts the smackdown on Romilly like Brom did to Eragon in the movie… THIS WOULD BE THE GREATEST BOOK EVER.”
I’m not sure I’d go quite that far.
Nate Winchester on 30 March 2010, 17:29 said:
Asahel, it’s good to know you’ll always be around to dash my hopes. ;-)
Danielle on 30 March 2010, 18:14 said:
It’s time for Danielle’s Alternate Endings!
Viola.
Nate Winchester on 30 March 2010, 21:08 said:
Danielle, truly you are an angel.
And THIS is how you do sisterhoods.
Danielle on 30 March 2010, 22:51 said:
MUCH more practical than the Sisterhood of the Sword—and more exciting than the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. :P
Zombie on 28 December 2010, 05:31 said:
What the heck is with the Orain thing, really? The examples from the book, from what I recall and understood, didn’t show that he is colder to her because she’s a woman. The only thing I can think of is that he didn’t want to diddle her anymore. And, if that’s how she means it when she thinks “ruthlessly cast out of his affections like that.” then she’s more of a spoiled, whiny brat than you make her out to be. He’s a horrible, terrible person because he doesn’t instantly make a 180 and decide that he finds women sexually attractive. wat wat wat