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The Crown of Dalemark
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Mitt at last came out with the real cause of his disappointment with the North. "They told me it was free here," he said. "They told me it was good."
North and South, history-time and story-time, past kings and future kings, bicycle horses and evil-haunted trains and a really truly impressive array of bad dads all meet on Dalemark's green roads in the book it took Diana Wynne Jones fifteen years to write.
Transcript available here, and we'll be back in two weeks with Deep Secret!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Crown of Dalemark'
00:00:20
Speaker
Hello, and now we are well and truly in the back half of season three of Eight Days of Diana Wynne-Jones. I'm Rebecca Framo. And I'm Emily Tesh. And today we are discussing the fourth book of the Dalemark Quartet, The Crown of Dalemark.
00:00:37
Speaker
Now this is a fascinating one to me because we last saw Dalemark in season one, 1979, The Spellcoats was the third book. So we are 15 years later and Ilewynn Jones has come a long way since then. I've been trying so hard not to talk about it with you for the past year because when last we spoke you had almost no memory of this book. I think you remembered that Mitt became king and maybe that was it.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, it is baffling to me how little I remember because it's a really, really good book. I do think actually Delmark has been one of my revelations from doing this project, this podcast.
The Depth of Dalemark's Narrative
00:01:20
Speaker
Delmark really, really rewards deep reading. like Even more than the average Diana Wynne-Jones, Delmark pays you back for taking it seriously and taking your time. Yes. So I've had a wonderful time. And what an ending. What a conclusion. ah Well, I'm really glad that you enjoyed it now. It's after the long wait.
00:01:42
Speaker
But I do think that it does feel like this is a book that she needed to wait 15 years to write. like You can see a lot of the thought and work that she's been putting in. over the past 15 years and to be honest the kind of giant revision in her process and her way of working that we saw happen in the mid 90s with the sudden wild magic go into this book.
Themes of Power and Arthurian Influences
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah this book actually is post-Hexwood. It feels very post-Hexwood to me. as One of the things it is doing is it's continuing threads that we saw in Hexwood of the child weapon who becomes the king, ah of the transformation or reform of a corrupt system of power, of this little group of candidates, any of whom could be the rightful king.
00:02:32
Speaker
And the way going decide that by secret and arcane competition ah held by a dead mind. Yeah, there's some Hexwoody feeling things going on in here. There's also some distinctly Arthurian shit, ah which which of course, Dalemark was always influenced by Welsh myth, and the Welsh past, so it's not surprising we're pulling out ah our magic swords of the chosen king and so on.
00:03:05
Speaker
um But there's... I don't know What a book. What an interesting book. I think one thing that's really worthwhile to think about alongside the Crown of Dalemark was that at some point in the first half of the 90s, Diana Wynne-Jones was one of a group of people working on the Encyclopedia of Fantasy.
Diana Wynne-Jones's Influences and the 90s Fantasy Critique
00:03:26
Speaker
yeah for which she had to read a lot of contemporary fantasy books in the And she didn't have a good time. Now, those of us who were there will know that this was the age of the doorstopper, the great, big, fat portal quest fantasy, fantasy novel, in which our hero and a merry little band of companions, in which there would be one girl, go on a quest, occasionally two girls, to be fair.
00:03:54
Speaker
yeah go Go on a quest to get some stuff to do the thing to to whatever. Sub-Tolkien fantasy, what Bando and Joes in her essays calls very unkindly, but I think not inaccurately, California fantasy. ah The only one she ever calls out by name, which was clearly so egregious she just couldn't stand it, is Faith of the Fallen, which is one of the Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth books, which started bad and got worse. Oh, they were so bad.
00:04:24
Speaker
I read all of them so many times and they were so bad. i think I stopped maybe like book three or four. Oh, you missed out. You missed out. There was so much more porn. And at one point, ah capitalism invented the social realist statue. There was a whole thing. and It was really weird.
00:04:43
Speaker
The scene with the evil chicken that circulated on the internet. I never organically hit the evil chicken, but I did read the scene.
Narrative Structure and Character Reintroduction
00:04:50
Speaker
Okay, we're off topic, but not really off topic because i think, among other things, Crown of Delmark is a response to the 90s trend of epic fantasy, of sub-Tolkien fantasy, and it is Diana Wynne-Jones returning to her one and only pure high fantasy universe. And it is a really classic quest fantasy. We are going to find the rightful kick.
00:05:14
Speaker
We have a series of MacGuffins. On this journey, we have a couple of youths. We have a wizard. We have some rogues of various sorts, and they're all going to go off together. And by the end of the book, we will have collected the you know sort of checklist of items that's going to prove that one of these people ah has the right to become the king.
00:05:35
Speaker
And yet. because of the way it's framed, it completely overturns the classic Portal Quest fantasy because this is a time travel story that sets up almost from the very beginning. It's actually in the second section, not in the first section. No, I think actually we should talk about that, how long the like the the joke, the twist is delayed. Yeah. The first section does play it straight.
00:06:00
Speaker
So can we talk about the first section first before we go on the time travel story? ah You immediately came after reading like the first two pages of the first section, you came into chat and were like, wow, Grimdark Dalemark.
00:06:12
Speaker
Grimdark Dalemark is right. So if you recall, One of the things that is striking about the first three books, the Dale Mark Quartet, is they all deal with different sets of characters. Book one, Carton Quidder, deals with the young musician, the singer, Morrill, and his family as they flee from the south after the murder of Morrill's father, Clennan.
00:06:33
Speaker
Book two deals with a young man from the southern port city of Holland, again fleeing from the south to the north. after getting himself into serious trouble getting involved in an assassination plot and throwing a bomb into a parade. And we talked quite a lot of the time about sort of the 1970s context of that book, Mitt as Freedom Fighter ah and the Troubles in Ireland.
00:07:02
Speaker
So, book three then went into prehistoric Delmarc and gave us a bunch of characters whom I completely loved, who all turned out to be, well, several of them turned out to be wizards or mages with the power of of transforming the story of Delmarc through their work. And it was really cool and I loved it. I can't do spellcoats again. I love spellcoats too much. But...
00:07:23
Speaker
what book four does is finally bring together synthesize what felt like three completely different plot threads and I think one of the sort of 1990s things post sudden wild magic post hex would things that she's doing is that she's no longer trapped with just one set of characters doing one thing in the same way like I was really interested in the point of view in this book yeah she slides between our main characters are moral and Mitt, so the main characters of book one and book two, and a new character, Mae Wen, who we'll come back to.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yes. We're actually almost never in Moral's head. Moral is a really ex-, you know, we see Moral through other characters' points of views, but we slide-, the first section is entirely in Mitt's point of view, the second section entirely in Mae Wen's, and then we start just sliding in between the two of them, almost as if they're the same person.
00:08:19
Speaker
Four reasons we shall examine when we get there. All right, first section
Mitt's Journey and Political Disillusionment
00:08:23
Speaker
though. Grimdark Dale Mark. The first section i think recapitulates... Delmark 1 and 2, Carton Quidder and Drowned Amit.
00:08:32
Speaker
Very, very neatly. Yes. We have Mitt, who in Drowned Amit so desperately wanted to escape the oppression and the plots and the evil earls of the South and come to the free North that he believed in.
00:08:49
Speaker
And the first thing that happens to him is he is asked to commit a murder. Yeah, immediately page two. He's been so it's not the first thing that's happened to him. He's been there for a year and he's been treated pretty well. In fact, so he's been taken in by Earl Carroll, who we are. No, actually, he's not been taken in by Earl Carroll. It's the first time he's meeting Earl Carroll. He's been taken in by a countess, one of the countesses of North Delmark. Everyone says she's treating you almost like a son.
00:09:15
Speaker
He's been made one of her hearthmen. He's been given a position of relative privilege. He's actually been also given like unreasonable license. Like he seems to be on close enough terms with her daughters that he could have squabbles with them where they end up pulling hair. yeah Which I caught. is like the The countess is is genuinely being on the surface of things. Very, very generous to Mitt.
00:09:37
Speaker
And then it turns out the first time we actually meet the Countess, the first thing she says to him is, oh, there you are. We want you to kill someone. She's there with Earl Carroll, who again, we met very, very briefly at the end of Cart and Quitter. He is the good, kind, loving father of Kialan, who they spent all book trying to get this imperiled child, Kialan, back to his dad, Earl Carroll, who's been searching for him desperately.
00:10:02
Speaker
And now we meet Earl Carroll and Earl Carroll says, to Mitt along with the Countess who's been treating Mitt like a son. We want you to kill this girl, a teenage girl who's setting herself up as the rightful heir to Denmark.
00:10:14
Speaker
We want you to do this because we've brought you into our household and we've treated you well enough because we have this use for you, this purpose. We want you to become an assassin again because we know that you've done this before. Right.
00:10:27
Speaker
I really enjoy how immediately and directly goes. I mean, this was already strongly hinted at, I think, in books one and two, that the free north is perhaps not everything that Mitt and Morrill have dreamed it to be. The free north is still a kingdom ruled by a group of petty kings called earls, and it is still a place where human beings live. So there's still going to be politics and associated um shadows on the north.
00:10:55
Speaker
ah But this really right away, we had taken one of the most likable dads of a book, a series which I maintain is largely about dads. yeah ah we're taken earl We're given Earl Carroll.
00:11:07
Speaker
A freedom fighter is what we're told about him in book one. Right. The freedom fighter Earl Carroll ah with his high morals and his loving fatherhood and the person who Morrill was so relieved to see at the end of Cart and Quitter. Right. i know His morals were high on Shut up. sorry sorry had tear Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. And this is the person who wants to make Mitt into a killer and who makes him feel like scum of the earth.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah. And we're, you know, this whole first section is really built on the myths that have been set up in the previous Del Mart books. The image that kind of hangs over this scene where Carol and the Countess look coldly at Mitt and tell him that the reason that they have taken in and him in and have been kind to him is because he is a murderer and they want him to be a murderer, is set kind of under the portrait of the Adon, who is the last legendary king of Dillmark. The legend of the Adon is sort of the the one, the Adon, the Adon. I'd be pronouncing it Adon, I think.
00:12:07
Speaker
I'll go with Adon. It is the shape that Carton Quitter took. And so this portrait of the Adon hangs over this scene where his descendants, the Countess and Earl Carroll, are doing this amoral thing. And Mitt sort of looks scornfully at this picture, um... thinks how ugly the picture is and how much the Countess and Earl Carol look like him.
00:12:27
Speaker
He says, earlier that day mit would have been thoroughly disappointed to find out that the aon looked like this since he came to aberrak he had heard story after story of the addo the great hero who had talked with the undying and lived as an outlaw before he became the last king of delmark several hundred years ago now he looked from the painting to the two living faces leaning together in the twilight of the library And he thought fairy stories, but he was just as bad as they are.
00:12:49
Speaker
Right. Mitt is so disillusioned at this point. Like he can see that these people who love power and have uses for him are fairly nasty pieces of work.
00:13:01
Speaker
Mitt is very familiar with the type. And he looks also at the legendary hero king and thinks, same kind of guy. You're all the same kind of guy. Yeah. This is, I think, really, it it feels really clear that this is following right on Hexwood because this feels directly in conversation with the conversations about Mordian and Hume and Martin and why you take a child in. But also, I think, like, as she's returning to books technically about children, Delmarc is a series for children that has previously been about children, child
Character Dynamics and Relationships
00:13:30
Speaker
protagonists. And in, you know, the 70s and 80s, Diana W. Jones has always been really clear about or really careful not to provide direct ages for these kids because she wants all kinds of kids to be able to identify with them and to be able to say, all right, approximately, you know, they're sort of a vague age. The exception was Mitt because it's very important that Mitts stay under 15 because 15 is the age of adulthood in Delmark where you can actually be hanged for a crime.
00:13:59
Speaker
Right here to start out with age is going to be really important in this book. We're going to be given very specifically everybody's age. Mitt is coming on 15. The Countess and Carol tell him that he'd better get on this quickly so that he can do this murder before, again, just as in the previous book, do the murder before you're old enough to be hanged for it. But I think that in returning to Delmarc, Diana Wynne-Jones has become really interested in the transition from childhood to adulthood.
00:14:24
Speaker
It's an inflection point in this book a number of times. Is Mitt still a child at this point as he's returned to the North and as he's you know sort of being used as a tool in the hand? Or is he becoming an adult?
00:14:35
Speaker
who can interact with these adults who are trying to use them on their own terms. One of the things I really enjoy about this opening conversation is that Mitt is intentionally rude to these vet two very powerful people to see what he can get away with and so to gauge how serious they are about wanting him to do this.
00:14:56
Speaker
His parting shot is to sort of point at the portrait of the Adon and then the two of them as ah he's effectively he's so disappointed in you two right now. so funny. For reasons that we'll get into later. For reasons that we'll get into later. But I think it is important that this both this section and the next actually begin with a significant picture and with an adult looking from the picture to the person and the person to the picture. yeah um The Adon's portrait and in the next section it will be a photograph.
00:15:26
Speaker
Both of them sort of stand at the front of the introduction to a character that we get, compare this picture and this picture. Anyway. Compare the myth and the reality because so much of this book is about myths and stepping into and out of myth.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yes. but I also think from what you were saying about this childhood and adulthood thing, the thing is that Mitt in his previous book and indeed Morrill in his previous book have both already had an a coming of age arc, right? Yeah. Because they both already had am I going to be the adult that my father was? Right. Specifically. Because Dale Mark is dad Mark.
00:16:08
Speaker
So both Carton Quitter and Drowned Amet feature Mitt and Morrill experiencing the worst days of their lives. And one thing I think is really fun about this first section, ah not fun for them, is that they both sort of have to re-experience the worst days of their lives to start out. Like Diana Wood Jones wants us to be really clear that these kids have been through trauma and they're not over it.
00:16:28
Speaker
So the first thing that happens to Mitt is, great, you're going to have to kill somebody again, a thing that you spent all last book wrestling with. Are you going to kill somebody or not? Are you the kind of person who will kill people? Here you are. You're still scum. Regardless of how much personal growth you think you've done, we still think that you are a murderer.
00:16:44
Speaker
Yes. And then Mitt goes, after an important conversation with the Countess's husband, Alc, he goes... you know sort of uh depressively down to figure out what he's going to do to meet up with this girl that he's supposed to kill and on the way he runs into moral and the first thing that happens is moral's horse is stuck you know get breaks its leg and gets stuck in a river someone has to shoot it again the thing that set off the you know the worst day of moral well the worst day of moral's life was probably when his dad died But arguably the worst day of Morrill's life is when he killed a whole bunch of people because he was mad about his horse dying.
00:17:19
Speaker
Right. Both of them relive the trauma of book one or book one and two in their opening in this opening section. These kids are not okay. Or possibly these adults are not okay because kids become adults. And I do think actually that is one of the things that's at work in the crown of Dalemark is this point that that a not okay kid will become a not okay adult who will continue to do stuff.
00:17:47
Speaker
We are returning to all these children and, you know, the ends of these previous books were sort of like, well, the worst is over. And it's not. These children are still dealing with it as they sort of figure out the kind of people that they want to be.
