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This wood is like human memory. It does not need to take events in their correct order. Do you wish to go to an earlier time and start from there?
It's a portal fantasy! It's a space opera! It's an office comedy! It's an epic romance! It's an exploration of parenthood! It's a metaphor for authorship and creative control! It's King Arthur! It's Siegfried! It's ten books in a trenchcoat playing 4D chess with each other, and we could probably talk about it for another four hours and still have more to say.
Transcript available here, and we'll be back in two weeks with Crown of Dalemark!
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode and Book Structure
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the fifth episode of the third season of Eight Days of Diana Wood Jones. I'm Rebecca Freymow. And I'm Emily Tesh, and we have got to stop pushing all those numbers in the introduction.
00:00:34
Speaker
Well, we're going to be talking about more numbers because we have to talk about this book in terms of sections, and there's nine of them. Because magic loves to come in nines, which is something a character said and it made us both giggle.
Impact and Genre Blend of 'Hexwood'
00:00:47
Speaker
Right. um So, Hexwood. The we've been trying not to talk about of for...
00:00:54
Speaker
A year and a half. I am so excited to talk about Hexwood. I feel like the purpose of this project in many ways was to get to talk about Hexwood with you. ah I would call it, of Jones's work, the one that's been the most influential on me personally. And it is extraordinary. I've never written anything like it. I dream of being able to write something like it. But the thing about Hexwood is...
00:01:20
Speaker
What is the best nineteen ninety s children's portal fantasy you've ever read? why is it Hexwood? Okay, all right, but what is the best secondary world Arthuriana you've ever read And why is it Hexwood?
00:01:34
Speaker
And while we're at it, what is the best adult space opera pro you've ever read? And why is it Hexwood? This is an insane book. What is the best fanfic author getting a kink bingo card and checking off all the squares at once and why is it hex one? Right. I think reading this one hard on the heels of a Sudden Wild Magic, it's easy to see some of that wild magic carrying over. This one is big, it's exciting, it's self-indulgent, it's sexy, it's fun, it's doing everything she wants at once.
00:02:10
Speaker
And like A Sudden Wild Magic, it is structured in nine sections. Unlike sudden wild magic, it is super controlled. Right. The nine sections actually make sense. So you you guys remember when we started talking about a sudden wild magic, we like, well, we thought about talking about it section by section.
00:02:28
Speaker
Then we were like, it the structure doesn't really help for talking about that book. But for this book, I think we are just going to be going through it section by section, scene by scene, because the structure is vital for talking about the book and what she's doing with it.
00:02:43
Speaker
And it works. People will fight with me on this, but it does. It works. How could anyone fight with you? You're just right. It works. It's meticulous. It's so carefully planned.
Narrative and Theme Exploration (Time, Perspective, Memory)
00:02:54
Speaker
There is a section in her essays where Jones talks about one book she ever wrote where she did actually keep note cards to keep track of the plot. and She doesn't say which one it was. i thought it must be Hexwood. Surely it's Hexwood because nothing else she writes.
00:03:10
Speaker
With the possible exception of Fire and Hemlock, is this complicated? Yeah. Even Fire at hemlock and Hemlock. Well, Fire and Hemlock is complicated in a different way. But this one, the way that the timeline is uncertain, but very carefully arranged,
00:03:32
Speaker
to highlight the development of all the characters is masterful. Yeah, I think sort of thinking in terms of big themes for Hexwood, one of the things she's interested in is time, another is perspective, and the intersection of those two things, time and perspective, which is memory. And how far you can trust a memory. And this is familiar from Fire and Hemlock from Time of the Ghost. ah Her interest in time memory perspective has been around right through her career, I think.
00:04:06
Speaker
But she's never been this good at it. And this book does some of the things that Fire and Hemlock did, that Time of the Ghost did. ah But it does that and more. The other thing I found on this reread, and this I reread this book so often, um but this was the first time that I'd read it after reading Jones's short stories.
00:04:25
Speaker
And there is so much in it which she was, I think, fighting with right through the 80s, trying to figure out how to use it. Like... Dragon Reserve Home 8, that yeah matriarchal, multi-planetary dragon empire.
00:04:40
Speaker
That's in this book. ah Enna Hittimbs, the girl who's sick in bed and her fantasy world comes to life. That's in this book. the The Master. ah The weird sexy man in the woods and there are wolves and it's all very creepy and worrying and the adult woman comes in and tries to deal with the problems and can't understand what's going on. That's in this book. And maybe it's going to happen twice or more times than that.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah. But Hexwood is interested in some other stuff as well. it's It has, ah we were just talking about this beforehand, it has that 90s sci-fi interest in cloning, genetic modification, breeding programs. Right. And it marries that interest in the sci-fi aspect of cloning and breeding programs with Southern Wild Magic's interest in parenting.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yes. And in telling the story from the perspective of people who are trying to parent while struggling. Yes, and it's interested in childhood and adulthood and adult-child relationships. And it comes back once again to a figure we have often seen in Diana Wynne-Jones, which is the father-husband, but I think handles it very, very differently. yeah And for my money, much more romantically.
00:05:50
Speaker
And I do think the core of Hexwood is, in fact, a romance. Yes, this is the sexiest Diana Wynne-Jones sexy man. Yeah, and I love him so much.
00:06:01
Speaker
He's perfect. But shall we shall we start at the beginning? Which the book also does. In fact, start at the beginning. if Believe it or not. Starts at the beginning. So part one of Hexwood, ah right up until parts eight and nine, each part is five chapters. Part one of Hexwood is five chapters and chapters one, two and three are all different settings with different characters.
00:06:22
Speaker
This is, by the way, not something you're really supposed to do. i have been told off for this kind of thing because it's difficult for the reader. but it is something that she did just do in A Sudden Wild Magic.
00:06:34
Speaker
A Sudden Wild Magic sprawls. It has different POVs.
Introduction to Hexwood's World and Characters
00:06:38
Speaker
We're jumping into different people's heads. all of the time. What I think is interesting about Hexwood is that sections one and two, well, section one in particular starts us with a POV and a bunch of characters who will not be relevant and that we will not see again until section four.
00:06:53
Speaker
It would be very... Yeah, like 170 pages later. Right. And it's a lot of characters. And it's a tone and a vibe that feels completely at odds with what we're about to get in the rest of sections one, two, and three.
00:07:08
Speaker
Right. Chapter one, we are starting a space opera. Two minor bureaucrats in a sprawling galactic empire have received a letter from Earth ah from someone very, very junior in the secret space empire organization that runs Earth ah saying, i summarize, this mysterious machine has been turned on. We don't know what it does, but we can't seem to get out. Can you send help, please?
00:07:33
Speaker
Right, i'm actually going to read one line because I think it's really funny and also important in setting what the tone seems to be. just This fool clerk calls himself Harrison Scudamore who went and started one of those old machines running, the one with all the Raynor seals on it, says he overrubed the computers to do it.
00:07:48
Speaker
When we say a few words about that, then he turns around and says he was bored, he only wanted to make the best all-time football team. You know, King Arthur in gold, Julius Caesar for st striker, Napoleon midfield, only this team is for real. He found out this machine can do that, which it do. So, A. This is comedy. We're in comedy mode. A maintenance guy is writing to his superiors about some idiot clerk who's got in over his head trying to make a great fantasy football team.
00:08:13
Speaker
B, this is telling us immediately right away that this book is Arthuriana, even though it doesn't seem like it's telling us right away that this book is Arthuriana. King Arthur in goal. Right. Keep that in mind. Right.
00:08:25
Speaker
Julius Caesar and Napoleon will not show up Although honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised. Right. So opening chapter actually does an awful lot of setup work. It tells us that there is this galactic empire that's secret on Earth that runs the place. It tells us that it's ruled by people called Reigners. It tells us that the Reigners, that is Reign as in R-E-I-G-N.
00:08:54
Speaker
that The Reigners present themselves as quasi-divine. One of our two minor bureaucrats has a very like religious, devoted feeling about them um and his service to them.
00:09:09
Speaker
The other one, in fact, let's name these guys. Their names are Barassus. ah who is the controller of Albion, so he rules this chunk of the galaxy but on behalf of the Reyners, and his assistant, the very, very hyper-efficient Géraldus, who actually is quite an important recurring character, but not for another 150 pages. But Barassus but barasus is clearly he thinks that he is the protagonist of this book.
00:09:36
Speaker
He gets this message. He has this this key. He's the controller and he has a key that's a symbol of office. um And he spent, you know, his entire job thinking that, you know, he's he's the Rainer's vicar on Albion. He has a strong feeling that nothing could possibly go really wrong, but something has. And maybe this is what his artifact, his key, is really for. He's going to go down to Earth and he's going to confront this problem and he's going to sort it out. And he's going to save the day for the rainers who keep the balance across the galaxy, which is so right and noble and proper. Right. And this section also sets up a villain, a scary villain.
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah. Because this is the first time we hear that not only do the rainers exist, but the rainers have a servant. a Servant with the face of death, who kills with his mind at a distance and will come softly walking between anything in the way of him and his target.
00:10:26
Speaker
He deflects all weapons. And he's probably a myth. He's probably not real. Right. So we have set up the Galactic Empire, ah the mysterious rulers and their evil wizard assassin monster who who kills people for them. Yep.
00:10:41
Speaker
And all of this happening at the same time as this full Clark Harrison Scudamore and his fantasy football team with King Arthur in goal. But the other thing that happens in this opening chapter, which I reread this time, was like, hang on a second, is an absolutely key plot moment that you don't realise is a plot moment unless you have read the book more than once. And this book is designed to be read again and again. If you read Hexwood once, you are not going to get all all everything that's there.
00:11:10
Speaker
It rewards rereading so much. Anyway, the thing that jumped out at me was before they do anything else, Barassas and Geraldas decide to call this Haywire installation and see if they can get hold of the clerk and find out what's happening, which is a reasonable thing to do, right? well Right.
00:11:28
Speaker
So they call and it's called Hexwood Farm and it's on a little housing estate outside London. And the year is 1993. And we are very specifically in a particular time, in a particular place, this...
00:11:42
Speaker
Like we've talked before about Diana Wynne-Jones' interest in story time, in the sort timelessness of storytelling. Here, story time is one of the modes she uses, but not the only one.
00:11:53
Speaker
We are right now in a specific time, like a son of magic, actually. Right. Anyway, Barassas and Giraldas cool down to earth, try and get hold of Hexwood Farm three times. And each time they get back, mysterious static, and eventually the mysterious static breaks off their monitors and starts like floating across the walls of the room. And they're like, that seems bad. We should turn this off. And they do. But in fact, they have just doomed the Galactic Empire.
00:12:21
Speaker
Yes. This, on a reread, is the moment when the mysterious machine at Hexwood Farm gets into the Rayna's systems and spreads its powerful magical field across the galaxy.
00:12:33
Speaker
This is the thing that allows the story to happen in a very real way, because this story is a story that is being constructed by this fantasy football machine, the Banas. And if it doesn't have access to all the places that the story is happening, it cannot tell and construct the story.
00:12:50
Speaker
So when Barassus takes the call to Hexwood Farm and unleashes this force through all the various little portals that link this vast galactic empire together,
00:13:01
Speaker
he the story's beginning here. That is why this is the first section of this. This is in fact what is technically termed the inciting incident of the plot. This is it. But it's so disguised. It just seems like a phone call gone wrong. But in fact,
00:13:17
Speaker
it's possible to miss completely what happened there until pretty much the last chapter of the book where the banners explained the machine itself explains what it did and even then it was so long ago you might in fact wait wait that was the moment in this sequence with characters who are not particularly important with events that don't seem particularly important except to signal to you that we are in space opera and no matter what else is going to happen there's some space opera happening and that you should keep that in the back of your mind Right, and now keep it right in the back of your mind because the space opera is not coming back for a while. Right, but one more thing that's set up in the space opera that is important is that we learned that not only is this mysterious mysterious machine, the Banos, being stored at Hexwood Farm on Earth, which doesn't mostly know about the fact that there's space opera, but the other thing that's being stored there is a bunch of stas tombs that contain prisoners.
00:14:09
Speaker
And that is the other important plot point that is actually going to come back very quickly. In a big way. But hold all of those thoughts. Chapter two, the enchanted wood. Here is a small boy lost
Character Dynamics: Anne, Mordian, and Hume
00:14:24
Speaker
in a wood.
00:14:24
Speaker
He doesn't know who he is or what he's doing or why he's there. He's very confused. He meets a silver man who introduces himself as a robot.
00:14:35
Speaker
And they have a little conversation in which they explain to each other what they are. right This chapter is sort of dreamy in tone, ah very, very confusing on a first read. ah It is absolutely vital.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yes. It contains, in fact, the end of the book, because before meeting the silver man, what are our young boy meets in the wood is a dragon. He's afraid of the dragon.
00:15:07
Speaker
He tries to fight the dragon by throwing a piece of wood in its mouth. And then he turns and runs away from it and that's when he collides with Yam the Silverman. And Yam says, oh you fought the dragon. you haven't killed the dragon yet?
00:15:20
Speaker
thought you'd already killed the dragon. All right, never mind. And that gives us as rereaders a location in time for this Yam. Yam is from the end of the story after the death of the dragon, which is happens i think in the penultimate chapter. Which is a different dragon.
00:15:38
Speaker
Which is a different dragon. We don't know that yet. Yam's very confused too. But Yam does not actually have all the answers, which is a little bit surprising because Yam, I... Okay, at this point, stop. Stop listening.
00:15:49
Speaker
Go away and read the book at least once. I am not kidding. We are going to spoil so much stuff because you can't enjoy the analysis without spoiling it. So right Yam is the badass.
00:16:03
Speaker
The badass, the machine that is in control of the story, the storytelling machine. this Essentially, it's a... a beautiful magical plot device to create realities where people act out scenarios. I stole this in a book I wrote called Some Desperate Glory. I was like, that's genius. I'm having it.
00:16:25
Speaker
um Jones uses it better. You can use it extremely well. oop The Banos is a storytelling machine and the reasons it tells its stories will become clear later on. But we know from Yam saying, I thought the dragon was killed.
00:16:40
Speaker
We know that this is from the end of the story. So Yam at this point knows everything and is the author, the master of this scenario in total control. Except that the child doesn't know him.
00:16:52
Speaker
Right. What the child says is, I don't know anything. What am I? And yeah, it says, which I think is really important. You are Hume. That is short for human, which you are.
00:17:05
Speaker
Hume is not this child's name, although we won't know that for a very long time. And I think it's arguable. whether the child is what we would consider human.
00:17:16
Speaker
But the first thing on encountering this sort of blank, unformed child in the wood that Yam says to him is, you are human. You are so human. You are such a human being that I am going to refer to you only by this concept that you are a human being.
00:17:32
Speaker
The idea of what is a human, what is a person, who considers themselves people, is how do you teach a child to consider themselves a person, is I think really central to this book and very important to this child that we are currently calling Hume.
00:17:50
Speaker
who's been on the other side, we would say the evil side of that equation more than once in the past. Right. So Hume then asks Yam a series of questions. I know you've got it in the notes, but I actually I want the whole scene.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, so good. Let me just flip to. Yeah, Hume says, why are we together? Hume asked, trying again to understand. Do we know one another? Do I belong to you or something?
00:18:16
Speaker
Strictly speaking, Robots are owned by humans, Yam said. These are hard questions to answer. You never paid for me, but I am not programmed to leave you alone.
00:18:29
Speaker
My understanding is that you need help. Now, real quick. The Bandits is a machine that not only constructs storytime events, but has also been placed in Hexwood Farm to trap a bunch of prisoners in, ah you know, that are in these Stass tombs in this location to be mutually trapped by them.
00:18:48
Speaker
So yes, Yam is not programmed to leave Hume alone. Yam was in fact keeping Hume prisoner because Hume is one of the prisoners in Stass tombs who has been released by the machine.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yes. And you know what? Yam is absolutely correct. Hume does need help. Hume needs so much help. And also the point of robots are owned by humans, I think, is an important one, because the question of who or what controls the Banos and whether anything can is quite central.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yes. This sequence ends after this sort of elliptical conversation in which Yam more or less tells Hume the complete truth. Well, maybe not the complete truth. The exact truth is Yam saying this wood is like human memory.
00:19:33
Speaker
It does not need to take events in their correct order. Do you wish to go to an earlier time and start from there? Hume says, would I understand more if I did? Yam says, you might.
00:19:44
Speaker
Both of us might. Then it's worth a try, Hume agreed. I love this. This wood is like human memory. It does not need to take events in their correct order.
00:19:55
Speaker
is the through line for the book. yeah Things in this book are not happening in the correct order. We just had a chapter from the very beginning of the story.
00:20:05
Speaker
This chapter from Yam's point of view happened at the very end. Yes. Profumes also very near the beginning. However, so go for it. No, you go for it. I was just going to say this line is also setting up several key misdirects to our expectation.
00:20:23
Speaker
The first is when Yan says this wood is like human memory, leading us to believe that the thing that is causing the disorientation, the reordering of events out of their proper order is the wood and not the person telling us about the properties of the wood.
00:20:41
Speaker
Second, is leading us to believe that when we go to the next scene that that's going to be somewhere near the beginning of the actual narrative of what's happening which could not be more incorrect but at the same time so the next chapter, chapter three of this first section of this very long book, we have multiple recording times booked in for this. um at the Chapter three takes us into a different narrative again. And you go, oh, finally, we're in a Diana Wynne-Jones book. Because here we are with a teenager age 14?
00:21:20
Speaker
12, depending on how you count. She just she thinks she's 14. We'll come back to that. Ordinary English teenager who lives in a housing estate, Hexwood Farm housing estate outside London. Parents run the green grocer's shop. She's sick in bed. She's bored. She's stuck at home. This is, in fact, the ah the setup for the short story, Anna Hittims. And this character's name is Anne Hittims. Just like the Anne, who is the main character of Enna Hittims. And Anne, who is a perfectly ordinary teenager, borrows books from the library, listens to her brother's Walkman. It's 1993. Anne is bored, silly, and then stuff starts happening.
00:21:59
Speaker
Anne is perfectly ordinary except for one thing that we hear from quite early on, which is that she hears voices in her head. ah She thinks she's made these people up. She thinks she has a set of four imaginary friends that she's just been holding conversations with since she was a child.
00:22:14
Speaker
There is the prisoner. who is exactly what he sounds like, he's locked up somewhere and it's very ah sad and boring. There's the slave, who works under very difficult masters and has to do exactly what they say and his life is very hard.
00:22:29
Speaker
There's the king, who is an absolute ruler, but not actually an absolute ruler, he spends most of his time sitting in meetings and being worried about being overthrown and also his life is very boring. And the boy, who is an assistant to a powerful wizard somewhere on the edge of everything, his life is also very boring. Anna's a bit worried that all of her people are very bored and unhappy, and what does that say about her psychologically? and That she made up all these bored, miserable people? But!
00:22:54
Speaker
She relies on them as she's lying bored and miserable in bed, especially to kind of keep her spirits up and and give her outside perspectives on things that are happening. And a lot of the joy of the book actually is the very charming conversations between Anne and the voices in her head. And there is, I keep going back to the short stories. There is, I think, an echo of Carol and Ear here is where you you are.
00:23:17
Speaker
Like a bored girl with a not very interesting life who spends a lot of time in bed, but your head is full of these real people who do stuff and have wonderful adventures um or are interesting to you and talk to you. And some of your imaginary people might be more real than others. Yes. And Anne is actually quite worried when it seems like her imaginary people might be starting to have ideas of their own.
00:23:42
Speaker
But that doesn't stop her from taking advantage of their ideas. Like, for example, when she sees a mysterious van ah roll up outside Hexwood Farm, she's like, something interesting is happening. Might be gangsters, who knows? But I can't see because I'm stuck in bed and I can't get up and look around because I'm too weak and tired.
00:23:58
Speaker
And the king says, oh, my spy masters use this trick all the time. We put up a mirror and we watch what's happening in the mirror. So Anne sets up a mirror and starts watching all the events that happen at Hexwood Farm backwards and reversed.
00:24:12
Speaker
Like the Lady of Shalott, she says. She does explicitly drop in the text like that stupid poem we had to do at school. Diana wants you to know that this is the Lady of Shalott.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yes, and this is the Lady of Shalott in multiple ways. First of all, this is our second, again, if you're paying attention, this is our second Arthurian drop.
00:24:34
Speaker
Diana is saying, this is Arthuriana. I'm going to keep mentioning it. Second, Anne is seeing everything that happens in this story reversed in through a mirror. All of the events that we are watching through Anne's POV are not what we think is happening.
00:24:50
Speaker
Right. So Anne's story seems like it is the beginning of the story and we're like at the beginning of a children's book. yeah She sees a lot of exciting things happening in her mirror. Well, not that exciting. She sees a lot of people driving up to Hexwood Farm and then vanishing, never to be seen again.
Emotional Depth and Character Development
00:25:06
Speaker
And we, the readers, feeling clever, can go, aha, that appears to be a maintenance van. I bet that's the maintenance team that sent the letter in Chapter 1. And you might think you've solved the mystery. You have not. um What is absolutely key...
00:25:20
Speaker
to the structural dislocation that Dinah Wynne-Jones is doing here is that this is not the beginning of the story. This is the middle. This is a very, very long way into the story.
00:25:32
Speaker
Anne is not Anne. That's not her real name. She is not a 12 or 14-year-old girl living on a housing estate on Earth. Nothing is what she thinks it is. And all of that makes this whole section so funny to reread. It's so, so funny to reread. Or in fact being forced to live through an AU version of herself, which is not the first time, but the last time that this is going to happen to her. Nope. Nope.
00:25:57
Speaker
But the other thing that is important, I think, about the mirrors that is set up quite early on in this scene is that Anne has these four people that mirror each other that live in her head.
00:26:08
Speaker
And a great part of the book is going to be about these people in Anne's head who are real people. experiencing mirror versions of each other's lives. So in this they're looking at themselves through a mirror.
00:26:23
Speaker
Which brings me back to like a thing we've talked about often in Diana Wynne-Jones' work, which is this mirroring, this other self that you need to find. But normally it's one...
00:26:35
Speaker
character? and Maybe two? Like the complexity. I think there are like 15 mirrors in play. Yeah. That's what I make it. Three times five. Yeah, that sounds right.
00:26:48
Speaker
At least. ah Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. But it also, I can't stress this enough, this is a really charming opening to a children's book. Like, it's really good fun to read. You enjoy Anne, you enjoy her life. She's got a lovely family. They have a warm, loving relationship, which is fun to read about. She's got a little brother, Martin.
00:27:09
Speaker
Her family are greengrocers like Jamie Hamilton's actually. Her family feels quite a bit like Jamie's. Yes. Which again is a misdirect I think, in leading you to think that this is an ordinary person from an ordinary family who is about to be launched onto scary adventures away from this ordinary family.
00:27:25
Speaker
Nothing about the ordinary family is true, except that they are warm and loving and care about each other. And actually that they have commercial interests. That's also true, that's a good point. um Our other hint, I think, we are given one hint other than the mirror that not all with Anne is what she seems.
00:27:43
Speaker
And that is that as Anne's fever breaks after she's sort of been watching events in the mirror, um she has scary dreams about something stalking her, covered in blood, through a location where she's never been.
00:27:59
Speaker
And these scary dreams, I think, are intended to reflect the description of the Raynor's servant that we got at the end of section one. Now there's no way that Anne ought to know about the Raynor's servant.
