#rote

thank u to the same 5 robin hobb fans who scroll robin hobb tumblr in all the tags and like my posts

ALT

Ok thanks for clearing that up

One line I get a profound quote about fate shaping people and changing who they are irrevocably and the next its just, Fitz,,,,

I think if Robin Hobb herself kicked me in the stomach it might hurt less

I know the stone dragons aren’t Dragons but wouldn’t it be hilarious Im sorry-

Option c popped up into my head writing this post, is the Wit derivative from the Elderling Dragon connection 🤔🤔🤔 why have I never thought ab this before hmmm, much to ponder

Brashen: you’ll fix the nose, right?

Amber: *whispering* i will disembowel you in your sleep

Brashen: sorry, what was that?

Amber: oh nothing he’s perfect i’d like you to leave now please 🙂

“i hope he wears an earring of silver and blue. the fingerprints he left on my wrist have faded to a dusky gray. i think i will always miss him.”

OH OKAY YEAH. I SOBBED SO HARD. and then when fitz is talking about how lonely he feels. i sobbed harder. i’m gonna miss him and the fool so bad i need them to come back NOW i don’t wanna wait. the fact that fitz was so lonely in the beginning, went on a quest with his friends, and now he’s back to where he started. he made all that progress. come back fool please 😭😭😭😭😭 i was such a mess in the prologue for assassin’s quest

this is true i was there

I was reading a part in Blood of Dragons with Sedric and Carson being the most adorable couple and seeing their dragons fly for the first time and then I turn the page and the rest of the chapter was a Hest POV. What a way to sour the mood.

fitz is burning a hole through my heart tonight and if i didn’t have to do a ridiculous amount of study tomorrow i would say the only thing i can do is get drunk about it. but instead i will cry

“you’d have me devote myself to my king and sacrifice all else to it, as you did. give up the woman i love to follow a king like a dog at his heels, as you did. and when that king abandoned you? you swallowed it.”

let’s have our wit-related self-loathing and the final crushing realization that the man you so loved + idolized actually treated you like his dog thrown back in our face with adopted bastard 🤗❤️

im obsessed with how hard fitz is not putting these dots together. bro you literally lived with someone you once described as “a pale freak”, who would wake you up with dark omens and warnings, who literally called you a catalyst, and who last you heard had gone to the mountains…. Hmm Kettle’s probably bullshitting

The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince — A Realm of the Elderlings Novella by Robin Hobb

Genre: Fantasy, High Fantasy

Rating: ✰✰✰✰✰

Additional Lore: 10/10 

Related Reviews: Farseer Trilogy | Liveship Traders Trilogy | More ROTE

This two-part novella tells the stories of Queen-in-Waiting Caution, a headstrong princess and heir to the Farseer Throne, and her illegitimate son Charger Farseer, rememberd in the songs of the Six Duchies as the Piebald Prince. A tragic tale exploring how the Wit came to be persecuted, The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince is a gut-wrenching but excellent read that enriches the Realm of the Elderlings series.

Review

The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince is two interconnected tragedies told from the perspective of Felicity, the lowborn companion to Princess Caution who has resolved to write a true account of events for posterity. An element I really appreciated was the decision to use a third-party as our narrator. Felicity is a witness to these tales and does not particate in them (with a few significant exceptions). As a result, the story is drawn out of the folkloric state we first encountered it in Farseer and given all the constraints and limitations of a historical document. Her proximity to both characters speaks to her value as a source and her willingness to portray herself and her loved ones in a less than flattering light gives her credibility. The consequence, however, is that we are limited to facts without conjecture. Felicity expresses her opinions on occasion, but rarely theorises about things she has no firsthand knowledge of. This is a very intriguing contrast with the elaborate myths surrounding the Piebald Prince, but it also leaves the reader guessing as we still don’t know the full story. If written poorly this may have just become frustrating, but in Hobb’s hands this limited perspective only enhances the story.