00:17:59
Speaker
right so But before Mitt and Moral and Naves, another character from a previous book, all get set up on their adventure together, Mitt actually meets the girl that he's supposed to kill. And he doesn't recognize her because she's disguised as a boy. And they have a really nice time. they everything I would describe this as a meet-cute, honestly. So are we skipping over Alk for now? I think we should come back to Alk and deal with him as as like a whole thing.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Let's get to Alk in the middle when we get to the ring. Okay, so Mitt sets out for this town where he's supposed to join up. The orders he's been given are to join up with the girl Noreth's royal progress. So supposedly she is going to ride the royal road, whatever that means, to claim the crown of Delmark, which is hidden somewhere mysterious. So this is a quest, right? Yeah. Mitt's been told, go and join the quest and find a good opportunity to kill her before she does it.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yes. ah So Mitt sets off to where the quest is supposed to begin, a little town called Edamouth, and along the way he meets a nice boy on the road and really, really likes him.
00:19:05
Speaker
and they get on great and have a lovely little ride together and they joke together and they talk politics. They talk about the North and the South. They talk about the problems. They talk a lot about the roads, which I think is really important. There's a lot of transportation in this book. they are you know It's a quest fantasy. They are traveling. They are riding the roads. The first conversation um like that the one in North have is about how bad Northern roads are. and the green what the green roads that they're riding, which are sort of these legendary old roads of Delmarc, actually are.
00:19:38
Speaker
um This is important because to touch on Alk briefly, we know that one of the things that's happening now is steam-powered trains are coming. They're not here yet, but someone is working on inventing them. Right.
00:19:48
Speaker
So actually, I find this unbelievably funny. Diana Wynne-Jones, in reading a lot of quest fantasy, clearly has some things to say about horses.
00:19:59
Speaker
ah So our main character, Mitt, has been trained as a hearthman. He knows how to ride, but he's never ridden all day before because in fact, it's not something you do all the time.
00:20:10
Speaker
And when you ride a horse all day, if you are not particularly experienced... your backside hurts so much. I want you to understand that like for most of the first section of this book, Mitt barely knows what is going on because his ass is on fire. yeah And he's trying not to show it in front of this nice boy he just met who he really likes. Uh-huh.
00:20:39
Speaker
And who he's having all these deep and thoughtful conversations with about the North and the South, and in which Mitt makes it really clear, you know, we're we're getting quite a lot of world building in both, I think, the first and second sections. And one of the things that Mitt expresses really clearly in these conversations with Riff is that although, you know, the the South is under seeing much worse political oppression than the North,
00:21:02
Speaker
But the North is just really poor. The North has no money and people are suffering. And the actual experience of day to day life here is not any better than the experience of day to day life in the location that he left.
00:21:16
Speaker
I've got I've got the quotes. Mitt last came out with the real cause of his disappointment with the North. They told me it was free here, he said.
00:21:26
Speaker
They told me it was good. I was badly enough off in the south, but besides some here, I was rich and idle. People are no more free here than... than... He was trying to find a proper description when they came round a bend to find the road blocked house high with earth and boulders, the stream sprayed from the top in a raw new waterfall and ran round their horses' hooves. This just about sums it up, Mitt said disgustedly, and your roads are terrible. Southern roads are all, of course, perfect, said Rith.
00:21:58
Speaker
But right this is, I think, really, really important very early on. We have been told for two books of this quartet about the free north, but the north is not free because the north is bound by poverty.
00:22:13
Speaker
The North is so poor that mitt we know what Mitt's life in the South was like, and it was not great. He was a fisherman's apprentice in a medieval port city. He worked unbelievably long days and he was poor poor as a church mouse. But no, he was rich and idle compared to this lifestyle.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah. But I also think that Mitt is, you know, as as North kind of points out, Mitt is also experiencing a little bit of ah You know, there's there's a line that comes back a couple of times in this book. I think it's the city of gold is always on the next hill. And you can see that Mitt is like also experiencing nostalgia for the South while he's in the North. He's disillusioned and he's thinking back on his life in the South and thinking, damn, actually, that was pretty good because he's just had, again, a reprise of the worst day of his life. When he meets Navis again, Navis, who is the father of Inan and Hildy, who were his companions in the previous book. Navis, it's really clear that he's very happy in the North. He never wants to go back to the South. He has none of Mitt's kind of nostalgia for that Southern lifestyle.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah. In fact, let's come to Navis now. But first, let's deal with the river.
Noreth's Role and Power Struggles
00:23:22
Speaker
So Mitt and this boy he's met, Rith, who will eventually be revealed to be the girl Noreth, this rightful queen in disguise.
00:23:30
Speaker
Mitt and Rith run into a roadblock and they go, well, we've got to go over the hills. And they go up over the hills. And Rith says, I know a place where we can ford the river. It's fine. And they stop for lunch and Mitt sees a huge, alarming river. And is like, how the hell are we going to ford that?
00:23:46
Speaker
And we, the readers recognize this huge alarming river because we have been to prehistoric Delmarc when the entire land was shaped by one enormous river that was kind of the central feature of the landscape that then was completely reshaped in an enormous earthquake that and turned the land into the modern shape it has today, which is a couple of little rivers.
00:24:09
Speaker
at the end, or it's implied that that's what happens at the end of Spellcoats. But this sort of glimpse back into... The river is linked to the One, who is the the great, sort of the oldest of the undying, the religious figures of Dalmarc, who hasn't really been prominent in Cart and Quitter and Drowned Amet. He really becomes a major figure in Spellcoats because he's not that big in Southern mythology. southern southern the Southern people have their own traditions about the undying, and the One doesn't really figure.
00:24:38
Speaker
But he started to show up here because Norrith's claim to Queenhood ah is that she is the daughter of the one. She is half divine.
00:24:49
Speaker
And so this glimpse of the river, the big river that is representative, that is in some real way the one, ah sort of reinforces that we are dealing once again with this figure that we met in Spellcoats, who is sort of the greatest of the undying of Delmar.
00:25:07
Speaker
And indeed, even though this this glimpse of a huge and mighty river only lasts for a moment, and Rith doesn't seem to see it at all, as they're fording the river, they...
00:25:17
Speaker
stumble, trip myth specifically trips and falls on a golden statue, which we also recognize from Spellcoats. This is specifically the figure of the one that the kids in Spellcoats kept in their house and worshipped, or they didn't worship it, they had a complicated relationship with it. A complicated relationship with it because it was their grandfather. Exactly. And there's... um The Crown of Denmark actually makes clearer the relationship between the undying and the images of the undying. It's still not clear and I think doesn't need to be part of divinity as mystery. But the undying, by being...
00:25:54
Speaker
pictured, carved, sculpted, become gods. and the And this little golden statue is perhaps the core of the Wands divinity.
00:26:05
Speaker
So, Mitt trips over it and Rith picks it up and... Rith very, very fairly says we should go halves.
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah. And Mitt quite reasonably is like, as in we're going to sell it and split the money because it's made of solid gold. This is not what Rith means at all. Rith actually says we should go halves, but can I hold on to it for a little while for reasons? like Well, I could use that money, but okay. Yeah, if Mitt had his own money, then he wouldn't have to go and do murders for various counts and countesses. Right.
00:26:42
Speaker
And then, so they've they've got the golden statue. Mitt doesn't know why. Important character we have not discussed, by the way. the horse. Right. ah So from very, very early on in this book, Mitt has the world's worst horse.
00:26:56
Speaker
Hates that horse so much. Names the horse countess after the woman he hates so much. And Rith is like, but it's a gelding. um It does not care. You name your your horrible horse after the person you hate most in the world and this horse is such a presence in the book. It bites. It kicks. It chases geese. It tries to leave. It goes the wrong way because it's an...
00:27:17
Speaker
animal with a personality right and and also it specifically doesn't like Mitt and it's mutual I love that Mitt is not Mitt is the exact opposite of fantasy protagonists who are instinctively good with animals Mitt is not a Disney prince animals hate him but speaking of horses this is when they encounter Morrill and Hestephane Morrill's horse gets his knees broken.
00:27:46
Speaker
Navis appears and shoots the horse. And again, what the book says as Mitt watches this is the white stare, the bang rang in Mitt's ears like the memory of his worst dreams. The white staring face of the singer boy looked just like he felt.
00:27:58
Speaker
They are both reliving their worst days. This does not bring them together. Morrill is immediately furious that these two southerners have appeared. These two southerners who know each other and one of them killed his horse. And Mitt makes the situation worse by trying to ease things over by making a joke about how much he hates his own horse. And Morrill is like, that is the last thing I want to hear right now.
00:28:18
Speaker
And so from the start, Mitt and Morrill just hate each other. They just do not like each other, which again, i love. I love when Diana Wynne-Jones brings in protagonists from previous books. It's just like these people, these people make each other miserable. We love both these people. They do not love each other. Right. And this is also the introduction of Navis properly.
00:28:37
Speaker
of've course We met Navis before in book two, but only very briefly. And he was seldom, if you like, he was seldom on camera. ah Yeah, you suddenly got a full portrait of him. Navis is introduced as unbelievably ruthless.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yes. ah This is a man who whose first appearance in this book is he rides up to a horse that is in trouble. He instantly sees there's no saving it and he shoots it at once in the head. So it's an instant mercy kill. It's clearly the right thing to do.
00:29:06
Speaker
But it's also, I mean, it's a hell of an introduction for the character. This is a man who shoots a a horse, no questions asked. The introduction, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit because the introduction we get for Navis in the next section, what we know his historical reputation is going to be. ah is amyl the great's chief minister and one of the most ruthless men in history and maywen who's our character from the future looking at this picture thinks she kept you know she could see the duke was ruthless it was in every fierce clear line of him but there was something familiar and almost friendly about him too mirror for somebody we've already which great dad children. Miserable someone who isn't one of his friends. you had to watch it
00:29:44
Speaker
he'd put you to death without turning a hair now this is kind of a mirror for somebody we've already met which is earl carol great dad to his children miserable to someone who isn't one of his friends Right. And I think Navis and Carol are balances for each other, mirrors for each other throughout this book. In the great disappointing dad sweepstakes of which more There are many strong contenders in Dalemark. There are many contenders in Dalemark. But again, it's really, you know i think one of the things that she's really interested in in this book is the complexity of these adults.
00:30:20
Speaker
They are all, if looked at from one side, fantastic heroic figures who are really good to have around you, useful in a crisis, play important roles. And if you looked at from the other side, deeply disappointing and villains.
00:30:34
Speaker
So Navis in the last book, we mostly saw kind of off screen being an absentee dad to Hildi and Yenem, kind of redeemed himself at the last moment by being not as ruthless as his brothers and trying to get his kids out of that situation.
00:30:48
Speaker
In this book, he's actually going to be playing the role of Hildy as Mitt's quest companion, but sort of upper class, ruthless southern quest companion. As Mitt and Navis decide that since they are being threatened by Carol and the Countess, what they have to do is join this quest and try and get to Hildy and Ynen, Navis's children, before Carol and the Countess can get to them and you know do some kind of, ah basically take vengeance upon them for or use them to leverage against Mitt and Navis in order to make them do this murder. Right. To be clear, Mitt was threatened by a threat to Hildy and Ynen, both of whom he cares about, although it's less clear that they care about him after the events of last book.
00:31:33
Speaker
And Mitt also was forced to swear by the undying and eventually refused to do so because Mitt has this special relationship with the undying, with old Amit and Libby Beer, which we saw in his previous book.
00:31:46
Speaker
yeah So again, it feels as if the Earl Carroll and the Countess, the human Countess, not the horse Countess, ah have Mitt very, very firmly under their thumb and he doesn't have much choice about somehow getting involved with Norrith's quest and doing what he can Earl Carroll's service. And Navus, the Ruthless, goes along with him because it's his children who are being threatened.
00:32:13
Speaker
Nervis also has a great excuse for doing this because we actually learn that Nervis... So Norrith claims to be the child of the One, is in fact the daughter of an unmarried aristocrat who said that she slept with the One in order to produce this child and then died pretty soon after. But her aunt is a sort of powerful noble in the region where Nervis is living. And it turns out that Nervis is having an affair with her.
00:32:39
Speaker
Which Mitt is scandalized by. Mitt is like, oh my god, I can't believe you're taking advantage of this married woman. this This is, I think, ah so this this book in many ways is the divorce Delmarque book.
Navis's Complexity and Mae-Wyn's Perspective
00:32:55
Speaker
Nevis is like, look, this woman is in an unhappy marriage. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.
00:33:01
Speaker
You don't understand what it's like to be married to a drunk. But because he's in this relationship with this woman who is the aunt of Norrith, he's like, yes, I'm going to go along and I'm going to take care of her. Right. In fact, he's specifically asked to by the aunt, which I think is important. Here is this girl um with a great destiny and a loving but forceful aunt who has asked someone to go along and be her guide and a protector on her journey.
00:33:28
Speaker
Remember that. It comes back. Right. We are immediately about to meet another one of those as we move to the... So Mitt and Navis and are you know have determined that this is the only way out of their solution is to join Norrith on her quest.
00:33:44
Speaker
Now we move forward to the next section. I'm going to say as well, so put it all together. I do think it's important. w Rith, the boy Mitt met who he liked so much, reveals himself as Norrith and Mitt is immediately like, oh my God.
00:33:57
Speaker
Oh my God. Oh my God. Mitt like, actually, I am very heterosexual about this. Yeah. She also reveals- Norrith is older than he thought. Norrith is 18, whereas Mitt read Rith as being younger because presumably of the high voice. Right.
00:34:11
Speaker
which makes Mitt feel deeply embarrassed. And then there's a big party because it's the Midsummer Festival. And in the middle of the party, Norrith reveals the golden statue of the one. It's like, I have been sent a sign that proves I am the true queen. So tomorrow I'm going to go out and ride the Royal Roads. It's quest time, everybody. And then the last we see of Norrith in the opening section is as she's preparing for her quest, she comes in, asks where her luggage is. Nobody knows. she said, oh, I must have left it in the stable.
00:34:38
Speaker
And she runs off and checks the stable. Goodbye, Norik. Section two. Section two. 200 years in the future and we are on a train.
00:34:49
Speaker
Now, we did see trains being foreshadowed in section one. Now, our our future child is riding the train to the capital city, Delmark's capital city of Kernsburg, to meet her dad, who she hasn't seen in a long time because her parents are divorced. She is the most embarrassed anyone has ever been.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yes. This is how our first introduction to Mae Wyn. She's on a train and she feels super, super awkward. Because her forceful aunt identified someone who looked like a good protector and went, this is Mae Wyn's first time ever going on a train all the way to Kernsburg. Could you keep an eye on her the whole way there, please? Very loudly. And Mei-Wen's like, the worst thing is, he's handsome. He's a hot railway guard and he thinks that she's a child because her aunt was like, you have to take care of my baby. This is the worst thing that's ever happened. I find Mei-Wen a very persuasive picture of a 13-year-old girl.