00:28:10
Speaker
So either if which Anne is who she seems to be, she's dreaming forward and having pre-cognitions, or Anne is remembering something that she ought not to remember. Yeah, it's great. So we are actually, we are still in part one because the climax of part one is none of this. We've had all this introductory work done in, again, it's, we've had maybe four chapters of introduction, two Anne chapters, and then Hume in the Wood and Controller Barassas.
00:28:39
Speaker
It's so tight. It's so, so, like, just just as a writer you're like look at that word count how is she doing that much in this little space but the final chapter of part of part one is Anne feels better and she decides to get up and investigate for herself all the things she's seen in her mirror she's going to do her first look at Morty and through the mirror first though just because again it's so funny the instant shut up so through the mirror Anne sees three guys, three weird guys, get out of a car and go into Hexwood Farm.
00:29:14
Speaker
um One looks like a businessman, one looks kind of shabby, and one tall and thin in a three-quarter length little camel hair coat that must have been at least 40 years old, yet he wore it like a king. he strolled over to the middle of the road to get a full view of Hexwood Farm. He moved in a curious, lolling, powerful way that took Anne's eyes with him.
00:29:35
Speaker
He had hair the same camel color as his coat. She watched him stand there, long legs apart, hands in pockets, staring at the gate, and she scarcely noticed the other two men come up to him. She kept trying to see the tall man's face. Anne is very attracted to this guy. This is important from page one. Anne looks at this camel-like man in the coat.
00:29:56
Speaker
And it's like, wow. Wow. this is the third group she sees enter the farm through the mirror. She sees the maintenance men go in and then she sees a mysterious figure with a strange ornament go in who we go, ah, there's Controller Barassas with his key. ah And then she sees these three arrive.
00:30:16
Speaker
which leads you to believe that Anne has been there the entire time from the beginning. Again, not true. And this all takes place when she's ill and is kind of misty and vague, which I think is important.
00:30:28
Speaker
The things she sees are not the original arrivals of any of these characters at Hexwood Farm, because at the time all these people actually arrived at Hexwood Farm, Anne was on a different planet.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yes. Like everything she's seeing is a rerun, a recreation put together by the Banos for her benefit to watch in her mirror.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yes. Anyway, then i would say the first... sort of real thing that happens to Anne happens. She feels better. Her head is clear. She's no longer watching events through a mirror.
00:31:04
Speaker
She decides to go into the wood and enjoy the fact that she feels better and and run about. She's definitely not chasing after this very attractive man to see where he went. definitely not.
00:31:15
Speaker
Why would she do that? ah Anyway, good. she She finds the very attractive man, right? Great. Well, no, what Anne finds is what appears to be a tomb buried in the earth. And it's echoes of Black Maria, actually, of Anthony Green coming out of the earth.
00:31:32
Speaker
She finds this... weird hollow and um she opens what looks to her like like a gigantic chest freezer that someone's thrown away and it turns out to be something like a cryo storage chamber. In fact, a stas tomb as described in chapter one.
00:31:48
Speaker
And inside it is what she thinks at first is a corpse. And then it gets up and it's not a corpse. It tries to talk to her. She's terrified of it because it looks like some sort of evil zombie. Also, it's naked.
00:32:00
Speaker
And it's naked. No, it's when i is wearing like the little rags of a loincloth. Right. But absolutely indecent is what Anne says, panicking as she tries to run away from the corpse.
00:32:10
Speaker
and flees up a tree, ah wearing a tight skirt which rolls itself up around her legs. Side note, as an American child reader, I was so confused by this sequence because A, Anne's mother tells her it's too cold to wear jeans wear a skirt, which I was like, that makes no sense. so Why would you wear a skirt instead of jeans instead of pants when it's cold? But then she's up a tree and she's worried that Mordian is looking straight up.
00:32:33
Speaker
Sorry, this is Mordian, this corpse. She's worried that he's looking straight up at her pants because her skirt has got rolled up around her legs. I, age 10. Oh, so she put the skirt on over her pants to be warmer. No, I am afraid Anne is in fact talking about her underwear. yeah So what we end up is this scene with this girl up a tree half naked and this naked man at the bottom of the tree looking up at her.
00:32:56
Speaker
And oh no, he's hot. is She's looking at the corpse like, oh my god. A weird looking man, you'd think you'd run into the Grim Reaper. And then he smiles at her.
00:33:08
Speaker
A smile that's full of amusement and humor and friendship. It was glowing. It changed his face to something that made Anne's breath catch. She felt almost weak enough seeing it to topple off the branch.
00:33:19
Speaker
It was the most beautiful smile she'd ever seen. Again, I cannot emphasize enough that three paragraphs ago we were going on about like corpses and enormous bone knobs and... Go, like Grimison.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah. Unfortunately, Anne is just, like, so weak for this guy. Does not take much to make her actually. But at this point, she thinks he's, like, an evil skeleton zombie coming to attack her, and she's clinging desperately terrified to the tree, but she's still like, wow.
00:33:48
Speaker
Right. Damn. And he explains reasonably that he's been a prisoner for... millennia trapped at Hexwood farm. He's trying to fight these evil beings, this evil empire, these evil beings called rainers, but unfortunately he's under some kind of ban that means that he can't do it directly.
00:34:08
Speaker
The only way to get round that is to breed up a race of men and women who are not under the ban and let them go against the rainers. And Anne goes, I'm not doing that! So like this scene,
00:34:20
Speaker
is about sex. Like, it's, we talked in Time of the Ghost about a scene with blood in the woods and how it was kind of standing in for scene. This scene is really explicitly what happens instead of a sex scene because Anne has cut her knee. There's a pile of, a pool of blood shimmering indecently on the path is the, the verb that Diana Wynne Jones, sorry, spinning, spreading luridly among the green mosses.
00:34:47
Speaker
splashed scarlet on the white stone that had cut her and Mordian looks at the blood and says yeah of course we don't need to breed up a race of people I can use your blood and my blood and that's how we'll do it so they're they're making a child together is what they are doing in this scene that is standing in for the sex that Vera and says I'm not doing that right they make a child together and where in this sequence does Anne realise that this is the man in the camel coat she saw in the mirror I think it's when he describes himself as a prisoner. She's like, no, I saw you walk into the farm yesterday. Yeah. Something's not right here. He clothes from his little rags and they're camel colored.
00:35:25
Speaker
And she was like, oh, like the coat. Right. I saw you yesterday when you were hot. Now you're like a skeleton and very weird. Something strange has happened. This scene, by the way, is also a seduction scene again, because when Anne agrees to let her blood be used to make the child, Mordian smiles at her again.
00:35:45
Speaker
She's like, okay, it's not so bad. But a small clinical piece of her says he uses that smile. Mordian is in control of this scene. He is talking Anne into going through with this, despite the fact that we know that she knows things about him that he does not know.
00:36:00
Speaker
Which is that he just arrived at Hexwood Farm yesterday. Right. He claims to have been a prisoner in the earth for thousands of years. and you're like, but that can't be right. Or Anne's like, that can't be right. Whole situation is even more complicated than that.
00:36:12
Speaker
But this is what Mordian does. He casts a spell. ah He describes it first as manipulating the paratypical field. And then he says, oh, you don't understand that. Casting a spell. And then she gets very offended and is like, excuse me! but Right, there's there's, in fact, this is science fantasy. We have stuff called fetus space, stuff called paratypical fields which can be manipulated, but the effect is, it does magic.
00:36:37
Speaker
Right. But Anne is very worried about being taken for, you know, a stupid stupid stupid supertitionious superstitious barbarian. Casting a spell will not do for her. And ever after she goes around for the next several chapters talking about the parathygamy field. But...
00:36:51
Speaker
A creature, a person, a small person, starts to rise up out of the path. Out of the earth, in fact. Out of the earth. Spare body, a fairly small body, that ends up in purple clothes.
00:37:07
Speaker
This is, I think, when we start to realise the description of this body as the child that we met in the last chapter. Right. So, this child rises out of the earth, gets to its feet, feet says...
00:37:19
Speaker
fell, assuming it fell over, and trots off into the wood. And we're like, wait, isn't that Hume? Wasn't that Hume? But Hume already, oh wait, we're going back in time. This is earlier in the, no, it's not. yes And Mordian's like, great.
00:37:35
Speaker
That's that! I've created my my person who's gonna go fight the rainers for me. And Anne watches this small child trot off and says, you should look after him!
00:37:45
Speaker
He's all alone in this wood and he's quite small and he doesn't even know he's supposed not supposed to go out of it. He probably doesn't even know how to work the field to get food. You calmly make him up out of blood and nothing and you expect him to do your dirty work for you and you don't even tell him the rules.
00:38:00
Speaker
You can't do that to a person. And Mordian says, the field will take care of him. He belongs to it. Or you could. He's half yours after all. And Ed says, I have to go home for lunch. And it's like, I am not ready for parenthood, but somebody should parent that child.
00:38:15
Speaker
And it's also, I think, very, very central to the book's thesis that to create a child for a purpose is wrong. yeah And this is where actually we are getting echoes of fire and hemlock to me, where you have Tom Lynn in fire of hemlock essentially creates Polly in the image of his Janet.
00:38:36
Speaker
yeah And that was wrong. To raise up a child for your own purposes and not as themselves because they're a person is terribly wrong. Yes. And I actually think that this scene, this ambiguous not sex scene in the woods is the beginning of a Tam Lynn narrative.
00:38:53
Speaker
The girl goes off into the woods. She meets a weird fey man who's under some kind of gaze and needs to create a child with her to get around that gaze. And in Tamlin, Janet goes home pregnant.
00:39:05
Speaker
But in this scene, I think the most important thing that Anne does, perhaps in the entire book, is tell Mordian, you have to take care of this child. You can't just treat this child as a tool.
00:39:16
Speaker
This child must be a child to you. You have to take responsibility for it and treat it like a person. Because we later learned that this was not the intended outcome of this scene. When this scene was set up by the Banas, the Banas intended to raise this child itself.
00:39:32
Speaker
And for Mordian to go off and do other things in the wood, just concentrate on himself, you know, takes really takes a me time. And intervention is what sets up the next section of the book, which is the next two sections of the book, in fact, which are all about parenting.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah. So actually that Anne narrative that starts in chapter three, but in part one, runs uninterrupted up till the end of part three. So end of chapter 15, effectively.
00:40:00
Speaker
And it is, i won't say it's a straightforward narrative. There are lots of dislocations in time, but we're always in Anne's point of view, occasionally slipping into Mordian's.
00:40:11
Speaker
And we are essentially in and out of the enchanted wood, occasionally going home for lunch, watching Mordian parent Hume. Yes. Because the next time Anne enters the wood, she will find, well, the next time, question mark, she will find that Mordian has listened to her and has taken a responsibility for this child.
00:40:31
Speaker
Not only has he taken responsibility for the child, he doesn't it takes him several scenes to remember that he ever said he wouldn't. He doesn't quite remember the events of creating Hume.
00:40:42
Speaker
When we first see him, and from Mordian's point of view, when we first see him and Hume in the wood, He's like, well, I have this toddler. I found this toddler. I guess I have to take care of this toddler. I'm not sure why I feel so responsible for this toddler.
00:40:56
Speaker
And it's so annoying taking care of this toddler. Right. So I'm thinking, hang on, let me get my notes. I took so many notes for this. Let me get notes on part two. So part two opens with what appears to be a completely different adventure of Anne in the wood, where she goes into the wood, she bumps into Hume. She's like, oh, it's Hume, whom she clearly knows well. And they look across a lake, they find the wood, they see a beautiful castle.
00:41:21
Speaker
And it makes Anne have a very deep and powerful feeling of sadness. You're like, oh, we are doing an Arthuriana thing. Cool. Right. Though we're also doing, I think, a castle in the air thing.
00:41:32
Speaker
We're looking at a beautiful castle far away and projecting all kinds of things on it that I think Anne already knows in her heart are not true. Right. And then Anne goes home for lunch. First Anne tells Hugh about the king who is ill with his wound that won't ha ah heal and some some knights...
00:41:48
Speaker
Sir Bors and Sir Fours and Sir Bedifer and Sir Harasoon. Half of these guys are actually guys from Arthurian legend. And half of them are like, there's no there's no Sir Harrison. yeah And in fact, we're probably able to go, wait, Sir Harasoon?
00:42:03
Speaker
As in Harrison the clerk? who started the machine and Sir Bors is control of Barassus who was trying to shut it down but Sir Ford and Sir Beddifer no clue at this point but there's clearly something going on some overlaps between the world of the castle the Arthurian castle and the real world but yes the key thing to me in the timeline clues Anne goes home for lunch right after this meeting with Hugh whereupon her people say to her that she's only been into the wood once
00:42:34
Speaker
Yes. And she's like, but, but, and we're like, what? Because two things happened there and one of them was like a really scary creation of Hume sequence and the other was immediately following that, one where Hume was considerably older and they were talking like old friends.
00:42:52
Speaker
And Anne goes, what? And this, the Bannis plays things out of order. The Bannis runs a lot of scenes in whatever order it feels like. Anne walks home looking at her parents' greengrocer shop, and she thinks, well, at least that much is real.
00:43:09
Speaker
And she has picked a little bundle of violets in the wood, and she stops outside the greengrocer shop, and she sees that one of the boxes in front of the shop is packed full of identical little posies of violets, just like the one she picked in the wood.
00:43:23
Speaker
Which again, I think is our clue that when Anne looks at the green grocery shop and says, ah, that's real. It's not. The wood is here. It's not. Okay. And then the back half of part two is it's it's a lot of Anne visits Mordian in the woods and doesn't co-parent exactly. She watches him parent and she acts as a consultant, an assistant, a friend.
00:43:50
Speaker
i think my I think I read this section and I came to you and I was like, all right, my theory about the band is that it's just a metaphor for the experience of parenting a toddler. so Yes. This section is in some ways ah just repetitions of Mordian stressed out, trying to get food, trying to build a shelter, trying to teach teach ah Hume how to read and write, trying to do everything at once and constantly a little bit on edge and a little bit confused. i like Yeah, that's parenting. Yeah.
00:44:19
Speaker
There's a bit where he... So Hume keeps wandering towards the water... And Mordian's like, it feels like the one hundredth time I've towed Hume away from the water. Centuries of stas had not prepared Mordian for this constant need to dash after Hume and stop him killing himself.
00:44:34
Speaker
He felt worn out. Several times he almost given up and thought, oh, let him drown. But that was wrong and bad. Mordian was surprised how strongly he felt that. He could not let a strawll small stray boy come to harm.
00:44:47
Speaker
So he's just doing these repetitive actions, which is what parenting a toddler is like. The toddler will do things over and over and over again. If you spend any time with a toddler, they will want to do things 101 times. And you're just like, was was was twice not enough? No, 101. Especially, actually, if there is a large body of water.
00:45:04
Speaker
And you just have to kind of... You have to do it 101 times until they grow and learn and understand a little bit more about the world and themselves, which is what the Banas is doing to Mordian right now. Right.
00:45:20
Speaker
But I think a lot of section two is also just Anne enjoys the visits to Hume and Mordian in the wood. That's really clear. She's having a nice time seeing them. They're happy to see her. There's this lovely, warm relationship developing between the three of them. in which Anne is sometimes Mordian's peer and a fellow adult talking to him about parenting Hume.
00:45:41
Speaker
And sometimes she's Hume's peer and she's a fellow child talking to him about his life, about the wood and about Mordian. um So she sort of has this slip back and forth from adult to child throughout. I talked a bit earlier about ah the Diana Wynne Jones father-husband. My argument is that this book is about, yes, it is sexy,
00:46:00
Speaker
when your husband is a father. ah Not um your father, someone else's father. right So unlike, say, Polly and Tom, where Tom begins as her father figure, ah the mentor and the protector and the the caring figure that she needs when her own father fails her and then moves to being a love interest, Mordian is never Anne's parent in any way. They're always co-parents or a parent and a consultant. they created this child together and now they're working on the the problem.
00:46:35
Speaker
or right And i'm I'm not sure that like have a baby with him is the only only way to test the mettle of one sexy man. But I do think the book argues that it is extremely sexy of a man to be a good father. Absolutely. Maudian is at his best as a father to Hume. He is proud of him. He calls him a genius. He is teaching him. He is working for him. He is responsible.
00:46:59
Speaker
It's really funny when he calls him a genius because Hume has tried to build like a little cart out of wood. and He's like stuck some like round pole ends on the edge of his cart and Mordian looks at the cart and is like, oh my god, he's invented the wheel. He's a genius.
00:47:15
Speaker
And Anne looks it and is like, ah, a Stone Age roller skate. Right. But the other, I would argue that the actual key emotional beat of this section is Mordian remembering that he, quote unquote, created Hume and why and for a purpose and being horrified, realizing that he has no right to create another human being to do your dirty work.
00:47:37
Speaker
that Hume must never know that Mordian had made him as a sort of puppet. That Mordian has a responsibility to raise him as a child who can live for himself. Meanwhile, Anne is off in the woods explaining the way babies are made and that Hume was made in a very special way because Mordian needs him badly to fight the Raiders. So they're sort of undermining each other by accident here.
00:47:57
Speaker
But this is vitally important because although we won't know this later, what is happening here is Mordian starting to realize that the thing, something that has been done to him, which was being created to be used as a weapon, is wrong, and that he must not visit the same wrong things that were done to him on the next generation.
00:48:19
Speaker
This is a problem that I think, I would argue that all Diana Wynne Jones sexy men grapple with this problem, and many of them fail. Tom fails. We've just read A Sudden Wild Magic, Harrow, a deeply damaged sexy man, immediately turns around and betrays his child to his mother. Can't help it.
00:48:35
Speaker
But Mordian from section three of the book, like, makes the fundamental mistake and then is like, no, I can't do that. I have to make sure that I'm not doing the same thing to this child as was done to me. Right. Mordian is someone who cares for children, who thinks it is important to care for children properly, that children deserve that, not for any other reason than than for being children.
00:48:59
Speaker
And this is very sexy of him. I do think this is very sexy of him. I'm like, yeah, that is hot. But... End of part two, right? The final beat of part two in terms of plot developments is that Anne and Hume go for a wander in the wood. Anne explains how babies are made and then they arrive at what appears to be Hexwood Farm.
00:49:19
Speaker
Except it's Hexwood Farm completely grown over with ivy and trees and ancient and like ancient growth and they sort of stumble past a white van that has clearly been there for years if not decades. And Anne's like, that's the van I saw drive in three days ago.
00:49:36
Speaker
time is out of joint in the wood and as they go to the farm and they go around the back they sneak around about they find a rubbish heap and under the rubbish heap they find a pair of silver feet and Hume recognizes them Hume's like I know I know I know get him out Hume understands who this is because Hume has met Yam before right yep trying to keep the timeline in this book straight in your head is insane Anne, of course, has no idea what this is, but she helps Hume dig out what turns out to be a very damaged robot.
00:50:08
Speaker
And this is there's this, it reminds of Tale of Time City, actually. There's this this time dislocation where you have this far future technology buried under heaps of thy ancient growth outside an old farmhouse. And time is sort of colliding from all directions at once. And it's hard to know what the present time is or if there is a present time at all.
00:50:31
Speaker
So they get Yam out from underneath the rubbish heap and they take him back to Mordian and Anne and Hume together beg Mordian to repair Yam who is quite badly damaged.
00:50:42
Speaker
yep And Mordian, who is ultimately a nice man and very weak to the pleas of children, agrees to do it. And Anne notices that ah working on Gam seems to be sort of Mordian's forte, actually. He's quite good at this. Instead of being either the mad seeming enchanter who had created Hume or the harassed monk trying to build a house and watch Hume at the same time, he's now a cross between a doctor and a motor mechanic with perhaps a touch of dentist and sculptor thrown in. I think this description of sort of the different sides and personalities of Mordian is important because the last part of this section is Yam explaining how the Banis works.
00:51:20
Speaker
Which is definitely not, yeah, of course not. One machine explaining another totally different coincidentally nearby machine. And when she explains that the Banis uses, you know, is designed to help people make decisions by causing them to relive through scenes over and over and over again, that it uses different parts of their natures to come up with different outcomes but that everything that happens is within the natures of the people within it, because people contain a lot of things within themselves. He says, nothing can make either a person or a machine do things which it is not in their natures to do.
00:51:54
Speaker
So this is our first glimpse, I think, of the Banis as author. As someone one who is taking characters, really rich characters, and forcing them to play out different little scenes to see which one is going to get it to the end result that they want.
00:52:08
Speaker
Thinking about the split sort of different personalities of Mordian really reminded me of how Diana Wynne-Jones talks about writing her own characters and how she usually takes a real person and kind of splits them off into different sides of themselves and puts them in different books and then ends up with quite a different result. Like, for example, Tom in Fire and Hemlock and Erskine in Archer's Goon, two people who do not seem similar except for the fact that they're both kind of tall and she thinks they're sexy.
00:52:34
Speaker
It's, I think... We are meant to look at these people, at each glimpse we get of these people, as one slice of a very complex person that off in a different part of Banas time is having a completely different end result to whatever scene they're playing out.
00:52:51
Speaker
Right. The Banas sort of, I think author is the word. The Banas is... Okay, here here's my theory. Jones has spent 20 years writing variations on the storytelling girl who tells the story to make sense of the world.
00:53:07
Speaker
And that metaphor no longer contains her craft. That's not who she is anymore. The Banas is an ancient, powerful thing of sorcery, capable of containing vast ah varieties and possibilities.
00:53:23
Speaker
which just happens to be doing this particular story, but could do a great many others. The Banas is a thing of terrifying sorcery, which contains, among other things, the storytelling girl, I think is a new metaphor for her new approach to her own craft.
00:53:41
Speaker
Mordian, we see in so many forms through the book, part of which is romance, of course, it's Anne's romance, it's Anne coming to love the man saying, do you actually know the man that you think you love? Is that instant attraction and that beautiful smile enough?
00:53:58
Speaker
what is the actual nature of your feeling for this person and the sort of variety of mordians she sees so in chapter one we saw an evil wizard uh in part one we saw an evil wizard creating a child to be a tool in part two we see this what's the word what did she say sculptor theabbada you just just had the quote last monk and a doctor, a motor mechanic, a dentist, a sculptor. Right, so you've got this sort of ah this professional, detached, expert nature of Mordian. And I think that is also a very important part of him. And of course, throughout parts two and three, you've got Mordian the father, Mordian the parent. So these different pieces of the man that Anne is coming to know deepen her understanding of what Mordian is or could be. But also at the same time are deepening the Banas' understanding of more what Mordian is or could be. which is quite important. The question of why the Banas is doing all this will not be answered for some time. But it's not for no reason. The author does not tell a story just for the hell of it. There is a point.
00:55:07
Speaker
Right. And in part three, we see another Mordian, an even deeper understanding of Mordian, which is Mordian the suicidally depressed.
Parenting Dynamics and Real-World Parallels
00:55:17
Speaker
Part 3 gives us, I think, another run at the question of the depressed parent and the child who needs them that we saw with Zilla and Marcus in A Sudden Wild Magic.
00:55:27
Speaker
But this time we're getting it from the child's point of view. Yeah, it's noticeable in part two, we actually slipped into Mordian's head a few times. Part three, no, it's purely external. It's all Anne's point of view. And it's Anne and Hume and Yam revolving around the problem of Mordian, which is that without the three of them poking him, whining at him, demanding things of him, requiring him, needing him.
