#Rose of Noonvale

[oldfashionedbooklove]

I honestly don’t think there’s a single character death in all the thousands of books I’ve read that affects me as much as Rose. I want to cry every time. It just shreds me 💔 poor Martin. Every time I hear this song, every time I think of her death or read about it, it breaks me all over again and I feel as sad as if she was someone real…

You will find me at Noonvale on the side of a hill When the summer is peaceful and high, There where streamlets meander the valley is still, ‘Neath the blue of a calm cloudless sky …

Look for me at the dawning when the earth is asleep. Till each dewdrop is kissing by the day, ‘Neath the rowan and alder a vigil I’ll keep, Every moment that you are away …

The old earth gently turns as the seasons change slowly. All the flowers and leaves born to wane. Hear my song o’er the lea, like the wind soft and lowly. Oh, please come back to Noonvale again.

—Martin the Warrior

[dazed-and-wandering]

Well, it's been a few months since I've drawn anything, trying to get back into it, I don't know, it's rough.

[son-of-drogo]

Rose of Noonvale finding out that Luke the Warrior passed his sword onto Martin when he was like 9 and fucked off to go on a revenge quest:

[stearleart]

Brome's pirate disguise

Digital illustration Brome in his his pirate persona, Bucktail! This is an interoperation of a scene from Brian Jacque's classic, Martin the Warrior. I've adopted a spanking new style when it comes to the shading.

[lostmidnightwriter]

Martin and Gonff: *do illegal/stupid shit*

Rose and Columbine:

[oldfashionedbooklove]

I planted her gently last summer, All in quiet evening shade. Within an orchard bower Her little bed I made. Alone I sat by my window As autumn leaves did fall; They formed a russet cover for My Rose of Old Redwall.

Through winter’s dreary days she slept Beneath the cold, dark ground, When all the earth was silent. White snows lay deep around, Bright stars came out above her, As to the moon I’d call, “Take pity on my dearest one, My Rose of Old Redwall.”

How the grass grew green and misty, Soft fell the rain that spring; Her dainty budded head arose, And made my poor heart sing. Then summer brought her just one bloom, So white, so sweet and tall, With ne’er a thorn to sully her, My Rose of Old Redwall. —Brian Jacques, Loamhedge

“Rose Song” from Loamhedge! 

This song is sung by Martha Braebuck for Bragoon and Saro before they leave Redwall Abbey to journey to Loamhedge. 

“Bright stars came out above her, as to the moon I’d call, take pity on my dearest one, My Rose of Old Redwall” Lyrics by Brian Jacques, and Music composed by Billy Maher! 

[folatefangirl]

I was tagged by @kolimachris to do a poll of my fave female characters (so hard to decide!)

Forgot to tag people oops. Tagging (with no pressure!) @wizardheart83 @clearancecreedwatersurvival @agardenandlibrary @morethanslightly @dxmedstudent and anyone else who wants to make one for fun :)

[tollsoftheclockwerkbelle]

ROSE OF NOONVALE LOOK WHERE YOU ARE GOING!!

[oldfashionedbooklove]

Thoughts after reading Martin the Warrior for the second time ♥️

- I haven’t read many books that can transport you into a “too beautiful to be true” setting like Noonvale. Anne of Green Gables is the only equivalent. I don’t know how he does it because the descriptions are so cliché or basic, yet somehow you FEEL the peace and love and perfection…

- Felldoh. Oh my heart, Felldoh. He breaks me every time 😭 I want so much more for him, yet somehow he feels destined to his story. He’s such a great guy, really, when he isn’t consumed with justice and protection. I love him in juxtaposition to Martin. Both are warriors, both hate Badrang and intend to free the world from him, yet Martin has a larger nature that allows him to let go briefly, while Felldoh is obsessed. Even if Felldoh went with Martin & Rose to Noonvale he’d still be obsessed. I love Brome’s wise words about paths of vengeance, but also Felldoh’s & Martin’s wisdom in insisting we can’t just ignore evil and run from it but destroy it or not only will it hurt others as it hurt us, it will spread like a cancer.

- Martin, by the way, is something else. I don’t know why I love him so much but he’s amazing. Really. Such a fascinating, admirable character. I see why he’s the guardian of Redwall.

- I love the talk about bravery between Felldoh & Brome, about how not everyone can kill, and it’s good to be innocent, and being a healer is just as important and brave.

- Also…. poor little Juniper who gave his life… 💔 And I love Ballaw. He’s not as amusing as most hares but he’s good and noble and his words about stages and curtains fit things so WELL. And I have to mention Keyla, who’s absolutely amazing himself!!