00:35:48
Speaker
A 13-year-old girl who's lived a pretty good, pretty normal life. Mei-Wen, I'm like... Most of the other protagonists that we meet in Diana Wynne-Jones children's books, Mae Wynne has no backstory drama, as far as we can tell. Her parents are divorced, but she's fine with it. She thinks they're probably both better off being divorced.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yep, she's had a very happy childhood. ah Her mother is an artist and a bit distracted and not paying attention, but that's all right because she's got this forceful aunt. The aunt runs a stable, so Mae Wynne has learned to ride and loves horses.
00:36:20
Speaker
um She's going to see her dad, who is head curator, Tanereth Palace in Kernsburg. and That's the palace of King Amal the Great who united all Delmark 200 years ago.
00:36:32
Speaker
And naturally the reader goes, who? And we're like, we've never heard of any of these people. Who is Amal the Great? Who is Tanereth? It sounds like an old Delmark name, but who could say?
00:36:44
Speaker
Now, actually, it turns out that Mae Wynne probably does need a nice guard to look after her on the train because the first thing that happened the thing that happens to her on the train is she meets a creepy old man. No, she falls asleep first and has a weird dream.
00:36:56
Speaker
yeahs She sees a river and a glint of gold and hears voices. and you're like, wait, Mae Wynne was there too? In this moment of Mitt and Noreth finding the sign, the statue of the one, Mae Wynne seems to be somehow also involved.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah. And she wakes up and there's a weird old man there. The man, this weird old man, it's it's classic stranger danger. Maewyn's afraid he's going to pat her knee. She surged herself right to the back of her seat, but that did not seem nearly far enough away.
00:37:23
Speaker
i will be with you from now on, he said, leaning at her. Think of me as a friend. No help, Maewyn thought. This is true. He will be with her from now on. He will be with her, in fact, in almost exactly the same way that he is right now as she zooms her way along these railroads to get to the capital of the palace.
00:37:40
Speaker
But we will get to that. I think it's really significant that she first encounters this figure on a train. And yeah I think we the readers do recognize him. If you've read Spellcoats, you know who this guy is. This weird old bell-shaped man with his ah alarmingly fat eyelids. It's a very specific description.
00:37:59
Speaker
is Cankreden, the Dark Lord who tried to conquer all of prehistoric Delmarc and who went through death and came to life again and so cannot truly be killed. Like this is evil wizard from high fantasy and he's here on the train.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah and I do want to jump back to the previous section a little bit and pull out the quote when we first hear about trains in Mitt's time. Mitt says, it's the biggest horse I ever saw. What good is it if it has to run on rails? Why do your things always run on rails? And Al, who's the guy who's building this, says to move too heavy. Otherwise, you have to work the way things will let you. So immediately there's this link between trains and horses. Keep that in mind.
00:38:37
Speaker
But also between trains and traveling. And I think this is pretty clearly a metaphor for like life movement, quest movement.
00:38:48
Speaker
You have to work the way things will let you. You have to kind of take the path towards the future that is that is presented to you on a rail, ah that is moving you towards that place. So Maywen is having this ah really, really alarming, and like it is actually very alarming situation very plausible encounter of the 13 year old girl alone in public ah being accosted by an old man who she can't does not quite sure how to politely tell to fuck off which is what she clearly wants right um and be a feeling deeply threatened even though all he's done is smile, be nice to her and maybe try to pat her knee. like This is like like, my skin crawled reading this. I have had this experience It's deeply unpleasant. yeah
00:39:36
Speaker
And Mae Wen is rescued. Thank goodness. She's rescued by the very hot train guard, which is the crown of her embarrassment. He had to be rescued by the hot guy. Right.
00:39:48
Speaker
And then she gets so she gets to the palace. She meets her dad. they have a lot of She has like a nice time wandering around the capital city doing tours and stuff. data but I do think the dad is a very familiar figure. You've got this haughty, powerful, I mean, Maywin herself will later look at Navis and realize he reminds her of her father. But also we have seen this man several times in Diana Wynne-Jones, I think most strikingly in himself.
00:40:16
Speaker
ah Maywin's father is a natural lecturer, a natural teacher. Everywhere she goes, he gives her a little lecture on what's going on and she enjoys it. She says, our minds seem to work the same way. and He's always surrounded by people, busy in the middle of things, having a wonderful time.
00:40:33
Speaker
Maywen looks at it and thinks it's a good thing that he and my mother got divorced because they're both such strong personalities. Having to deal with both of them at once would be a nightmare. like I do think this is yet another portrait of Anoyah and Jones.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yes. In some ways a happier portrait than we've seen before. Yeah, the kindest portrait we've gotten so far in a real way. This is an Enoirun Jones who is happy and doing what he's intended to do.
00:40:58
Speaker
The thing, you know, the work that fulfills him. And this is, you know, Maywin's mother who is an artist who, you know, works with pottery. She works with ceramics. She's kind of distracted and distractible, but Maywin is always taken care of because her aunt is also there. Again, these are people who are who are fulfilling their you know creative and artistic purposes and have not let the sort of constraints of marriage and a child prevent them from doing that.
00:41:23
Speaker
And it works. Maywen has had a good childhood. I think in some ways, The Crown of Denmark is really just ah consider divorce. book Divorce! That's great! Why didn't they just get divorced?
00:41:36
Speaker
Which ah really strikes me in contrast to say Black Maria, where Mig spends so much of the book secretly wishing that her very mismatched parents will get back together because that's the correct happy ending. And in fact, that wouldn't be a happy ending for her mother because her dad sucks. well But Maywen, by contrast, is extraordinarily clear-sighted about other people, which is consistent with her throughout the book. She's clear-sighted about her own parents. She's clear-sighted about nearly everyone she meets. And she's able to see this is better.
00:42:10
Speaker
They are free and they are happy. Yeah. So Mae Wynne gets there. She does her tourism thing. We get quite a lot of exposition about what the future of Delmarc looks like in this section. And it looks quite a lot like modern Britain. They're, you know, kind of a constitutional monarchy. This palace that was a center of power for a long time is now just a tourism site. They have a lot of money from coal ah that powers their energy, etc, etc.
00:42:36
Speaker
We also learn about Amal the Great. What we hear, I'm actually going to read this out because I think it's important thematically. So we learned that the palace that they're in is was completed by Amal the Great.
00:42:48
Speaker
And Malin's dad said he was always full of ideas, but toward the end of his reign, the ideas got rather out of hand, I'm afraid. Amal seemed to become obsessed with death and evil. He divided his time between having this tomb built and journeying all over the kingdom to eradicate what he called Pockets of Cangcredon.
00:43:03
Speaker
he simply meant places where there was injustice or lawlessness but he had become very eccentric eccentric by then and he preferred to call them that and then he shows off this this enormously fancy little tomb where amyl the great is buried and says amyl had seen this country through from two primitive groups of earldoms to a full industrial society so i think he earned the right to be a little eccentric that tomb is by way of being his folly I think the injustice or lawlessness being linked to Cancreden is really important because this is a book that is deeply concerned with law and with justice. And also we're we're being invited to look at this tomb and think about Amal the Great and Amal the Great's death. Right.
00:43:38
Speaker
All of which becomes very, very funny on a reread. This is another one that really rewards being read twice, at least. I read it twice in quick succession for this and I went, oh, wow. Oh wow! it It crunches the second time through yeah really satisfying ways.
00:43:55
Speaker
Right, the only sort of unhappy part of Mae Wen's lovely time staying with her father in the Tanareth Palace is that unfortunately the hot train guard was secretly a museum attendant the whole time. Very confusing, but yeah, he's there too. He has a name, his name is Wend, um which is an old-fashioned Dalemark sort of name.
00:44:17
Speaker
It also means wander, wend your way. i mean he Yes, he who wanders. ah And he continues to be extremely handsome, which Maywen finds very depressing, very very worrying indeed. ah So she's constantly trying to dodge him while also wandering around, admiring portraits and looking at artworks. And so she finds in the palace the portrait of the Duke of Kearnsburg, which is that most the most ruthless man in history.
00:44:44
Speaker
um She finds various other portraits it too. Most importantly, she finds a portrait of a young singer boy holding a quidder which is kept in a glass case next to the portrait, who we the reader go, well, that's moral.
00:44:56
Speaker
Yes. And he's really sad. And we're like, oh no, what happened? And Maywin is also like, oh no, what's happened? This boy looks so sad. And she also sees a great picture of Amel the Great, who is, have you got the quote actually? Let me see. I do have the quote about the purple trousers. Yes. Yes.
00:45:19
Speaker
Which says, nobody knew what, so there's all these portraits of Amel the Great running around in purple trousers, heroically fighting and conquering the kingdom. And nobody knew what Amel the Great really looked like, and the purple trousers were a pure invention. This so amused Maewon that she left Wen's embarrassing presence order to go down to the hallway and buy a postcard of Amel in his purple preaches and write a wish you were here message on it.
00:45:40
Speaker
ah Right. Which I think is foreshadowing. The other thing that I think is is really interesting in this section of Mae Wen in her world, in her time, is that she's introduced by comparison to a photograph, right?
00:45:54
Speaker
There is a photo of her that her father has been sent so he can pick her up at the train station and know which kid she is because he hasn't seen her since she was seven. And Mae Wynne looks at it and doesn't like it.
00:46:06
Speaker
It's her looking freckly with her arm around a horse. And her father says, I suppose that's how your aunt Liz sees you. So there's this idea that the portrait, the picture of a person being filtered through a perspective.
00:46:19
Speaker
Yeah. And that photograph is, I think, key to everything that happens to Maywen after this. Yeah. There's a lot in this book about ah what a representation of you, what a rumor about you, what a story about you ah does to change your fate and does to lock you into your fate, does to bind you in a certain way.
00:46:39
Speaker
And what this photograph of Noreth, of Maywin does, is ah it binds her into this adventure because it turns out that who has seen this photograph but Wend, the hot security guard? And at the end of this section, he corners her in a gallery and is like, you know, you look exactly like a young woman named Noreth who was destined to become queen 200 years ago. ah Something happened to her. I need to find out what. So I'm sending you back in time to take her place.
00:47:03
Speaker
Good luck. Congratulations. But Wend also at this point introduces himself, right? yes Yes. Yes, he says well you' You've probably heard of me. I'm Tanamoril, Osphamaron.
00:47:16
Speaker
And May was like, as in the legendary wizard who brought the Adon back from the dead in those old myths. And we are like, as in duck. As in baby duck from Spellcops.
00:47:27
Speaker
as in Tanakui's youngest brother and like yeah that does indeed appear to be who we're dealing with here because that is what he immediately does he takes the golden statue of the one out of a ah glass museum case and he hands it to Maywen and the next thing Maywen knows she is on a mountainside yep and being, you know, her her clothes, her modern clothes disappear and reform themselves into Norris sort of riding warrior maid clothes.
00:47:56
Speaker
I have to say, I really enjoy how different this feels to the nineteen seventy s books where we have ah this female protagonist ah who gets to enter this world of warrior heroism. She's like, oh, I'm a warrior maid. But she doesn't have the sort of bitterness, the anger that Tanakui felt.
00:48:13
Speaker
She's having fun. she's happy She's happy. So Maywin is plunged into this very stressful situation right away. She knows that she's supposed to try and be North, but North, as far as she can tell, she's never heard of North.
00:48:26
Speaker
So North has disappeared from history. So something clearly happens to her. She's with these strangers, one of whom she recognizes immediately as there's Navis, the most ruthless man in history. Here he is on my quest. Here's The depressed singer boy, something very sad happened to him. Here he is on my quest. And here is this other hot boy who also seems very stressed for unknown reasons.
00:48:49
Speaker
ah Plus morals traveling with Hestephan the singer who picked him up at the end of the last book, who will be important later. All of them seem to hate each other. None of them are going to make it into the history books, except again, Neva's the most ruthless man in history. And to top it all off, there's an ominous voice that keeps talking to her whenever she's alone.
00:49:06
Speaker
I will say the none of these people is the first thing that that happens to Maywen because the first thing that happens to Maywen and kind of gets her going on the journey is she bumps into an abandoned horse, a stray horse. And she's like, oh my God, this must be Noreth's horse.
00:49:20
Speaker
And she mounts it immediately. Luckily, conveniently, although she comes from the future where there are cars and trains, Maywen knows how to ride because her aunt runs a stable. Right. Which is really fortunate because she'd be in so much trouble on this quest otherwise, because as we saw in the first section, if you are not a regular rider, riding all day is incredibly painful.
00:49:39
Speaker
But she might be fine anyway, because she immediately notices, due to her horse knowledge, that this is the world's most well-behaved, least personality full horse. This horse just does whatever she wants. This horse is not at all stressed by the fact that she's not Norrith. Right. If you compare this horse to to Mitt's enormously personalityed horse, the Countess, it's really striking all the way through the book that Mitt has the worst horse in the world and Norrith has the most placid horse in the world.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah. But what I was going to say is that even though she's in this incredibly stressful situation, One of the first things that Morrill says to her is, wow, you're really a very relaxed person.
00:50:20
Speaker
Right, which comes back a few times through the book that compared to just like ordinary levels of being stressed out in historical Delmarc, Maywen, who's had this good life, this peaceful, calm, prosperous life in 200 years in the future, in something not so dissimilar from 1990s Britain, where there are, she tells us, cars and trains and planes and computers.
00:50:45
Speaker
Maywen's just... chill compared to all these people she does not have their problems there's a bit at the very end when she's finally returned where she's you know she's in danger and she talks about the animal wariness she had acquired in those days of journeying and says she was ashamed of the wariness it showed her uh you know whoever the person she's looking at was full of fury and frustration carefully hidden but she could not help knowing it They all had this wariness. Morrill, Mitt, Hestephan, Nevis, everyone. It was the way you lived in those days.
00:51:14
Speaker
Everyone's very stressed all the time in prehistoric Denmark. Meywen doesn't have this sort of background amount of stress going on in her brain. And this actually makes her a really good person to lead this expedition.
00:51:26
Speaker
because she's you know she's not that stressed despite being in this stressful situation she's able to look at these people around her and be like look you guys need to get it together you all hate each other that's not going to be sustainable everybody chill out yeah we are on an important quest here guys calm down it Actually, it's really striking that Mae Wynne is, I think, a plausible replacement for Norrith, the chosen queen, right away, because she has this emotional awareness, this leadership quality, which is perhaps just the quality of not having been stressed out her entire life. Right.
Dalemark's Transition to Modernity
00:52:05
Speaker
We are set up, even though, you know, in this sort of opening section, we learned that Delmark in the future is an industrialized nation. Mitt's father expresses some ambivalence about that.
00:52:16
Speaker
You know, he says they're talking about the smog and, you know, the the process of industrialization. And her dad says there was smog from coal fires. I'm never sure it was such a good thing when they discovered oil under the marshes. It makes the queen a rich woman, but it has its drawbacks. So like industrialization is not 100 a good thing for the country. Maywin looks around Kearnsburg and wonders where all the trees are.
00:52:39
Speaker
But it has made the nation prosperous. It has made the children of the future happier. Yeah. And we will come back again and again, I think, to that transition from high fantasy world to a contemporary, recognizable world where I remember we we read at least one article which said contemporary but Delmark is Britain. I don't buy that.