Felicity’s subaltern status adds a further layer of complexity to the novella. In Farseer, Fitz’s position as a royal bastard both affords him priveleges not enjoyed by the general population and reduces him to a tool to be used to further the interests of the Farseer throne. Felicity as the daughter of a wet-nurse and servant to the Queen-in-Waiting is similarly a body to be exploited. Indeed, her only way to improve her circumstances is to be exploited and in doing so gain a priveleged servant position through proximity to the Farseers. Throughout the novella, Felicity’s mother and Felicity herself are referred to as cows in an allusion to their roles as wet-nurse and the daughter of a wet-nurse (and thus, it is expected, future wet-nurse). While comparisons to animals are not unusual in this novella, the invariably derogatory manner in which these comparisons are made means that no matter the practical luxuries they may earn through their service, these women will never truly improve their social standing and instead must live off the goodwill of their masters. Worse, this service irreperably damages their health; Felicity’s mother states that nursing for prolonged periods of time has damaged her back, however being constantly pregnant and going through multiple childbirths also poses a multitude of other health risks. Felicity, however, was entered into service so young and as a consequence developed an all-consuming devotion to Caution. She thus never questions her position as much as her mother does and sees any act of service to be a duty she owes to her princess and future queen.

One thing that did take me by surprise was how expressly queer this novella is. The Wit in the Farseer Trilogy can be interpreted as a metaphor for homosexuality and other queer identities, of course, but in terms of depicting actual queer characters and relationships there still remains a thin — very thin — veil of plausible deniability throughout Farseer and Liveships. This is not the case with The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince. Without wanting to reveal too much of the plot, I will say that our narrator reads quite clearly as a lesbian character. Felicity’s attitudes towards her sexual relationships are complicated by her servant status and power dynamics as well as decision to engage in one that is undoubtedly purely functional. Nevertheless, she asserts that she has no interest in finding herself a husband, preferring the company of another woman instead. Now, when I first began to detect hints of this, I just assumed that there would be no actual confirmation. I suppose I’m just too used to relying on subtext for queer readings. I was thus very pleasantly surprised to have it confirmed very quickly that Felicity is canonically attracted to and engages in a relationship with a woman.

Ultimately, The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince tells the story of two tragedies. Seeing as most readers wouldn’t pick up this novella unless they were already invested in the Realm of the Elderlings, however, I think it’s safe to say that the threat of heartache will not deter anyone. Importantly, in true Hobb fashion, these tragedies are very well crafted stories. Both are made more tragic because they may seem avoidable, their outcomes hinging on one or two critical moments, but are ultimately made inevitable by the fatal flaws of the main characters. In Caution’s case, her strong will and stubborn disregard for the opinions of others jeopardises her position as Queen-in-Waiting as she consistently fails to live by the virtue for which she is named. Caution’s characteristics are also inherited by her ‘daring’ son Charger, who indeed fully embodies the name and all it evokes to his detriment. His fate is partly predetermined by his bastard status but finally sealed by the same traits that doomed his mother. And yet, there is something to be said for the “slavering hounds” of the Buckkeep court that sought to run down both mother and son. For Caution, it is arguably the flaws of our narrator as much as the princess that leads to her downfall. In Charger’s case, the circumstances of his birth and his ‘piebald’ appearance make him a target in a rivalry his otherwise princely status would have protected him from. These tragedies are thus not definitively brought about by any hamartia of our characters, but they certainly exacerbate them.

As a novella intended to be supplementary to the main series, the key question is whether it meaningfully contributes to the Realm of the Elderlings lore. In that way, this book is certainly worth the read. Aside from being an excellent and enjoyable story (and the tragedy is actually what makes it so), it gives us significant insight into what the Six Duchies were like when the Old Blood/the Wit was accepted and how it came to be so heavily stigmatised. In doing so, it actually contextualises and recontextualises a number of things in Royal Assassin. Looking back, I remember Fitz noticing a puppet show about the Piebald Prince in one of those examples of such subtle foreshadowing that Hobb is so good at and is so sickening when the penny finally drops. I would highly recommend The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince for that reason alone.