- The last few pages are terribly beautiful. I still don’t understand why SHE had to die… really. I know the plot demands it in a way, but… why? She can’t really be… she’s too vibrant to just cease. But oh, Martin, my heart hurts for you so much. And his words about memories… ♥️

- There’s things and parts in the Redwall books that are silly and cliché and poorly written, and remind me he wrote these for kids. Then there’s some supremely awful and beautiful bits that remind me why I adore these books and why Martin is my favourite of them all…

- and the Treehouse TV show is so good for this book ♥️

*edited 23.1.24

[mamawasatesttube]

Get to Know Me

tagged by @paleolithicarcher (ty!!)

List 3 ships I like: timkon, clois, qp konbart!

First ship ever: oh man. maybe martin the warrior/rose of noonvale from redwall? or zelink?

Last Song I heard: "i belong in your arms" by chairlift!

Favorite Childhood Book: the silmarillion by j.r.r. tolkien. i first read it when i was 11. yes, something is wrong with me to this day bc of it.

Currently Reading Now: between books but in theory about to pick up "persephone station" by stina leicht! also in theory about to start reading the dungeon meshi manga. i'm just awful at starting things.

Currently Watching: dungeon meshi anime with my friends :)

Currently Consuming: nothing but i ate some adai for dinner earlier? oh unless beverages count in which case i'm having some chai.

Currently Craving: a body that doesnt hurty :/

Tagging: @mysterycitrus @ectonurites and @lemontongues <3

[tinybookgirl]

Most Tragic Redwall Deaths Bracket

Yes @captainmirefleck is running their villains bracket at the same time but I want to do one also so it’s time for tragic deaths. My poll results actually said heroes won but I had already started setting this one up so we’ll do that one next.

There are too many deaths to technically include every single one of them but I think I got all of the major ones. Polls will be 24 hours, and I’ll link them up here. All will be tagged ‘Redwall deaths bracket’.

Round One:

Lord Stonepaw vs. Laterose of Noonvale Winner: Laterose of Noonvale

Brinty vs. Mother Mellus Winner: Mother Mellus

Rillflag vs. Flandor Winner: Rillflag

Friar Skurpul vs. Methuselah Winner: Methuselah

Bragoon & Sarobando vs. Log-a-log (Mattimeo) Winner: Log-a-log (Mattimeo)

Sanya vs. Russa Nodrey Winner: Sanya

Hillgorse vs. Abbot Mortimer Winner: Abbot Mortimer

Veil Sixclaw vs. Luke Winner: Veil Sixclaw

Windred vs. Fatch Winner: Windred

Urthstripe vs. Cregga Rose Eyes Winner: Cregga Rose Eyes

Ranguvar Foeseeker vs. Finnbar Galedeep Winner: Finnbar Galedeep

Jukka the Sling & Fleetscut vs. Skarlath Winner: Skarlath

Mask vs. Felldoh Winner: Mask

Shogg vs. Piknim Winner: Piknim

Friar Hugo vs. Romsca Winner: Romsca

Warbeak vs. Thyme, Clary, & Pakatugg Winner: Warbeak

Round Two:

Laterose of Noonvale vs. Mother Mellus Winner: Laterose of Noonvale

Rillflag vs. Methuselah Winner: Methuselah

Log-a-log (Mattimeo) vs. Sanya Winner: Sanya

Abbot Mortimer vs. Veil Sixclaw Winner: Veil Sixclaw

Windred vs. Cregga Rose Eyes TIE

Finnbar Galedeep vs. Skarlath Winner: Skarlath

Mask vs. Piknim Winner: Piknim

Romsca vs. Warbeak TIE

Special Tiebreaker Round:

Windred vs. Romsca Winner: Romsca

Cregga Rose Eyes vs. Warbeak Winner: Warbeak

Round Three:

Laterose of Noonvale vs. Methuselah Winner: Laterose of Noonvale

Sanya vs. Veil Sixclaw Winner: Veil Sixclaw

Warbeak vs. Skarlath Winner: Warbeak

Piknim vs. Romsca Winner: Piknim

Semi Finals:

Laterose of Noonvale vs. Veil Sixclaw Winner: Laterose of Noonvale

Warbeak vs. Piknim Winner: Warbeak

Finals:

Laterose of Noonvale vs. Warbeak

[abreathofthewild]

I am begging someone to please record Rose of Noonvale and put it on Spotify.  Begging.

[stearleart]

Heh, Butt mole!

