berethnetqueen

[berethnetqueen]

Theory: cutting down the siden trees caused the Nameless One

We know that the trees are siden, and that two of three of them have been cut down. We also know that the Nameless One is siden, and was likely created due to a siden imbalance.

My theory: the siden trees are a safe way for siden to rise from the earth. With the hawthorn and the mulberry gone, there was an excess of siden, which could only be released from the earth as the Nameless One.

Futher proof of this theory: the series is called Roots of Chaos. As in the 'roots' of the trees caused the 'chaos' of the Nameless One.

[berethnetqueen]

went through samantha's q&a highlights on instagram and omg!!! i desperately need this to be the case because i need to see more of them all (especially of nikeya and dumai)

[berethnetqueen]

Spoilers!

Here’s my theory:

The sterren that was gifted to Unora for a year by the dragon Pajati, that was passed onto Dumai when she got pregnant with her, also caused Dumai to resemble the emperor in a similar way that the Berethnet descendants resemble Kalyba.

Unora chose to hide Dumai from anyone visiting the temple from court because she knew they would see the striking resemblance between her and the emperor. And that’s exactly what happens when Epabo and Nikeya see Dumai at the temple, both running back to court with the secret.

[berethnetqueen]

Spoilers!

Here’s my theory:

The sterren that was gifted to Unora for a year by the dragon Pajati, that was passed onto Dumai when she got pregnant with her, also caused Dumai to resemble the emperor in a similar way that the Berethnet descendants resemble Kalyba.

Unora chose to hide Dumai from anyone visiting the temple from court because she knew they would see the striking resemblance between her and the emperor. And that’s exactly what happens when Epabo and Nikeya see Dumai at the temple, both running back to court with the secret.

[berethnetqueen]

Could you share the etymology of the names of the narrators of ADOFN? And was the etymology document for ADOFN longer or shorter than the one for TPOTOT?

I've used the same etymology document, so it's just grown.

Dumai: Proto-Japanese, *dùmài (‘dream’)

Tunuva Melim: First name from Old Persian, tunuva (‘mighty’); surname from Sumerian, melim (‘splendour, radiance’)

Wulfert ‘Wulf’ Glenn: First name from Old English, wolf (‘wolf’) + heort (‘heart’); surname from Proto-Celtic, *glendos (‘glen, valley’)

Glorian Berethnet: First name from Middle English, glorie (‘glory’) + -lian, a suffix indicating repetition, so intended meaning is something like ‘unending glory’ (also inspired by Gloriana, an epithet of Queen Elizabeth I); surname from Old English bēreafian (‘to bereave, to deprive, to seize’) + næht (‘night’) so ‘seize the night’

[berethnetqueen]

so I was browsing through the character list in priory and–

[ID: text from “persons of the tale” in the priory of the orange tree, reading, “Wulf Glenn: Friend and bodyguard of Glorian III of Inys. One of the most famous knights in Inysh history, an ideal of courage and gallantry. He is an ancestor of Lady Arbella Glenn.” /end ID]

[berethnetqueen]

A Day of Fallen Night mild spoilers:

I want to talk about Wulf and his pov + Old English Literature.

What we know:

The Kingdom of Hroth is largely a Scandinavian/Nordic inspired country.

In Priory, Inys is roughly equivalent to the English Elizabethan/Tudor era (the 1450s- 1500s). Fallen Night takes place 500 years prior. What era was England in in the early 1000s? The (end of) the Anglo-Saxon era.

While Inys during Fallen Night is definitely not set in an Anglo-Saxon era, I feel like there are definite motifs and similarities. The Hrothi used to raid Inys, but stopped after the marriage of Sabran and Barholdt. Wulf uses a saxe knife. The fens and monsters resemble those of Old English epics.

Aside the Anglo-Saxon & Scandinavian influences, I want to talk about the references to Old English literature:

Firstly, Samatha Shannon introduces Part 3 with a quote from the Old English (fragmented) poem, Wulf and Eadwacer.

it is:

wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre. / fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen… / Ungelice is us

This roughly translates to: Wulf is on one island. I am on another. Fast is that island set among the fens....We are apart.

Now, Wulf and Eadwacer is a notoriously difficult poem to translate and make sense of, for those of us who have studied Old English. It appears to be from the pov of a woman lamenting over the separation of a male person she loves (typically interpreted as a husband/lover, but it doesn't have to be) referencing an on-going violent event in the background. And! there a line about a child being left in the woods with a wolf.

But I think Shannon does something so neat here and she changes the meaning to fit for Tunuva and Wulf, and bases so much of Tunuva and Wulf's relationship/story on this small poem fragment!!

Secondly, during a titular scene with Wulf washing up on a beach, Wulf is called the seafarer. "By dawn, the lights had disappeared, and the seafarer was still alive" (pg 396). This is obviously a direct call to the Old English poem, The Seafarer. It's a melancholic, elegiac poem concerned with life and death, about a seafarer on a cold, wintery beach mourning the loss of his comrades. Sound familiar?