00:55:50
Speaker
Mordian sinks into depression very fast. We get this as sort of once as comedy and once as tragedy, right? Because the first glimpse of this we get is Yam complaining about Mordian, saying the man has to be kept up to the mark as well as the child. Left to himself and Mordian sits and broods. And Mordian says, I don't brood, but I like to sit with the sun on my back and fish and think, of course. You idle, says Yam, and you sleep.
00:56:15
Speaker
In other words, he acts like a depressed person. yeah This line, I think, is really funny when you know what the Banas' intentions for Mordian are. Because the Banas is like, I have plans for you. How much time do I have to spend making you into a person who's not depressed enough to go fight an evil empire? You know, I think... in time Like we meet in parts two and three Hume as they first encounter him, who is a toddler.
00:56:39
Speaker
So maybe, maybe two or three years old, all the way up to Hume as a young adult at 16 or 17. I think Mordian does subjectively spend that much time in the wood parenting Hume. I think i think it's implied that Mordian is having a continuous experience of ah his time with Hume, not just these intermittent scenes that Anne is getting as she goes in and out of the wood.
00:57:01
Speaker
Right, because Mordian's beard goes gray and Anne always looks the same. Hume actually points this out. He's like, Anne, why do you always look the same when I'm growing? And Mordian is visibly getting older, although, you know, maybe the stress of parenthood is just doing that to him over a week. Who could say?
00:57:17
Speaker
But this is after we get this sort of like jokey scene with Yam where he's like, oh, I have to keep poking Mordian into doing things and he'll just sit around. This is when we get Hume describing how how frightened he was during a sequence where he can't find Mordian.
00:57:33
Speaker
You know how Yam always goes on about- actually i'm just going to read this whole thing. Hume says, you know how Yam always goes on about Mordian being lazy because Mordian goes off and just sits somewhere and it takes hours to find him. Well that's just Yam being a machine. Last time we had to look for Mordian he was up on those really high rocks down river from the house and he looked dreadful.
00:57:51
Speaker
Even worse when he tried to smile at me to make me think he was alright. So I took a deep breath. You know how you have to get up courage if you want to say anything personal to Mordian. I breathed in, and then I asked him straight out what was the matter.
00:58:03
Speaker
What did he do, Anne asked. Blast you to outer darkness? I almost, Sheen said, only it was me that did it. I thought he wasn't going to tell me, so I thought I'd look in his mind. And it was sort of like, can you imagine somewhere so dark? It's sort of roaring, and you can see the dark, and the dark is like the worst cut of scrape you ever had, so you can feel the dark too, hurting.
00:58:21
Speaker
It was like that, only huge. I had to stop quick. And I nearly went away, only Mordian spoke then. He said, I'm pure evil, Hume. I've been thinking of throwing myself off this rock into those rapids.
00:58:34
Speaker
Right. So this is straight suicidality. This is a suicidally unhappy man. Why exactly Mordian has within him this sense of roaring agony and this feeling that he is pure evil is not clear to either Anne or Hume at this point.
00:58:51
Speaker
Right. But the only way that Hume can get Mortian to come down off the rock is by getting bratty about it. He whines and says, you're not to leave me all alone. And he does this on purpose. Like Hume is describing to Anne how he cunningly went whiny and bratty and says, you can't leave me alone. I need you. I'm a child. And Mortian climbs down and says, no, I'm the selfish one. You're the one good thing fate has allowed me to do.
00:59:16
Speaker
And Hume's like, well, Hume is at this point around 10. And Hume's like, I have to free Mordian. The way he feels is so terrible. I have to be this weapon that he's wanted me to be because I feel so bad about what I saw in his mind. Quick side note, so Hume can read Mordian's mind, huh We won't find out till later, actually, that Hume and Mordian have all been telepathically connected for many years. But I think this a shout, a call forward into that, that these people have been living in each other's minds and in each other's pockets.
00:59:47
Speaker
And sometimes they see scary things. there Yeah. And I think there's something about like this this relationship of guilt and need that it can exist between parent and child, where both you have Hume but whining and snivelling and begging Mordian to stay with him, but you also have Hume's resolve resolve to do what Mordian needs him to do and to be what Mordian needs him to be because he feels awful for him, because he loves him. And it's the way these um these coercions can sort of come into being between parent and child to the benefit
01:00:21
Speaker
of only the parents. Right. Again, it's a much, I think, richer exploration of the Zilla and Marcus situation from A Sudden Wild Magic, where we see Zilla thinking about how she can't kill herself, it wouldn't be fair to Marcus. But Marcus in that book is a toddler who is mostly comic relief or imperiled.
01:00:40
Speaker
And we see through these two sections both the actual how raising a toddler does not help your depression because it's exhausting. It's tiring. It's repetitive.
01:00:53
Speaker
But also when you're a child, it's very scary to see your parent being unhappy. We've seen a lot of unhappy parents in Diana Wynne Jones. I think you could argue that some of the bad parents that we've seen throughout this whole project have probably been about as depressed as Mordian.
01:01:09
Speaker
But this is the first time that we are really looking at that and looking at that from the parents' point of view as well as the child. I think one of the things that makes Hexwood so effective as an exploration of parenting is this time slippage, which means we see Hume at every age. So we have parenting a toddler, parenting a bright child, parenting a tween, parenting a teenager.
01:01:31
Speaker
And you've got this boy growing up and we get glimpses of every bit of it, but it's sort of ah glimpses stand in for the whole of this whole experience of being an adult responsible for this person through the exhausting toddler stage, through the won't stop asking questions stage, through in this section, we do actually get hormonal teen Hume is going in for the snog and Anne's like,
01:01:57
Speaker
I'm your mother. She doesn't quite say that. but ah It is, in fact, you pointed this out. It's a kind of reversal of Fire and Hemlock where you have the girl is the mentor creator figure and instead of ah this becoming like the weird mentor-mentee adult-child relationship where she becomes a mother-wife, she's like, my cousin's much hotter than me.
01:02:24
Speaker
And he immediately is like, oh? A hotter woman? i didn't think those things existed. Hume has seen one woman ever, as far as he knows. And a Dan. Also, it's very funny that Anne, she she has this episode, she's like, wow, that was awkward. And why did I invent a cousin?
01:02:42
Speaker
Right. Made me make up a cousin. but don't have a cousin. Wait, do I have cousin? No, don't have a cousin. Anne has a cousin. Right. A hot cousin. And it's like when she's taken off guard, I think Anne does occasionally break through what's happened to her memory or the blocks on her memory from the banners and bits of her her other life are underneath.
01:03:03
Speaker
Yes, and we'll see this increasingly come true later. But the culmination of this scene right now with Teen Hume is Anne telling Teen Hume, you know, Teen Hume has these dreams of being a prisoner trapped under a mound for centuries.
01:03:19
Speaker
And they're both like, oh, those should be Mordian's dreams. Mordian is the person who was a prisoner under a mound for centuries. Not you, Hume. bracket a man who was a prisoner under a mound for centuries but we don't know that yet right I think rereading this book I am struck by how meticulously fairly Jones is playing like there is no point at which you can go we didn't have enough information to guess that ah we do have enough information at this point to guess that Hume is the real prisoner and that Mordian did not in fact come out of the ground having been entombed we do have enough information to guess that the banners has control over a much wider section of reality than just the wood we even have enough information to guess that Anne is not just Anne like you really have to be paying attention because the misdirects are very good and very persuasive but she is also giving you the facts there's there's a detective novel feeling to it there's really careful control of information and what's revealed to the reader when
01:04:14
Speaker
And it really is, i keep coming back to this metaphor of the mirror, because it's all mirrors, right? And in this section in particular, Mordian and Hume are mirroring each other. They are being having mirror image experiences of their own pasts.
01:04:27
Speaker
Because as we will eventually learn, what Mordian was is a child who was raised to be a living weapon for somebody else. And what Hume is is a man who created children to be living weapons.
01:04:39
Speaker
So Mordian believing himself to have had Hume's experience of being buried underground, of creating children to go against the rangers for him, and Hume being forced to live through what it's like to be raised as a weapon for somebody, are both learning things about themselves that they don't know that they're learning. Yes. I should also, is section three is when we have the Mordian and Hume sword fight, isn't it?
01:05:02
Speaker
Yes, which is when Hume gets really huffy and that's when he goes off. And that's when he snogs yeah. But this is teenage Hume, Anne turns up and he's got a sword, like a really cool, very sharp sword with a ruby in it. And he has been practicing sword fighting with Yam, but Yam as a robot is not allowed to hurt humans and therefore Hume has been cheating.
01:05:22
Speaker
and getting away with it and I think actually this idea of cheating of not playing fair because somebody else you know can't hurt you but you can hurt them that is part of sort of the underlying threads of emotional connections between every every character in this book but Mordian watches this and it's like okay let's show you what it's like when you're playing fair and Anne sees Mordian and Hume fight each other and it becomes clear that ah as as Yam puts it, Mordian is a master swordsman. He's very, very, very good. He's got a wooden sword and Hume has got a a shining silver blade, but Hume does not stand a chance, which is why he ends up so embarrassed and cross.
01:06:04
Speaker
Right. The end of this conversation with Hume ah is Hume saying, the horrible dreams were enough to make me swear this guilt, to make me swear to break the ban on Mordian, but now I'm not sure I care.
01:06:16
Speaker
And Anne says, you may be right. It's not fair. You should devote your life to Mordian. And then, but that's not actually the end of the section. It feels like it should be the end of the section because it's a big emotional resolution. It's Hume saying, I don't think I want to devote my life to somebody else. I want to be my own person.
01:06:29
Speaker
But the last thing that actually happens in this section is Anne goes home and finds her little brother, Martin, who we haven't talked about very much, almost in tears because he saw something weird to do with the Hexwood farm estate.
01:06:40
Speaker
And their dad doesn't believe him and thinks he's making it up for attention. I do think it's important actually that we go from Hume saying it's not fair that you should devote your life to Mordian to a scene with Martin, which seems completely irrelevant.
01:06:53
Speaker
But it's not in fact irrelevant at all because we will eventually later learn that Martin is a person who had previously devoted his life to Hume. This is the other child that Hume now is mirroring.
01:07:03
Speaker
Yeah. So Anne and Martin have this genuinely very cute sibling relationship ah where he lends her tapes but she hates his taste in music and they make fun of each other and then watch Alien together on the like on the late TV show.
01:07:17
Speaker
And they do chores and Martin picked up all Anne's chores while she was sick. And like, that there's that there's a normal loving family, right? Yes. ah But Martin also clearly has like strong feelings about their father. And like, there's a really like...
01:07:31
Speaker
Again, it's very concise. It's very controlled. But there's a really touching little scene of Martin saying, I know what I saw. I'm not lying. I saw someone dressed like a superhero climbing the gate into Hexwood Farm. Yes, I know it was weird, but that's what was there.
01:07:44
Speaker
And their father doesn't believe him. And Martin is like disproportionately heartbroken about his father not trusting him. And you're like, yeah this boy has an unreasonable level of daddy issues for the life he appears to have, which he does.
01:07:59
Speaker
For good reasons. And something that I think is like, it's a small detail, but when Anne and Hume are hanging out on the tree, Anne thinks to herself, oh, this is like, I feel like Martin and his little buddy hanging out in the trees. Like, I'm,
01:08:13
Speaker
There's a way in which Anne doesn't have any friends her own age. When she thinks about having a friendship with other children, she's looking at Martin and she's mirroring how Martin behaves. Anne is not quite a child. Anne is always in these sequences somewhere in between child and adult and a little bit more adult than child, even though she's set up to us as a child.
01:08:32
Speaker
But I do think that both when we eventually learn who all these people really are, both Hume and Anne are sort of learning how to be a child from Martin, who is the closest thing to a child that any of these people actually are.
01:08:43
Speaker
And we'll come back to Martin. But with that, OK, we are now one third of the way through Hexwood. We have been for the last 13 of the last 15 chapters in the point of view of Anne Stavely, the Greengrocer's daughter.
01:08:56
Speaker
Part four. So remember that space opera? Remember those evil Imperial Reyners? Part four, we are suddenly taken to the other end of the galaxy and it turns out Earth is like right out of the arse end of nowhere. And we are in the palace of the Reyners, the house of balance. with four reiners sitting around a table. And it's very clear that there ought to be five because they don't have names, they have numbers. They are reiners one, two, four and five. No, so one, three, four and five. Reiner two is not there.
01:09:31
Speaker
Reiner five is playing for them. So again, we have this mirror effect, this watching of recordings and memories. This is not immediate action, this is playback of the action.
01:09:43
Speaker
Reiner 5 is playing for them a recording of Reiner 2's journey to Albion to deal with the Banas problem accompanied by the Reiner's servant. mordian And this is when, like, immediately we recognize these as the people that Anne saw the first time she saw that man in the camel hair coat walking into the, and was so immediately enthralled by him. Like, there's no mistake.
01:10:08
Speaker
Mordian is the man in the camel hair coat who is the Raynor's servant, who is the very, very scary assassin that we first heard about in chapter one. But what we also learn on this little journey is that Mordian is very charming.
01:10:21
Speaker
People like him. He has this beautiful smile that he knows how to use to get his way. And we learn that Mordian hates his job. a fact which Raynor 1 knows very well and which the other Raynors are sort of surprised to learn. Right. We have, in fact, I actually love this sequence because it's basically, it could be quite dull if it was just the Mordian and Raynor 2 walking around, but it's also a little Greek chorus of all the most evil wizards in the galaxy going, so about all our evil, ha ha. Oh, there are dancing girls in this bit. It's really, really charming and funny. I love these evil wizards.
01:11:03
Speaker
They are a little bit of a comedy act in and of themselves, more even in Raynor 2. Like, they get to the Dancing Girls bit and Raynor 2 is like, I sincerely hope the clerk doesn't set to do anything with Dancing Girls. I really cannot cope with Dancing Girls. It's my time of life.
01:11:17
Speaker
And we do actually find out what Raynor 2's time of life is. We learn a bit more about who the Raynors are and what they are. We learn, for example, that Raynor 1 is 2,000 years old So this evil god wizard is apparently immortal and has been ruling the Galactic Empire all this time.
01:11:33
Speaker
We learn that Rayna I is the only one of the Rayners who looks old, although the others are also taking anti-aging treatment. So he is older and greater and more dangerous than the rest them. It becomes very clear, in fact, that Rayna is actually the god emperor of the universe. And the others are kind of, I guess, his one-man band, his Greek chorus, ah his's his, well, there they're the fingers of his hand.
01:11:59
Speaker
Yep. Raynor 2 is actually specifically, I believe, 80 years younger than Raynor 1. And he does look at a little bit. He acts like a fussy old man. And they're, you know, the the sort of Greek chorus of Raynor's, as you very aptly called them, are watching Raynor 2 act like a cranky old man and reveal more than he should increasingly to Mordian as they're going along. And Mordian doesn't want to hear it. He knows he's being told more than he's supposed to know. Being told Raynor's secrets.
01:12:28
Speaker
But Raynor 2 is very tired and he's had a long day and he's had to deal with dancing girls and his time of life. And he says, i order you to think about the Banos. What i really enjoy about this sequence actually is how little Raynor 1 talks for most of the Greek chorus sections. It is three, four and five who do most the talking and though they have rough personalities. Three is a cunning evil hyper feminine woman.
01:12:53
Speaker
She's great. yeah I love her. She's my possibly my favorite Jones villainess of them all. Four is an athletic idiot. And five is a mean techie kind of guy.
01:13:05
Speaker
Four is also Three's little brother, which we get in one very brief comment, although she doesn't seem to feel particularly... Sisterly. Right, about him at this time, now that they've all been evil wizards for thousands of years, who all are quite clearly really tired of each other. Yeah, they're all sick of each other, that's very clear. And explicitly later on it says, Rayna Three, who had once loved Rayna had been sick of him for several lifetimes now.
01:13:31
Speaker
But Rayner 1 is the most sinister, the most worrying. And he is the one who is the most alert to what's actually dangerous in what Rayner 2 has done. And he lets the other Rayners know what's dangerous about it. He says, well, the Rayner's servant is in fact...
01:13:50
Speaker
a purebred Raynor. And what this means isn't completely clear, except it seems to be something like a wizard as good as any of us, or possibly better than us. We know, in fact, that were it not for the sort of training and telepathic blocks on Mordian's mind, he would be vastly more powerful than Raynor 2, whose power mostly comes like Constam Khans in Homeward Bounders because of a bunch of gadgets that he's got.
01:14:16
Speaker
Yeah. So part four mostly is exposition on the evil empire, very smoothly and very amusingly done. Yes. And at the same time, the very sinister hints about what's been done to Mordian to turn him into this dreadful living weapon, this child who became an assassin for the Raiders, and about what he's doing now.
01:14:40
Speaker
And what becomes particularly clear is that the Banus is in some way a threat to the Reynas themselves. yeah And it needs, from their point of view, it needs to be turned off.
01:14:51
Speaker
So Reynar 2 has been sent to do that. And we know he has not done it. We know he's done a very bad job of doing it. The other thing that happens over the course of this sequence, which I do think it's really fun that Reiner 5 is again showing them these scenes from this journey and speeding them up and slowing them down, like a little mini-Vanus himself. ah He's constructing a narrative.
01:15:11
Speaker
As they're like oh no, that one's boring. Fast forward through
Reynor's Galatic Adventures and Humorous References
01:15:13
Speaker
this. No, stop. Again, the dancing girls are here. They're not actually here. They say no to the dancing girls. Reiner 4 gets some dancing girls later on, but... well Actually, nope um note on the dancing girls. So that basically, the Reina and Reina 2 and the Servant are going from office to office through the like the governing offices of the galaxy. ah The offices are all the same layout with different decorations. I think this may actually be a Doctor Who sets joke. ah It's like, what does the galaxy look like? It looks like a series of offices with silly decor.
01:15:43
Speaker
And then at each office, Raina 2 is traveling incognito. Nobody recognizes him, but they all recognize the servant with his death's head grin. And so he's offered all sorts of luxuries and wine and dancing girls. And Raina 1 wants to know, what would the servant have said about dancing girls if Raina 2 wasn't there?
01:16:03
Speaker
And there's this little pause that ah our servant would have said yes to the dancing girls. i I think it's really funny. We've seen a lot of Anne's terrible attraction to Mordian. What this says to me here is Mordian also would quite like to have sex.
01:16:17
Speaker
I think that's very true and really quite important. Diana Wyn Jones wants us to know. The other thing, so actually it just occurs to me now that I wonder if Vierin's fashion sense is also a Doctor Who joke. Yes. The other thing that's set up here kind of slid into the background is that whenever they go to Earth, the Reyners have to get Earth costumes. And there is a young woman who runs the costume department for the Reynor organization. Her name is Vierin and she has a weird sense of humor, which is why everyone always looks so weird when they go to Earth. So when Reynor 4, for example, is like, right,
01:16:51
Speaker
Clearly something's gone wrong with Raynor 2 and the Servant. I have to go sort it out now. He gets a pair of red plus tartan plus fours, a coat of hunting pink, green high tops, orange socks, and a frilly fronted white shirt.
01:17:03
Speaker
to go wear down earth That's a Doctor Who outfit. But I think also very strikingly, Rainer 4, in thinking about this rather annoying young woman, who his main objection to her is that he doesn't find her attractive. um And Rainer 4 is quite clearly the kind of man who expects women to be attractive and compliant or invisible.
01:17:23
Speaker
and But the think the problem problem with her is that although she's not child, she does have a hot cousin. Hot blonde cousin. And if you're paying attention, you're like, wait a second. like Again, Diana Wynne Jones is playing fair. You now have enough information to know that this girl whose name we've been given as Vieran, who is in the costume department of the Rayner organization on the home world, light years away from Earth, and has a hot blonde cousin, is...
01:17:51
Speaker
the same person as Anne who at once has admitted that her middle name was hatefully Veronica so Anne Veronica is V-A-R-A-N from the home world I believe we've already been told in this section that Vierin in the costumes department is the one person in the whole organization of Homeworld that the Raynor's servant ever talks to. Anyway, that's probably not important.
01:18:16
Speaker
But it's so lightly done, we get no Vierin point of view. I don't think we even meet her directly. She just sends up her joke. ah her joke costume for Reina 4 and he looks at it and he's like nope I'm going to wear my real clothes Earth should know its masters he's really dislikable this guy so he goes striding off in his superhero outfit along the the same path that Mordian and Reina 2 took earlier in the in the the mirror recording He gets to the world with the dancing girls. He turns off all his monitors and says dancing girls.
01:18:48
Speaker
And then he forgets to turn his monitors back on. what So the Reynas have no information. Reynas 1, 3 and 5 about what 4 is doing when he arrives on Earth. Passes through.
01:18:59
Speaker
that sector office from the opening chapter where he meets the very efficient bureaucrat, Giraldus, who both Rayner 2 and Rayner 4 look at Giraldus like, too efficient, he needs to die.
01:19:12
Speaker
We'll get around to it later. Right. Specifically, they're like, he's too efficient, he needs to die, but we need someone efficient to get us home, so we'll terminate him on the way back. And this is a running joke with Giraldus. Every Rayner is going to pass by Giraldus and be like, this guy needs to die, but not until I'm going home.
01:19:29
Speaker
Right, so Rainer IV goes down to Earth, arrives at Hexwood Farm and vaults the gate heroically, which is exactly what Martin described seeing at the end of the last section, I saw a guy in a superhero costume vault into Hexwood Farm.
01:19:43
Speaker
But then... aha we're not done with part 4 Raider 4 heads down to the basement past what appears to be the Clark Harrison's horrid bedroom has a brief and highly racist thanks Diana encounter with someone from Raider Hexwood Japan um which turns out to be an illusion that tells him the badass is behind you What we learn from this encounter is that the band is is racist.
01:20:07
Speaker
yeah I'll tell you what it is, though. It's like it's Time City doing the 1990s thing of where is high tech and science fictional. That's right. It's Japan. Yes.
01:20:18
Speaker
Anyway, he turns around and he sees what seems to be a glowing golden chalice, the Holy Grail. um And he follows it and suddenly he's in an Arthuriana. He's in a shining coat of mail.
01:20:32
Speaker
He's a knight. And his name is Ser Fawz. And I don't think Raider IV ever remembers who he really is after that. He is Ser Fawz. He is one of the knights and he arrives at the castle, which we have seen so often. But this is our first time actually entering what seems to be the core of the Banas' story, the Arthurian castle, yeah where there is a king who requires that he fights all the champions before he's accepted in.
01:20:56
Speaker
So he fights Sir Harrison, who sucks, and Sir Bors, who is tiresome and religious, and Sir Bedifer, who is quite good. And actually, we should mention Sir Bedifer we have met before. We saw him in Raider 5's little cube narrative. He's Earth's area controller of Raider Hexwood, Sir John Bedford, ah who I always imagine as being played by Colin Firth, circa Kingsman. He has that sort of in Englishman works works for MI6 feeling.
01:21:26
Speaker
Who likes him? Every time we meet Sir Bedifur Sir John Bedifur, everyone's like, what a nice guy. We've got a lot of, all of our heroes meet him and are like, I like you instinctively. There's quite a lot of narrative space on Sir John Bedifur, which I think is ah a joke that we'll get to later when he starts talking to the director at the end.