00:53:02
Speaker
It's a fantasy country, but it's a fantasy country that is modern. And one of the things the Delmark Quartet is arguing for is that that is possible. A fantasy country can modernize. Right. Which I think, again, when put it in context of the big quest fantasies of this era, one of the things that a lot of them kind of do is hint or gesture at this idea that the pastoral fantasy landscape is a post-apocalyptic version of our modern industrial age. Something happened, and over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, you got the Wheel of Time, you got Shannara, and we reverted to this sort of rural pastoral
00:53:41
Speaker
feudal fantasy situation. And Dale Mark, I think, is very deliberately doing the exact opposite of that. It's saying, here is fantasy land and here is the future of fantasy land and it looks modern, it looks technological. Yeah. And I have more to say about that, but we'll save it for later on and for Mae Wynn's conversation with Naevis, but I think it's really, really striking as a through line in this book.
00:54:01
Speaker
um is how much it rejects the um the pastoralist fantasy. Yeah. And indeed, the first thing that Mae Wynne does on her quest is they come across some distressed miners who want Norith to intervene with one of her cousins who's oppressing them.
00:54:18
Speaker
And Maywen's like, well, I don't really want to meet any of my cousins who presumably will immediately know that I'm not Noreth. But what if you guys just had a strike? You haven't invented strikes yet? Can we invent strikes? And they're like, what if we what? And Maywen, as Noreth, invents the strike. Like, have do you considered the industrial action? they're like, we don't know what any of those words mean.
00:54:41
Speaker
no I am paraphrasing. The point is that Maywen... is able to do this because she looks at history, has been taught history and knows it has been done and done successfully. And she's also able to look at history and go, okay, you're coal miners, you're being paid pennies now, but give it five years and you are going to be such valuable workers. You don't know it yet, but I do. and they're like, hmm, the one does talk to her, they say.
00:55:07
Speaker
It doesn't 100% land because like, even though she has this idea, she introduces the idea of strikes. The infrastructure isn't quite there yet. um And Mitz there, like, you know, the Earl just was just going to ride in and hang the ringleaders. Like, how do you get round that? So she's not like, you know, Mei Wen is not bringing her future knowledge and perfectly transforming the lives of these people.
00:55:27
Speaker
But she is seeding ideas and sort of showing a glimpse of what the future is going to be, which involves collective action on the part of people below. Which has been a theme in Dalmark since now that.
00:55:39
Speaker
Which is a freedom, I think. A freedom specifically for the common people not being forced to work for half wages for the earls who have and being left with no choice about what to do instead. um I think Maywen's introduction of the concept of a strike is important as an instance of unbinding. Yes. I said this was divorce book, right? There are different kinds of divorce. Yes, you could divorce your husband, your wife, but have you considered divorcing your feudal lord?
00:56:12
Speaker
i think maybe you should. You should divorce your feudal lord. Right, but this is what the strike ends up being in the sort of collective imagination of this group of people is it is we could just walk away. and that's what they're going to do they' Maywen is desperately trying to avoid having an army. Like she can see that the rightful queen is probably going to need an army to conquer all these earls. It is clear from the beginning that there is no way to take over Delmark and unite the crown of Delmark without violence. yeah There is going to be violence at some point. Mewen doesn't want anything to do with it. Mewen is like, I'm just here until I can hand over to the guy, Amal the Great, who I know turns up at some point, but I didn't pay enough attention in history to know when exactly in this next six month period or where he comes from.
00:56:55
Speaker
So Meiwen is on the lookout for the actual king who she's going to hand over to. But in the meantime, she says, well, how about you meet me in three months? I'm bit busy till then, but three months from now and you can come and be my army.
00:57:11
Speaker
And that will give you something else to do. And they're like, busy doing what? or navis Busy with what? So at this point we're like, why is there a quest happening? And it's because Maywin is desperately trying to avoid becoming queen, which I do think is a little bit of a joke about the fantasy quest. It's like, why are they wandering all over the countryside collecting MacGuffins? It's a way to fill time. It's to avoid collecting people for the army, which is what she's supposed to be doing. Right.
00:57:43
Speaker
So there is this legend in the north that the Aedon, the heroic legendary Aedon, who died and was brought back to life by his friend Osphamiron, who we've met, who is Duck, who is Wend. And we have many questions about this, actually. ah The Adon supposedly had these gifts that were given to him by the Undying. And they are a ring, a sword, and a cup.
00:58:10
Speaker
And you have to collect them all to prove you're the rightful king. Mayweather's like, I'll do that! Let's do that! And the ring, conveniently enough, is exactly in midst. It's being kept by the Countess, Mith's old enemy. And Mith's like, well, this hot girl needs a ring. I'm just going to go steal her that ring to prove that I'm not going to murder her.
00:58:31
Speaker
Speaking of divorce, now I think it's time to talk about Elk. okay Right. I do love ah that Delmark appears to have just discovered heterosexuality since we were last here. Teen drama is so strong in this book from the very beginning. You know, first we start off, even in the first section before Maewin even turns up, it's very clear that Mitt has a crush on Hildy and Hildy... probably does not reciprocate. Maywin turns up, she's immediately like, oh my god, I'm so gross and sweaty. I hope Mitt doesn't think I'm disgusting. Mitt is like this hot girl that was a boy that I met on the road, who's so cute, who's older. i just got to do things for her. It's so clear that Mitt volunteering to go and steal the Adon's ring is just like, how do I impress this girl?
00:59:13
Speaker
Yes. Okay, so now is a good time to talk about Alk. So we go back to the Countess who set Mitt off on this journey when she told him she wanted him to kill someone. ah She is married and she is married to a man called Alk and we get a little sort of potted summary of their relationship and it's quite romantic. Yes, it's cute. alc was Alk is not from the upper classes. Alk was a lawman, which is something we've not seen in previous books, but appears to be a big deal in North Delmark. where he's a trained expert in the law who acts as a consultant to an earl or a countess.
00:59:50
Speaker
So we've seen it a few times. Alk was the countess's lawman, and she fell in love with him and married him. And they've been very happy together ever since, even though Alk has given up the law. And what he does now is he invents machines, and they're called Alk's irons. And we've seen a glimpse of them. We've seen his iron horse, which to us is very clearly ah a steam engine.
01:00:12
Speaker
One thing I think is really funny is that Alk is actually out here inventing new metaphors. there's When Mitt goes right after his first conversation with the Countess and Carol, and Alk clearly seeing that Mitt is really upset, tries to sort of get out of him what's wrong. Alk actually assumes it's about Hildy. Right. Alk assumes it's about Hildy and Mitt does not respond to that. And what Alk says is, hmm, on the wrong track there. Alk is the only person Delmarc at this point who can say on the wrong track because he's inventing tracks.
01:00:41
Speaker
I miss that, you're right. You're absolutely right. Right. we We do get a list of Alk's irons, the machines he's invented. None of them work very well, says Mitt, but we do know that there's a printing press, there's some kind of plow, there's some kind of
Family Dynamics and Prophecy
01:00:56
Speaker
steam engine. So Alk seems to be like a soloing the industrial revolution. Later on, Alk will also solve a magical problem by turning the magical item off and on again, a thing you have only learned how to do if you're busy inventing machines.
01:01:10
Speaker
Alk is also, and it's not actually a difficult competition, Alk is the best dad in Dale Markham. Yeah, I think Alk is actually a mirror for Hoban, right? Because in Drowned Amet, we had Mitt had this stepfather situation with this man who was an inventor. He was making the best guns in Dalmark, and he was trying to make sure that Mitt had an education and was trying to get him out of this sort of freedom fighter terrorist situation that his mother had gotten him into.
01:01:37
Speaker
And here, now that he's in the north, we have Alk, who again is an inventor, who again is kind of a level-headed, reasonable man, who again is trying to get him out of this terrorism murder situation that Alk's wife has gotten him into. And, you know, Mitt,
01:01:52
Speaker
Mitt likes Alk quite a lot. ah When he thinks about this marriage, he thinks Alk has to have quite a lot of illusions about the Countess in order to stay married to her. And so when he goes to steal the ring, he finds Alk there waiting for him. and i love this. The first thing Alk does actually is tell Mitt where to stand over there next to the portrait.
01:02:11
Speaker
Right. And he looks between Mitt and the portrait. And then he says, you know, he explains that he had a bit of a conversation with his countess, like I told you I would. and wasn't pleased with what she had to say at all. To put it bluntly, as soon as Carol was out of the way, we had words, which is not a thing we've ever had before.
01:02:28
Speaker
What do you think about that? You being the cause of those words. Mitt is mit is the child causing his parents' divorce. Right. Almost as a son to the Countess he's been, but I think more clearly almost a son to Alk.
01:02:41
Speaker
And Alk, a former lawman, is very, very clear that Mitt can't do the murder he's been asked to do because it's not lawful. But he's equally clear that Mitt can't steal the Aiden's ring.
01:02:53
Speaker
because theft is also not lawful. Right. But he knows that Mitt is in trouble, right? Like he hasn't been able to talk the Countess out of this plan that she's got. This marriage is so interesting. Again, it's just, you know, one of these portraits of adults that are being shown from multiple sides. Clearly, there was this great romance.
01:03:12
Speaker
Equally clearly, the Countess is very ruthless and, you know, sort of doesn't care about the law as much at this point, despite having married her lawman. There's so much here, it's so interesting. I kind of got the vibe that the Countess and Earl Carroll had a thing going on as well. like There's stuff happening behind the scenes here, I think.
01:03:31
Speaker
But Alk? So Alc says, I figured out a way out of this problem for you. Alc also reveals at this point that he talks to the or he's seen the one. The one has appeared to him.
01:03:41
Speaker
And so he's like, the one is involved in this somehow. He's actually quite a religious man. Doesn't know how, thinks it's kind of cagey, that doesn't really get the vibe of the one as someone who would knock up ah a young woman and have a daughter in this day and age. But who can say?
01:03:57
Speaker
So his way out of this situation for Mitt is instead of having Mitt steal the ring, he's just going to give Mitt the ring. It's fine. here you go It's a promise that he makes Mitt make first. Mitt promises that he will be lawful.
01:04:13
Speaker
So he promises... the one's favourite lawman, that he, Mint, is going to abide by the law. He sets a binding on himself. Keep track of the bindings and unbindings in Crown of Delmarque.
01:04:26
Speaker
And not only does he set a binding on himself metaphorically, but then in order to take the ring away, he tries to put the ring on and it literally gets stuck on his finger and he can't get it off.
01:04:37
Speaker
This is, you know, he he brings the ring back. He sort of flails his way back with the ring stuck on his finger and says to Maywin, I got you the ring. The flaming thing stuck on my finger. I think I'm in for life. So this is A, a marriage metaphor as one of the many forms of binding in this book.
01:04:53
Speaker
B, foreshadowing about the relationship that Mitt is going to have with this artifact. Except this is not the real artifact. Yes. That's quite important. Alk has in fact given Mitt a copy that he made. See, set up for perhaps my favourite funny line in this book as Mae-win is trying to get this ring off Mitt's finger.
01:05:11
Speaker
ah She says, well, you should have thought people were smart in the old days. And then she thinks, but this is the old days. He's not smart. Never mind. Wait, does your book say smart? Because mine says mine says small.
01:05:24
Speaker
People were small in the old days. The point being that the ring won't fit because Mitt's big. oh Oh, weird. Maybe mine is a typo. I think that makes more sense. Although I think mine- Yours were funnier, but I actually think mine makes more sense because the whole point is actually Mei Wen going, oh, he's huge, which is quite important. like Mei Wen's obvious attraction to Mitt is expressed in terms of he's big, he's lanky, he's gangling.
01:05:52
Speaker
Later on, you'll he'll be like a figure with great shoulders. Yep. Walking away from her. Now what am I saying? Mitt gives this ring to Mae Wynn. Mae Wynn looks it like that's never going to fit me. Shoves it on her thumb and thank goodness it fits. And we have got one MacGuffin.
01:06:07
Speaker
Three to go. Next one is the best one. Speaking of teen drama though, I think that's quite a good setup for the next thing that happens, ah which is Mitt and Maurel get in a big fight about Mae Wynn because Maurel also has a crush on Mae Wynn. Both of them are traveling around on this quest like, look at this 18 year old girl. She's so old and hot.
01:06:26
Speaker
And so Moril is trying to sort of, you know, where is is really deliberately needling Mitt every chance he gets, right? He's like walking next to Maewyn and talking loudly about how untrustworthy Mitt is and how he hates all Southerners and you can't trust any of them. Which, again, is really interesting, given that Carton Quitter is all about Mitt trying to sort of reconcile the northern and southern halves of himself and part of his personality. And the answer is, did he do that? He did not. He did not.
01:06:55
Speaker
And so Mitt hears this conversation. that's like you know Moral's like, I hate southerners. I hate nobles. And it was like, but Mitt's not a noble. He's just a normal guy. And it's Moral's like, I don't care. He says, I'll tell you why I really dislike Mitt. He makes jokes all the time about serious things.
01:07:13
Speaker
And then they get in a fight. And in the fight, Moral does some unwise magic on his magical quitter. And suddenly they end up in the middle of a big river, a big familiar river.
01:07:24
Speaker
Screaming at each other like they're still having the fight in the middle of this mile wide river. And the best part of this is that the other characters on the quest are watching, a standing on the riverbank going,
01:07:35
Speaker
Hmm. And in particular, Navus is watching and everything Navus says in this book is very funny. I'm just like, imagine imagine imagine your teen drama quest, but an adult man is there and he's not impressed.
01:07:50
Speaker
He's never impressed. Very difficult to impress Navus. But Mitt and Morrill essentially argue it out, reconcile and are friends thereafter.
01:08:01
Speaker
Yes. Mitt says in sort of, I think the key moment of this argument is what's wrong with you. I think your mind's mixed up. You behave like the whole world's out to get you. And Morrill says, and you're jealous. I meant you to be. This argument is both about a girl. It's about the fact that they're both in, you know, in crush with Maywin, but it's also about the past trauma that both of them have experienced. Morrill explains that after,
01:08:28
Speaker
The big event at the end of Cart and Quitter, where he killed a whole bunch of people by causing an avalanche, that he's afraid that someone is going to come and kill him. Like he's, you know, he's constantly afraid that someone is out to get him in revenge. The only person he can trust is Hestifon, the singer that he's been traveling with.
01:08:44
Speaker
And so that's part of why he's been so weird about Navis and Mitt, is he really does genuinely part of him believe that so what they are they are here to kill him in vengeance for what happened at the end of the last book.
01:08:56
Speaker
Yeah. And meanwhile, we also get Mitt and Moral both openly acknowledging their respective crushes, after which they're both able to be a bit more normal about it. Yes. With each other, not with Maywen.
01:09:09
Speaker
Mitt immediately goes very weird with Maywen. yeah And they talk about, you know, whether they talk about their ages. They actually, so Moral's, you know, they're talking about Earl Carroll. Mitt actually opens up about the fact that he has been sent to kill Maywin and he's not going to do it, which is way earlier than you'd expect him to come out with that secret, especially to someone that he doesn't like. And he says, you, but, you know, you seem to be friends with Earl Carroll. You seem fine. And Moral says, yes, but he treats me like a child and I'd done something so awful. I needed to go away and work it out for myself.