Spoiler-filled discussion:

• “I love her: she was my baby, my sibling and my future.” YOU’RE A CHILD, FELICITY! YOU’RE A CHILD TOO! She’s a young girl immediately saddled with too much responsibility and taking on a caretaker role that is obviously highly emotionally demanding and will inevitably warp her sense of self.
• Chalced 🤢 and Bingtown 🤩 Mention!!!!
• “I had all I needed there at my fingertips, for I loved her with all my being.” While stroking Caution’s hair. Felicity definitely has feelings that go beyond childhood companion/older sister/vaguely maternal caretaker role. And her heart doesn’t “cry out” for a husband…

• Oh okay so I was immediately proven right. You know I love Hobb but I wasn’t expecting actual confirmation given that the queer presence in Farseer and Liveship still has the thinnest veil of plausible deniability over it. Not only do we get a sexual relationship confirmed within the first 30 pages of this book, but it’s between two women! Robin, I love you and forgive all the heartbreak you will undoubtedly cause me in the next ~150 pages.
• “In that duty I had served my queen well and willingly since before we had been women.” So there’s a lot to unpack here. Three year age gap is a bit of an eyebrow raiser given that Felicity says it started before either of them were fully grown. At the same time, there’s a big discrepency in status and she’s articulating this as a ‘duty’ owed to her queen as a loyal subject and servant. Honestly, the bit that worries me the most is that her mother was the one to give her advice on this and potentially suggested it to Felicity with her own motives in mind.
• We’re breezing past the “pleasant enough” arrangement they have going on, which makes sense given that Felicity seems to want to downplay it a little and also approaches it as just another one of the all-consuming ways in which she serves her princess. But it sure does leave me with a lot of questions.
• Felicity being reminded of her place and how Caution views her when her advice can be dismissed so easily… She’s totally devoted to Caution and Caution at best considers her to be her most loyal servant.
• Okay, can we all agree that Lostler is an absolute horror of a name to give to someone with a speech impediment?
• Reading about the Wit/Old Blood being considered a gift… Fitz 😞 You could have lived in a different world. What made everything change so much?
• I also find it interesting that Lostler is from Chalced seeing as Burrich also has Chalcedean ancestry or at least his family were historically enslaved by Chalced and Lostler is a Chalcedean slave.
• We know the Wit is widespread in the Six Duchies at this point and seemingly also Chalced. We also know that Mountain Kingdom has some Old Blood given Nighteyes senses Kettricken’s latent ability in Assassin’s Quest and Fitz presumably inherited it from his mother. Yet in Liveship Traders there isn’t really any knowledge of the Wit? The connection between the ships/dragons and their families is probably the closest we get to anything resembling the Wit. Why is it that half the world knows about this magic and half doesn’t? Did the Old Blood not reach Jamailia and thus the traders missed out? I need answers!!!!!!!!!!!
• Ah I see. Caution is riding the Spotted Stud and through the Wit-bond Lostler feels everything. This is the weirdest form of foreplay I’ve ever read in my life.
• Felicity finding it “painful” to see Caution grow into a sensuality that she never saw despite all their years together and having to see it directed at Lostler…  Hope the Six Duchies had their own Chappell Roan. Felicity would have sat in the Great Hall listening to Good Luck, Fair Maid! and asked the minstrel to sing it again and again.
• I know the fact that the only person she has shown any romantic interest in is a servant is also driving her insane.
• “All know that a minstrel will lie down with any woman for an hour, and play a sad song about her the next day.” This quote reminds me of Blue Boots, but then again when do I not have Blue Boots on my mind?
• Felicity why would the only lie you ever told be THAT big a lie? On the one hand, delicious writing: jealous and resentful servant-companion caught in the equivalent of a sitatuationship with a princess who she has been in love with her whole life because her entire identity is tied up with her and serving her wants to ruin said princess’ relationship. On the other: this is sure to end catastrophically.
• I really do like Caution’s reasoning for why her child being born a bastard shouldn’t actually be an issue given that there’s no doubt the child is hers and thus is trueborn in that sense.
• At a very functional level, the concept of legitemate vs illegitemate children in a fantasy feudal society boils down to inheritance rights. When property is traditionally inherited via the male line then yes, there’s some logic to excluding children born to women who are not married to the male property holder from the inheritance. At the end of the day, that hypothetical women isn’t under social or legal expectations to be faithful to the man in the same way a wife would be and so paternity would be dubious. What happens if your property is inherited not by your actual child but just someone claiming to be your child? Culturally the society then begins to construct various stigmas around the idea of bastardy, but to me at least the core issue remains property rights.