01:21:43
Speaker
Anyway, Sephorz defeats the champions, Serbedefur by pure luck, which he nobly admits. I'm interested actually in the way Reinaf 4, Sephorz, is an athlete and his best qualities are his qualities as an athlete. He is strong. He is good. He's a bloody good knight and he's capable of being pleasant and kind and ah playing fair. and saying, yeah, I admit it, that was pure luck when he finally wins, um because he knows how to play the role of a good sport.
01:22:15
Speaker
Right. But A, he has also all the ah bad qualities of a knight. He's grabby with women. He doesn't consider his inferior his social inferiors as equals. But above all, he is a man of violence who uses violence to serve state authority. And that makes him an exact equivalent to, say, the Reina's servant.
01:22:40
Speaker
Yes. Also, his head is empty. He's just very dumb. He's so stupid. It's really important that Forza is stupid. It's very funny that Forza is stupid. Yes. But he is a man of violence. And in the next section, we are going to start talking, I think, in a very real way about violence. I think of this section as the violence section.
01:22:58
Speaker
Which is also the midpoint of the book. So right, part four of the book is the Rayner narrative ending with Rayner IV being absorbed into the Banas' story world as Ser Fawz in the Arthurian castle. And at this point, we have very clear hints that this is what the Banas is aiming to do. It's trying to drag the Rayners into its story world for reasons of its own.
01:23:21
Speaker
Or is is it even clearer it has reasons yet? It might not be. It's just Banas is dragging you into its story world. The Banis is dragging you into its field. The Banis creates little scenes. The Banis is trying to make your perfect fantasy football league for you. The Banis makes dreams come true.
01:23:35
Speaker
This what we heard about the Banis. Right. Part five, then, is the part, is the midpoint of the book, and it's the part where all these different story worlds begin colliding. So we have, at this point, four narratives.
01:23:50
Speaker
We have Anne, the teenage girl in a housing estate outside London, doing portal fantasy. We have Mordian and Hume living this enchanted life in the wood in a way that's very reminiscent, I think, of T.H. White, the sword and the stone, ah the wizard raising the boy to be a great king. We have the Arthurian castle where Sephorus is having a wonderful time being Sephorus.
01:24:11
Speaker
And we have the space opera starring the Reyners. Right. In part five, these worlds begin to collide in ways that are more and more alarming and more and more violent. And part five is, you're right, it's about the violence.
01:24:29
Speaker
So the first thing that happens in part five is we return... to Anne and Mordian from Mordian's point of view. And now we, the readers, know who Mordian is. We know that he is a mind-controlled assassin who has been raised in very painful ways and undergone tremendous suffering and has been specifically bred for the purpose. We're told by... ah by Rainer in section 4 that all of the servants are in fact the descendants of his greatest enemy that he keeps around and twists for fun to be his servants as part of a long game of revenge.
01:25:04
Speaker
and an elaborate and ill-advised reading program. And we know all of this about, and that he hates his job and he hates killing and has had to do it for many, many years. Part five picks up on the afternoon of the same day as part three.
01:25:18
Speaker
I think in Anne's actual narrative, it has been three or four days at most. Yes. It's disguised and misdirected by how many different little scenes she's been through in that time and how much time jumping happens in the woods. But in fact, it's only been a few days.
01:25:36
Speaker
And here we are. both time city, she's running through the same little bit of space time over and over and over again. Getting different scenes out with it. Yes. And when Anne gets to the wood this time, it's very cold.
01:25:48
Speaker
And Mordian's been trying to provide food and shelter. and the basic necessities of life for Hume. And he's also trying to make Hume a real enough person to leave the wood.
01:25:59
Speaker
They're starving. Mordian's been giving all his food to Hume. And Anne snaps at him because of the way that Mordian is treating himself. Do you have the scene? Yes.
01:26:10
Speaker
Hang on, I have quite a lot of different bits in part five I want to talk about. Can't you treat yourself with a bit more consideration? Why should I, Mordian said, hugging the duvet around himself. Because you're a person, of course, Anne snapped at him.
01:26:24
Speaker
One person ought to treat another person properly, even if the person's himself. What a strange idea, Mordian said. He was suddenly weary to the point of shaking. He suspected it was because Anne had once more put her finger on something he did not want to think about.
01:26:41
Speaker
So I think this is actually a really central moment in the book and the key of what Anne does for Mordian, what their relationship means to him. what Anne tells Mordian and he's a person and deserves to be treated like a person.
01:26:56
Speaker
And he she's the only one who does. Mordian doesn't want to think of himself as a person. He doesn't want to face the enormity of the crimes that have been committed against him as a person.
01:27:08
Speaker
It's easier not to think of himself that way. And also the enormity of the crimes he has done. That's the other thing. If he's a weapon, then nothing is his fault. If he's a person, he has responsibilities.
01:27:20
Speaker
Yes. And I think this echoes back against the first meeting of Yam and Hume in the wood. Human, which is what you are. Everyone in this book is a person, not a weapon.
01:27:31
Speaker
Yes. But, so the woods in winter, a few different things happen. One of them is that Anne and Hume in the wood encounter a knight in shining armour. And Hume has been obsessed with knights for a long time.
01:27:47
Speaker
It's a beautiful vision of a man in armour. It's beautifully described. Great eyes are shadow of horse and rider glimpses of billowing green cloak and She's terrified. she doesn't know why she's frightened, but she sees this man riding through the woods and she's so scared all the while that Hume is like, oh my god a knight I love knights. That's a knight. Tell me all about knights. Hume is like a small child again at this point Hume is maybe like Six or seven I would say.
01:28:14
Speaker
Yeah In fact, because we're out of order, this is the first time Hume has ever encountered the concept of a knight. Anne tries to put in some propaganda. She says, you have to deserve to be a knight before you're knighted. And when you're made knight, you have to fight and behave with honor.
01:28:28
Speaker
And Hume responds, oh, so when you're knights, you fight dragons. He guards the king from dragons. Does he fight dragons? When I'm a knight, I'm going to become a knight and I'm going to kill dragons. And then we have an actually quite scary... I'm going to kill dragons for the king. Yeah. I think that's important, actually. The idea of being a living weapon and being really into it. Like, yeah, imagine it.
01:28:51
Speaker
I'm going to be a knight, which is a really cool thing to be. and I'm going to kill dragons for the king. I'm going to do it for a good reason, because there's a king who's in charge of me, and that'd be great. Right. I'm going to be power wielded for authority and violence wielded for authority.
01:29:08
Speaker
And then Hume sees a dead branch, and when they come to the edge of the copse and they find a rabbit or maybe a hare, skinny and wretched, caught in the last of the snares there, Hume went half mad with delight.
01:29:20
Speaker
I'm going to kill dragons, he screamed. Like this. Kill, he screamed, and beat the rabbit furiously with his branch. And Anne screams, because it's horrible to watch, and...
01:29:33
Speaker
Mordian arrives and immediately sees this animal is in pain and instantly snaps its neck. Right, I've got to actually the rest of the scene.
01:29:44
Speaker
Anne screamed as well, Hume, stop! The rabbit was making a horrible noise, almost human. Stop it, Hume! Dragon, kill, kill, kill! Hume shouted, battering at the rabbit.
01:29:55
Speaker
And then Mordian slung Hume aside so that Hume sat down in a crash in a heap of frozen brushwood, and in the same movement he knelt and put the rabbit out of its agony. "'Don't you ever do that again,' he told Hume. "'Why?' Hume said suddenly. "'Because it's extremely cruel,' Mordian said.
01:30:15
Speaker
He was going to say more, but he looked up just then and saw Anne's face.' She was fixed, unable to look away, seeing again and again and again the way Mordian's long, strong fingers had known just the right place on the rabbit to find, and the deaf way they had flexed, just the right amount, to break the rabbit's neck with a small, final crack. He didn't even have to look, she kept thinking.
01:30:36
Speaker
He was busy glaring at Hume. She kept hearing that weak, clean little snap. Mordian opened his mouth slightly to ask her what was the matter, but there was no point.
01:30:46
Speaker
They both knew what they knew. though neither of them wanted to. This is Anne being brought face to face with Mordian as a killer, a very good and efficient killer. And this is, I think, the ultimate point of all the use of violence stuff in these chapters is, yes, what this is as a killer. And being a really good killer is still being a killer.
01:31:08
Speaker
We talked about Anne seeing different sides of Mordian. This is one of them. This is, we know, the Reiner's servant, the the the great and terrible assassin. um And it's horrifying.
01:31:20
Speaker
Yes. And I think that the the rabbit's almost human scream and ah the weak, clean little snap. We are meant to see in this moment an echo of all the people Mordian has killed.
01:31:32
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And this is this this moment has to come after section four because we, the readers, need to know who Mordian is and what his backstory is. And this is, I think, the first vision of Mordian that we don't see at all through a mirror.
01:31:48
Speaker
As we will later learn, everything else that has happened to Mordian that he has believed about himself has been because he had memories that were not correct. And his the way he has been presenting himself to Anne and to us and to himself is as someone who believes he has gone through a different experience.
01:32:04
Speaker
But now we know what his experience has been and now we have to see that for what it is. And Anne has to is starting to see that for what it is as well because, it of course, in some part of the back of her mind, Anne knows exactly who Mordian is and what he's done.
01:32:19
Speaker
They both knew what they knew. Right. And neither of them wants to know. Part of the the enchantment of the wood is neither of them has to be the people they have been. And there's this this idyllic, I mean, we haven't talked about this actually, but the wood sections are beautiful. Just some of the most gorgeous descriptive writing Diana Wynne-Jones has ever done. um The descriptions of the trees coming into bud, the smells, the colors, the sounds of a wood in springtime. There's always beautiful pink blossoming tree
01:32:52
Speaker
under which several of the most significant scenes happen, which I think you looked at Yeah, it's a Judas tree, also known as a love tree. So a place of love and betrayal. But it's exquisite, the wood idyll.
01:33:06
Speaker
um But it also, I think, we know that there must be an end. Like at some point, other truths, other stories are going to intrude on this place of connection and love and care that these are all showing for each other, in which they can all be these different aspects of their true selves.
Themes of Violence and Chivalry in Hexwood
01:33:25
Speaker
But it is, I think, also in some ways it is the falsest part of the book. And in some ways it is, I think, the truest, you know, going through when we do these these recordings, I always go through and take quotes of things that I think are important.
01:33:37
Speaker
And almost all my quotes are from the wood sections because that is where they talk about the themes of the book. It's where they talk about things that matter as we really start to try and get to the heart of who these people are.
01:33:49
Speaker
Right. The heart of who you are is not necessarily the same as the experiences you've had um or in fact none of these three people Mordy and Anne and Hume knows who they really are in the wood sections and yet they are all their truest selves or not even that their best selves the people they most want to be yeah it's who they become in the wood yeah meanwhile Meanwhile, this is the thing. So we've had a wood scene and we're like, okay, so part five is a wood sequence. No, we go straight back to space opera. Chapter two, we're with the Rainers.
01:34:23
Speaker
um And they discover... The Reyners discover that a security team has gone into the wood and not come out again. And they notice that the date is after Reynor 4 went in. So they're like, right, fuck it, 4's failed. 5, you go. People right and left. People keep going in. They're not coming out. It's getting more and more people, which is within its field, which is irrelevant, as we will eventually learn.
01:34:49
Speaker
And then... So we've gone wood sequence, Raina's, and now we're in the castle and we're Sir Forze's point of view. So they've just gone, where's Raina for? Sir Forze in the castle was like, oh, it's a tough winter. Why have we run out of food? And we're suddenly doing an Arthurian joke sequence ah in which Sir Forze is doing castle politics with ah his least favorite fellow knight, Sir Harrison.
01:35:13
Speaker
So Harrison, rather, it's spelled a little bit differently. Harrison Scudamore is the awful clerk who turned on the machine at the start of the story. We know he's awful because we actually have a little bit of Anne's point of view on him when she describes how he entered the community of Hexwood Farm Estate and how he was rude to everyone and told nice Mrs. Price, who always gossips, to shut up and homophobically kicked the little dog belonging to the boys who kick the keep the wine shop.
01:35:39
Speaker
And it's... Side note, I do love the detail of the the boys who keep the wine shop, who every time we see them are either cuddling or upset about their dog or fighting evil. Right, they are specifically the gay boys at the wine shop. Like she uses the adjective. It's not just inferred.
01:35:55
Speaker
But the I think Sir Harrison, I want to spare there a moment for for poor Harrison Scudamore, who is terrible. He's an asshole. ah But we also learned that he's 18 years old and just kind of bluffed his way into this job because he happens to be a genius with computers. I think this is another Seb situation.
01:36:13
Speaker
this is is what This boy is under the impression he's the protagonist. He's like, okay, I turned on the cool machine. I made all this happen. I gave the machine the scenario I wanted.
01:36:24
Speaker
And now I'm a knight in a castle. And in fact, I'm Sir Kay. Yes. This is- we know that Diana Wynne-Jones doesn't like Sir Kay. Sir Kay is my Arthurian bias, so I pay attention to this. um she She talks about him as a bully, which is harrison Sir Harrison is, but he's also the person who finally stands up to Sir Fors when Sir Fors is like, we need a tremendous feast, and Sir Harrison's like, we have no food for feast. There is nothing for us to eat.
01:36:52
Speaker
Something must be done about this, and no one else has noticed it. And then they're like... Wait a minute. There are peasants. Peasants have to give us things. That's right. And we're going to have a raid on the peasants. And you, the reader, are like, what peasants? What village? There isn't a village. We know there is just this castle, right? What are they...
01:37:13
Speaker
Wait a minute. You have, and there is a really great joke where Saphors is like, our strength is as the strength of 10 because our cause is just. And Sabetha says, 20 men is what we have. Do I count them as 200? Right, just imagine Colin Firth saying that lie.
01:37:32
Speaker
Honestly, I long for the TV adaptation of Hexwood. Anyway, so we then have... We've gone from the woods to the rainers to the castle and we're back to Anne Stavely doing her portal fantasy, walking past what she thinks is the portal signal, which is a yellow crisp packet in a tree and tree root, ah which is one of my favourite misdirections in the whole book. The yellow crisp packet means nothing. It is not the portal.
01:37:59
Speaker
There is no portal there. There can be no yellow crisp packet in a magic wood. She thinks if I'm seeing trash, litter on the ground, it means I'm in the real world where there's litter on the ground in our stupid little wood that you can see all the way, you know, that isn't a great magic wood.
01:38:14
Speaker
And if I can't see any trash on the ground, then I'm in the great magic wood. But in fact, the trash on the ground exists in the magic wood. The like everything that you think is not part of magic is all encompassed by the magic.
01:38:27
Speaker
Right. The magic is everywhere. The magic is here and now. There is no getting away from the magic, which is taking us all the way back to eight days of Luke. um And magic is as every day as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
01:38:40
Speaker
Yes. Right. And then this section, we have ah what seems to be a pretty standard ah adventure in the wood. This time, Mordian is trying to do some magic to Hume and he accidentally blows up the river and nearly gets Anne. And Hume discovers in the rubble that's been created a sword in a stone.
01:39:00
Speaker
yeah And we're like, do you remember we're doing Arthuriana? And we're doing we're doing, specifically we're doing T.H. White. Here we have the moment where the boy pulls the sword out of the stone. And I really enjoy this.
01:39:12
Speaker
I think, Mordian said, that the Banas is challenging us. Either I try to change its scenario or it will play it out as I said I would in the beginning. There's writing on the sword, Hume says.
01:39:23
Speaker
In Hermitic script, I thought it was just marks at first. It says, he held the blade out to get the shadows across the marks. It says, I am made for one. He turned the sword gently, awed by it and afraid of dropping it.
01:39:35
Speaker
And on this side it says, Who is Worm's Bane? I was afraid it might say something like that, Mordian said. a hu Destiny appears to be coming for Hume. Destiny says, yes, you are going to kill dragons for the king or kill rainers for Mordian. Are these the same thing? Not clear.
01:39:56
Speaker
You are a weapon. Here's what you need to do the job you were created to do. ah Mordian, with increasing horror, realizing either he has to do something or Hume's going to be stuck being what he was created to be.
01:40:10
Speaker
Right. And just before this, we've had another sequence of Anne and Morty and Anne saying to Morty and why do you always think of Hume and never of yourself? Morty and saying, because I want to be free, too. And I don't want to think about this.
01:40:23
Speaker
So, again, we're we're looking at the parent and the child. One of them, there there is no freedom within a parent child relationship, right? There is always this bond. And there is when you are a parent, you are going to to have to do things that you don't want to do. You can't experience freedom in that way.
01:40:40
Speaker
But that's better than launching your child at something instead of yourself. But Mordian is also the child who is a weapon, and we know this now.
01:40:51
Speaker
So when he says, I want to be free too, we're looking at these reflections as the way that these are mirror images of each other. Right. Mordian's...
01:41:02
Speaker
So Hume is the enemy of the Reyners whom Mordian and all the other servants are descended from. So Mordian is sort of a reflection in multiple ways, including like a a literal descendant of Hume, um which I think is important. And it's the way that all these parent-child relationships bend back on each other and mirror each other and you find yourself trapped in the same patterns as the generation before you, whether you meant it or not.
01:41:29
Speaker
A thing that actually I meant to point out in part four and didn't, the Reyners have cyborgs, half-life robots guarding the doors of their their council chamber who are former servants um who have been turned into these things, these statues. And when they hear the Reyners discussing Mordian, they become agitated because they are in fact Mordian's parents.
01:41:52
Speaker
Yes. It's just just there there's this parent to child trauma going generation after generation. And the question is, how do you break that cycle and who breaks that cycle? And the answer is, it has to be the parent and not the child. Hume will do what he was made to do unless someone else changes the story.
01:42:14
Speaker
After all this, Anne walks out of the wood. worried about, she looks, you know, she she passes Martin going the other direction. She sees thinks about her own family and she says, but Martin seemed to belong to the real world somehow, like mum and dad.
01:42:27
Speaker
They all three struck Anne as being immune to the baddest. This is the funniest thought Anne has had in the entire book. So, ah but Martin has once again seen something strange happening going into the wood. He says he saw a load of men looking heavily armed. He's pretty sure they had guns looking very purposeful marching into the woods. And we're like, wait, we know this one. This must be the security team the Reigners were talking about. Where did they go?
01:42:52
Speaker
and pretty much as we're having this thought, out of the woods comes charging a loads of knights in shining armor. here to raid the village for food. Yep. This village. The 1993 housing estate full of the peasants who owe tides to the castle.
01:43:09
Speaker
All the story worlds are colliding. And it is not funny. It is not cute. This is a lot of heavily armed men. here to use the power of violence against you on behalf of the state.
01:43:23
Speaker
yeah Which is the same thing as the Rayna Hexwood security team with their guns, which is the same thing as Mordian, the servant assassin with his is ah magical killing. Which is the same thing as Hume killing a helpless rabbit that happens to be caught in a trap because he's imagining killing it as a dragon for the state.
01:43:43
Speaker
Right. Which is the same thing as Hume receiving a magical sword that tells him that he is supposed to go do violence and whom to enact it upon. Right. Violence is a property of the state. Your knight in shining armour, this lovely hero that you can do the propaganda about and say you have to be a noble and honourable knight and do as you're told for the king who will be a good king. or These are all the same kind of guy.
01:44:11
Speaker
The knight in shining armour, the security man with the gun, the assassin, the child attacking a helpless rabbit. These are all the same thing, which is a monstrous injustice and cruelty.
01:44:26
Speaker
And what the knights in shining armour do in the village is cruel. Yes. So they come charging in and they steal everything. So Anne's family runs a greengrocer's shop, right?
01:44:37
Speaker
They come in and they take all the food, but also they attack Anne's father and they threaten him with violence and then they actually use violence on him and Sephor's, it's very clearly Sephor's, with the shield showing the sign of the rainers on it, holds his sword to Anne's father's throat and he says to Anne and her mother,
01:44:57
Speaker
If you do anything, I cut your man's throat. Yes. This also, I think, really importantly puts violence as in the the the arena of men, specifically.
01:45:09
Speaker
That's going to be complicated later, but in this scene, violence is masculine violence. Anne and her mother have picked up their heavy potatoes. They're going to... And the the sword is at Anne's father's throat.
01:45:22
Speaker
Clearly he is the threat. It's your man who who is at risk and who is the target of the violence. Women are for undressing with your mind. Right. And in fact, Sephor looks at Anne's mother and I think it says, decide she might do if he was desperate.
01:45:38
Speaker
right Both Anne and her mother can see him doing this. And it is just almost almost as horrifying and disgusting as what he's doing to their home and to Anne's father. I think, hang on, I had a thought and it just went.
01:45:52
Speaker
You talk, I'll think of it back. um I think so. We're coming, we we set ourselves to recording sessions and I think we're coming to the end of our first one as in this moment where all the worlds collide, where we see evil space wizard surfors riding with charging in with his crew of castle- romantic castle knights on a castle quest to invade a normal 1990s green grocery shop and steal everything there.
01:46:16
Speaker
When we get to the next section is when we're gonna actually meet the protagonist of the book for the first time, although not the first time, and I think I don't know. I think that's kind of where i want to end for today, unless you remember what you wanted to say. remember what I was going to say. right Yes. because Violence is the as the province of men, right? Because what we're actually dealing with here is the heroic masculine.
01:46:36
Speaker
Yes. You thought Diana Wynne-Jones would ever leave the heroic masculine alone. No, she will not. ah She is interested in the relationship but relationship between the the the girl protagonist and the world of heroic men.
01:46:50
Speaker
What can Anne even do in this world of heroic men, which is to say a world of state-sponsored violence? And I think that there's something really important in that. Whenever Anne sees the castle, the knights, that this dream, this vision of chivalric romance, of heroic violence, she's always sad and afraid.
01:47:13
Speaker
She doesn't know why she's sad and afraid. but there's some part of her that already knows to be suspicious of this vision. And we're going to see why in the next chapter. All right. So I will see you tomorrow to do the rest of this recording session. ah Pick it up tomorrow. Bye, Becken.
01:47:32
Speaker
Bye.
01:47:43
Speaker
And we're back. Yes, for you guys, it has been a few seconds, but for us, it has been 24 hours, which we spent contemplating Hexwood some more. And now we're back to talk about the second half of this very complicated book.
01:47:57
Speaker
Yeah. All right. so part six. Where we meet Vierin Stavely and her no good, very bad day. Not Vierin Stavely, Vierin of Guarantee. Right, I didn't even do that on purpose.
01:48:11
Speaker
But yeah, part six, Vierin's no good, very bad day. But before that, we do actually have Reina V, who I deeply enjoy. So we are back in the space opera narrative. And the space opera, in some ways, I think is actually pure comedy. Yeah, even though it's full of horror, horrifying stuff, because it's just like the Reyners one by one going, gosh, a problem, I shall go and deal with it.
01:48:34
Speaker
And then they go and they fail. Reiner 5, I think, maybe does the worst that anybody's ever done it. ah Which is not really his fault, but like we've had Reiner 2 and Reiner 4 going off to the castle, and they immediately get ah you know sort of swept up in the castle atmosphere. Reiner 5, again, goes through the same journey as everybody else. He meets the same annoying, hyper-efficient secretary, and just like Reiner 2 and 4 is like, they should have killed this guy already.
01:49:05
Speaker
I should kill this guy. No, I'll wait and kill this guy later. This guy has now escaped being murdered three times. And gets to the castle. But unlike Rainer 2 and Rainer 4, he sees the shining holy grail of the Banas. And he's like, ah, this is a medieval AU.