01:09:39
Speaker
Mitt says, you don't look much like a child to me, if that's any comfort. How old are you? Moral says, I shan't be 13 for another month. How old are you? And it says, 15 come harvest.
01:09:50
Speaker
I thought you were more than that, Morrill said, marveling. You come from a slum somewhere, don't you? You've got that old and young look they all have in Holland and places. But I thought you were at least as old as my brother. Comes of earning a living as soon as you can walk, mid-answered. But then I reckon that applies to both of us. So again, they're being positioned as like, they've they're They're sort of struggling to find that people are treating them like children.
01:10:10
Speaker
They don't see themselves as children. Even though Morrill is not yet 13, his experiences and the things he's done have sort of put him out of the realm of childhood. They don't live as children. And I think this is part of what Maywen talks about, about the sort of the different experiences that people have had in the past compared to But if this 12 year old and this 14 year old were living in Maywen's time, they would be children, right?
01:10:35
Speaker
But Mitt and Moral are adults in the context of their society, in the context of the lives as they've led. ah They have adult concerns, adult problems, adult feelings.
01:10:48
Speaker
And this immediately comes into tension when they come out of the river, because Hestifan, is like, oh my god, that quitter is a dangerous artifact and morals shouldn't have it. I'm going to take it away. Look what he's done. he's made a big river and he trapped him in the middle of it.
01:11:02
Speaker
And Moril's like, you don't have the right to take that quitter away from me. um And Hestephan says, yes, I do. I'm his master. And at this point, Maywin intervenes. And she says, Moril told me this morning that it was your daughter who was indentured to you, not him. He said he came with you from his own choice. Doesn't that make him your colleague instead of your apprentice? So Maywin sort of as the leader of this group makes the determination.
01:11:26
Speaker
that Moril and Hestephan are actually equals on this quest. Moril is not an apprentice to Hestephan. He is not a child. right And then she takes the quitter away from him anyway. And I do think this is important. she Wend has been with us on this quest the whole time. like norris ah Sorry, May Wend. Even I'm doing that. May Wend was intensely relieved to see him because he was thank goodness the wizard guide is here.
01:11:49
Speaker
Wend is a bit weird, a bit mysterious, um not very helpful or there's not much advice, but presumably he knows what he's doing because you go on a fantasy quest and there's a wizard guide who knows what he's doing, right? That's how they work. Right, no problem. So Mei Wen is at this point the only one of the group who knows that Wend is really Tanamoril, Osphamron, Mage Mallard, the legendary wizard of the undying who's been walking the green roads for centuries, maybe millennia, the brother of King Hearn.
01:12:23
Speaker
But she... There's someone who's emphatically not Morrill's colleague, but in fact someone who might be in her like master apprentice situation is Wend. Yes. So when she says, alright, Morrill shouldn't have the quitter because he just did something very stupid with it and he was trying to hurt Mitt, wasn't he?
01:12:38
Speaker
And Morrill does say, yes, I was. Morrill's but It's really striking. Again, Mei Wen is so emotionally able compared to everyone else here. She is able to ask honest questions and get honest answers. She's able to resolve interpersonal conflicts. And she says, moral shouldn't have the quitter. Wend, can you take charge of it? And of course he can. It's his quitter.
01:13:01
Speaker
Yeah. It's I sing for Osfamiron. I move in more than one world. Right. And he is Osfamiron. So he takes the quitter and he plays it a little bit and he's having a nice time. And he immediately it says his, he only played a sequence of chords and arpeggios, but he became a new person doing it.
01:13:17
Speaker
His face came alive into a slight wrapped smile full of thoughts and energies that had not been there before. The way he stood altered to accommodate the quitter into the stance of someone much stronger.
01:13:28
Speaker
for the first time since maewyn had met him he looked happy oddly enough that made him look ten times more dangerous too Why couldn't he be like that all the time, Maywin wondered as she turned away to mount her horse at last, instead of trying to pretend he was not an undying among all us dying people.
01:13:43
Speaker
So, Wen has given something of himself away. He's deliberately finding himself. He's taken away part of his power and getting it... You don't you know what that you know what this is. It's Sauron and the Ring. It's not a struggle before, but but we do get it quite explicitly later on when says he put himself into the quiddah, which is the heart of his power. And they've been separated for a long time because the quitter has come down to moral through his father's family.
01:14:11
Speaker
And without the quitter, Wend seems less of a person or less himself. Yeah. And I think this is really important and we're going to come back to it at the end as it ties into themes of unbinding and divorce.
01:14:24
Speaker
Yes. But I think the other thing, I think it's it's not an accident that this scene with Moral in the river happens immediately before we meet Hildy again, because that's the next thing that happens is they're going to go find the cup which is at law school, which is also where Hildy is. And Naves and Mitt are like, we've got to get Hildy and get her away from here before Earl Carroll and the Countess's men can come take her away and you know make her sort of a pawn against us I absolutely love the law school sequence because, glory of glories, it is very, very funny. And Diana Wynne-Jones is at her best, I think, when she is doing comedy.
01:15:01
Speaker
yes But it's comedy with a serious edge, as always. So they they go to the town the law school is in, it's called Gardale. They go there. They have a nice little pub lunch, pub breakfast rather. They very briefly meet Mitt's brother, Dagner, who is there on page for two sentences. And then before Mitt can even go say hi and introduce himself, he's like, oh, my God, Hestephon's daughter was in danger. I i must go to her immediately. He's off page again. Bye, Dr. So there's a very funny pub breakfast scene where they have a great big breakfast and then Maywen has been drinking the beer with the breakfast because obviously the water here is not safe to drink. But she's a 13 year old girl who's never had a beer before. So that doesn't go very well for her. She ends up in an honest political conversation with Navis, which in some ways is a very bad idea. ah even when sober, trying to explain her programme, her ideas, her policies as Queen, like this is the campaign speech, right? The problem is Mae Wen is not Norrath and is not planning to become a Queen and doesn't have any ideas. So... She says there has to be change and then it occurs to her that this is like just a completely stupid thing to say.
01:16:15
Speaker
And we have what I think is quite a touching scene of effectively ah nineteen ninety s teenager aristocrat and an eighteenth century aristocrat And she is telling him, you do not know how different it could be.
01:16:30
Speaker
yeah You have no idea how much better Delmark could be. And Maywen's argument is one we've seen before. it is the argument that what's keeping Delmark miserable is division and poverty.
01:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, that Delmarc cannot be its true self, cannot be what it would. Have we got the exact quote? You know who has the quotes? I'm always terrible at finding them. they went They went speech to neighbors. Yes, there's a lot in Delmarc that hasn't come out yet.
01:16:59
Speaker
Wonderful people and talents and richness. Some of the reason it hasn't come out is because that all the ordinary people are too poor for different reasons. Am I going to be sick? But the main reason is that everybody is too busy thinking of themselves as North and South.
01:17:12
Speaker
They need to be one country and be proud of it before they can show what's really in them. There, I believe that, she says, and then she immediately has to run off to go throw up because she's quite drunk. I really like, it's the same as actually the opening with Mitt unable to realise he's in the middle of a very, very important and significant moment because unfortunately his arse hurts too much. Yes. Here, Maewyn is too nauseous to notice that she's just shaped the course of history, which I really think she does in this moment where she, I think, does persuade Navis of the change there needs to be. yeah um And it is a change of...
01:17:49
Speaker
freedom, it actually echoes the sort of the talents and richness that can come out. It echoes some of the things that Mae Wynne said about her own mother, who is a divorced single mother sculptor ah living presumably with her sister, which is a life that doesn't exist in historical Delmark, Mitt's Delmark, Navis' is Delmark. It's the teenage girl in 1990s looking at historical pastoral fantasy and being like, this is terrible. You have no idea how shit this is.
01:18:21
Speaker
Listen, the future is better. Yeah. dellmark Delmark Quartet, I think, is an argument for the future being better. Yeah, I think you are absolutely right.
01:18:34
Speaker
But before we can get to the future, we have to face the past again, which means that we have to meet Hildi. We're getting Hildi from the outside here. And, you know, crowned emmet and ah Drowned Amet and Crown of Telmark and Crowned Amet are actually, they actually have very similar kind of POV structures. Drowned Amet also had this kind of POV where we were sliding in between Mitt and Hildi. And so we got a lot of Hildi from the inside.
01:18:59
Speaker
In this book, we're getting Hildi only from the outside. Haley is blanking Mitt out quite clearly. She is twigged that Mitt has a big crush on her and she does not want to deal with it. She is giving him the cold shoulder.
01:19:12
Speaker
So Mae Wynne, who has a big crush on Mitt, hates her immediately. And what Mae Wynne thinks about Hildy is, you know, they're they're sort of arguing about Mitt. And Maewyn says, Hildy was quite aware of Maewyn's unkindness. She had met it often before and she expected it and did not care two hoots.
01:19:28
Speaker
Hmm, thought Maewyn dropping back again. I suppose that says volumes about her early life. She has problems. Well, I suppose unpleasant people do have problems or they wouldn't be unpleasant. But that doesn't mean I have to like her or forgive her.
01:19:40
Speaker
So, you know, they meet Hildy. Hildy is rude. Hildy is snobbish. Hildy is trying really hard to impress everybody by throwing around all the stupid law school slang and how happy she is and how much she feels like she belongs in this place. And we've seen this. We've seen Hildy do this exact thing in Drowned Amet. We know that when Hildy feels awkward, when she's in an awkward conversation, she falls back on Leaning on her own status and on, ah you know, sort of being rude and being snobbish and talking about like her great future to make herself feel better. So I don't think that any of what we see of Hildy in this book is at all out of keeping with what we saw of Hildy in Drowdam, but it's just external rather than internal. And because you see it externally, you're like, wow, bitch. Which is pretty clearly Mae Wynne's reaction. Although, again, i was struck in this sequence by Mae Wynne's emotional maturity, her kindness, the fact that she's able to think, well, she has problems.
01:20:35
Speaker
yeah Still don't like her. specific But Hildy has at law school made what she calls a besting, because law school has lots of stupid slang, a best friend who is Biffa, my favourite minor character in this book.
01:20:49
Speaker
Biffa is wonderful. Biffa is taller than Mitt, and Mitt knows he is at least six foot. And she is very, very intelligent, and she adores Hildy. And Morrill says about it, you know, the way girls do. Morrill knows about lesbians.
01:21:08
Speaker
So the this the the thrust of this law school sequence is Navis and Mitt are trying to convince Hildy that she needs to go with them for her own safety. Hildy refuses because ah in in the very well, actually, we have to do the griddling before we can do Navis's best dad jokes.
01:21:24
Speaker
um They're there to see the graduation. Right, or the end of term. It's like, you know, accidentally they've arrived just in time for the end of term festivities. So Hilde and Brid, who is Mural's sister, are you know are all there and they they have this you know very funny sort of Oxford parody law school graduation sequence. And then the middle of the graduation sequence suddenly explodes into comic violence because law school also has this tradition called griddling. Becca, say the word again.
01:21:54
Speaker
Griddling. Sorry, I love it in your accent. Gridling is what I would say. Which appears to be football with weapons.
01:22:08
Speaker
And about seven teams. but but Okay, there's a lot happening in this sequence. Like, even before we get to the griddling, I'm doing it now.
Political Tensions and Assassination Attempts
01:22:20
Speaker
even before we get there, ah someone has tried to kill Mae Wen twice. She is being followed by an assassin. and The first time, Navis saves her. That is, in fact, when she was throwing up in the pub bathroom. Someone jumped out at her with a knife. The second time is at the law school and Mitt saves her that time and Mae Wen's so embarrassed. yeah As Mae Wen often is when she finds someone very attractive. She screams, oh, save me, Mitt. And then it's like, oh, my God, that was so girly.
01:22:49
Speaker
And then while they're there, this is sort of a quiet, out of the way bit of the law school. it turns out the Chapel of the One is here and the cup is in there on the altar. Mitt tries to steal it and it's got some sort of hex on it and it starts blazing with light when he touches it. So he's like, never mind. So Navis goes in, picks it up with his handkerchief and puts it in his pocket.
01:23:08
Speaker
So they've stolen the cup and now it's time for griddling. Right. One real quick, one important thing that happens while he's sitting there, Mitt is trying to steal the cup. And then he like, he hangs out there just for a while, like, oh my God, am I going to do it or not? And so he's like, why am I doing this?
01:23:24
Speaker
Because he'd made that promise to Alk, because he'd spoken words to old Ahmed and Libby Beer, who'd been around yesterday and today, perhaps to remind Mitt of those words. Mitt grinned, a bent, unfunny smile. Funny the way it was never enough to swear and promise just the once.
01:23:38
Speaker
You seem to have to rethink and re-promise every time the subject came up. So we're back to binding and we're back to the ways that you bind yourself. You choose to get on the ride.
01:23:48
Speaker
You can get off, but you don't. Right. Mitt's choice to continue being lawful means is one of the reasons why Mitt can't steal the cup. The other is this hex that makes it blaze when he touches it.
01:24:00
Speaker
But also I do think it's very funny that Navis walks in and like oh, is that all? And just steals it himself with a handkerchief. Yeah, Navis has no problem. Most ruthless man in history. Yep. And I do think, so again, this very funny sequence where then they go watch The Graduation and everything explodes into violence. It's a joke. They're all sitting around watching it, but it is also foreshadowing. There's a lot in this book about the law and about justice.
01:24:23
Speaker
And it is also very clear that this is a book that is building towards a necessary war. And so the fact that the law school, where all these law people come from, is also a place of sudden, abrupt violence, where all of these law students are carrying hidden weapons under their sleeve. Morrill can't watch this. Morrill says it reminds me of Flynn Pass, which is when he killed a whole bunch of people in an avalanche.
01:24:43
Speaker
Maewyn can't watch it either. Mitt is having a wonderful time. Mitt loves it. Mitt's like, what are the rules? And then Mitt spots in the middle of the crowd this gigantic, amazing girl they met earlier. And it's like, she's brilliant at this. And hang on, I've got it. Mitt, on the other hand, had discovered that it was easy to pick Biffa out in the fray. And he was yelling with the rest. Come on, Biffa, hit him. Amit, that girl's strong. Go to it, Biffa. Go it. Mitt is like, I love evil sports day. She loves Evil Sports Day so much!
01:25:17
Speaker
Hildy also loves Evil Sports Day. Hildy's right there in the crowd. Right. So they're trying at the end, they're trying to get Hildy to go away with them. And Hildy says, Father, I've come to a decision. I intend to be a really good lawwoman. And Mavis has an excellent intention. Is this recent? Did it come upon you during the griddling?
01:25:36
Speaker
Hildy stamped her foot. Mae Wynn hardly blamed her. Navis could be so maddening. And actually, unless it's the only moment that Mae Wynn feels any sympathy for Hildy, is when Navis is like, ah. A dad joke. dad joke moment.