[happytapirstudio]

Redwall Reread #2: Martin the Warrior

2nd in chronological order, 6th in publication order (1993)

(major spoilers under the cut)

Summary: A young mouse warrior named Martin escapes from slavery at the evil fortress Marshank and journeys to the hidden valley of Noonvale to raise an army, destroy Marshank, free the slaves, and seek vengeance against the stoat tyrant, Badrang.

Framing Device: Two travelers stop by Redwall Abbey one winter night and tell this story to the creatures there.

The Goodies: Martin’s our main boy, obviously.  Felldoh the squirrel, a fellow slave-turned-warrior, is also a key player.  Then we have the critters from Noonvale: Rose (full name Laterose) and her little brother Brome, both mice, plus her friend Grumm the mole.  While Martin, Rose, and Grumm travel to Noonvale, they recruit the hedgehog Pallum.  They also encounter a variety of beasties: a tribe of savage pygmy shrews, the lovely mole wife Polleekeen, a family of stuffy rabbits, and a rowdy horde of squirrels, plus of course the denizens of Noonvale, including Rose’s mom and dad.  Back at Marshank, we’ve got a whole host of slaves, who later team up with a group of traveling performers, the Rambling Rosehip Players, whose most notable members are Ballaw the hare and Rowanoak the badger.

The Baddies: Two stoats ((two of them))!  Badrang the Tyrant, former corsair, now the cruel and calculating ruler of Marshank, and Captain Tramun Clogg, his old sea-going partner.  Each of them have their own little vermin swarm, among which the only individual really worth mentioning is Hisk the weasel, Badrang's head slavedriver and personal enemy of Felldoh.

The Freakies: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, it is time for...REDWALL HERPETOFAUNA.  This demands an entire essay but for now I will just say we’ve got a whole mess of reptiles and amphibians crawling around these here Marshwood Hills.

The Birdies: The Warden of Marshwood Hill, a grey heron.  AND.  Boldred, the map-making short-eared owl, and her husband Hortwingle (a stay-at-home dad) and daughter Emalet.  AND.  A cute little dipper who Rose befriends in Marshwood Hill.  Special shoutout to the various unnamed seabirds, particularly the one who steals that piece-of-shit baby shrew and tries feeding him to its hatchling.

Noteworthy Locations: All of this takes place in the northwestern region of the Known Redwall Universe, away from Mossflower Wood and the Western Sea.  Most of the time, we’re at or around Badrang’s Fortress, which backs up to a stretch of coastal marshes that includes Marshwood Hill up to the north.  Inland is a rich stretch of forest, including the idyllic Noonvale (which I high-key wish we’d revisit in later books), and a small mountain range/highland area.

Noteworthy Weapons: Martin the Warrior’s sword for sure.  Or, I guess, his dad’s sword.  For most of the book Martin’s using a pygmy shrew sword, which probably looks even more pathetic than I’ve been imagining.

Riddles: Just a little one...when Martin and friends ask Polleekeen for directions to Noonvale, she provides them with a short riddle.

Continuity Notes: This is a key story in the arc of Martin the Warrior (go figure, huh), and we also get some significant insight into Luke very early on.  Apart from that, the only other scraps come from the pro- and epilogue: the storytelling takes place after Mariel of Redwall, with characters from that story.  The travelers are descendants of Brome and Pallum.  One of them brings Rose’s namesake from Noonvale: the seedling of a variety of late-blooming rose, which, once planted in spring, will become a characteristic component of Redwall’s appearance.

Other Notes: I believe this is the only book where rabbits make an appearance?  I mean I straight-up forgot they ever made an appearance at all, that’s how rare they are.  Additionally, the previous book I read (Brocktree), which takes place in a coastal terrain like this one, also features a grey heron and short-eared owl on its bird roster.  The birds’ personalities are very different, though.

Tapir Takes:

(1) The B in Badger stands for Butch.

(2) I wrote down “Martin acting like the protag of an 80’s film” and I stand by it.  If these were humans, he’d be the tanned youth with blue eyes and sandy-blond hair tousled by the sea wind.  This vision came to me when he was rescuing that pygmy shrew nuisance from the seabirds.  It also re-contextualized that earlier period of time when he first meets Rose, and he’s freaking head-over-heels, stuttering over his words, goo-goo-eyed and ga-ga-faced.  Insufferable. Disney Channel Original Movie-type shit.  Thank god it goes away after a couple chapters.

(3) Similarly, Rose acts like a damsel-in-distress more often than I'd expect? Ultimately yes I'd characterize her as a warrior first and a princess second, but there are still moments where she reacts to things in a distinctly feminine way (screams, passes out, paralyzed with terror), while her male companions do not.