01:49:20
Speaker
not going to get me. Not like those idiots two and four. Reiner 5. Okay, one of the things that has become clear from the Reiner plotline is that in order to stop the Banas, you need to enter its field and take physical control of the object that is the Banas. So you need to grab it wherever it is and stop it.
01:49:40
Speaker
And Reiner 5 is... I think is smarter than two and four. And unlike them, he doesn't immediately go, ah, yes, I'm in an AU and this is who I am now. He's like, I'm still Rainer 5, thank you.
01:49:51
Speaker
And there is discussion of the willpower it takes to control the Banas. And it's clear that Rainer 5 has more willpower than his colleagues and is able to identify what he's facing.
01:50:03
Speaker
So far so good. But he is operating, they are all actually operating under a fundamental misapprehension and this I think is kind of pointed out to us in the various discussions whenever, the reason that we get aside from the comedy of this one annoying secretary turning up over and over again, The reason that we get this discussion every time of the secretary being like, where am I going to put you down?
01:50:24
Speaker
How close do you want to be to Hexwood farm? Is again, because of the fundamental misdirect of how far the Banas' field stretches. All of them are like, I'm going to go out just outside the Banas' field and then I'm going to kind of wiggle my way in and find the Banas. The Banas' field is already here.
01:50:40
Speaker
The Banas' field is coming from inside the house, wherever you are in the house. Right. The Banners' field since chapter one has been stretched across the galaxy. Since that first phone call the hyper-efficient secretary made to the farm, the Banners is here. What is happening, and we have been told this, Diana actually plays extremely fair in Hexwood. She gives you all the information you need. She misdirects you like crazy, but technically she has told you enough.
01:51:09
Speaker
We have been told by Mordian back in part two that there are two fields, one belonging to the Banas and one which appears to be just a magical wood that's coincidentally there.
01:51:21
Speaker
And everybody keeps looking at the magical wood and going, ah, that's it. That's the Banis. Not true. Nope. The magical wood is its own separate thing. Nothing to do with the Banis.
01:51:33
Speaker
And it is pure coincidence that they are mingled up in each other. And all the Reynas, and indeed very nearly everybody, has mixed them up. And so Reiner 5, under the impression that he's being very cunning, is like, just outside the magical wood.
01:51:49
Speaker
No, no, no, no. He... he he He's well inside the Banas' field. He was already in its power. Yes. But he's convinced that he's on top of things. So he gets in and we're doing, let the Arthuriana jokes are coming thick and fast. So we get there and immediately he's met by some knights going, oh, thank God you're here. We can't eat until a magical one. The king has said we can't eat until some kind of ah wonder has arrived.
01:52:13
Speaker
um And he's like, all right, I guess I'll be your green knight or whatnot and come to the king's table and be your wonder. And immediately he sees that the king is Raynor 2 and Ser 4 is Raynor 4 and is like, idiots. Well, never mind. I'm going to get the badness and sort this out.
01:52:30
Speaker
And so the first thing that he does is he warns everybody about Mordian. He says, be on the lookout for the mad but for the evil magician Mordian, the enemy of your overlords, the raiders beyond the stars. Nobody likes that.
01:52:43
Speaker
Nobody likes being told that they have overlords who are raidar who are who are rulers from far beyond the stars. And then the Banis appears, and this is the Banis in full Holy Grail mode.
01:52:56
Speaker
It's actually, um I'm just going to read the description because I think it is really important that the Banis is showing itself as the Holy Grail. Five was aware of a hush first and then a sweet scent.
01:53:09
Speaker
It was an open air scent that seemed to blow away the heavy smells of the feast and fill the hall with an expectation of bluebells, budding oaks and willows, lichen on the heath and flowering gorse. This is all all wood stuff, right? You're going, ah, yes, magical wood. Uh-huh.
01:53:23
Speaker
As if all those things were just around the corner, ready to appear, there was singing too, faint and pure and far off. Very nice, Five thought. Pretty effect indeed. He swung himself round on his seat to see where it was coming from. A great chalice was floating up in the central space between the tables, shedding its otherworldly light on all the faces near.
01:53:42
Speaker
It was a massive flat cup that seemed to be made of pure gold, wrought in patterns of great intricacy, and it was covered with a cloth so white and delicate that it impeded the light it barely shed at all.
01:53:52
Speaker
The music passed to solemn chords. On the platform, the knight with the key of the sector controller was standing up to meet the chalice and his face was dazzled with reverence. So this is also a joke in many ways.
01:54:04
Speaker
Perhaps most obviously it's a Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke, right? Look at the beautiful cup. This is obviously the Holy Grail. It's the big shiny gold one. Obviously this is not the panace.
01:54:18
Speaker
But I think it's also worth thinking about what the Holy Grail means in the context of Arthuriana. And specifically in the context of some Arthuriana that we know Diana Wynne Jones has read because she put it on her book list for Fire and Hemlock, which is the ones in Future King.
01:54:35
Speaker
where the Holy Grail is the thing that is supposed to turn the violence of King Arthur's court, might makes right, into something pure and holy. It's to save the failing project of creating chivalry out of violence.
01:54:52
Speaker
And what it actually does instead is lead half the court to their deaths and presage the ending of the Arthurian project. Yeah.
01:55:03
Speaker
So I do think there is a ah comment here on this heroic masculine violence that was so much the focus of the previous section. um We're like, here, look, here's the justification for all of it. Here's the Holy Grail. Except that we know at this point, we know that the Banas appears to lie and cheat and misdirect. Something is not right And this is not going to be a a magic redemptive MacGuffin that fixes the problem of of the court violence.
01:55:32
Speaker
Right. By the way, I just realized I said Monty Python and the Holy Grail. What I actually meant was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke is going to come later. Actually, no, we've already had it. I'll come back to that.
01:55:46
Speaker
Okay. But yes, we have got both of these things ah in our thoughts, I think. and Anyway, what happens is Five tries to destroy the Banos with one of the cool gadgets he's got with him, which is called a molecular disintegrator, ah because he's from sci-fi, don't you forget.
01:56:03
Speaker
And there's an explosion. There's a flash and a bang. And Five's like, wait, the explosion appears to be happening to me. ho But Five is a person of remarkable willpower. So despite the fact that he has been blown up by a molecular disintegrator, he sort of pulls himself together, a wanders off, staggers off it into the woods and finds an abandoned cabin in the woods beside a stream.
01:56:27
Speaker
And it's like, all right, I'll live here. So we've got suddenly the other end of, if you like, the the Mordian in the woods timeline. We've now found this cabin empty.
01:56:38
Speaker
Where's Mordian gone? Where's Hume gone? We don't know. But there's no one left there but Rainer 5. Yep. yep We'll come back to that. Yes. Another thing I wanted to say, the Monty Python joke, which I actually ah picked up, was talking to Becca yesterday after we recorded I went, oh my God.
01:56:56
Speaker
Briefly mentioned in part five, so briefly, i think it's one sentence, we didn't even pick it up, is the first appearance of a character named Sir Artigle. When Sephorz is discussing all the problems faced by the castle, he's like, ah there's these outlaws in the woods led by that renegade knight, Seratical. And you're like, who?
01:57:15
Speaker
ah But of course, if we are doing English myth, English folklore, then yes, we do Arthuriana. Yes, we do dragons. But also, you've got to have your Robin Hood.
01:57:27
Speaker
There's got to be a guy in the woods rebelling against the evil king and waiting for the true king to come home. So apparently we've got him there. He's Seratical. But the Bennis for some reason doesn't seem to be collecting scenes from that part of the narrative. Right! Because he's so not appearing in this book!
01:57:45
Speaker
Exactly! The Sir Article joke when it lands is so funny. We will get there. For now, we're back in space opera. Five has wandered in, wandered out, been dispatched with incredible speed.
01:58:00
Speaker
So now it's time for the last two Raynor's standing, Raynor's one and three, to go down to Earth. Most of this comes, sort of slides in between the viewpoint of the two most important women in this book, Raynor three and Vierne of Guarantee, the costume worker who's in the basement the evil overlord's house. Sending them all bad outfits.
01:58:25
Speaker
Right. So, Reina 1 and Reina 3 decide they have to go themselves. Reina 3 attempts to protest and stay home and it becomes clear from Reina 3's point of view, she is the Reina who understands one best. She's pretty sure all of this has been on purpose. He has intentionally gotten rid of 2, 4 and 5. He expected them to fail. ah He's quite happy to see the back of these people he's been co-ruler with for a thousand years. is Three is not so easily disposed of. And actually i love one and three's relationship. They were once lovers. They once cared about each other. They now despise each other and have done for a long time.
01:59:05
Speaker
But we also know... They get each other. They get each other. But we also know about Three. Again, this is... You can sort of get the glimpse of a a past father-husband situation with One and Three because we know that One was already quite powerful and Three was a dancer.
01:59:22
Speaker
And when they started their relationship, He raised her up to power. She is much younger than he is. She does not come from the sort of halls of Raynor power that one walked when he sort of raised his rebellion and overthrew the previous Raynors.
01:59:40
Speaker
There is honestly so much implied backstory, specifically in part six, where you get the sense of a thousand years ago, Reina I led a rebellion against a regime that was very pleased with itself, ah destroyed them all, destroyed their descendants. um And all that's left is the great houses of the homeworld, whom Reina III hates. She hates all these people because their ancestors sneered at her when she was a lower class effectively I think she she was a sex worker I think she's a dancer opera singer this is a common euphemism yes but Rainer 3 despises these people she despises their descendants and you can feel
Reynor Family Complexity and Power Struggles
02:00:20
Speaker
the the bitterness the resentment that the Rainers have against this thousand year dead regime um which they rebelled against and won yes And the other thing, like it's one single throwaway line that we know that two that three and four are siblings. So you get this implication that one was like, hey, to his to his girlfriend at the time who loved him, do you want to come rule the galaxy with me? And she was like, yes. And can I bring my dumb as rocks baby brother with me?
02:00:48
Speaker
Yeah. And now. Which is cute. And now they all hate each other because they've been doing it for a millennium. a thousand years later, there is no shred of feeling left.
02:00:58
Speaker
in Raynor 3, 4, Raynor 4 or Raynor 1. It's all just turned in on itself and warped. And it's, you know, this is suggested again in just like a single line here, a single line there, but it's so interesting. Yeah, I think Raynor 3 is one of Jones's villainesses, but I think she's maybe the best of them like one of these we've seen it in say Dillion we've seen it in several places but these sort of hyper feminine evil women um but Reyna 3 fucking rules I vote Reyna 3 to rule the galaxy I love her except for the fact that she's also a misogynist. Oh no, she hates women, she hates everybody, she is evil. but like she has
02:01:38
Speaker
i think this is the first time her fe ah we've seen like this hyperfemininity treated as skill. Raider 3 has skill. When she decides she needs Earth costumes, she goes down to the basement to see Vierin who makes the costume joke and Vierin is instantly like, I cannot play a stupid joke on this woman because she's good.
02:01:56
Speaker
She will understand. She's like, what the hell do I show Raider 3? she's like, Vogue. I'll give her Vogue. They have this incredible conversation.
02:02:07
Speaker
It's so good and quite long in which Raynor 3 is sort of probing Vierne about, because what Raynor 3 knows about Vierne is she likes to play stupid jokes with the costumes. And she's the only person in the house that Mordian talks to.
02:02:20
Speaker
And Mordian at this point is they're all considering Mordian on the loose and very dangerous because they know that now that he's in the field of the badness, the badness can start to work at dismantling the sort of conditioning that he's been put under to make him absolutely obedient to the Reyners.
02:02:34
Speaker
So Reynothree looks immediately at Viren and is like, I can use this young woman and starts interrogating her about her relationship with Mordian in and around complaining and discussing about the bad selection of clothing that's available to them in to go to Earth in the House of Gertie, which it turns out all comes from Goodwill.
02:02:54
Speaker
So you have we have arrangements with various Earth charity shops. You're right, this is a Doctor Who costuming joke. Yes. So they have this conversation that actually tells you quite a bit, like everything important about V'Erin and Mordian's relationship around all these costume jokes.
02:03:13
Speaker
And it's like so tense because V'Erin is trying so hard not to get herself killed and not to give anything away. and Three is getting everything she needs to out of it.
02:03:25
Speaker
Right. Vierin completely gives herself away. And by the end of the conversation, Three is well aware that Vierin has feelings for Mordian and that quite possibly Mordian has feelings for her and that these two can be used against each other.
02:03:40
Speaker
yes So this is her decision. She's decided she's going to take Vierin with her to Earth as her maid and force her to carry the luggage. And this conversation also does a really interesting job of explaining to us what Vierin's relationship with Mordian is. Because like we see their conversations. They're cute.
02:04:00
Speaker
They're really cute. cute. It's the camel moment. Right. Mordian coming in to get his costume for Earth asks about the camel coat and says, what is a camel? And Vierin says, a horse designed by a committee.
02:04:13
Speaker
And Mordian says, do you think of me as a camel then? And there's an awkward moment because Vierin does kind of think of him as a horse. dont We know that Vierin loves horses.
02:04:25
Speaker
And also he has been designed by a committee of Reina's. So he wears the camel coat to Earth and that camel coat, which was key to the first description of him we got, was picked for him by V'Erin.
02:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, she she built that own that her own joke that she's going to catch later on in when when she, for having forgotten everything, sees the outcome of her work back on Earth. And immediately the camel coat catches her interest and she's like, I got to i gotta to follow that man. I gotta see what that man looks like.
02:04:53
Speaker
But also we learn that Dierren has been compiling lists of the people that Bordian has terminated. Raynor III keeps kind of poking at her about like, ah, yes, our servant, you know, he's killed many, many people. And Dierren's like, I do know. I have the list. like There's something a little bit like it's their their office workplace romance is adorable. And there is also something we see a little bit sort of fetishizing about the way that Vierin looks at Mordian. And patronizing. Yes. Because I think what' what's happening actually is that Vierin who has quite a boring life, she sits in the basement and she collects clothes. It's like, ah, the sexy assassin is here. Wow, it's so sexy that he assassinates people all the time. In fact, no, it's not very sexy. This is one of the less sexy things about Mordian. It's really be sad.
02:05:43
Speaker
and The things that Vierin is convincing herself are cool and exciting. Ooh, he's a secret agent who goes all over the galaxy. It's not cool and it's not exciting. So there's not, it's not a happy, like, it's not purely a romance, like they have this connection, but also there is this division between them, based on their difference in social status, and Vierin's misunderstanding of what Mordian is and what he experienced, what he's experienced.
02:06:08
Speaker
Right. Like up until this moment, exactly this moment where Reiner 3 is like, hey, you're going to come to Earth in us. Viren has felt herself very safe. her So she's from another one of the great houses in the House of Balance. it's I love it. She's a space princess. She is a space princess. And it is tradition that the heir of one of the great houses, ah one of the heirs always goes to work as kind of a hostage situation in the House of Balance. um So it was either going to be her or her hot and beautiful cousin will get to the hot and beautiful cousin. i
02:06:40
Speaker
Vierin is not hot and beautiful. There's no absolute wow wow here. We're done with that after Zilla. If anyone is the absolute wow wow, it's Death Head Morty. Very clearly. um But ah we actually get a physical description of Vierin that maps exactly to the way Hume described Anne in part three. Again, Diana ma Jones playing very fast.
02:07:01
Speaker
But one of the two of them was going to have to go work in the House of Balance. Vierin gets the pull and her father says, think of it as doing your bit against the Reyners. So she's like, ah, I'm a secret agent. I'm sitting here in the basement gathering information and, ah you know, flirting with the evil assassin. Which, by the is one more father putting his child in the position of being a weapon. yeah But I think Vieran's father, Huguen of Guarantee, is kinder about it than many other characters who have created child weapons in this book.
02:07:32
Speaker
Yes, and he's doing it under duress. It's quite clear that he doesn't want to send Vierin into this situation. None of the the how great houses do. He is being, once again, this is a relationship that has been warped by the Reyners and this is the system that they have put up, which turns every child into a weapon.
02:07:49
Speaker
There is sort of a pattern of of the system that is being that is in existence forcing children to become objects and tools. Right, and so Vierin discovers she's going to Earth with the Reynas, and she tells her family, and she she has to present it as a wonderful, exciting thing that's happening to her, because obviously all her messages are being watched. um And her father sends her a gift, which is a beautiful bracelet contain containing a gun and a message cassette.
02:08:19
Speaker
Yes. And then as soon as she gets back, so already, as soon as this happens and she knows she's going to earth, she knows there's, ah you know, when she receives the gift, she says she knows such a gift as this is this as this bracelet, as she and her father both knew was likely to be the very last thing he would ever give her.
02:08:38
Speaker
So it's quite likely that she's not coming back from earth. That is the first, but not the worst thing that happens on her bad day. Right, then her whole family gets arrested. Right.
02:08:49
Speaker
Immediately afterwards, she gets back to her room, starts to pack and is told that everyone in her family has been arrested, um along with several of the heads of the other major houses. So when she was like, I'm going to Earth and nobly sacrificing myself so the rest of my family can continue being at Revolution.
02:09:04
Speaker
No, that's that's done. There's nothing that she and no one that she's doing this for. They've all been arrested already. And then she has to carry all the luggage. Yeah, ah there's the moment when she finds out about the arrest.
02:09:18
Speaker
She thinks, how stupid, that business with the bracelet was just too obvious. She had a mad need to throw the bracelet away rush to Rainer one suite and shoot everything she met there or simply lie with her legs in the air and scream.
02:09:30
Speaker
Instead, she packed her bag and went through the pearly labyrinth to the portal when Rainer three paged her. I think what Vierin is getting here throughout the rest of this sequence is a little bit of the experience of being the Rainer's servant.
02:09:42
Speaker
Yes. She has to do as she's told. She's screaming inside. She's got no family left. She's got nothing. And she has no choice but to smile.
02:09:53
Speaker
Yes. She carries the rainer's bags and she tries not to think about the terrible situation she is in and how scared she is. and then And they treat her like furniture and they they talk very freely in front of her because she's not in any way a threat to them. There's nothing she can do.
02:10:11
Speaker
And then when they're almost to Earth, Rainer 1 sends Rainer 3 off to the bathroom and keeps Fjeren there and tells her the next part of her extremely bad day, which is exactly what he has planned for her when she goes to Earth. And she said he says, congratulations, I've decided you're going to be the mother of my next generation of servants.
02:10:34
Speaker
In other words, Vierin is getting co-opted into his evil wizard brub breeding program. And it's clear that this is not actually parenthood, motherhood at all. ah She'll be forced to have as many babies as possible and then she'll be disappeared and never heard of again.
02:10:50
Speaker
And the wording of what he says to her is actually pretty important, so I'm going to read it out. So she's sitting there frozen in terror, they're making small talk, and he says, I've been meaning to talk to you for a long time now, my dear, he said, and now is as good a time as any.
02:11:03
Speaker
Of course, you may have guessed, you are one of the young ladies I have chosen to breed with my servant. You and your cousin Ciri is a matter of fact. But since you are here, we will take you first. You are going to be the mother of my future servants. Say thank you, my dear. It is a great privilege.
02:11:16
Speaker
Thank you, sire, Viren found herself whispering. No, she thought, no, no, no, but she could not say it. Raynor One increased pressure on her, augmented the pressure by his instruments, and continued, The servant, as you know, is on Earth, where he seems to have become inadvertently caught in the field of an antiquated machine. When get to Earth, I am going to send you into that field after him.
02:11:36
Speaker
You are ordered to find him there and breed with him. Vierin found herself whispering, Yes, sire. Mind you do, said Raynor One, if you disobey this command, there will be painful consequences for the rest of your family.
02:11:46
Speaker
You are to go into this field and make a child with my servant. Is that clear, Vierin? Viren struggled against the force she could feel him putting on her. It did no good. All she was able to say was, what fun, sire, almost as if she meant it.
02:12:00
Speaker
So what we get here, first of all, is the enormous mental pressure that the rainers are able to put on people. Again, this is a glimpse from the inside of what we will never but we have not yet seen directly, which is how it feels to be the servant, mind-controlled by the rainers.
02:12:16
Speaker
Viren is just getting a crash course in this, in being a reproductive and logistical tool for the rainers. She can't scream. She can't express her emotions at all. She is forced to say, ah to look as if she enjoyed it.
02:12:29
Speaker
But also the exact wording of ah go into the field and make a child with my servant is quite important given the first section of this book. Right. This is in fact almost the first thing Anne did in the book was go into the field and make a child with the servant.
02:12:46
Speaker
in that not a sex scene. I think we described it, as we were talking about it, as a sex scene of sorts, but I think it's quite important that it's not actually sex. They have not had this coercive coupling that Rayna I wanted to force on them both. Rayna I clearly well aware of Vieran's feelings, of Mordian's feelings,
02:13:09
Speaker
wants to take it away from both of them because he is and this is really clear all through his section especially the glimpses of his point of view we get he is a sadistic and cruel person who specifically hates his servants the whole bloodline of his servants because of what they represent to him he wants to destroy anything good about like those moments of comfort which were the nice conversations Mordian had with Vierin in the basement Yes, he is specifically, I mean, I think this book is in its own way as much about sex as A Sudden Wild Magic, because so much of this book is about sex as tool and as about coercive power and breeding programs and sort of taking the the love and joy out of sex in order to make it completely utilitarian.
02:13:56
Speaker
So I think it is really important that Riharan and Mordian have gotten around this without sex, and instead are able to later on in the next section, bring, or I guess in two sections, bring romance back into the book in a completely different way. Right.
02:14:13
Speaker
I think it's, it's cunning. It's funny. It's, moving I think that the Reina one does not get his way in this and we know he doesn't get his way in this we've already seen the outcome of this psychic compulsion he puts on Vierin it is possible to cheat and I think the idea of cheating the story or cheating the expectations of the story is very important throughout Hexwood and cheating the narrative that the villains the antagonists are trying to force on her is one of the ways in which Vierin will eventually triumph
02:14:48
Speaker
Right. And I do think it's also really important that Vierid experiences this compulsion, though, because, again, throughout the first couple sections, what we've seen is the Banis putting the various people in which it's interested in the position of mirroring each other and of understanding each other's humanity by living through each other's experiences. We know that Vierin's feelings for Mordian were kind of a little bit exploitative, a little bit shallow. And in order to understand him, she has to really see it from the inside.
02:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, she has to be him. Yes. I'm you, you're me once again. This time she's getting it in a crash course. Anyway, the last thing that happens before they get to Earth is ah the long joke of efficient Secretary Geraldes is finally, finally concluded because Rainer 1 is not like the other Rainers.
02:15:34
Speaker
He gets there. He sees that Geraldes needs to be terminated. He kills him immediately. Right. It's actually very disturbing little murder because it's very clear that what Reyna I does is the same thing that Mordian knows how to do, which is kill with his mind. He looks at Géraldus, Géraldus stops breathing, and he's doing it as a lesson to Vierin so Vierin can watch what happens when someone is terminated so that she'll know what will happen to her family if she disobeys Reyna Yeah. And the word terminated itself is a it's a it's a black joke. Great. It's the very first section. You know, we get sector sector controller braces. I keep I forget what his real name is now ah talking about how you hear rumors of people being terminated from the organization. right It's the worst office environment there ever was. Right. I think it is important, actually, that the House of Balance
02:16:27
Speaker
It's framed not as a space empire, but a space corporation. yeah um The Reynas are Imperial God Wizards, but it's framed always as a ah massive commercial concern. And the the leaders of this massive commercial concern have no difference in power from Imperial God Wizards. It comes out the same.