01:25:52
Speaker
And Hildy says, i think pretty reasonably, having been, remember, in Drowned Amet, Hildy's future had been curtailed by being engaged to the Lord of the Holy Isles. She's not allowed to do a whole bunch of things because she's an important political pawn. And so what she says now is, you always try and stop me doing things by making me look silly. If what you told me goes wrong, then we'd be on the run and I'd never get back here. I'd have to sacrifice what I want to politics, just like I have done all my life.
01:26:18
Speaker
I'm not going to. i refuse to come with you. I'm staying here. Which is a bad decision because her life is in danger, but also a really understandable decision. She has taken the steps towards forging a future for herself.
01:26:29
Speaker
And it seems to her that she's being drawn right back into the sort of political morass that she tried. desperate She spent all of Draw Dammit trying desperately to escape. I will say as though it's actually very, very urgent she comes because also at the law school at the same time when they've seen him is Kialan, Earl Carroll's son, with a bunch of hearthmen from Hanart, presumably there to take Hildy away. So they've got to get Hildy out.
01:26:55
Speaker
yeah And in fact, Kialan and Mitt have bumped into each other. and had a conversation where it became clear that Kian is on their side, or at least not entirely Earl Carroll's pawn. He's willing to kind of help them get away, but they decide to belt and suspend it and they are helped by Biffa who comes up and is like, look, Hildy is too mad to understand that this is important, but I am very smart and I understand that this is important. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take Hildy home with me for vacation. And what Hildy doesn't know is that we often get really snowed in on vacation. So unfortunately, we're probably just going to get really snowed in and have a nice cabin in the woods time together while you're on your quest. Can't be snowed in because it's mid it was started in midsummer. I think it must be autumn storms, something like that.
01:27:40
Speaker
Point is that ah there's no way that Hildy is going to get kidnapped by the Earl of Hanark because Biffa is here. We love Biffa. We love Biffa. Hildy loves Biffa. ah Happy ending for Hildy. She doesn't have to come on this quest. She's going to go off with Biffa. And I do think that you know part of the reason that Hildy doesn't go on this quest is because Navas has functionally taken her place in the narrative. In Drowned Amet, we had Hildy with us and Navas was a distant and somewhat unpleasant figure. And in Crown of Delmark, that's reversed. We have Navas with us and Hildy is a distant and somewhat unpleasant figure.
01:28:08
Speaker
But the ways in which they are unpleasant are quite often the same. Yes. These are representatives of the Southern aristocracy and what it's done and what it means.
Internal Struggles and Prophetic Influence
01:28:20
Speaker
And Hildy and Morrill, I think, are also really deliberately mirrored as people who are very unhappy. and have taken a lot of damage over their lives and are taking it out specifically on Mitt.
01:28:31
Speaker
But also people with an ambition, with a dream. yeah Something they want to do personally and which they want to do as an adult choice. Hildy doesn't want to be carried off by her dad.
01:28:43
Speaker
Right, she wants to be a really good lawyer. Right, she's an adult. Yeah. In the scheme of historical Dalemark, just as much as Mitt or Morrill is. Yeah. Alright, so two quest items got...
01:28:56
Speaker
one to go. ah We're riding away from law school. At this point, this is when Mitt and Maura actually figure out that something is talking to Maywen when she's alone. I'll tell you what a striking moment is though, when they when they go back onto the green roads and they meet we they meet Wend again, who hasn't come down for the law school episode.
01:29:18
Speaker
And Maywen, who has been very, very frightened this whole time because people keep trying to stab her. is so relieved to see the the powerful wizard guide again. As you would be, right? Thank goodness Gandalf's back. and She was so glad to see Wend that she leaned down from her horse and wrung his hand. Wend was surprised, but she could tell he was very flattered too. His face looked like that of a normal human person who was glad to see friends again. This is so cute and so sad when you know what's actually going on with Wend. Yeah. Yeah.
01:29:47
Speaker
Mitt has a dream that I wish I had time to read all out all of and we don't. It's all about the roads of Delmark and the way that the roads kind of travel through time and history and story time. And he sees people from spellcoats and he sees people from the present and he sees people from the future, all traveling these roads that link the past and present and myth of Delmark together. The roads that we know eventually will be the railroads. But all throughout this dream, there's a sense of terrible danger. And when he wakes up, he overhears the voice that speaks to Meowen, the voice that Norroth clearly thought was the one, saying, right, now is the time, now that you have the two of the artifacts, you should probably start killing ah Mitt and Navis. And then when you get to the end, you can kill Morrill as well. These people are all dangerous to you.
01:30:33
Speaker
Right. So there this voice speaking out of nowhere to Meowen is saying some really horrible stuff. In Mae Wen's point of view, interestingly, she always worries that it's her.
01:30:46
Speaker
She thinks, well, being sent back in time must have ah mixed up my mind somehow. What if this is a part of me that wants to kill people and hurt people? Mae Wen has heard of evil mirror selves.
01:30:56
Speaker
Yeah. And unlike, say, Tanuqui, who encountered her own evil mirror in her ancestor Kemblith in the Dark Lord Cankreden, Mae Wen is not encountering her evil mirror self here.
01:31:10
Speaker
Mei-Wen's fine. She's normal. She's good. That's actually the bad guy. Mei-Wen is encountering a predator. You know, as with the the situation on the train, there's a real sense of stranger danger here. She's afraid to be alone because she knows the voice might talk to her when she's alone. She knows she's safe with other people. And there is a mirroring here, although it's not between Mei-Wen and Cankreden, but it's between Mei-Wen and Nett, both of whom are being are children or children on the verge of adulthood, Who are, you know someone, an adult is attempting to turn them into a weapon, into a murderer. And they're saying, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that.
01:31:45
Speaker
yeah but The voice says to Maywin is, do as I say or fail and die yourself. Which is more or less what the Countess and Carol said to Mitt. Yes.
01:31:56
Speaker
Because Maywen and Mitt are the same and they're seeing each, like from across time, from across space, from these incredibly different life experiences, there is something in each of them which answers to the other one.
01:32:10
Speaker
Yeah. Mitt is obviously very upset that his crush has a disembodied voice telling her to kill him, as you would be. Right. He goes and talks to Morrill about it and again, there's There's something very... They come to the conclusion that ah this is not the one. This is King Creedon. The way they come to the conclusion is, i think, quite important, right? Because Mitt storms off to feel sad by himself about it and bumps into old Amet. He's I cannot specifically give you any answers, but the one does not give instructions to his mortal children. And Mitt's like, but I just heard... And Amet's like, think for two seconds, dude. and i'm sorry i keep a I keep doing this. I should give the exact words, but instead I do it in a ah ah paraphrase. I've got the quote. I think the bit before that is really important. And it says, why do you undying keep pushing me about?
01:33:01
Speaker
It's not our fault, Alhamet, old Amet answered. The times are pushing us. And I should remind you that when you chose the Winds Road, you chose the Green Road too. I know, i know, Mitt said, once I got on, there's never been a moment I could have got off, but I keep having to choose all the same. And every time I choose to try and get right, things turn round on me and try to make me go the other way.
01:33:20
Speaker
And Amet says, I'm not here to tell you what to do. No, Mitt said bitterly, you undying never do give a straight answer. You just push. It is not my place, said Amet, to question our grandfather, whom they call the One.
01:33:31
Speaker
His law is that we do not tell his mortal family what to do. That is to make people into puppets. Then the One just broke his own law, Mitt said. I am here to tell you to think about that, said Ammit. So Ammit thinks about it and goes, wait, that wasn't the one. Who would give evil instructions? It must be Cankreden, a moral who has actually fairly consistently been following people about eavesdropping for most of this quest. Yeah.
01:33:58
Speaker
We followed Mitt around, eavesdropped on him and was like, wait, you are the chosen. to that like that's That's not a metaphor. That was definitely one of the undying, giving you direct conversation. And it's like, yeah, that happens to me sometimes. Yep. ah So Morrill and Mitt are now teamed up thinking about how do we defeat Cankreden and save Cankreden.
01:34:20
Speaker
Norrith. They still believe that Maywen is Norrith. They don't know her real identity. And the way they talk about it is he started talking to her when she was young and worked up to this gradually. He's been grooming her is what Cankreden has been doing to Norrith. And they're both terrified of that because what does a woman who's been groomed by Cankreden do when she's queen?
01:34:39
Speaker
Right, so their goal now is to prevent Norrith from succeeding in her quest and becoming queen. Which they try really hard to do when they get to the next place on their quest line. This is my favourite sequence in the book, and that's partly because Spellcoats is one of my favourite books. So good. But here in the next part, out on the green roads, things are getting quite stressful. They're running low on food. ah They think they might be being pursued by various troops of horsemen. There are at least three or four different like troops of mysterious horsemen moving about the countryside in this part of the book. So they get off the road and Wend says, let's go and visit my sister.
01:35:14
Speaker
And we're like, Wend's sister? Tanamorel's sister? he We missed her. And so we are taken out of the present time in Denmark, the historical period.
Kenareth's Legacy and Mythology
01:35:26
Speaker
And into what is very clearly story time as we come to a little cottage ah with a little pond outside and a water trough and a garden. And it's all very lovely. And Wen says, as as a kind of private joke, those are my sister's ducks. Yeah. and we're like, hey, it's Tanaquii.
01:35:46
Speaker
And I do think it's really important that we're getting Wend here. We're getting these reminders of the fact that last time we, the readers, saw Wend, he was a child. He was a child like any of these children. He was a child. His name was Duck.
01:35:57
Speaker
why And he was, in fact, the spoiled baby of the family. And the other thing I think is important is that we are here given more names for Tanakui. She's called Kenareth, the Witch Kenareth, who is a figure who's been named several times in the first two books, the Delmar Quartet. And she's also called the Weaver, which is a name that comes up elsewhere as one of the greater undying, as in of ah a goddess, a divinity.
01:36:25
Speaker
Yes. She weaves fate. And in fact, well, so there's, she's also, it turns out the mother of Manalia Brid, who was the Adon's wife who made all these magical gifts.
01:36:38
Speaker
And we get sort of a familiar picture of a a powerful mother and a strong-willed daughter in a complicated relationship. And this brief glimpse of what happened after the Adon died, when Kenareth explains that her daughter stormed it, ah hung a magical sword up by a bazillion different knots, and said, whoever cuts the sword down without touching any of the knots and without letting it touch the floor, etc., etc., the real Alexander the Great situation will become next king of Delmarc. And...
01:37:07
Speaker
Kenareth says, shes my daughter expected too much of her children's children, if you ask me, but I wasn't consulted. And she also said that when they're talking about how this is for the children of her blood and the Adons, that's rather a lot of people these days, but that's another thing she wouldn't listen to when I told her how it would be in enough time past.
01:37:25
Speaker
So again, we're getting that, you know, everyone in Dalemark essentially is a candidate for this kingship at this point. There is a blood of kings situation, but it's been hundreds of years. And most of the people, in fact, all of the major people in this book have the blood of this king.
01:37:40
Speaker
Right. People have a lot of descendants if you go if you go if you wait long enough. I find the portrayal of Tanakui here really interesting because we last saw her as the teenage girl narrator of Spellcoats and now she is an old woman. When they first see her...
01:37:58
Speaker
Our main characters think she can't be Wen's sister, she must be her his grandmother. And then they see her again and she seems like a woman perhaps in late middle age ah with hair gone white and face lined, um but clearly very beautiful when she was younger.
01:38:13
Speaker
But what I find striking is that, right, we get this Tanakui who is this eccentric lonely old woman, not lonely, alone old woman living in her cabin in the woods, doing her magic, her strange things with this complicated mother-daughter relationship. And I was like, is this Gladys? Yeah, I think it is Gladys. I think it's Gladys. But also one of the things that Maywen notes specifically is that although she seems to be living this very rural life um and this very sort of primitive life, she has this educated voice. And I went, I've heard that before.
01:38:48
Speaker
That's Wilkins' tooth. yes yeah pity This is This is witch living by the water in her strange little shack surrounded by what turned out to be lost treasures with an educated voice and sort of things going on. But she's gone from being a simple antagonist way back at the beginning of Jones's career to being one of the most complicated and interesting figures of power in the book. And she was once a child, unlike Sophie, who was a teenager who became old by magic, which is you know sort of the first really sympathetic portrayal of old womanhood in Diana Jones's works. This is and a protagonist who's been allowed to grow up, who's been allowed to become old and powerful and complicated. Yeah, it's great. It's splendid.
01:39:35
Speaker
And we get Go on. oh stay And the other figure that she mirrors is Maewyn's mother. Maewyn looks at Kenareth doing her weaving, doing her crafting alone in the woods, and thinks that she looks like her mother doing her art. Right. This idea of this woman who is, again, free to pursue her art, to do her own thing, yeah um and to become a person of great power.
01:40:00
Speaker
Yeah. We get so much in this little sequence of what Tanakui's power has come to mean. So our three children character characters or adolescent, our cusp of adulthood characters, Mitt, Morrill and Maewen, all the M's, go into the house of the Weaver along with Wend, ah who's quite cheerfully like, yeah, I'm their wizard guide doing my wizard guiding. is six And like, oh, Wend. Oh, Duck. Classic Duck.
01:40:28
Speaker
Right. So they meet the witch Kenareth. She's always called Kenareth, except when Wend talks to her. He's the only one who ever uses the name Tanakui. They meet her. She explains the sword to them and all the conditions around the sword. but Before that, she takes a look. Is it before or after they get the sword that she looks at them? After they get the sword, she watches them all flail around.
01:40:51
Speaker
Postmit and Morrill are trying really hard to sabotage getting the sword. And unfortunately for them, they accidentally fulfill all the the conditions of prophecy while they're doing it. Right. So, know, they're told you have to do this and you have to do that and to do that and don't touch it and don't drop it and don't let it touch anything. And Mitt's like, OK, what's the quickest way to ruin everything?
01:41:09
Speaker
Gets out his knife, cuts through the knots. out In a real Alexander moment. Yeah. And then drops it. And Maimond's like, oh, no, don't drop the sword and catches it.
01:41:20
Speaker
So Moral kind of bangs around trying to sabotage her and so drops everything. Everything else. It's been nailed up over the fireplace and the fireplace is full of fire irons. And this is bo
Identity Reveals and Romantic Tensions
01:41:30
Speaker
there's a farcical sequence of everything crashing to the floor except the sword, which in the course of everybody accidentally trying to drop things or not drop things in all directions, Mitt ends up grabbing the hilt and pulling it out of the sheath.
01:41:44
Speaker
and is standing there holding the naked blade aloft and Tanakoy is standing there trying not to laugh. Yes it's so funny and you can tell that she thinks it's really funny. And then she turns back to her weaving presumably because she's like I just saw something really funny and I want to make sure to get it down right.
01:41:59
Speaker
And she notices that the the yarn that she was using has suddenly has been turned to a different color. A color that's a dye that hasn't been invented yet.
01:42:11
Speaker
Right. From a rusty orange to a very bright, colourfast red. Antanakwe Kenareth looks at this and then looks at Maywen and says, who are you?