• But that’s not how inheritance works in the Six Duchies. Women can inherit! Queens can sit the Farseer throne in their own right. In Farseer we’re told that the eldest child of the King or Queen, regardless of gender, is the heir and so the firstborn daughter comes before a younger son. When a ruling queen has children, the right to the throne is conveyed to her children by virtue of descent from her. In such cases, maternity is the critical issue, not paternity, and while in a medieval-esque fantasy society there’s no way to verify who a child’s father is, the mother’s identity is beyond doubt. The issue of legitimacy essentially collapses. That child is her child, end of story. What remains is the social stigma of illegitimacy and the threat illegitimate children pose to a society ordered around inheritance rights.
• Yes I am traumatised by dragon show discourse, why do you ask?
• King Virile saying that Caution’s affair and subsequent child might have been ignored if she were a man, but as she’s a woman that is not the case…UM, TELL THAT TO MY FRIEND CHIVALRY?
• I’m very concerned about the mother and why she wants Felicity to be pregnant at the same time as Caution. Why does she need to call her went Caution goes into labour? She’s a wet-nurse, not a mid-wife! This cant’t be good. Please let there not be a baby swap.
• “It pained me to see Caution like a stag aurrounded by slavering hounds.” This isn’t the cover for the book I have (it’s an older copy out of the library) but I’ve seen the newer edition with the stag and the hounds and it’s a very evocative image. Unfortunately, Felicity is to some extent one of those hounds whether she acknowledges it or not.
• At first I thought Lostler would join the stallion like Fitz did with Nighteyes in Royal Assassin to escape death, but no both Lostler and the Spotted Stud are dead.
• Oh god, yep. It’s baby swap time.
• The mother is catastrophically stupid btw. Yes, of course I can appreciate the desire to better the fates of your children and grandchildren in such an inequal society where so much is determined by your birth alone. Why are some baby girls born to be noble women and others born to be wet-nurses physically exploited by the aforementioned noble women to the detriment of their health until they are biologically incapable of further exploitation? Baby-swapping is not a smart outlet for this class consciousness, however. The risk alone is insane! If they’re caught, they’re all dead immediately.
• At this point I tried going to bed but I should know better than to start a rote book before bed because after about five minutes I grabbed my book light and started reading again. My note was: I guess I won’t be sleeping????
• “But strange to say, I had always thought more of Caution’s baby than my own.” Felicity having zero connection to her child because her whole life is so focused on Caution! She has no sense of self seperate from her, she can’t even begin to consider what bringing a new life into the world will mean for her because Caution is everything! “I felt no wonder.” It is a task to her, having this child, nursing it. Just one of those things in life she has to do.
• “My queen, my sister, my daughter, my lover all were gone.” This is simultaneously the most devastating line and the most insane in this novella and perfectly captures the intense, all-consuming way Felicity relates to Caution. It also speaks to how much damage putting such a young child into that kind of universal caretaking role did to her psyche.
• I had no idea we would be reading about Caution’s baby. I definitely thought that the Piebald Prince was going to be the Wilful Princess’ lover in this story, but now I see that the title refers to the novella’s two parts.
• Charger isn’t quite the virtue name Farseers usually get and is definitely more a horse’s name than anything, but at least Felicity gave him a name. That no one else cared to really does remind me of Fitz…
• Okay so it’s actually so upsetting reading about Charger living a slightly less lonely version of Fitz’s early life 😣
• I thought this would be about how the Skill got into the Farseer line but I suppose not. Is this about how the Wit enters the Farseer line? I always assumed Fitz inherited the Old Blood from his Mountain Kingdom mother…
• Redbird “was as cautious as the prince was daring”. Imagine your child being the perfect embodiment of the virtue the love of your life was named for. And him speaking only truth to his prince in the ‘Motley Court’ when one lie from his mother had brought tragedy on all of them… Hobb is crazy for this.