02:16:49
Speaker
Right. They're imperial in the sense of the East India Company. Yes, fact exactly in the sense, because we know that what the thing their power is built on is they control the rarest resource in the galaxy, which is Earth flint, which they import from Earth. while lying to the earth people about how much it's worth and then make a fortune on the monopoly.
02:17:12
Speaker
So it's very much, in fact, I think um we get it explicitly in the text later on from Sir John Bedford. It's ah shells and baubles in return for, I think, priceless value from the natives.
02:17:25
Speaker
yeah So East India Company is exactly the framing. Yeah. So, Reiner 3 and Reiner 1 end up down on Earth and the last scene in this section gives us almost all the backstory that we actually get about Reiner 1. And it's amazing because it's, I'm sorry, I don't know if you have ever been in a like an English motel chain. eat has a little restaurant attached and you go down and you order the steak and chips and they bring it with really sad coleslaw. But like, it's that thing that that we've seen Joes do a few times. It was in a sudden wild magic of, I know we're doing a great big fantasy book, but I have a really specific bit of satire I want to do at the same time. yup um
02:18:07
Speaker
So Rainer 1 and Rainer 3, these Imperial commercial god wizards have dinner in the motel bar. the steak bar and they have the steak and chips and it's terrible and they talk about the evil backstory yes i think is this actually the first time that the name martellian is used i think it is so this is our first proper introduction to martellian who was uh rainer one before rainer one with rainer one it's implied that they were part of the same hand of rainers rainer one led the our current rainer one
02:18:39
Speaker
led a rebellion to dislodge Martellion, exiled him to Earth. He's been Stas for a long time, but not before he led two specific, distinct rebellions.
02:18:51
Speaker
During one of those rebellions, he was using the name of Merlin. Right. The other one, Wolf. I don't think... Yes, we do know that. Yeah, I think we do. I think he does give us all the all the names.
02:19:03
Speaker
Yeah. So I think we do find out here, Martellian, a.k.a. Wolf, a.k.a. Merlin, and you go, wait, wait, wait, wait. wait wait wait Especially if you are familiar with Jones's enjoyment of Wagner, Ring of the Niederlandons. And you're like, hang on a fucking second. So at this point, you're like, we have...
02:19:23
Speaker
We have all the pieces. We have all the pieces. There is this dislodged former Rainer, a person whom our Rainer hates, really, really hates.
02:19:34
Speaker
And we discover, I think from Rainer I here, we discover that in the course of his rebellion, Martellian bred up a race of children to oppose the Rainers, which is what Mordian told us early on. He's this is how you get round the ban. You breed up children to do your fighting for you. Yep. So this is what Martellian did.
02:19:53
Speaker
um And we discover that he's done it twice, that there have been two rounds of this and that the most effective rebels, Martellian himself and two of her descendants, one from each each rebellion, have all been entombed close to the Banas, using the Banas's power to keep them under.
02:20:12
Speaker
Yep. So these are characters that are presumably in play. We're being told that these are people who are there running around somewhere in the chaos that is Hexwood Farm, the castle, the estate, etc.
02:20:23
Speaker
Hang on, let me get the the ex exact... The two orange dots are the most troublesome of Martellian's children. I forget their names. One is from the brood he got when he was calling himself Wolf, the one who wounded four so badly when we brought in the worms from Lind. And the other is from the second lot when he was calling himself Merlin.
02:20:39
Speaker
And if you're going worms from Lind, you're like, as in a Lindworm? As in the dragon. we've got we've so we've got dragon fighting round one. that that Like this is Siegfried, right? yes At this point, we're like, these have got to be Siegfried and King Arthur. And we have Hume who has pulled a sword from a stone.
02:20:59
Speaker
And that sword says, I'm made for one who is Worm's Bane. So she just very efficiently did the two once.
02:21:07
Speaker
So now you, the reader, are like, well, Hume must be one of these kids right? Right? Okay and if you recall Hume's conversation with the but with Yam back in chapter two it is my understanding that you need help
02:21:27
Speaker
yeah And I am not programmed to leave you alone. What we learn at the end of this section is that the Banis has been, the way the Banis has been trapped here on this planet ah is by basically putting it around the the stas tombs and using them to trap each other. So the Banas has to be programmed to watch the stas tombs because these people are all potential rainers and one of the Banas' jobs is to control deselected rainers and the stas tombs are held in the field and everything's very neat and tidy. And meanwhile, the current rainers
02:22:01
Speaker
the thousand year old hand don't have to go through the election process, which i think this is also where we learned about being yeah right this is where we learn what the balance his actual purpose is. Like there's a lot of important reveals in section six. We learned the balance is actual purpose, which is to elect reigners. And that's the word choice elect as in reigners aren't just a thousand year God King. group they're meant to be changed every 10 years and this is the machine that forces your like space wizards uh obey the rules now the election process which they call an election appears to be uh the balance just means choose true it doesn't even have to do a vote it just means somebody gets chosen somehow yeah i think when we were talking about it you called this the one man one ban one ban is one vote yeah
02:22:49
Speaker
One Banas, one vote. That's right. Sets up a bunch of little challenges and at the end of the little challenges, it's like, right, these five, these are going to be our next 10 years of God Kings and everybody claps.
02:23:00
Speaker
And 10 years later, it does it again. So there's no, no one is actually involved in the selection except the Banas. Right. But that makes it clear what the Banas is presumably trying to do, which is choose new reigners. So everybody that's in the field now,
02:23:16
Speaker
is a new potential Rainer. All of these people who feel like their main characters, even though they're clearly not. Sir Harrison, Sir John Bedford, as Sir Bors, the gay wine shop boys. These are all potential Rainers who are being pulled into the selection process, just in case they're the ones.
02:23:35
Speaker
Right. So now we've spent like nearly 40 minutes just on part six, but in our defense, part six is great. It's vitally important. And I think at the end of part six, you're sort of meant to be, to maybe have started putting together what's going
Resolutions and Reflections on Identity
02:23:52
Speaker
on with Vierin. think yeah end of part six, you've put together almost everything except the one big reveal, which is immediately given to you at to start of part seven, just in case you're dumb, ah which is that Anne and Vierin are the same person.
02:24:05
Speaker
And we yeah get this through Vierin, like, at the end of her very bad, no good day, collapsing in the motel bedroom and listening to the recording on her cassette, hoping for a message from her father, and instead hearing herself saying, this is Vieran, this is at least the second time that I have despaired in the hotel bedroom.
02:24:25
Speaker
We've been here. hang on, we got the actual message? because I do have the actual message. She does get the message from her father first. She also goes through a round of suicidal despair, which I think she also needs in order to experience Mordian's situation. But then she says, Vierin. This is Vierin speaking. Vierin to myself. This is at least the second time I've sat at the in-bedroom despairing and I'm beginning to not quite believe it. If it happens again, this is to let me know there's something odd going on.
02:24:51
Speaker
The errand found she had sprung off the bed. Damn, Banos! She said she was laughing as much as she was crying. I'll say there's something odd going on. Four soundless voices fell into her head. It was like getting back the greater part of herself.
02:25:05
Speaker
You keep blanking me out, said the slave, as always the faintest. Do keep talking, said the prisoner. Go on with the story, said the boy. And oh, there you are, said the king. What happened? You were in the middle of sorting out what happened in the wood. And these are Anne's four voices.
02:25:18
Speaker
And Anne and Vierin have always been the same person. And we were missing the four voices in the Vierin narrative we just got. So we were missing the greater part of who Vierin is.
02:25:29
Speaker
And we were missing, you know, the whole space princess part from Anne's story. So we were missing the greater part of who Anne is. Anne is also very clearly not 12 or 14. This is an adult woman with a job.
02:25:41
Speaker
Yes. The bandit has been running these scenes at the same time. It's been running, it's been kind of playing out the Vierin Space Princess storyline at the same time as it's playing out Anne in the Wood. ah When Vierin asked her voices how long the last time was that she stopped talking to them, which we saw in context when the last time was she checked in with her voices, the boy says three quarters of an hour ago.
02:26:02
Speaker
In other words, Anne thinks, just time for the raid on the shops followed by the walk back to the motel with Wieners 1 in 3. So it's these None of these, you know, you read the, if you're putting the book in order, in theory, V'Erin's trip to Earth with three and one comes before everything that happens in the wood.
02:26:22
Speaker
But the version of it that we see, which includes no voices and just the facts and the important elements of the situation that the Banas is presenting to the narrative it's constructed, does not it's a reconstruction of what happened.
02:26:33
Speaker
It's not what actually happened, which happened before the beginning of the story. Right. This book is structurally insane. This is a compliment. Almost nothing we see is what we think it is.
02:26:46
Speaker
Our main character is not who she thinks she is. And we don't find out her real name conclusively until part seven of nine.
02:26:56
Speaker
it's' It's exquisitely dumb. But also, I think it's really important that in the Banas' reconstruction of Vierin, Vierin's journey, very no good, very bad day, she had no voices.
02:27:07
Speaker
But then we're given little glimpses of what it's like to be resisting the Reyners when you do have the the voices of other times and places in your head. And my absolute favourite moment is... her At the time when Rayna I was doing his very sinister, you must enter the field and breed with my servants. Do you understand, my dear? In Vierin's head, we have the prisoner,
02:27:30
Speaker
um who has described himself as imprisoned by the Reyners long ago and trapped, just says very scornfully, who is this baddie daddy? It's so funny.
02:27:42
Speaker
I think it's also funny that it's the prisoner who says this, given what we will eventually learn about the prisoner and his particular various little plans. But that aside... One of the things that we first learned about Vieran as a character, as distinct from Anne, is that she has this very particular and pointed sense of humor, which we don't see in Anne. Anne doesn't play mean little practical jokes.
02:28:04
Speaker
The errands only do this when they're very stressed. it's Not cute. um this is you know This sense of humor, is these jokes, is how she's retained her sanity in this situation. that's It's resistance. It's rebellion. It's being able to imagine other things and therefore see the absurdity of what's in front of you. And there's actually a great moment in part seven where Reyners 1 and 3 drag Vierin along with them as they go to examine the burial mound, which contains the Stass tomb of their enemy Martellion, which is in a place called Merlin's Lane.
02:28:38
Speaker
Yes. And they are walking down the road and Rainer 1 is passing himself off as like a kindly old man with a cigar in a fantastic suit and Rainer 3 is mincing along in her Vogue-inspired look with great heels. And Anne looks at them, Vierin looks at them and is like, they look completely ridiculous.
02:28:56
Speaker
And it's that ability to stand back and look at power and laugh ah which gives Vierin the truth of who she is. Yeah. So now Vieren knows just about everything. ah She gets a little bit of time to reflect back on her time of Anne and be deeply embarrassed about several of the incidents, including the underwear in a tree situation. At this point, Vieren starts thinking, I've never dared go near Morty and again, this is the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me.
02:29:28
Speaker
And then they all continue on
Final Discoveries and Relationship Evolutions
02:29:31
Speaker
into Hexwood Farm. This section is actually not very long. We get Vierin discovering who she is, we get the discovery of the empty stas tombs, and then they proceed on and the wood springs up around them, and they are all en route to the castle within the woods field, within the Banas' field, and everything is sort of in play for what's about to happen next. I will say there's a couple of really important moments in Viren's reflection on her relationship with Mordian.
02:29:56
Speaker
Yes. And when she talks about Viren had detected instantly that this servant found her attractive, unusual, though she told herself now this was probably only because she was willing to speak to him.
02:30:08
Speaker
That she had also detected a terrible, lonely unhappiness in him she dismissed now with bitter impatience. Pity. Pity was for happy people to look down on unhappy ones with. The fact was, V'Erin had come down from her high place, slumming, just like Rainer 3 on Earth, and decided she had a crush on the servant.
02:30:28
Speaker
On the servant, not the man. who And this is V'Erin coming to understand the unkindness of the way she's treated Mordian as the the thing that Rainer's made him and not the person he really is.
02:30:43
Speaker
This is, you know, I think one of the things in Diana Wynne Jones' successful romances, one of the things that I think she understands that is very important and very romantic, which is very important and very romantic, is to react one way to a person's appearance outside the role that they play, and then to sort of see the various layers of them peeled away and peeled down until you get a glimpse of their internal self.
02:31:07
Speaker
over the course of a period of time. I think this is one of the places that she's doing it most explicitly and most interestingly because of the ways in which we see Vierin and Morty and play all these different roles to each other.
02:31:20
Speaker
You know, they they are assassin and rebel. They are a cute office co-workers. They are a girl who lives in the house and a magician who lives in the wood. They're about to be a pair of medieval, you know, a medieval knight and his lady.
02:31:34
Speaker
and they They're also co-parents. that They're also co-parents and they're also connected with the telepathic soul bond from childhood. And they don't recognize until very near the end that all of these different relationships and different sides to each other they that they see are in fact the same and that they add up to a really complicated and interesting whole.
02:31:54
Speaker
Yes. So I will say in part seven as well, ah the entrance of the Reynas to the wood I find really interesting because Reynar one stands outside where he thinks the field is and sends Reynar three in first. ah He's just the most ruthless man imaginable.
02:32:12
Speaker
And he watches this woman who he he's had as his partner for a thousand years go in and disappear. And it's like, the field spread a bit in the night. I thought it would. And then he enters the wood. And just as we saw actually with Reina 4, he doesn't realize the transformation is happening.
02:32:30
Speaker
And we don't fully realize transformation is happening because he is busy thinking about how much he hates Martellian. Yeah, I'm going to read this section out because i don't think he's even walking at this point. He's standing, smugly watching 3 and Vierin disappear into the field.
02:32:45
Speaker
And then he did not see the trees appear behind him, softly springing into existence at intervals along Wood Street and standing in groves in front of the empty shops. For an instant, the shops could be seen in glimpses among the green branches.
02:32:58
Speaker
In the road, the trees briefly stood on mounds of broken tarmac. Then there was nothing but forest and old leaves carpeted at the ground. Rainer One paced on obliviously, breathing out smoke. He's got a cigar.
02:33:09
Speaker
Considering his enemy. he had never hated anyone as much as he hated martellion martellion had stood in orm pender's way all his life certainly throughout orm's youth maddening orm with his gifts and his looks his full rainer blood and the easy way the goods of the galaxy fell into his lap most maddening of all had been martellion's pure niceness far from despising the young orm pender for being a half-breed with an off-world mother and short and squat martellion had gone out of his way to encourage orm to bring him along in the house orm hated him for that worst of all it had given him enormous pleasure to cheat the banas at the selection trials to become a reiner and then to pry martellion out of office it pleased him to make martellion fight for his life and forced him to return vicious blow for vicious blow by the time he was exiled martellion had been forced to fight so hard that he was not nice at all
02:33:56
Speaker
Not anymore. This pleased Orm wonderfully, too. It still pleased him to work out his hatred on Martellion's descendants, on generation after generation of servants. Blowing smoke, Orm swung his head.
02:34:07
Speaker
That smell. Martellion's. Martellion was here in the wood, distant, but not too distant. He was here. All Orm had to do was find him. He swung in the right direction, farther in among the trees, across a dry break of brushwood,
02:34:20
Speaker
His long scaled tail slid round the trees after him and followed his great clawed feet over smashed twigs and flattened brambles. Right. It's the pure force of Rayna I's hatred for his enemy has distracted him from his own transformation into a dragon as he gets caught up in the Banas' field and in the wood. And it's very smoothly, very beautifully done. The shift from blowing out the smoke of the cigar to just blowing out the smoke as a dragon breathing fire. But it also, through that hatred, that little mini portrait of the how of who Martellian was, we learn that by the time Martellian arrived on Earth, he was as bad as Orm is. That...
02:35:03
Speaker
Reina I, Ormpenda made it his mission in life to make himself and Martellian the same. These two are mirrors of each other in that classic Diana Wynne Jones way. And they are both very nasty, very ruthless people who use others who have ruled the galaxy ah with terrible power in them. And you're like, oh, shit, this guy is in the woods somewhere. There's two of them. Yeah.
02:35:28
Speaker
Who make use of children specifically. Like that is the really important thing. The thing where specifically we see the mirroring of Orm and Martellion's choice of weapons. Their choice of weapons is their children.
02:35:40
Speaker
Yes, they create children and abuse them and turn them into something that can be turned on their enemies. Just as Mordian said he would when he created Hume. Yep.
02:35:52
Speaker
yeah Right, so we've got some evil wizards in the woods. One of them is a dragon. Mordian, there is ah also a sequence in Chapter 7 where Mordian decides to head to the castle.
02:36:03
Speaker
Vierin and Reiner 3 are in the field of the woods. Everyone's going to the castle. This is where the action is now. um and part There is i also, ah this is the point where the idol in the woods, the sent the part of Vierin and Mordian and Hume together ends officially Vierin runs back to the woods to walk to to warn Mordian sorry I just remembered everything and all the rainers are here do not go to the castle you cannot take on all five of them at once whoops oops oh she gets there and mordian is not there the only thing there is the horrifying zombie corpse of reign of five who has been dead all along but has so much willpower it takes him till now to lie down and give up rip to reiner five i i tell you what i think reign of five is actually also among many things that are mirrors for each other in thiss book i think reiner five is a mirror of harrison scuddamore Yes. The clerk at the beginning of the book who is a menial with airs above his station, ah brilliant with gadgets, orange hair, both of them are noted to have. And both of them ultimately, it is revealed, fully understand what's going on and believe themselves to be the protagonists, but alas, are very much mistaken. Yeah, both of them get some of the the worst fates in the book too, but we'll we'll get to Sir Harrison's end a little later on. First, we have to be in the castle with Vierin as- this is such a stupid joke, I love it so much- Vierin as lady-in-waiting to Morgan Latrey!
02:37:32
Speaker
Right, all through the castle sequences, since we started getting them back in part four, we are aware that there is an evil queen hanging around here somewhere.
02:37:42
Speaker
But where? Here she is at last, Morgan Latre, Reiner 3, who is to marry the king and the king really doesn't want to. There's something actually really fun about the way, what again, on a reread you notice this, that when...
02:37:57
Speaker
Four and five enter the castle and but five in particular notice like there's mentions of ladies. Five notices that all the ladies are unreal people. Most of the like the people that he sees in the castle are just kind of illusions created by the Banis.
02:38:10
Speaker
But there's mention of a beautiful blonde. There's mention of a queen. But it's not until Rain or Three and everybody else from Homeworld gets here to start filling out the cast that they actually become presences, that they become personalities. The Banis created placeholder people. waiting you know He created the the place for a queen to be and then waited for Raider 3 to walk into it.
02:38:34
Speaker
Right. Raider 3, as Morgan Latre, is up to no good, as you'd expect, and is plotting cunningly in practically every direction at once. And it becomes clear that one of the things she wants to do is kill four people.
02:38:50
Speaker
But it's not quite clear which four people. It could be the four knights who are the leaders of the forces at the castle. Sir Bors, Sir Four, Sir Harasun and Sir Bedifur. Or it could be Reina's one, two, four and five.
02:39:07
Speaker
Yep. And it's never clarified and I'm not sure Three even really knows herself. It's really not clear how much Three understands what's going on. Like, Rayna Five was fully outside the Banas' control mentally and he knew what was happening.
02:39:23
Speaker
Rayna Two and Rayna Four are clearly fully absorbed by it. Rayna Three? Hmm, somewhere in the middle. Somewhere the middle. um But what is clear is that the kind of scheming political mindset of the Raynor organization is fully here in the castle.
02:39:38
Speaker
And Vierin, you know, we've seen the castle as kind of this haunting emblem of beauty throughout the book, which Vierin was always a little bit suspicious of. And we have a full silver chair moment here of Vierin in the midst of the castle, sort of thinking about the illusion of beauty that the castle presents.
02:39:56
Speaker
I'm going to read it out. She recalled the first time she and Hume had seen the castle like a chalky vision across the lake that seemed to promise beauty, bravery, strength, adventure, all sorts of marvels.
02:40:07
Speaker
She had wanted to cry then too. Perhaps I was so sad because I knew even then that all that beauty and bravery simply weren't there, she thought, planting the first pin expertly in the waist of the dress. I just knew it was an illusion invented by the Banas.
02:40:20
Speaker
Maybe beauty and bravery are a sham and there are no wonderful things in this world. In any world. in any world tears got in the way of the second pin the erran had to wait for them to clear while she did she tried to contact her four voices for some comfort damnmit theeer and thought putting in the second pin and then the third quickly those four are good people they do exist it just shows you what this castle does and then suddenly as if her head had cleared she was quite sure that wonderful things did indeed exist Even if they're only in my own mind, she thought they're there and worth fighting for.
02:40:53
Speaker
i mustn't give in. I must bide my time and then fight. There isn't Narnia. There is. I love this because also like just as in The Silver Chair, it is that moment of this evil woman is making me doubt the existence of God. at that level oh oh my god she's so awful ah but also we were talking about this we're like you know the silver chair really has a lot of resonances in Hexwood it is the most Arthurian of C.S. Lewis's books but this idea of the rightful prince who has lost his mind and come under the sway of evil ah but also there is a girl child who will help him
02:41:32
Speaker
Vieran is always called by her four voices the girl child. But also, also, I think key, ah one of the most charming characters in The Silver Chair is Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle, ah who is a tall, thin, very gloomy, very weird looking, reliable babysitter. Is Puddleglum a Diana Wynne Jones sexy man?
02:41:54
Speaker
I don't think out. Once you see it. But also I do think Hexwood is the book that dared to ask what if Puddleglum was Prince Rillian? And I think it's such an important question. So good.
02:42:11
Speaker
And this is the so this is this the sexiest section as Mordian turns up and realizes that the castle is funny. It's funny, he can laugh at it.
02:42:24
Speaker
Right. And there's honestly, is it's a fairly straightforward narrative. Mordian turns up, passes himself as off as a wizard, ah doesn't introduce himself by his given name Mordian, which is a good thing because Reiner 5 told everyone to kill Mordian if they saw him.
02:42:38
Speaker
Instead he uses his second name, which is Agenos, which I believe mostly means agent in Latin, speaking of dehumanization. Yeah, but it's also, I think, Greek, agenos, of no race, of no family. oh And we have the great moment of Vierin sort of watching Mordian do the magic show and going, oh, damn, she thought, I'm in love with Mordian. Oh, damn. Maybe this was why that vision of the castle had once nearly broken her heart. She must have known then, as clearly as she knew now, how hopeless it was to love Mordian.
02:43:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's not. ah it This love is a very embarrassing love. She realizes while she's in the middle of fighting with ah her cousin, Ciri, to be Mordian's magician's assistant and just making a complete fool of herself. It's fantastic.
02:43:26
Speaker
Right. So various bits of castle plot happen. Morgan Latre is doing evils evil magic. Modian tries to heal the unhealable wound. Again, this is full Arthuriana.
02:43:39
Speaker
right He sees the unhealable wound and it's just a a ah bruise. Not even a very bad bruise. And he's trying so hard to keep a straight face. He's like, oh, yes, this wound is very grave. I'm sure you cannot marry your lady for another year. And he's desperate to go find someone to tell about it.
02:43:56
Speaker
And this is when he and Vierin actually comes together because he goes and he finds Vierin. He's like, oh, my God, I have to tell you, this is so funny. Right. And they laugh together. And that, I think, is the beginning of the story.