01:42:23
Speaker
Right. You are from, I love how much of this book is about technology, in even in the ways that you don't necessarily think about technology, like colourfast dyes. Yeah. And of course, Tanakui as a weaver, as a craftsperson, is instantly able to identify what's wrong, what's different about this particular yarn, this particular thread.
01:42:43
Speaker
So Maywen at this point is forced to confess that she came from the future. And surprisingly to her, Wend has a temper tantrum. He's like, you're not the one, you're you're not Norrith, you're not the one I've kept the green roads for all these years. You can go hang in the green roads with you. Not one step more do I go with any of you.
01:43:01
Speaker
And he storms out and is gone for the rest of the quest. The wizard is not there. He does not see the ending of this story. Right. And in fact, I think it's a great shock to Maywen she's been assuming all along that Wen knew that he was the one who sent her back in time, right? This was all his plan. It turns out she knew more than him about what was going on the whole time. He thought she was Noreth. And Noreth was the one he wanted to become queen and was supporting on her quest. He is not happy with this outcome. And in fact, very strikingly, he turns to Tanakui and that's when he uses her name. He asks her to unpick Maywen's thread.
01:43:42
Speaker
Have we got it? Because it's... Oh no, I don't have the quote. I think it's interesting because it sort of reveals a bit about about the um the legend that's the sort of centre of Tanamorel's myth, Osfamaran's myth, is that he brought the dead Adon back to life.
01:44:00
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, I've got it. I've got it. she said He says, unpick it don't be silly said his sister but you've unpicked before when said not often and not for centuries she retorted and only when the one has asked it of me but i asked you last time went cried out he seemed quite desperate don't you remember i asked you when that slimy trader killed the addon you unpicked then Duck, that was unpicking a death, she said very seriously. You wouldn't want me to unpick a living person.
01:44:29
Speaker
Why not, went demanded. She's an imposter. Unpick. Send her back. I don't want her here. yes So we now discover that this legendary act of magic that Osbamaran did was in fact done by his sister, which was ah bringing the dead back to life by unpicking a death that had been woven in fate, which is apparently a thing that Tanakui can do now. Cool. yeah But also really alarming that Wendy is trying to have Maywen unpicked. And as Kenareth has said, you can't do that to a living person. You can't undo her life.
01:45:02
Speaker
Right. Once again, the spoiled baby brother who, you know, we've seen a lot of willful, spoiled youngest children in Diana Wynne-Jones. And I think Wynne is a very striking portrait of one of those grown up.
01:45:14
Speaker
Yes. Right. So they leave. Now everything's out about who Maewyn is. Mitten and Morrill are tremendously relieved because it means that she's not been groomed by Cang Creedon for her entire life. and probably isn't going to try and kill them.
01:45:28
Speaker
They both do still think she's 18. And so their their their crush on her is still kind of like, ah, this older woman will never be interested in us. But now we're moving into the climax of the book.
01:45:39
Speaker
So as they they'd have all the objects. And at this point, they do in fact run into the thing that Maywen has been trying to avoid, which is an army. Maywen's cousin has showed up with a very stupid army full of children.
01:45:53
Speaker
Right, and Maywen's very, very handsome cousin, who it's pretty clear was Noreth's boyfriend and is expecting to become Prince Consort of Dalemark when she's Queen. ah So Maywen is stuck with this amazingly awkward situation where he keeps trying to say romantic things to her and then Mitt rides up in between them, grinning like a death's head. Noreth had seemed an age, an endless age, after you had gone. Dropwater was empty, empty and void, and Maywen is Again, this is the teen drama book. Maywin is sitting there dying of embarrassment and Mitt and Morrill are basically just making fun of her the entire ride to the final battle. Like, look, there he is. He's writing a poem.
01:46:34
Speaker
But this, you know, this funny idyll is interrupted by the arrival of Alk with another army. There are so many armies in this bit of the book. Right. And Alk is there in his capacity as lawman.
01:46:48
Speaker
He is on the track of a murderer, which we discover as he calls out the names of the people he specifically wants to talk to and says, just you guys privately with no one overhearing. And then he says, I know that you are not Norrith One's daughter because that is the person whose murder he's investigating.
01:47:09
Speaker
Someone has killed Norrith One's daughter. The woman who, again, we met in the first part of this book. We liked her. She was funny. She had a meet cute with Mitt. She was smart. She had good ideas. And she's been dead the whole time.
01:47:23
Speaker
ah In fact, we are told the circumstances of her death. She was found with her throat cut buried under a pile of straw in the stable. If you remember, the last thing we saw Noreth say in her last appearance in the book was, I'll just go and look in the stable.
01:47:38
Speaker
Diana Wynne-Jones, as usual, has played perfectly fair throughout the book. It was always possible to work out what must have happened to Norrith and where and when. yeah Multiple people or multiple times now someone has tried to kill Maywen in more or less the same way, catch her alone and cut her throat.
01:47:58
Speaker
That is what happened to Norrith. Alk has brought, has basically come to try and figure out if any of them have killed North and he's able to prove that all of them didn't because it turns out this cup that they stole has magical truth telling properties and it will shine with light when someone is telling the truth and switch off when someone is telling a lie, except for Mitt because it goes just haywire every time that Mitt touches it until Alk comes up with the idea to turn it off and on again.
01:48:24
Speaker
So Alk is able to prove that none of them killed Norrith. And at that point, it's quite clear that Alc and Navis know something that Mitt doesn't. They have a sort of coded conversation in which they are, they have clearly twigged to the ending of this book, which is that the reason that everything goes haywire when Mitt touches things is that Mitt is the rightful king or Mitt is the destined king, let's say. I think that rightful is not the right term.
01:48:48
Speaker
Right. So there's actually Alk does multiple tests because he's got, you know, an engineer's mind, a scientific mind. First, he gets Mitt to touch the cup several times and gets the the the firework display, the light show that Mitt understood as a hex on the cup.
01:49:02
Speaker
And then he also gets Mitt to draw the sword for him a few times, which only the rightful king can do. And Mitt, I think, honestly, is being quite thick here and has not got a clue what's going on. Yeah.
01:49:16
Speaker
But Alk says he's going to join them and Navis queries it and Alk says, let's say I've got the same reason you do. And I think at that point, it's pretty clear that both Alk and Navis support Mitt for the throne.
01:49:31
Speaker
Yes, because what we eventually learn is that everybody, Mitt, again, quite thick, has not realized this, but when at the end of Drowned Ammit, Mitt was fulfilling a bunch of prophecies. And we talked when we talked about that book about how Mitt had made the choices that led him to fulfill those prophecies. He had put himself in the way of walking the winds road and thus walking the green roads, as ah old Ammit says in his conversation with him. And so everybody has been looking at the southerner who arrived in this prophetic boat very mystically and showed up in the north in a way that fulfilled every prophecy. And it's like, huh, that a king, do you think?
01:50:06
Speaker
Also, we learn that Mitt looks exactly like the portrait of the Adon that when we first see it, Mitt is like, what an ugly motherfucker. But also like that portrait kept coming back, right? Mitt kept standing next to it with people looking at him weirdly. Right.
01:50:23
Speaker
So, I mean, I do think that Mitt has, you know, eventually we get, yes, Mitt, you're destined from the Adon, you have a perfectly legitimate claim to the throne, but also Mitt has put himself in the way of these prophecies. He has walked the prophetic path and thus has become, by walking these roads, by walking the green roads, by walking green roads, green roads, by walking the winds road. By making a choice and continuing to make it. Yes.
01:50:47
Speaker
Has become the person who will become the king, Amal the Great. And it's important that nobody knows that Mewen has no idea who Amal the Great is because Amal the Great is a new person. Anyone could step into that path. And in the end, Mitt is the person who actually does. All of our protagonists end up in sort of this mystical sequence where they encounter the ghost of King Hearn, who I know is your favorite guy in all of Delmar. I do like Hearn.
01:51:12
Speaker
I'm allowed to have a favorite guy. He's a good guy to have his favorite. He's fantastic. He's even fantastic as he's actually very good and very sad as ah a King ghost. Right. So in fact, let's talk about the final MacGuffin.
01:51:24
Speaker
Everybody has converged on what is the future site of Delmark's capital city, Kearnsburg, which Maywen has a weird time with this because she's walking through this um this site of a ruined prehistoric city, which was Hearns City, and thinking, but I'm walking down
Mitt's Kingship and Philosophical Debates
01:51:39
Speaker
the main road. There ought to be, so you know...
01:51:41
Speaker
skyscrapers and tall shops and a large railway station and all the things I'm familiar with. There there should be a palace over there. Right. She says she felt as if time had stood upside down and she really was in the far future looking at the remains of the Kernsberg she had known. um There's echoes here again of Time City, of the way that, you know, past and future and all time is kind of the same time, that a city is a ruin and a great city and a ruin and a great city and this happens cyclically. Yes.
01:52:07
Speaker
And this idea of time being upside down, I think, is part of Dale Mark's argument for the future, such as it is. Right, so they go to the city and it's quite clear that the violence, which the whole series has clearly been building to an explosion of violence. It was obvious at the end of Cart and Quiddah, where we had the abortive invasion of the North by the South. It was obvious in Drowned Amet, where there was a simmering revolution, clearly on the verge of happening every moment in the city of Holland.
01:52:38
Speaker
spellcoats that was haunted by delmark's founding war it is clear that something has got to give in delmark and the violence is happening here there is there are various armed forces all converging on the site of kernsburg and this is also supposed to be where the crown of delmark is hidden our final mcguffin somebody's got to get it yeah Somebody has to go through the waystone, which is, you know, we've heard about these waystones that are on the green roads. They're big stones with little holes in the very beginning of the book, which I actually think is very sad, North is talking about how they're supposed to, ah the undying are supposed to sit in them. And Mitt says, but the undying are very big. They could not fit in those little holes.
01:53:22
Speaker
And North says, sometimes the things they do make them seem smaller, which I think has to be foreshadowing a reference to the the way that she's been groomed by Cancredon, who's been presenting himself as an undying, but keeps telling her to do these terrible things.
01:53:38
Speaker
Yeah. So, moral uses the power of the quidder to enter storytime, I think is what should call it. And I think actually this this book, more explicitly than most, Diana Wynne-Jones talks about the relationship between present time, historic time and storytime. Storytime is where Kenareth lives. Storytime is the place where stories are true and it's where the one lives as well.
01:54:04
Speaker
Right. Storytime, though, is also, Alk quite explicitly says, before I created my machines, they were a notion in my head. and Maybe the one is real like that. Storytime is a world of ideas ah that exist in potentiality before they exist in reality.
01:54:22
Speaker
And it's in story time they'll find the crown. It's also the history of Amal the Great, which who has never been portrayed accurately, who is a legend in ahistorical purple breeches in Maywin's time. Yes, who exists in stories. yes So they go into the story time of Kernsberg, the city of gold.
01:54:40
Speaker
And we've had this running phrase, the city of gold is always on another hill. But finally, the City of Gold is here. This is the city that Hearn built that he was dreaming of at the end of Spellcoats. And they travel through it, enter the palace, go down to the bottom of it and find the strong room. And there is a stone seat with the crown sitting on it.
01:54:59
Speaker
Yep. So that was easy. Yeah. And now somebody just has to take it. And the group who are there, and this is important, actually, we've got Mitt, Morrill and Maywen are joined by Kialan and Inen, Navas's son.
01:55:14
Speaker
Kialan has rescued Inen from where he was a hostage held by Kialan's father, Carol, and brought him here to Kernsburg to be part of this moment. And actually, Mitt and Morrill, in their earlier conversation about somebody's got to be this Amal the Great guy she's talking about, were both like, Kialan?
01:55:32
Speaker
Inan? And Morrill went, Kialan's the guy. And Mitt went, no, Inan, trust me. Because we we've both got our favorite posh boy. Right. our Our posh boy sidekick from the previous book that we bonded with. Yes.
01:55:45
Speaker
But, in fact, it quickly becomes clear that this sequence is test. And what Hearn is there to do. So Hearn explains that he is a ghost who made the mistake of asking the one to be able to crown the next king.
01:55:59
Speaker
And so he's been here for hundreds of years waiting to crown the next king. But he also says, I'm a dead man. I can't have new thoughts. And then they enter into this sort of philosophical debate that I think is really interesting about...
01:56:13
Speaker
Whether in fact a dead person can have new thoughts, whether Hearn is in fact real and there and present and having new ideas to talk to them or, and how his advice should be taken and what the, you know, how to think about undyingness and about the one and about kingship.
01:56:30
Speaker
Right. Hearn both is and is not undying. Like we've met several of the undying now. We've met Amit and Libby Beer, we've met Kenareth, we've met Wend.
01:56:42
Speaker
Hearn does not seem to be like that. no And Wend has already told us, you know, when in in the question of why is Wend like he is, he's part of the reason that he's so lonely and sad is because he saw two of his brothers die, ah which we know he has two brothers there, Gull and Hearn. So to Wend, Hearn is dead.
01:57:04
Speaker
Right. But this remnant of Hearn that exists only in storytime is Well, what is it? what What does it mean to exist only in story?
01:57:15
Speaker
In some ways, it means that what you are is purely a function of what has been said about you. So a lot of what Hearn says, Morrill then says, that's the the singers say, that's the king's sayings. Right. That's in a song. That's in a song of famer. Anton Amaral said that, but he wrote it after you were dead. And Hearn says, well, that doesn't excuse my brother. Of course, I heard him say that. Yeah.
01:57:37
Speaker
And they have this, I wish I could read out this whole scene because it's so good, but we're we're running so long. So to cut to the chase, they sort of have this argument and it's Mei-Win who's been disqualified from the beginning from kingship competition by being from the future is watching them sort of banter and argue with Hearn. And the only one in the end who has the sort of strength of will to stand up to Hearn, to stand up to this story of kingship, ah these ideas of kingship that have been preserved from the first king, is Mitt.
01:58:06
Speaker
Right. And it's in fact Mitt's ability to refuse Hearn, to argue with him, and to want to change things for him, to change the story of the king, if you like.
01:58:19
Speaker
that qualifies him, that makes Hearn say to him, all right, now you have to take the crown. And Mitt refuses it. And Hearn has to bribe him. Right. He bribes him with whatever he wants.
01:58:31
Speaker
And the wish that Mitt makes is for Hearn to be freed of his sort of half-life here. Right. Which I think is... one more striking unbinding in this book that is so much about unbinding.
01:58:45
Speaker
Here it's an unbinding from the past, right? What Hearn says he wanted to do when he asked the one for this, well, for the right to give the crown to the new king and thus bound himself to this half existence. Hearn says he wanted to be able to give a new king his advice.
01:59:02
Speaker
Yeah. So he wanted to speak out of the past to the future to help, to shape, to stabilize perhaps yeah mitt undoes that binding and so has undone dale mark's binding to an ancient past yeah And there's there's a really, I think, also really striking moment at the end of this chapter where the one, having taken the crown, the one asks Mitt what name he will take, what kind of king he will be. And Mitt says Mitt knew it was a real choice, even if Maewyn had told him which way he chose.