• Also I really like how Felicity’s limited perspective means that we really don’t know Charger’s inner thoughts. Obviously she could in theory have given greater insight into his mind and behaviour and theorised what was going on since she was the woman who raised him, but because Redbird has charged her with writing only the truth she doesn’t stray from what she knows for a fact and does not speculate. It does leave a lot up for interpretation and thus I have a lot of questions! For one, is Charger deliberately building up a power base in the Motley Court or is he just being a good friend asking for titles and land grants for his loyal companions? Both? Does he have his eyes on the throne and wants a fighting chance?
• That Redbird only makes songs about Charger’s hunting exploits and actions done out of kindness is breaking my heart. He’s kind! Despite everything, his defining trait is kindness! Which means something but is going to happen to this kid I just know it.
• Giving all your mates piebald horses and spotted dogs 10/10 excellent branding there.
• I don’t know how to read Lady Wiffen’s behaviour. Felicity is fairly unforgiving in her assessment of her as a fickle and capricious girl happy to play the two men off against one another and the observation that Canny and Charger both would have forgotten her in two weeks if she hadn’t become a way to play out their rivalry.
• What did he say to her as they dance do you think!????? Was it a suggestion that they continue their romance even though she’s married or was he expressing his hurt at being rejected?
• What was he doing in the garden? How did they know? Was it a trap Wiffen helped set or did he really go down to think?
• The raven is probably his animal right? 😭
• Poor Redbird perched in a tree like his namesake while Charger is murdered beneath him and he realistically can’t do anything to stop it. At least by surviving he can ensure that the true story is known, but that’s small comfort to him I expect.
• The raven following Redbird and refusing to leave him! Did Charger enter the raven through the Wit-bond or did the raven choose to follow Redbird because he remembers his friendship with Charger? Did he have a friendship of sorts with Redbird like how Nighteyes came to like Kettricken?
• I like the detail of Strategy not attending his own sons’ coronation because he can’t acknowledge a new king when the old one may stil be alive. That he continues to think Charger may be alive is probably because Canny can’t tell him what has happened. Or perhaps he suspects something less than honourable occurred, like how everyone else seems to understand quickly that Charger is dead even if they don’t know he’s dead.
• The idea of Copper Songsmith spreading lies and Redbird Truthsinger undoing his fathers crime 10000/10.
• The raven knocking the crown from Canny’s head YES YES YES. I don’t know which I would like more, to believe that the raven is Charger’s bonded animal that is avenging his companion’s death or the raven is both Charger and his bonded animal now and he’s making his presence known.
• “For on the back of the child’s left arm, I saw that which I had seen also on his father’s arm; a small birthmark in the shape of a dark bird with outstretched wings.” YES YES YES YES!!!!!
• So, this novella has significantly changed my understanding of the Wit and its origins. The idea that there’s Old Blood in the Farseer Line has so many implications!
• I chose to read the novella immediately before starting Tawny Man on the basis that I read it gives some background lore for the trilogy, so now I’m very excited to see how the Wit appears in the next few books.
• Finally, I do want to talk about the use of character names real quick because I love how Hobb makes use of them here.
• Our narrator is called Felicity. I thought only the highborn named their children after virtues in the fashion of the Farseers typically. After having read the whole novella, I realise that this may be a reflection of her mother’s ambitions. Not necessarily that she had hoped to swap her child for a Farseer (that would not have been possible), but that she was not content with her station and had loftier aspirations for her child. I also think it’s such a clever choice of Hobb’s to give her a name that can mean 1) happiness and 2) well-chosen or suitable words when 1) Felicity has a decidedly tragic life and 2) she certainly did not choose the right words in one very notable situation!
• Obviously we also have Princess Caution being ironically the least cautious character in the whole story, Queen Capable who is shown to not be the most capable of mothers at a personal level nor in raising an ideal heir to the throne and King Virile who shows no indication of being especially virile as he sires only one child. Also, imagine looking at a baby and deciding his name was going to be Virile. Now, Canny on the other hand is a very appropriate name for our antagonist! Of course, Charger is not a virtue and so he doesn’t have a typical Farseer name which suits his bastard status. Moreover, it is definitely a name much more appropriate for a horse than a man. He does however seem to embody the idea of charging ahead into battle (thus why war horses were once called chargers). And then there’s poor Redbird who was stuck perching in a tree unable to do anything to defend his king but sing a song for him. I still maintain Lostler is a horrible name to inflict on a guy with a lisp though.