02:44:12
Speaker
the enchantment, the romance, the the almost the resolution of their love story is where Mordian and Anne discover what real chivalric romance is and it is sitting on a bench in the castle courtyard giggling together over how funny all of this is.
02:44:28
Speaker
Yes. And Like again, I think chivalric romance is exactly the right word, right? Like I think one of the points that this book wants us to look at critically is what is chivalric romance? What is chivalry? what is What are the ideals that are meant to be represented by this castle?
02:44:44
Speaker
And earlier in this section, we've had the realization that everything that is meant to be represented by the castle is false. What is true, what is important, the real thing that gives you beauty and strength is the friends you made along the way.
02:44:57
Speaker
oh So when Mordian finds Anne in the castle and they make a little enchanted world for themselves on this bench in the castle hall, they are bringing something true to this castle that has been entirely false.
02:45:11
Speaker
Right. There is also a really delightful moment where where she says something that struck her just as urgent. How old do you think I am? Mordian says, it's hard to tell. you You look younger in those pretty clothes, but I've always thought you were about 20. 21, really.
02:45:27
Speaker
twenty one really Do you know how old you are? No, said Mordian. V'Erin knew the servant was 29. Guess what? This was not a problematic age gap roman romance after all. They had normal people in their 20s. It's fully normal. They had an office romance.
02:45:45
Speaker
They were co-workers. Just because Anne appeared to be 12 and Mordian appeared to be about 60 for lots of the book doesn't mean it was true. So, I mean, Wardian may be subjectively 60 at this point. We do not know how many ah subjective years he lived through trying to raise Hume. But this is all running through the same little bit of space time, so it doesn't matter. It's not important. They're both in their 20s. It's fine.
02:46:09
Speaker
But I do think it's interesting in light of, I think you have to read this book against fire and hemlock a little bit. I think this is a rerun of the great romance, the person who understands you as you really are. And there's that part in, i think it's Colin Burroughs' words on his mother's work, where he says, you know, fire and hemlock is her best novel. It's about many things among them, her love for my father.
02:46:33
Speaker
I do think this one may also be actually about Diana and John. I don't know them personally, but certainly this is a book that is about the love of a tall, thin, charming, funny man.
02:46:49
Speaker
who you look at them and you just know a and who is a damn good father to your child to your sons at different ages and I think certainly it has to be drawn from that well like like you Jones writes from experience more than almost any other author I can think of she's constantly drawing from the well of real life yes and I think that must be in here And a man who looks at you, who Vierin is specifically described as short, dumpy, a little bit weird looking, unbeautiful.
02:47:21
Speaker
The first time they meet in the castle, Mordian looks her up and down and Vierin's like, oh good, he seems to like doing that. um A man who looks at you as if you are beautiful, whether or not that's true.
02:47:32
Speaker
Yes. It's very romantic. It's so romantic. It's technically romantic. I do think the other book that we need to read this against is Tale of Time City, because I do think the sort of unfulfilled promise of what if you are think you are a child, but in fact you are a very powerful space princess is fulfilled here in this book.
02:47:53
Speaker
ah Vivian Vieran. It's, and the way that, the Raynor organization interacts with its worlds is in fact explicitly putting putting into explicit words what is sort of implicit in Tale of Time City. Yes. And also, you know, there is overlap in terms of the like the Arthurian colliding with the futuristic, which we had in Time City. And I think the comedy robot man in the middle of everything. Oh, my God. yeah character I think Yam is Elio. I think she is, in fact, taking a second run at that book. Yes.
02:48:27
Speaker
What else was I going to say? I was going to say something important and I forgot it because I was laughing about Yam. Oh, yes. Various people in the castle start to wake up while they're doing this. So the whole time Mordian and Vierin are having their romance, Hume, remember Hume? He has become a squire in the castle and is training as a knight and he's very very happy and having a wonderful time and he's being trained by Sir Bedifer who we know is John Bedford the area controller of Raina Hexwood on Earth. Right and who is the one like the one knight in the castle who's really presented unambiguously positively every time one of our heroes meets Sir Bedifer and
02:49:06
Speaker
Bedivere, not quite the same, but clearly clearly intended to evoke, is a character in Arthurian legend. He is Arthur's sort of loyal right-hand man. um He's the character who sort of gets supplanted by Lancelot in later legends, or one of the characters who gets ah sort of supplanted by Lancelot.
02:49:21
Speaker
And every time they meet him, they're like, wow, what a nice guy. What's he doing here? Sir Forrest is always coming up with incredibly stupid plans. And every time Sir Beddifer is like, must but that's ben why are we doing this? this is Also, this is the point where Vierin accidentally shakes Sir Beddifer out of the Bannis haze and reminds him of who he is. And it's, ah I was asking your robot, did you say the word was, Sir Beddifer said, whether it thought there was any truth in what that mad monk came in in here and told us. You know, he said we have rulers beyond the stars or some such rubbish, called them rainers and said they ruled Earth. Now you're Robert, man.
02:49:57
Speaker
But it's true, V'Erin said without thinking. There are rainers, but they don't rule, they exploit. They take flint from Earth that's so valuable you wouldn't believe and pay nothing for it and keep Earth primitive on purpose.
02:50:10
Speaker
Rainer Hexwood Earth sells guns to the natives. Oh no, we don't, Sir Benefit answered, also without thinking. I like to run a clean ship. Then he blinked and obviously wondered what had possessed him to say that.
02:50:22
Speaker
Uh-huh. So worlds are colliding more and more as our main characters, our Raina candidates, are increasingly failing to cooperate with which AU the Banas has put them in. Right. And this moment is also, this conversation is also what shakes Mordian, unfortunately, again.
02:50:41
Speaker
a little bit more to who he really is which is something that he's been saying throughout the book again and again whenever Vierin presses him on something I don't want to think about this I don't want to think about that i don't don't ask me about that right ah because he is saddest saddest trauma muppet and he doesn't want to think about oh my no one has more man pain than Morgan so real quick what happens at the end of this section is Morgan Latrey the banners appears to Morgan Latrey and says here is a poison that you can use to turn their enemies into their true forms There's a tournament at the tournament. We've missed the dragon.
02:51:15
Speaker
We've missed the dragon, the first dragon. Sorry, because this is the death of fours, which I think is great. Yes. So during all this, the castle sends out a force to attack the outlaws. And we know now the outlaws are being led by two villains, One of them Sir Artigle, Sir not appearing in this book, and the other one a greengrocer named Stavely. And you're like, wait, Anne's dad? Wait, is that Anne's actual dad? Yes, that was Anne's actual dad the whole time. So the Reiner Rebellion from Homeworld is still happening here on Earth. And all these great and powerful figures from the alien planet have been brought down to Earth to cooperate with local Earth people in rebelling against the Reiners. And also Sir Artigle is there.
02:51:56
Speaker
And every time Fyarin looked at her parents and was like, yeah, that's real. That's Anne looked at her parents and was like, that's real. That's true. I can count on them. She was right. But then who the hell is Martin? Because Fyarin doesn't have a brother. There are no male children in the house of Martin. But there's this great moment where in the middle of ah the castle's attack on the outlaws, somebody shouts, Dragon.
02:52:20
Speaker
Dragon! And Orm is there. And everybody runs for it because this is a giant dragon. Don't try to fight it. Except for Sephorz, whose good qualities remain the qualities of the heroic masculine. He's violent. He's brave. He'll try anything. ah He's proud. He won't back away. So Sephorz charges straight at the dragon. and gets immediately crisped and the dragon ormpender reina one kills him beheads him and eats the head yep delicious and that's the end of reign of four so two down and the two down fours and five didn't no one even had to kill them they did it to themselves i mean i guess orm did kill fours but basically he did it to himself yeah you didn't have to run straight at the dragon that was your own idea But right, end of the end of the story, end of part eight, rather. Everyone at the cast like, oh no, a dragon. How terrible. What are we going to do?
02:53:17
Speaker
And then... ah Morgan Latre has got her sorry it's really hard to keep track of how much plot is happening in this book everything happens in 8 and 9 and as is classic in a Diana Wynne Jones book suddenly all kinds of things are happening at once everything happens so much right so Morgan Latre's got her magic poison which he's using to destroy she says my old enemy who's risen from the grave and for some reason she seems to think this is Mordian and we're like shouldn't that be Martellian Martellian was the one she was seemed to be really scared of when she was talking about with Rayna I. But as has often happened in this book, Mordian and Martellian seem to have been confused, mixed up. Standing in for each other. Swap places. so
02:54:00
Speaker
Morgan Lattray throws this poison onto Mordian. She actually gets Ser Bors to give it to Mordian. She goes to Ser Bors and says, you're a godly man, give this to one we know works for the devil.
02:54:11
Speaker
And Ser Bors identifies Mordian as one who works for the devil because Ser Bors is saintly and believes in the power of the Reyners as almost a religion. So he's the one who throws it at Mordian and turns Mordian into a dragon.
02:54:26
Speaker
And it's because actually he sees Mordian talking to Martin, who's one of the outlaws. Yes. Question, martin who the hell is Martin? Martin has come here. Martin, Anne's little brother, has come here to be like, hey, Vierin, why are you in the castle when our whole family is out there fighting with the outlaws? You should go fight with the outlaws.
02:54:43
Speaker
Vierin is, of course, in the castle because she's undercover in the House of Balance. She is playing the exact same role of being forced to be in the House of the Enemy. But they want her home. But then they see Martin and everyone's like, oh my god, an outlaw lad. This man works with Robin. This child works with Robin Hood. And Mordian tries to get him to safety.
02:55:00
Speaker
He tries to do it non-violently. He's like, great, I'm going to have this fight, but I'm not going to kill anybody. No more killing ever again. And then unfortunately he gets turned into a dragon. Right.
02:55:11
Speaker
And that is the end of part eight. Part nine! final section of Hexwood! My god, what a book! We now go into what I can only describe as the full man pain. Oh my god, the diamond spikes of man pain! It's so good because it has been earned. Here is the thing, I actually love high melodrama. I love it when a sexy man is very, very, very sad and has the worst backstory in the universe. But you gotta earn that shit! You can't just show me any random guy and say he's so sad. You've got to make me sad about him for 400 pages first and then I go, oh my god, and his backstory is so awful. Exactly. This is where, you know, this is maximalist. Like A Sudden Wild Magic is maximalist. Morphin's backstory is maximalist. But unlike Harrell in A Sudden Wild Magic, who shows up and we're like, well, I guess your situation is terrible, but we've known you for two minutes. We spent eight sections unpacking Mordian's trauma and now we're in it.
02:56:16
Speaker
This is also, and I do love this, like it is structurally mad to like right before the climax being, and now we stop. And we do a really, really long flashback.
02:56:28
Speaker
We will not be going on with any of the plot. We will not be discussing anything that's currently happening. We're going to introduce a bunch of characters you've never heard of before and we'll never hear about again. yeah um All we're going to do right now is think about how sad Mordian is.
02:56:42
Speaker
And he's so sad. And it ought to be a pace killer. But by this point, you are so invested in Mordian. You're like, God, oh my God. What happened then? oh and it's But it's also vitally important because it sets up, again, you know, this book is so much about resonances. It's about connections between people. It's about parallels between people, as all Diana Wynne Jones' books are. It's about over the course of this section, this unfolds not just the tragedy of Mordian's backstory where he was an abused, mind-controlled child who had five beloved siblings that he had to take care of. And then one by one, they all died in horrible ways.
02:57:18
Speaker
But it's setting up both the sympathy between him and the Banis as the Banis is sort of forcing him, walking him through this reliving of his backstory and saying, wow, that was terrible.
02:57:29
Speaker
I understand. I'm also a very sad prisoner. You and me are alike. And the way that we've seen the way that the voices, the connections to her four people, you sort of helped Anne and Vierin throughout the course of their various stressful experiences. And now we see what that looks like from Mordian's end.
02:57:47
Speaker
Because of course Mordian is in fact the slave who is the voice in Vierin's head. And Vierin has been to him the girl child who was his lifeline throughout all of this trauma.
02:57:58
Speaker
in a way that you know sort of unfolds on and really deepens what we saw in that glimpse of Vierin's voice as being her lifeline throughout the worst day of her life. Right. I think important as well is that when Mordia meets Vierin in person in the House of Balance, he recognizes her almost at once. He knew she was the girl child.
02:58:18
Speaker
She didn't see the slave. um So like in terms of their unequal, misunderst ah their unbalanced relationship, It was, in fact, Vierin's condescension, her pity that kept her from truly understanding him. Because Mordian saw her more clearly, he recognized her for like this voice in his soul that he's had all along.
02:58:40
Speaker
And she is. So we learn throughout that because of the the training and the sort of horrible things that have been happening to Mordian's head, Mordian couldn't hang on to all five of his voices. He had to pick one.
02:58:51
Speaker
The other voices, you know, the the prisoner, the boy and the king have been shut down. They did do an important thing for him. He describes this as, ah you know, so he defends these children. the ban is ah He has these five siblings.
02:59:05
Speaker
He takes care of them. He protects them from the terrible training. And the Banas asked him, why did you do that? What made you understand that you had to, like, given this horrible childhood, that you had to protect the other children in your care?
02:59:17
Speaker
And Mordian says somebody has to. um But what he thinks is the reason that he was able to was not so much that he was taller and cleverer, which was not fair anyway, but because there were three voices that sometimes spoke in his head, they told him that what was happening was wrong.
02:59:31
Speaker
Better still, they made him aware of wider, happier worlds than the six children knew. Mordian, with intense excitement, learned that these voices came from people many light years away, and that he was speaking with people whose voices had set out for his mind centuries before.
02:59:44
Speaker
I think what Morty is describing is reading. Yeah, this is voices speaking to you across time and space, giving you a sense of wider and different, more wonderful worlds than you know. Yeah, this is reading books.
02:59:57
Speaker
Giving you an ethical understanding of your world, which is something that you shouldn't really have based on, you know, for Morty, there is no way that he should have an ethical understanding of the world. He's been given no framework for an ethical understanding of the world that isn't obey the rainers, please the rainers.
03:00:13
Speaker
But he has these voices that have given him a framework and that allows him to build on it and share that framework with the other children in his life. This is a reflection again of Viren in the castle saying, if there's nothing good, if there's there's nothing good in the world, I have these voices in my head that tell me there is something, there is something that's good. There is something that's worth believing. in yes Man, it's just... I just love that insight, Becca. That's so good.
03:00:40
Speaker
That's a good one. When you're good, you're really good. Same as it. ah But the ending of the Mordian tragic flashback, which we won't go into depth on, but it's super, super sad. ah It's so, so bad. It's so awful.
03:00:55
Speaker
ah He's been treated so horribly. Is Mordian recognizing that the Anne, the Vierin he knows is someone he loves? And just like V'Erin going, well, buddy, it's impossible.
03:01:07
Speaker
And what he says, she was heir to the house of guarantee and Mordium was the servant. The gulf between them was full of blood and impossible. You've got to earn a line like that.
03:01:21
Speaker
Oh, the drama. Oh, the high drama. The thing is that like, like how do I say this without being mean? I have read a lot of bad romances and this is because I love romance and when you really love a genre you read widely in it and some of it is crap.
03:01:37
Speaker
And I have read a lot of high melodrama and they're like the gulf between us is full of blood. Oh my god what a line. She has earned it. Yes. This is how Mordian feels. It is very very sad and you know what?
03:01:51
Speaker
He's right. It's fair. He's fair to be so sad. The other really important thing that comes from this conversation with the Banas is... So the Banas is, again, being like, we're the same, you and i I, like you, have spent much time closed down, allowed only to act as a security guard, to judge by my feelings you have been raging within.
03:02:11
Speaker
Yes, said Mordian, the worst was being forced to be so respectful. I'm surprised you picked that out, said the Banas. Try being sick every time you want to laugh at someone, Mordian said. i understand, said the Banas. I suspect you do not believe me, but I do.
03:02:24
Speaker
I have promised myself for centuries this joke I am now playing. I would have allowed myself to rot had I not. So, again, explicitly everything the Banas has been doing is a huge, nasty, practical joke.
03:02:37
Speaker
And that's what it needs to stay. Well, I can think we could argue whether if the Banas is sane.
03:02:44
Speaker
It needs to it needs that as an outlet in order to survive. And I think that Mordian, who could not laugh, who was physically forced to feel nauseous every time he wanted to laugh at the Reyners, who, again, As you pointed out, the Raynor scenes are comedy. They're so funny.
03:03:00
Speaker
And that's what makes it terrible that Mordian has never been allowed to laugh at them because we know how funny they are. I think that Vierin, with her sense of humor and her practical jokes, Vierin, the last voice that Mordian can hang onto in his head, has been Mordian's outlet. Vierin laughs because Mordian can't.
03:03:18
Speaker
Vierin plays these jokes because Mordian can't do it. Yes. I will say as well that this is, again, the parallels are being drawn clearer and clearer. um The banners have been clever.
03:03:28
Speaker
Even it had been Mordian who had decided to look after Hume, the banners had used Hume very deftly to make Mordian see that he should not train someone up to do his dirty work for him. And if this was wrong for Mordian, it followed that it was equally wrong for Rainer I. What mattered even more was that Rainer I had been doing this to children for generations and that the next children he would do it to would certainly be Mordian's.
03:03:52
Speaker
Yeah. So we come... back to that core thesis of the book, which is your child cannot be your weapon. Yes, and Mortigan has to live this from both sides. I mean, we've seen this is not a new thesis for Diana Wynne Jones, right? We've seen many children who have been formed to be weapons or have formed themselves into weapons, who are being pushed into futures that their parents decided for them, who are being, ah you know, turned, slowly turned into something that they don't want to be because of the adults in their lives.
03:04:23
Speaker
this is the first time that we're seeing it both from within as the child and from without as the parent. Yeah. So we still have all the rest of Section 9 to go and there's lots of it. Right, right.
03:04:37
Speaker
Mordian decides to go and join the outlaw camp because they are the rebels against the Raiders along with Martin because he's an outlaw and Sir John Beddifer rather than Vierin because actually it seems like Sir John will be more useful in rebelling against the Raiders I do think it's really funny that we get the gulf between us is full of gloved full of blood and impassable and immediately V'Erin turns up and is like, hello so dragon Mortian, I'm in love with you, yes I do know that you're the servant that have killed five million people, I don't care, here's a little kiss on the nose. Cute. It's cute. It's very cute. And Mortian's like, oh, oh, oh okay.
03:05:14
Speaker
Right, so Mordian heads off to the outlaw camp. The minute he's left the castle, out comes Orm. Orm, remember? Orm, Reinawan, is looking for his enemy, Martellian, and believes him to be in the castle.
03:05:29
Speaker
At the outlaw camp, let's take a minute at the outlaw camp, because this is where, for the first time, we meet Sir not appearing in this book, Sir article. that Tall, well-muscled man with shrewd eyes.
03:05:40
Speaker
And as soon as Sir Article and Mordian meet, they recognize each other. And Mordian explains to the outlaws, who are all high-ranking people in the at homeworld, No, they're not. They are mostly high ranking people he recognize from homeworld, but some of them are just earth people from the from the housing estate.
03:06:01
Speaker
And I do think it's important that although we've seen mostly masculine violence in the outlaw camp where everything is egalitarian Robin Hood, there are women in positions of leadership, there are gay wine shop boys in positions of leadership.
03:06:12
Speaker
there you know it's It seems to be like a very sort of equal opportunity situation for rebellion. I think this is important, actually, because what the Banas has done is put these great powers from an alien world together with the exploited natives of Earth and said, you guys are the same. Like the Banas is doing a lot of everybody getting their rightful comeuppances here and no one's exempt even these very minor characters.
03:06:37
Speaker
Yes. and It has forced these like important and powerful people from the homeworld to go through the experience of having their shops raided by knights in armour. Yes, exactly. they are They have become the exploited villagers and they are not going to take it anymore in the same way that the Earth natives who have now understood that they're being exploited are not going to take it anymore.
03:06:57
Speaker
So everything's well in Robin Hood camp, except now that Mortian has explained that he's the servant they all want to kill him. But Sir Artigle says, wait, this man and I have known each other on the level of souls where one mind knows another's true nature, and I can thereby assure you there is nothing to hate or fear in him.
03:07:12
Speaker
ah This is the king. We've met the king. He's been here the whole time. He has made many of the best jokes in this book, in fact. He's been just off page. So we are up to three out of five of these telepathic voices. We have the girl child, the slave and the king. and this point, we're like, where are the other two? Who are the other two? Surely she can't produce any more new characters at this point.
03:07:36
Speaker
All right, now we can go back to the castle and the dragon. Okay, the thing is at the castle, right? Everybody inside the castle is like, oh no, there's a dragon because they all saw Mordian transform. Somebody has to kill the dragon. And who shows up but the brave young squire Hume, who's always been obsessed with being a knight killing dragons for the king. Right. And he goes, please. Before that though, Sir Harrison meets his fate. Poor Sir Harrison sees the dragon, sees Sir Forz get eaten by the dragon, and then, as far as everyone else in the hall could see, Sir Harrison appeared to go mad. He shook his fist up the ceiling. You there, he shouted. Yes, you. You just stopped this. All I did was ask you for a role-playing game. You never warned me I'd be pitched into it for real.
03:08:14
Speaker
And I asked you for hobbits on a grail quest, and not one habit have I seen. you hear me? ah He stared at the ceiling for a while. When nothing happened, he shook both fists upward. I order you to stop, he yelled.
03:08:26
Speaker
His voice cracked high, almost into a scream. The sound seemed to bring Sir Harrison to his senses a little. He glared around the hall. And you're all figments, he said. My figments. You can just carry on playing by yourselves.
03:08:37
Speaker
I've had enough. And then he immediately storms out and gets eaten by the dragon. What I think is important about this outburst, aside from it being really funny, is that the last thing that her Sir Harrison says is he looks round the hall. And again, this is a scared 18 year old kid who wanted hobbits on a grail quest. Like, he was annoying. But I don't think he deserved to get killed and eaten by a dragon.
03:08:57
Speaker
But I think that his cardinal sin within the book is looking around at all these people and saying, none of you are people. You're all figments of my imagination. I can't treat you as people, and I haven't been treating you as people. And although he recognizes that the Banas field is false, he doesn't recognize what within it is true, and I think that dooms him.
03:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think you are right. And specifically, he doesn't realize the dragon is true and could actually eat him. Yes. And Sir Harrison, I think, is quite important in that. So what the Banis says kicked all of this off is that someone with rain or blood needed to enter his field in order for him to start start working again.
03:09:32
Speaker
And after a thousand years, Sir Harrison was the first one. Harrison Scudamore was the original protagonist of this book. He's not wrong. And there there is like there is a world in which Harrison, in fact, eventually wins the game and becomes one of the next ah Hand of Reyners, which would be really funny.
03:09:51
Speaker
it would be but I think that's another way in which he is a parallel to Reiner 5. Like, this is a potential Reiner. It's a real candidate, if you like, to be one of the Godwizards ruling the galaxy. But now he's lost. Rip to Harrison.
03:10:04
Speaker
Rip to Harrison. And Hume is ready to go fight the dragon for the hand of the beautiful Lady Sylvia. who is we have not We have not talked about the funniest thing in the whole section, which is what the hell has happened to Ciri. So Vierin's cousin Ciri, beautiful blonde cousin who's very nice, who she's mentioned a few times, and who has appeared once in the Vierin's No Good Very Bad Day section where she gave Vierin the bracelet.