(4) And then Martin will jump to her defense so fast!!! He is her freaking white knight. They'll all be laughing at a joke, but the moment it turns sour against Rose, Martin will intervene. And as a whole they are sooo codependent. Like when Martin was just hurling himself at the gates of Marshank and Rose was the only one able to pull him away (which I think she knew...the calmness she approached him with suggests a confidence in her own ability to get him to see reason.) She's always talking reason to him, but she herself will also do reckless things because of him, and ultimately gets herself killed running into battle alongside him. In many ways this is a really well-crafted tragedy. To me. It's also, in other ways, really freaking obnoxious (see point 2). To me.

(5) Returning to Gender for a moment. Overall, the girls in this book are a lot more finicky and shallow than they were in Brocktree. (These volumes were written nearly a decade apart, so perhaps that explains it.) I'm thinking primarily of Celandine the squirrel, secondarily of that whiny old mouse lady. For sure, there are just as many, if not more, grizzly girl warriors than there are damsels in distress, but Celandine's character still surprised me. And, like a lot of other things about this book, something about it feels a little corny, a little melodramatic, and pointedly one-dimensional in a jarring way.

(6) I can't wait to write about warriors in Redwall. This book is chock-full of characters, scenes, and quotes that illuminate the various facets of Redwall Warrior Culture. Stuff about the nature of a warrior's spirit, the inherent grief and tragedy of the warrior's destiny, the importance of nonviolence roles (while also emphasizing that such roles must coexist and cannot be substituted for one another.) Essay forthcoming, indeed.

(7) Martin definitely has some of the blandest Redwall villains.  I remember Cloggs, and the double-assassination scene is always fresh in my mind, but I think that’s mostly from watching the TV show between my initial and present read of this book.  It’s particularly upsetting to me because everyone in the book insists Badrang is pure evil, but there’s very little to demonstrate that evilness.  He’s just a slave-owner, something most Redwall villains already are.  I think the evilest thing we see him do is leave Martin out for the seabirds, but after that all he does is yell at his underlings and dish out insults.  And besides that, he has no personality, especially compared to Cloggs.

(8) The frenemy angle between Badrang and Cloggs could’ve been so much more interesting than it was!!!!  The crossed-wires assassination was cool and I wish we’d had more stuff like that!!!

(9) Druwp is a really interesting character.  Really, really interesting.  Tucking him away for later.

(10) I don’t like what Jacques does with his herpetofauna, and I don’t like how he does it two more times in this book, first with the pygmy shrews and then with the Gawtrybe.  You know what I’m talking about.  Essay forthcoming.

(11) The Marshwood Hill arc (?) did prove something important to me, though! Something I mentioned in my Brocktree post! Is it cannibalism to eat another talking animal, even if they're a different species? YES!!!!!! The denizens of Marshwood are called cannibals several times because they eat any travelers that come near their marsh. However, when the Warden eats them, it's treated differently. It's gross and perhaps excessively strict, but he is not called a cannibal, or considered to be stooping down to the frogs/lizards/snakes' level. Perhaps the definition of cannibalism excludes birds? When life closes an answer God opens a question. Wait that's not how that goes

(12) The end of this book always felt very sudden to me. I think that's equal parts an intentional choice on Jacques' part and an inevitable consequence of the tragedy genre. Still, I feel there should've somehow been more padding around Rose's death and the last few chapters.

(13) I mentioned the show earlier.  So I’ll drop my Redwall TV Show Story here: I watched the show before I found the books.  Loved the show.  They adapted three Redwall books: the original, the direct sequel (Mattimeo), and this prequel.  I actually own the original on DVD, somehow.  At any rate, I watched religiously as they aired in chronological order on PBS, but then during a playdate with my neighbor, whose mom did not let her watch this show because it was “too violent” (pffffft baby) ((we were four)), I missed an episode early on in the third season and totally fell off the wagon!  It haunts me to this day.  I tried rewatching it when it was on Netflix, but I just couldn’t get into it.  I might do so now, though.  Just found out via the Redwall Wiki that they transed Pallum’s gender.  A huge win for feminism.

OVERALL:  I think I remember being not a huge fan of this book when I first read it.  Well I hate to say it but I’m definitely not a huge fan now!  It seems it had the makings of a good story, but the delivery fell somewhat short. Still, it had its moments <3

[alexsrandomramblings]

Just a completely inconsequential mousemaid who nothing bad ever happens to, and who lives a long happy life.

In other words, I’ve decided that Martin the Warrior will be the next book I read. Because I hate myself.