01:59:41
Speaker
He weighed it up. Alhammit was a good name, except that it was the name of half the men in the south. Amel was a name no one else had, but it carried the one's burden with it. Well, Mitt had carried burdens all his night life. Kingship was another one.
01:59:53
Speaker
One more seemed to make no difference on top of that. I'll take Amal, he said. So what he's doing, instead of being the person that he has been, Alhamet, who is, ah you know, one of many, is he's forging himself into a new story, Amal, a name that nobody else has, that will become a story that, you know, again, that Maewyn has brought back from the future, this this story figure that is not Mitt, that is not Alhamet, that is someone that can step into and eventually step out of.
02:00:23
Speaker
Right. It's creating a new story of Delmark in creating a new king. And we talked about how Hearn in the Spellcoats becomes like the story of Delmark. The the protagonist of the narrative that Tanakui creates is this union of Delmark through the way Hearn unites the peoples to fight Gankreden. By rejecting Hearn?
02:00:46
Speaker
not quite rejecting him by releasing Hearn. There we go. Mitt says, new story. Yeah. And again, like in Spellcoats, what we get by the end is the story told imperfectly and incorrectly by way of the artifacts that survive it.
02:01:04
Speaker
So when Maywin returns to the palace at the end, she goes and she looks at all the portraits and she goes and asks her dad about what we know from the portraits. And we know some of the things in the portraits are correct, some are incorrect. There's these artifacts in the museum. I think there's this really important thread about the story of history as a story of myth that is necessarily imperfect and full of holes and full of absences. Yeah. So ultimately...
02:01:29
Speaker
Mitt becomes king. There is various bits of political thought fallout, but essentially the battle is over and Mitt is in charge now. I think we're so we're running so long, perhaps we shouldn't dwell on exactly how that works. And also if you think too hard about it, it becomes less persuasive. The one thing that I think we do need to talk about is Cankreden. Because we do discover, we have to talk about Cankreden, we have to talk about Hestephane.
02:01:49
Speaker
yes So it turns out that Cancredin was there all the time. yes and know we Again, this has been played totally fair. Cancredin was there all along. Every time that Maywen was alone, Cancredin spoke to her.
02:02:02
Speaker
When she was alone, what she was usually doing was grooming her horse or taking her horse to water. And she thought multiple times, what a weird horse. So calm, so patient, so fine with the fact that I'm clearly not the person it's used to. So unlike Mitt's very, very full of personality Countess horse, Norrith must have used this horse like a bicycle.
02:02:26
Speaker
is is a and thought Maywin has at one point I read that and i went hang on a second I have seen you use that joke somewhere else and I flipped to the tough guy to fantasy land and let me just read this out to you this is also Diana Wynne-Jones the 1990s tough guy to fantasy land wrote a little dictionary of the kinds of things you might encounter in a fantasy book Horses are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full tilt all day without a rest.
02:02:54
Speaker
Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame, or put their hooves down holes, except when management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the Dark Lord are only half an hour behind.
02:03:06
Speaker
They never otherwise stumble. Nor do they ever make life difficult for tourists by biting or kicking their riders or one another. They never resist being mounted or blow out so that their girths slip, or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world.
Resolving Mysteries and Future Reflections
02:03:21
Speaker
For instance, they never shy and seldom whinny or demand sugar at inopportune moments. but for some reason you cannot hold a conversation while riding them. If you want to say anything to another tourist or vice versa, both of you will have to rein to a stop and stand staring out over a valley while you talk.
02:03:38
Speaker
Apart from this inexplicable quirk, horses can be used just like bicycles and usually are. Norris, icicle horse, which does not behave like a horse...
02:03:50
Speaker
was the Dark Lord the whole time. It was pure evil. And again, this is foreshadowed, right? The horse is the train, which is where Cancreden first appears to her. She's been riding, and it's also very creepy, she's been riding this horse the entire all around Delmark. Anyway, they defeat the evil horse. It's fine. No problems.
02:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, they do exactly the way Morrill and Mitt planned. Morrill uses his quiddah to make Kangrodin take his true form, and then Mitt uses the power of the names of the Undying that he knows from previous ah from from the end of Drowned Amet. And actually, that is what brings the battle to an end and makes everyone go, oh, right, I guess that's the chosen one then. Right, that seems like the destiny. with The crown with the magic powers, that seems plausible. We also resolve the question of who killed North. It turns out that the person who murdered North was Hestephan the singer, who's been with them the whole time, just kind of being disapproving and grumpy because his daughter was being threatened by a Southern Earl.
02:04:47
Speaker
In fact, he was made a murderer in exactly the same way that Mitt has been attempted, you know, that the Countess and Carol attempted to make Mitt a murderer by threatening the person he loves, in this case, his child. I don't want to dwell on this too long because, again, we're running really long, but I do think that there's a whole web of mirrorings between Hestephan and Navis and Carol about dads who are trying to protect their children.
02:05:10
Speaker
and We might have to do the Delmark dad sweepstakes in the bonus episode. yeah Because there is a lot to say. i do think on a reread, it becomes really clear that Hestephan is dodgy.
02:05:21
Speaker
yeah The way he responds to Mae Wynne is specifically... He knows that he murdered Noreth and then she turns up the next day alive. Hestephan is deeply freaked out by Mei Wen, as you would be. You're like, here is a zombie who might accuse me of murder. I think something really interesting that happens at the end. So Moril is the one who's really like this is really impactful for Moril and not for anybody else, because Moril is the person who said Hestephan is the only one I can trust.
02:05:49
Speaker
And the way that Morrill resolves this is by telling Hestephan, you have to go and be a spy for us now. And Hestephan's like, well, I can't do that. And Morrill says, my father would have done it. My father did it all the time. So he's taken this failed father figure, Hestephan, and he's forcing him into the shape of his real dead father, ah which I think is really interesting.
02:06:09
Speaker
Yeah, and sad. And in fact, by the end of the book, it's clear why when Maywen first encountered Morrill's portrait in the palace in the future, she was like, that boy looks so sad.
02:06:20
Speaker
Now, unfortunately, all these reveals happen, but Wend isn't there for them because Wend, who the entire reason that he sent Maywen back in time was to try and find out what happened to Norrith, he fucked off and never found out what happened to Norrith because he didn't stick around for the end of the quest.
02:06:34
Speaker
So, Mae-win goes back to the future. She intends to stay in the past because she and Mitt have sorted themselves out and they're having a very a cute teen romance, which only happens, by the way, because Mitt learns that Mae-win is in fact 13 and not 18. They're having an age-appropriate teen romance, but unfortunately Mae-win touches the golden statue of the one again and gets bopped back forward into the future and has a very sad and touching arc of sort of wandering around looking at all these bits of history that she's touched and interacted with and realizing that they've all been gone for 200 years.
02:07:03
Speaker
However, they didn't quite solve the problem of Cancredon, and they certainly didn't solve the problem of Wend, who's still there, who wants to know now what happened. And the thing that becomes very clear that Mae Wend works out instantly is that the only way all of this could have happened, with the connection between Wend and Norrith being instantly clear to Cancredon, who was there to meet her the minute she arrived in the past, is if Wend and Cancredon were working together.
02:07:33
Speaker
Yeah. Duck's gone evil. Wend's gone evil. And, oh, he also reveals, Wend also reveals, that the reason that he was so invested in this, that he wanted so desperately to know what happened to Norrith, is because she was his daughter. he She was never the one's daughter. She is the one's great-granddaughter.
02:07:53
Speaker
And he, you know, he agreed to let her mother sort of tell the story about her, that she was the one's daughter, and build her up to try and make her queen. Right. And Maywen points out to him that Cancredon, I say Cancredon, was probably at work on him at that point as well. It's kind of the whole thing. The other thing that becomes really clear here is that actually the person who Wend ended up blaming for the death of Norath was Mitt.
02:08:22
Speaker
which makes sense if you don't know the details, because like if you have two claimants to the throne and one of them disappears and the other one becomes king, ah you can quite reasonably look from one to the other and go, well, what happened? Which is clearly what Carol intended to happen is for one of them, you know, when he sent Mitt off, knowing that Mitt was probably a claimant to the throne, he was like, well, at least one of them will kill the other. And then we've only got to deal with one of them.
02:08:46
Speaker
Right. Right. We haven't even talked about sort of Keral at the end being like, we took you in, the Countess treated you as a son, now that you are we're becoming king in the accordance with the prophecies, as we kind of suspected you might, although we didn't really want you to, remember that you owe us. And Mick's just like, uh-huh.
02:09:03
Speaker
We've really cast my mind all the way back to eight days of Luke and that sequence where wodens where where David and Woden have their argument and David says, you did it all for a reason and that's not fair.
02:09:14
Speaker
The way that adults use their power to help and support children as a gross manipulation. Right. So it turns out Cancreden is still there. He's been working through Wend. Fortunately, Mitt is also still there. He turned out to be of the Undying. And he stepped out of being king as much as he had stepped into it. He stepped away from being Amal. He let Amal die. And has been just bouncing around 200 years fighting Cancreden.
02:09:43
Speaker
ah wherever he turns up and so he fights Cankreden again and Maewon's like oh my god that's my teenage crush from 200 years ago i'm a fight he is he is now a giant adult in a leather jacket acting as the evil disposal squad who's also my great great great grandfather but we're not going worry about that We are absolutely not going to worry about that. She does instantly, and I really think this is cute, she goes running around asking her dad all these historical questions and he's like, are you writing a novel? Well, make it accurate. And she does ask who Mitt ended up marrying. And it was Biffa.
02:10:15
Speaker
It was Biffa. Let's take a moment. A really beautiful Mitt-Biffa-Hildi situation. Yeah, the beautiful emotional triangle. And she also learns, which I do think is really important, she learns that Mitt, the Tannareth Palace,
02:10:29
Speaker
is named after her, Tanareth Younger Noreth, which is what gives her, oh, he didn't forget about me. He did, you know, he also still nourished his crush. But I think this is really significant because it makes, you know, ah we ask, she asks what Tanareth means and she learns that Tan, as a participle we've seen before, in spell codes it means Younger Noreth. Her dad is like, it's just it just seems to have been a name, Younger Noreth. But if you look at the glossary in the back of the book, we know that Aureth is one of the names of the one and it means bound. And Anareth is the name of the one's daughter, meaning unbound. So there is something in the name of Tannareth Palace about binding and unbinding as well. It's disguised, but it's definitely there. I am still wondering what Kenareth actually means. Yeah, clearly something.
02:11:14
Speaker
Possibly even something like the one who binds or she who binds. In this book about binding and unbinding, you know, Mitt defeats Cancreda and Maywin's like, I'm going to go find him. We're going to have our teen romance. But the last scene of this book, which I think is really important thematically, is Maywin confronting Wend and giving him back his quitter.
02:11:36
Speaker
The quitter, you know, she'd given it to him in the past and she'd seen how it kind of transformed him into a more complete person. And when she gives him back the quitter, he says, ah so he says, I gave it to my son. and she says, you can take it back now. And he says, it was my power I put in the quitter, a good half of it.
02:11:54
Speaker
I should never have passed that power on, he said. And looking as dreamy as Moral often did, he turned and walked out of the room. His face had gone beyond happy to become the face of a man of power. Oddly enough, that made him look kinder.
02:12:07
Speaker
So the ending... you compare that to what was said about him the first time he takes the quitter, it made him look ten times more dangerous. yeah um And being his full self makes Wend both more dangerous and more kind.
02:12:23
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, you know, to go back to... like We've talked about this as a book about divorce and about unbinding and about... sometimes you have to move away from the ways in which you've bound yourself, from the the, you know, devotion to what you think might be a virtue, right? Devotion to your family, fatherhood, passing your power on, giving your power up so you can be a good parent to your children. But if that makes you less of a person,
02:12:49
Speaker
And that makes you more willing to do cruel and ruthless things in order to protect or advance your children. Then it's not a good thing at all. The other thing that I think really comes out in the final sequence is how unhappy Wend has been. And he talks, um Maywin describes him as speaking drearily and he talks about how much time there is.
02:13:11
Speaker
yeah The idea of being undying as simply a very empty eternity with no real purpose to it. And of course, Wend is missing his craft, his art. We've seen Kennereth Taniqui is clearly not having a miserable eternity. She's having a great time. She's weaving.
02:13:29
Speaker
yeah But Wend's quitter, his music, is sitting in a glass case in the museum. may you have You have to have your art, your creative self, to be a full self all the way through your your long life, your adulthood. You can't give it up for your children. Absolutely. unique You know, Maywin's parents play almost no actual plot role in this book. But unique among the parents in this book, they are not scheming for the advances of their children. They are not doing crimes in order to protect their children. They are living their lives, doing the things that they pursuing the careers they want to pursue and doing what makes them happy.
02:14:04
Speaker
And that makes both of them it allows them to be full people and it allows Maywin to be a full person. Yeah. And when the undying do this, maybe it allows Delmark to be a full country too?
02:14:15
Speaker
Now that's a good line. We should call it there, but I do want to say one more thing, which is about Mae Wynn and Mitt. yeah So they've had, 200 years ago, this very cute age-appropriate romance where they held hands as they were walking through the City of Gold. And they promised to meet back there again in two years. Because Mitt says, you know, I'll go and fight the war, but you'd hate that. So you build the city.
02:14:38
Speaker
and And in fact, in a way, I think Maywen and the city are always associated for Mitt. She is the city. And that's true. She will be the city. She comes from the city of the future. ah When he builds his palace, he names it after her.
02:14:54
Speaker
Anyway, at that point, they were 13 and 14. Mitt is now 214. Yep. Which is a very different age at which to have a relationship with a 13-year-old girl. um So Wend passes her on a message, which like, oh, yeah, did have something to say to you. He says, give it four years to allow for inflation.
02:15:14
Speaker
Which is very, very funny. um Which Maywen instantly... rejects. She is not going to wait until she's 17 to pursue her relationship with this 200 year old man.
02:15:27
Speaker
She asks how to get in touch with Mitt and Wendland asks Kenareth and Mayweather's like right I'm going to find Kenareth right now! no I do I have faith in Mitt's ability to draw out the chase. probably quite good at not being found. Because what we know about Mitt is that he spent his whole life trying attempting not to be bound.
02:15:48
Speaker
You know, that's why there's all these terrible portraits of him is because he knew if anyone ever put a real portrait of him, he'd be bound into Godhead. He'd be, you know sort of locked into being Amal, which is exactly what he didn't want. So Mitt has become, i think, over 200 years, a bit of an escape artist. I think they're going to get those four years. Sorry, Maylan. At least I certainly hope so. Yes.
02:16:09
Speaker
But yes, it is it is ultimately a romance, a very cute romance. It's a romance where the final beat is, the separation, the division. Consider being apart.
02:16:20
Speaker
Consider being unbound. yeah Consider being free. Because that's what free Delmark is. It's a better future. Now that's a good ending line.
02:16:31
Speaker
All right. We gotta go. I have to run and get ready for work. But in two weeks, we'll be back with Deep Secret. So get excited for that. And we'll have a guest for that one. it's Excellent.
02:16:42
Speaker
See then, Becca. See then. Bye. Bye.