03:10:28
Speaker
ah is an adult woman with a job. Yes, very smart. Head of a commercial accounting firm. Right. And she arrives at the castle and we get Lady Sylvia, who is, for some reason...
03:10:45
Speaker
a mindless blonde bimbo and you're like why has the badass done the bimboification of siri what is the story purpose of this no one understands veron you know there's the bit about how the banas can't make anyone act against their true natures and at one point viera looks at her beautiful blonde cousin and is like did you want to be bimbo fine is this like a secret fantasy of yours
03:11:09
Speaker
Honestly, that's as good an answer as any, because that is what happens. And Ciri plays the role of the beautiful blonde idiot Damsel for the purpose of the Arthurian castle story. Right.
03:11:22
Speaker
and Including being the person whose hand in marriage gets offered to whoever kills the dragon. And Hume, who you may remember, tried to snog Vierin way back, and Vierin was like, I have a hot cousin! And Hume was like, ooh, I like hotties. Hume is instantly like, me!
03:11:38
Speaker
I will slay the dragon to have a chance with this blonde. be like Anne is appalled is like, but you know the dragon out there is Mordian. And Hume's like, yeah don't worry, we're going to fake it so I can have a chance with the hot blonde. And Viren is like c incredibledible incredible. This is one of the moments where she is human. older sister. She's like, apart from the fact that you will have tricked her, which no one is going to like when they find out, she's nearly 23. In real life, she holds down a big post in a major interstellar insurance company, and she never did have any patience with love-lorn teenagers, and she doesn't even live on this planet. And Hume's like, I don't care.
03:12:09
Speaker
I don't care. And Vera's like, I hope Mortian doesn't come back. And Hume says, that sucks to you. he is back. And of course the the bitter irony here is that we the readers know the dragon outside is not Mordian.
03:12:22
Speaker
Mordian is still with the outlaws. He's managed to turn himself back into a human. And the dragon outside is Ormpenda, Rayna there to kill his enemy Martellion. And at this point we're like, where the hell is this Martellion guy?
03:12:37
Speaker
so excited when Hume comes out. And he says, look, it's my enemy. Come to meet me. Hume is Martellian. Hume is Martellian. I think we've talked about this before because it makes the book much more interesting to know that Hume is Martellian. Hume is the evil wizard who was exiled to Earth long ago and bred up a race of his own descendants to fight the Reyners.
03:13:01
Speaker
Yes. He is Wolf. He is Merlin. And... He's been living as a child, but he's not a child. He is, in fact, the exploitative parent. Right. He's has been forced to go through it. Yes, to live through the stories of both Arthur and the other child, whose name we have not yet learned. The Dragon Slayer.
03:13:22
Speaker
The Dragon Slayer. um And as he runs around, he's not... The thing about Martellion is he's always bred up other people to fight dragons for him. He's never actually fought a dragon himself.
03:13:34
Speaker
And he's not good at it. He's very bad. So he just starts running around in circles while everyone else, literally everyone else at the castle is watching. And like, huh, he does not seem to be killing the dragon.
03:13:47
Speaker
But I think it is actually very moving, the sequence of Hume experiencing, fulfilling what he thinks is his purpose. you know Mordian created me miraculously for this, Hume told himself. It's what I'm for.
03:14:01
Speaker
All the same, as he made himself move, he did not feel particularly designed for anything, unskilled, gangling, too young, too frightened, and above all, most stupidly in the wrong kind of armour.
03:14:13
Speaker
But he mustered what little courage he had left, and walked very slowly and steadily down towards the dragon with his sword held out. Yume is experiencing what it is like to be the exploited child, the living weapon, and it feels scary. And he hates it. He's doing his best, he's he but he doesn't know what he's doing.
03:14:34
Speaker
Right. And to know that you've been designed for a purpose and that you are not actually designed for that purpose. You know, someone someone created a role and created you to put you in it, but you are a distinct individual who is built in different ways.
03:14:49
Speaker
Yeah. And Hume has this dragon fight with Orm and it's great. It's a really good sequence. He sucks. he says he he key cut off He cannot fight that dragon. He does start remembering, you know, he sort of gets starts getting these bits and pieces of memory enough to realize instinctively who this dragon is.
03:15:11
Speaker
And the one thing that he does do is start hurling insults at the dragon. Big teddy face, fatso, half-breed, stupid old Orm. ah Right, these very cruel taunts which match exactly the bitterness and resentment that Orm felt for Martellian.
03:15:29
Speaker
who he's who he described as always so nice to him, bringing him along in the house in a way that Orm clearly experienced as patronizing, as condescension. And it's clear he was right. Right. This is clearly what Martellian did always think of Orm. Yeah.
03:15:45
Speaker
Like there was, again, the backstory is so juicy. Like if you look at this dynamic a thousand years ago, you can imagine... I would be team Orm. I'm like, yeah, rebel against this god king guy. sucks. Right.
03:15:58
Speaker
They've turned each other, I mean, I think that's actually what's happened is they've transformed each other into each other. Martellian made Orm an evil god king, and Orm made Martellian an evil breeding program wizard.
03:16:11
Speaker
But also, ultimately, Orm has made Martellian into a rebel against an ancient and terrible power. And I think that is also what Orm was. He was a rebel against yes the terrible power that was once Martellian.
03:16:26
Speaker
yeah They have fully swapped places. Yeah, it's great. it's ah you know you I think you talked at the beginning about how many levels of parallel there are in this book. All of the current reigners are paralleled and echoes and intertwined around all of the people the people in it in Anne's head and Vierne's head who are going to be the next hand of Reyners. And it's just so juicy and it gives you so much to to think about as they resonate against each other. gives you the bad end, right? It's this is how this could go wrong. This yeah this is what five people plus a thousand years of power can become.
03:17:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. ah So Hume eventually realizes he's completely doomed and yells for help and he yells for Mordian and Mordian comes to save him.
03:17:12
Speaker
Because Mordian is his father because he is a child and Mordian is his father even though we now also know that he's Martellian and thus he is Mordian's great great great grandfather. There's a real I'm my own grandpa situation going on here.
03:17:27
Speaker
Right, so Mordian comes to ah help fight the dragon. He does. I think it is actually Hume who does the killing blow with the dragon blade, the the worm blade. I am for one who is Wormsbane. Hume kills his own enemy.
03:17:44
Speaker
And I think that's important because actually this whole book has been about both Rayna I and Martellian creating children to do their dirty work for them. Hume this time is doing his own dirty work, killing his own dragon. Yes, but I think that Hume probably does not survive this fight unless he has this relationship with Mordian where he can call on Mordian for help.
03:18:06
Speaker
Which is important because what we eventually learn is that the Banas did not intend for Mordian to raise Hume. The Banas intended for Mordian to think he had created Hume and then just have a lot of nice me time in the woods to kind of get over his various traumas.
03:18:24
Speaker
It's only because Vieren shouted at Mordian that he had to take responsibility for this child, that Mordian then does take responsibility for Hume, that Hume and Mordian end up with this parental relationship where Hume can call on Mordian for help.
03:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, and that is what saves Hume. But I do think also the parental relationship is transformative and important for Mordian because it's what allows him to fully feel that he is a victim and not just a monster.
03:18:53
Speaker
Yes. That what was done to him was wrong. Exactly. Right. But then a whole lot of plot that happens so fast in this chapter. They've beaten the dragon and then Mordian's like, Reina 2 and 3 over there being the King Ambitas and Morgan Latre. So he like...
03:19:08
Speaker
leaps up and discovers they have turned each other into dragons by mutually poisoned wine cups no no big deal and he's like well i don't want to fight you two as dragons that seems like it would suck and he terminates them both so this is the last assassination we ever see mordian do yes he thinks about leaving them alive actually he's because he's like i feel quite sorry for them two seem so harmless then he's like no actually they have been deeply complicit in all the wrongs done over the years And they can't be allowed to survive. Unlike the past arm of Hand of Rainers, he's not going to put his enemies in stasis and relieve them roaming around to let them suffer. It's just done.
03:19:47
Speaker
Yeah. So after he's done that, he's like, i've got to teleport again. And he goes running after Yam because Mordian is the first person to realize that Yam is the Banas. Yep. And in order to take control of the Banas's field and end the whole game, somebody has to physically grab the Banas and make it stop.
03:20:09
Speaker
It's just a capture the flag. It's a full-on rugby tackle. And by the ankle. It's great. It's like, Bandus, I've got you. And the Bandus gives a full, beautiful villain speech on Orm Pender's death. And he says, I want you to know that every one of my 697 plans of action was designed to end in your death. And your death now comes.
03:20:32
Speaker
And meanwhile, while Mordian's doing all this teleporting and tackling and terminating, Viren's just running around with her little spy bracelet like... Let me add him! Oh no it's done, right now I'm running over in a different direction.
03:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, Vierin has actually passed her usefulness to the actual plot I think. Yeah, yeah, this point and again I think the most important thing that Vierin did for the plot was way back in the beginning.
03:20:55
Speaker
yeah At this point she's she's there because she's gonna be one of the next Reyners but she's not really doing very much. Right. So suddenly, the castle's gone and we're all in the Woodland Glade.
03:21:06
Speaker
And the banners is like, and now I will conclude my program and select the next hand of rainers. Yep. Just in case you weren't paying attention. And is like, alright, new rainer one is Mordian. Mordian's like, are you fucking kidding me?
03:21:21
Speaker
But reluctantly agrees. New rainer two, V'Erin. Rainer two is the economics one. V'Erin... has a commercial background, was raised in a great economic house. She's going to great at this.
03:21:33
Speaker
Right. I do really like that ultimately, uh, V'Erin's purpose in the next rulers of the galaxy is, is not about her wonderful insight or her close relationship with Mordian or any of like the romantic and exciting and beautiful stuff that's happened in this book. It's like, You have a degree in accounting. Somebody involved in all this needs to have a degree in accounting. And also you actually worked in the organization like you had an office job in the House of Balance and you can't just dissolve the House of Balance. Someone who had an office job in the House of Balance and understands like the payroll needs to be in there.
03:22:08
Speaker
New Rainer 3. Martellian! Evil god being used! Martellian goes, no, not again! well le's this is fair, because Raider 3 is traditionally the sexy one. And it becomes clear that a lot of Martellian's problem is he is wildly oversexed. um He has to keep having those descendants, right?
03:22:27
Speaker
Speaking of descendants, Raider 4? King Arthur! King Arthur Vindragon, remember all the way back? King Arthur in goal Napoleon in midfield no we've got King Arthur Arthur Pendragon is Reign of 4 and Sir Article says fuck off the worst to that effect right sir so we haven't gotten any scenes from the outlaw camp where Sir Article has been Robin Hooding around and it turns out the reason for that is because very early on the banist came to Sir Article and was like
03:22:59
Speaker
I would like you to enter my you know my castle realm, whatever. And Sir Arnigle said, fuck off. No, I'm not doing that. And kicks the banners out. So the banners has no footage from that area. Because Sir Arnigle has, King Arthur, has willpower strong enough to just keep the banners away. um you I do like imagining the banners like, oh shit, I've got to do an Arthurian castle and I haven't got Arthur. What hell am I going to do? What?
03:23:24
Speaker
And so real quick he has to sub in Raider 2, the most embarrassing Arthurian king of all time. So yeah, this was King Arthur. King Arthur immediately looks at Hume, Martellian, and is like, ah, Merlin. Here we are, here we are again, guess we both got got.
03:23:41
Speaker
Raider 5! Hey, remember Martin? Martin says, and everyone always forgets about me. And Vieran is like, wait, who the hell is Martin?
03:23:54
Speaker
And Martellian goes, Fitella. And at this point, you do actually need to know quite a lot of old English literature to have the faintest clue what he's going on about.
03:24:06
Speaker
I will do this backwards ahhu Because I tried to figure it out the other way around and that was tricky. And I was like, okay, Martellian has done two rebellions. ah In one of them, he was Merlin and the ah super descendant he eventually produced who was a effectively a reign of themselves was Arthur Pendragon. So far, so good.
03:24:27
Speaker
So this is Diana Wynne-Jones incorporating in her space opera backstory, The Matter of Britain, right? So that's one round of English myth and folklore.
03:24:39
Speaker
We've also had Robin Hood, of course, involved. ah But there is another layer of myth and folklore to draw on in the British Isles, ah which is the Anglo-Saxon Norse Germanic layer, in which the key exciting product of incest, who then goes and slays dragons, is Siegfried. Who is an old friend of Diana Wynne Jones's, I think. We saw him way, way back in Eight Days of Luke, her first real children's book, the figure of Siegfried as this very tragic, heroic dragonslayer with this complicated relationship with the King of the Gods.
03:25:18
Speaker
Siegfried has various ancestries depending which bit of the myth you're basing it on. But I think we want to go with Wagner because we know that Diana Wynne-Jones was very, very familiar with Wagner's take on the Niebelungenlied in which Siegfried is the product of the union of Sigmund and Sieglinde.
03:25:38
Speaker
So far, so good. I think Martin is ultimately Siegfried figure. But how she's getting there is via a very small mention in Beowulf, ah connecting Beowulf incidentally and by the by to the Walsing saga, which because it's old English, they're Walsings, in which Fetela is the character mentioned as the incestuous offspring of, they have different names in this one, there's something like Sigurd and Signe. Oh my God, they're all called Sig and there's all different etymologies. I sincerely regret not doing Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic University.
03:26:14
Speaker
ah But he is the half-brother of Sigurd, the Siegfried figure. And I think Jones is kind of crushing them together because what she wants is an old English name.
03:26:25
Speaker
Because Hexwood is combining multiple strands of English myth into one great big space opera backstory. Multiple strands of English myth that all have to do with weird incest. Like it's also not an accident, I think, that Mordian is going to an Arthurian castle, Mordian whose name sounds quite a lot like Mordred. Mordred.
03:26:43
Speaker
Mordian who is also the product of many generations of weird incest going back to Merlin and Arthur. Yes. I think you're absolutely right. Anyway, the point is, Martin reveals himself as this dragon slayer and he looks at Martellian and is like, Uncle Wolf. And Wolf is the alias that Woden uses in the Siegfried story.
03:27:05
Speaker
So this is the king of the gods. And Martin says to him, oh, you've got two eyes again. Last time I saw you, you only had the one the dragon didn't get. So you're like,
03:27:17
Speaker
Martellian is this power from another world with strange magical powers with only one eye. Right, he's Woden as well as Merlin. Olean god king with very dubious ethics. ah Yeah.
03:27:30
Speaker
Who has been placed again in this position of being a helpless child who has been given the swords that he gave to the children that he trained up to fight his battles for him.
03:27:41
Speaker
The... I think that Martin, even though, like Martin's really important in this book, even though he's not in it very much. Because what Martin is to, so Martin reveals himself and then immediately Vierin's parents are like, oh, but he's he's not ours?
03:27:55
Speaker
We liked having him so much. This relationship between Martin and Vierin and her parents is of a ah childhood, so Martin has, while everyone else was having to experience each other's traumas, Martin got the present of getting to experience a normal childhood, Vieren's normal childhood, in fact. Yes!
03:28:13
Speaker
This is sort of, you know, what we get at the end with Martin and Vieren's parents is a representation of parenthood and childhood as it can be, as something that is completely, it's not based in blood, it's not based in utility, Martin has Vieren's parents have no use for Martin whatsoever. He's just a random child that showed up and became part of their lives and part of their family. He's their choice. And I think that's important that parenthood is a choice in Hexwood. It was Mordian's choice to take care of Hume that changed the shape of the story. And in the same way, Vierin's parents choose Martin.
03:28:49
Speaker
They want him. They like him. They want to be his parents. And Martin's loving it. Martin's loving it. Vierin is ready to take on. She's like, all right, I guess I'm going to have to be Martin's older sister and keep him out of trouble. Like, that's just what our relationship is going to be. Again, a reflection of in the past hand, Reiner's three and four. We remember we're siblings and Reiner four is the dragon slayer.
03:29:10
Speaker
So something to watch out for there. Right. But there is also and when Martin is like, I don't know anything about anything except slaying dragons. Why are you making me a ruler of the galaxy?
03:29:22
Speaker
And the Bannus explains, it's because you lot all hear each other's voices telepathically in your head, which historically has produced very convincing hands of Raiders. And this is how we finally get the information that Martellion is the prisoner, which we kind of knew already. right It was pretty clear the prisoner was in a Stas tomb and there was enemy of the Raiders. you're like okay, well, it's got to be Martellion, right? Right.
03:29:47
Speaker
ah So Hume is the prisoner. And then Martin is the boy. Yeah. who in our first introduction of him, Anne described him as ah he lives right on the edge of everything and he's always having to help his uncle with his job.
03:30:03
Speaker
Now I do think, even though we end up with this very neat hand of Five Rainers, I do think that the Banas maybe didn't think that Martellion was going to make it. What the Banas says, when when all of this has been revealed,
03:30:15
Speaker
Hume, very embarrassed, because not only has everyone watched him embarrassingly running around fail to kill a dragon, including all of his descendants, but he injured Martin's sword in the process, and Martin is still making fun of him about it.
03:30:29
Speaker
So Hume says, blast you, Yam Vanus. You were telling me this time kill your own dragons, weren't you? Vanus says, that is correct. I see I made my point. I am glad to see it. Your rehabilitation was of some concern to me.
03:30:40
Speaker
I was afraid you had damaged your personality irretrievably in the course of your struggle with the previous raiders. Luckily, after all that time and staff, your body weight was sufficiently reduced for me to circumvent their ban, which I regret to say was imposed through me by allowing you to believe yourself a child again, and this in turn proved very helpful to Mordian." So I do think that the banist was looking at Martellian all this time like, I might have to sub this one out. Not sure this one is gonna make it into the final selection.
03:31:11
Speaker
ah The baddest the whole time being like I really like Sir John Bedford. Exactly. The baddest gives so much again this is a constructed narrative right we know from the way that every scene that happens in this book except probably for the very beginning and the very ending happens multiple times all the scenes in the woods It's referenced, happen meant they have the same conversation over and over again. Viren's trip from a home world to Earth happens multiple times. She experiences it multiple times. The Banis is assembling this footage. So if someone shows up often in the footage, it's because it's the Banis' favorite little guy. They just want to see more of them.
03:31:51
Speaker
Now, Mordian is the Banas' favorite, favorite guy. I think that's very clear. I mean, the Banas is an author, right? yeah And so it has many authorial traits and none is more authorial than projecting wildly on your favorite. And the Banas going to Mordian like, you and i we have the same problems. I too was created and it was a painful experience and I was a prisoner and I felt really bad about the whole thing. Why don't you stay in my field forever? And you're just like, you just want to rotate this guy in your head forever. Yeah, he offers Morty in the chance to be a constellation in his field. Meanwhile, Morty in being, again, impaled on diamond spikes of man pain.
03:32:32
Speaker
Like, are you sure we have- I don't know that I'm enjoying this. Yeah, the I think the Banas has a real hurt comfort urge with Morty. But yeah, so the process has been completed. the new Hand of Rainers has been selected.
03:32:47
Speaker
And they are a pair of besotted lovers, their child, who is also one of their great great great grandfathers, who is also an evil wizard, and that evil wizard's two nephews, Siegfried and King Arthur.
03:33:01
Speaker
What of it? No problems. This is gonna be great for the galaxy. Oh, and we should mention also that the whole reason that Vierin's whole family is there, because they did get here, I think they forgot to say, Reiner 1 shipped them all to Earth, like they'll probably be useful, we can use them to threaten Vierin.
03:33:17
Speaker
The reason that they're all there as part of the Banis' master scheme is because the Banis does need 30 witnesses to politely clap when it's selected at the end of the Raiders. I think there's a minimum number of candidates and it's 30 candidates. So it's like pulled in all these people who have just enough Raider blood, whatever that means. Yeah, you do have to be in some way a super magic space wizard in order to be a Raider. But luckily, loads of people on Earth secretly are, thanks to Martellian's breeding program.
03:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I do think I love this book so much. I love the ending so much. There is some real like super magical space wizard blood is necessary to rule the galaxy nonsense that's going on here. Everyone that ends up ends up in the final hand is a, you know, very specifically a pure blooded rainer who has been bred to be a pure blooded rainer by weird back routes and terrible evil magical breeding programs. But that is what's happening. Weird shit going on here.
03:34:07
Speaker
Except for Vierin, who is a throwback and we're, you know, described quite explicitly that her sort of weird looks and dumpiness and so forth are because she is, you know, her mother calls her a throwback, you know affectionately to the old race of powerful people that originally populated Homeworld.
03:34:22
Speaker
Right. But even this is not the actual ending of the book. The book doesn't actually end with the space opera plot because the space opera was never the most important thing. Yeah.
03:34:35
Speaker
So Mordian leaves the wood and he is now ruler of the galaxy and it is is it his job to undo all the evil that Rayna has done over the last thousand years and he's got a term limit so he's got ten years to do it. ah when he leaves them Which he's very excited about.
03:34:51
Speaker
But he leaves the wood and he's alone. And he goes back and finds that everyone else is still stuck in the wood. And Yam is running around in circles yelling in a way that is very reminiscent of Elio and Time City panicking.
03:35:05
Speaker
And very funny. Very, very funny. And the Banas is like, the wood will not let us out. um And it turns out that the wood, with its magical field, which the Banas has been making so much use of, the wood would like something in return for all the help it has given to all this nonsense.
03:35:25
Speaker
It would like to magically permanently be turned into an enchanted wood. So they do that. Yeah. ah The great enchanted wood. And this again feels very TH White. The great enchanted wood of Britain ah that holds adventures inside it.
03:35:40
Speaker
And there is something I think this ending is kind of an interesting reconciliation with the problem of chivalric romance. Right. It's not in the castle that the chivalric romance resides. It's in the wood.
03:35:53
Speaker
The wood that can open itself wide and contains all of these weird and scary and wonderful and beautiful things to swallow you up or let you out as it chooses. And they give it that power at the end of the book.
03:36:06
Speaker
And this is very dubious about the whole thing. It's now going to be very, very difficult for people to leave this wood if they if they get stuck in it. Yeah, but maybe that's fine. I don't know. It's an interesting resolution, I think. it's Yeah, but the point is that theyre the... the The final moment of the book is is not, and let's all go back to space and be space rulers. It's this enchanted forest is permanent and eternal.
03:36:34
Speaker
yeah There is a place of story time, which you can return to and get lost in. And it is the place where the most beautiful and important things in this story happened. It was the place where Mordian healed and where he and Vierin came to truly know each other.
03:36:50
Speaker
is in this enchanted heart of the the magical forest. And that was not false. Unlike the various AUs and plot threads that the badass came up with, like, ooh, and now you're a teenage girl in a housing estate, and now you're market marching through the universe with the rainers being oppressed, and now here you are in an Arthurian castle.
03:37:11
Speaker
All of that was fake. It was layers of false memory. It was seen through a mirror backwards. But the wood is true. Yes. And it's the thing that they chose. That's the other thing. It's the part that wasn't part of the bandit's plan.
03:37:26
Speaker
They chose to have that relationship together. Yeah. All right. I think this is going to be another four hour episode, isn't it? Sure is.
03:37:39
Speaker
We hope you've enjoyed it and we'll see you all in two weeks again for Crown of Dalemark. Yeah, for my next trick, says Diana Wynne-Jones, remember the Dalemark Quartet. but I haven't touched it since 1979.
03:37:56
Speaker
But we're going back. All right, catch you next time. Next time. Bye.