I just love this little attention to detail concerning Wulf and Fallen Night. Samantha Shannon is a brilliant, brilliant woman

[berethnetqueen]

just looking at and comparing the maps in priory and adofn makes me so happy. the changing of place names over time! geographical changes! political changes! the attention to detail in shannon’s worldbuilding is sooo <333

[berethnetqueen]

Omg I love Queen Sabran VI and King Bardholt!!

[berethnetqueen]

In theory, Kalyba should find it easy to hook up with someone. She’s a beautiful, immortal, powerful witch. Plenty of people would go for that! But she’s exclusively attracted to people who don’t want her back.

So important of Samantha Shannon to invent this sexy evil witch and then say “also, she’s a bit pathetic”. So important.

[berethnetqueen]

esbar and tunuva...i love u middle aged lesbians

[berethnetqueen]

Went to a Q&A session with Samantha Shannon on SFerakon and I don't know if she has shared this somewhere before but she said that originally Priory ended with Ead and Sabran getting a happily ever after but then her editor advised her not to do that so she rewrote it. She said that on one hand she feels sad about it but on other she liked it because that would mean she would write a sequel. In the sequel (which will come in years to come) she wants Tané to have a bigger role and I'm really looking forward to that 🫶 She also revealed that an editor asked her to kill Niclays bc they can't stand him but she didn't want to do that because she quite likes him. So yeah I just wanted to share these pieces of info in case someone will find them interesting ❤️

[berethnetqueen]

pink in the night

[berethnetqueen]

You know what messes me up?

This dinosaur skeleton is incomplete. But, it doesn't look that way to us, because the parts it's missing are parts we don't have.

See how there are ribs on the bottom? Those are called gastralia. That's right, dinosaurs had ribs on their stomachs as well, and modern crocodiles and alligators still have them! (Also, notice that the ribs keep going to the hips instead of stopping above the waist. This is also true of modern birds, and why a bird can't have a concave stomach!)

Next, notice that ring floating in the center of the eye socket? That's called a sclerotic ring! Fish, reptiles, birds--with the exception of mammals (and, oddly enough, crocodilians), pretty much all modern vertebrates still have them! It's literally an eyeball bone. Afaik we haven't found a T-rex specimen with any intact, but since we've found them in other dinosaurs, it's very likely they had them too.

So, keep that in mind next time you see a dinosaur skeleton.

[berethnetqueen]

I saw somewhere that Sabran was a canon bisexual, but since I read the priory, I’ve always interpreted her character as a lesbian. (I don’t mean to erase the bisexual community with this, but it’s just how the character spoke to me as a lesbian who forced herself into dating men) Is that ok? Are we welcome to interpret each character’s sexualities freely?

This is a very interesting question, and I think it has some relation to The Death of the Author by French literary critic Roland Barthes – an essay that separates authorial intention from readers' interpretation, minimising the importance of the former. It's been a while since I studied it at university, but from what I recall, Barthes argues that the author's intention is not the ultimate, exclusive, or correct way to read a text; neither is their personal biography especially relevant.

Your question also highlights the accessibility of authors in the modern age. Many of us have social media nowadays, making us far more available to readers than our predecessors. If I didn't have a Tumblr and didn't answer questions, you wouldn't know for sure that I had intended Sabran to be bisexual. Without my external statement that she is, you would have no choice but to interpret the words in a way you found most personally resonant, bringing your own life experiences to the text, which sounds like exactly what you've done in this case.

In short, I can state my intention, but the interpretation belongs to you. In this case, I can see why it would be troubling for you, because of the frequency and intensity of bi erasure even in LGBTQ+ spaces, but it doesn't sound like you're denying the idea that Sab could be bi – it's more that you related to her from a different perspective.

[berethnetqueen]

Can you tell as something about protagonists/narrators of your next priory project?

I can't say much as I haven't even formally announced this project yet, but:

There are eight narrators this time: four main storytellers, as in Priory, and four 'satellite' narrators. There are seven women and one man. Between them, they visit every country in Priory's known world, and you get to see them grow over a long period of time.

I really love them and feel terrible for the sheer amount of hardship they all go through in this book.

[berethnetqueen]

If Sabran would give birth to her daughter, would court of Inys accept her marrying Ead? Or the fact that she's lowborn convertite and from Ersyr would still play a role in it?

It would probably be allowed, unless anyone had found out that Ead was a false convert.

The fact that she’s from the Ersyr would be irrelevant as long as she was understood to follow the Six Virtues. Sabran also ennobled her as Viscountess Nurtha, so I think the Virtues Council would have allowed it overall, even if some of the more pious ones grumbled a bit. But the fact that her conversion was untrue would be a serious issue.