Thank you for designing the beautiful dividers once again @cafekitsune ♡

Our boy is growing up so fast🥲

Fitz fixes the feists fits, fat suffices

& miles to go before i sleep

the elfbark reveal in assquest was soo good and i loved it so much. A huge part of fitz’s personality has been influenced by trauma, which he is in some aspects aware of, but also, and the likes of which caught him COMPLETELY unawares, the drugs he’s been abusing. Even his supplier wasn’t aware of its effect’s both on his developing mind and on his powers, chade really thought it would help him. I could go on about the grooming and compartmentalization that has effected fitz’s life from a very young age

all this to say— the finale of s5 House M.D. where he’s blissfully unaware of the effects of his substance abuse and hallucinating to the gills about sleeping with his long-term crush and hallucinating a dead friend that helped him with his cases (to put it shortly)— I WANT TO WRITE A FIC SOO BAD IM FOAMINGATTHEMOTUH

Chade singlehandedly providing the world with enough Farseers to establish a 7th duchy at this point

The Duke had made space for her among his own women, and she had made her own choice never to emerge from those chambers and their secluded gardens and baths. He knew of her life mostly from his concubines. She tended the herb gardens assiduously, read avariciously, mostly history and healing lore, wrote poetry, and practiced for an hour every day with her bow. She had expressed an ardent desire to never wed again.

ARTEMIS IS THAT YOU??!!

He counted his friends and his enemies and knew that some he counted belonged on both lists. His dear, loyal chancellor was one. And his loving, viperous vixen of a daughter was another. Thrice he had married Chassim off, hoping to be rid of her. Her first husband had left her a widow at fourteen. Barely three weeks after the sumptuous wedding, the man had slipped coming out of his bath and broken his neck. Or so all surmised at the time. There had been no witnesses to the accident. And his young widow, sallow-faced and hollow-eyed, had seemed appropriately mournful when his family had returned her to her father’s home.

LMFAOOOO??!! ITS DEFINITELY NOT AN ACCIDENT HAHAHAHAH

Her next husband had been a much younger man, scarcely thirty years older than his bride. He had lasted six months, succumbing to a stomach ailment that gave him debilitating cramps and bloody bowels. Again, the girl had been returned to the palace, and he had seen her silent and seething at her fate.

BWAHAHAHAHA 😆😁😄 IT’S ON PURPOSE LMFAOOOO

Her most recent spouse had died three years ago. The worthy old man had publicly slapped her over some lapse of manners. He had died before the day was out, subsiding in a frothy fit at the feast table among his warriors. Again, Chassim had been returned to him. This time, he had asked her directly. “Daughter, do you mourn your husband?”

To which she had replied, “I mourn how suddenly and swiftly death found him.”

HAHAHAHAHA QUEEN SHIT???!!!