#The Crown of Dalemark

[tanoraqui]

Help! An Immortal Wizard Disguised as a Museum Assistant Sent Me 200 Years Into the Past, and Now Everyone Thinks I’m the God-Chosen Destined Queen and I’m Surrounded by Cute Boys!

^ the hit new* light novel by Diana Wynne Jones

*published 1996, also called The Crown of Dalemark

[yonayona]

What if Dalemark Tarot

[dianawynnejonesfan]

I was at a concert about a month ago where all the musicians were playing music from the 1600s on surviving instruments from the 1600s (there was something very like a violin but not quite and a 6 stringed curvier cello). Anyway I just kept thinking of the Cwidder from Dalemark, which I previously struggled to imagine lasting so long with regular use.

[quietflorilegium]

"People’s idea of what they can do is even more important than what they can do."

Hern, Diana Wynne Jones, "The Crown of Dalemark"

[littlemissinkdrinker]

The Crown of Dalemark by Diana Wynne Jones

This book was the perfect end book to the series - I loved that it tied all the previous books together, I honestly wasn't expecting that so it was a delightful surprise. I really enjoyed the story all the way through, it was an a great example of Jone's fantastic ability to weave a complicated but easy-flowing tale.

Read : Feb 21st - Mar 17th, 2023

Rating : 5 Stars

[deborahocarroll]

Wrapup: #MarchMagics 2022!

Recapping my recent #DianaWynneJones and #TerryPratchett adventures!

Time got away from me (clearly! XD), but it’s time to look back at the Diana Wynne Jones and Pratchett related goodness I got up to in March — and, actually, April as well! I didn’t manage to finish up my March Magics goals during the month since I got crazy busy, so I carried on a bit of the reading in April, which was rather nice, actually. And now that I’m trying to ease back into blogging, I…

[recurringwriter]

i sure can pick 'em (characters that will die before the end of the story)

[karinonsan]

in crown of dalemark, mitt was offered two choices on how he would be king/supreme leader. he also had two father-figure who could (would) become his right hand. after reading hobin's addendum, i always thought he would be the one on mitt's side if mitt ever choose the french revolution road.

[airandangels]

I’m rereading the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones and am of course thoroughly enjoying it (a sort of a children’s Song of Ice and Fire, long before GRRM wrote A Song of Ice and Fire, with the key difference that several of the main characters are commoners whose lives intersect with the nobility only by strange twists of fate (and all these main characters are children and teenagers between about ten and fourteen)). As used to be the way for bookish children when I was young, I discovered series of books by reading whichever one I found first at the library or at school or in a friend’s room and then trying to find the others (for example, my first Narnia book was Prince Caspian, although I had seen an animated film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), so in this case I read Drowned Ammet first and because its events take place at around the same time as those of the first book, Cart and Cwidder, just at different locations, I tend to feel as if it’s the real first book for me. The third book, The Spellcoats, has a strikingly different vibe than the others (it’s entirely a flashback to events hundreds of years before those of the first two books, whose significance will become clear in the fourth and final book, The Crown of Dalemark), and I think I actually got to read it last and was left a bit put off by it, though it wasn’t a bad book by any means. I’ve reread the series in the proper order since then, and am doing it again, but I wonder how I would have felt if I’d read them in order originally.

Anyway, the whole reason I started to write this post is that I was just reminded again by the actual text that Ynen Navisson has black hair, when I always imagine him blond. He just has a blond personality. I don’t mean he’s bimboish, just that there’s a softness to him that I associate with fair hair. It’s mildly jarring each time I’m reminded that he’s not. I have no problem remembering his sister Hildy has black hair because her description sounds like she’s pretty much a dead ringer for Wednesday Addams (and she’s a much stronger personality than Ynen).

It’s a pointless observation, but I can write anything I like here, so.

[thenegoteator]

I'm reading the dalemark quartet for the first time and uh. In a world of complicated diana wynne jones parents Alhammitt takes the crown of Worst Father Ever

[windsroad]

I always have mixed feelings about the big reveal in Crown of Dalemark

I feel like it’s different because he still had to like… compete and argue for the crown… it’s not just handed to him by virtue of blood…

But I don’t know for my little anti-monarchist soul it leaves a bad taste in my mouth

But you know what doesn’t do that…. PRYDAIN…. Bro never finds out who his parents are at all

[tanoraqui]

rereading the Dalemark Quartet because of this fantastic podcast series, and a few notes:

I really cannot imagine Duck as looking like anything but my own younger brother. I don’t imagine Tanaqui as looking like myself, despite the many years of having this username and relating intensely to DWJ’s first girl narrator & mythic history-weaver trope. I don’t have any problem imagining Gull, Robin or Hern as they’re described. But Duck, young or grown, looks like my little brother (who, for the record, is currently doing grad school chemistry, which is definitely a sort of magery).

I’d argue that Mitt and Navis have a parallel moment of first-meeting, future-of-the-country-deciding Mutual Vibes Check to Hern & Kars Adon. It’s just that Mitt is 3 years old at the time, so Navis is mostly going “why is there a toddler here. …Hildy-coded, though”, while Mitt has gotten all the way to “he’s a little strange but I can and will trust him with my Dream of a Better World.” (They are both correct.)

I’m having a LOT of thoughts about the fantasy trope of “there used to be magic & gods but now there’s less or none at all”, and all its variations, in comparison to Tolkien and modern works. But I’m having so many that it needs to be a separate post and maybe short essay.

The structure of the series is so interesting. It’s not chronological at all, which actually makes the gap—15 YEARS—between books 3 and 4 even more agonizing to imagine waiting through. Books 1-3 are all separate tributary rivers pouring into 4, and each one ends on more of, in effect, a cliffhanger: Cart and Cwidder with a fairly normal “this adventure is entirely resolved but there are likely more to come.” Drowned Ammet wraps up the story but is lacking some denouement, they never actually reach the North, it’s just safely in sight, it’s clear that they will reach its relative peace & safety—but we don’t see them do so, and we don’t know what happens to them when they do. And Spellcoats! Has a vision of how the plot will resolve, but very pointedly ends before showing it! All we have to know what happened to any of the characters is a historically uncertain postscript, and the knowledge that (more) modern Dalemark exists as it does! Much less any mention of anyone or anything—except technically the earl and earldom of Hannart—from either of the previous books. And she left the readers like this for fifteen years!

If I’d been a teen in the late 70s reading these books as they came out, when Crown of Dalemark was accounted in the mid-90s, I would’ve screamed aloud. I would love to know if anyone reading this post did have that experience.

[yonayona]

some of my latest dalemark stuff

btw once I did Hern and Kars Adon as Tarot Lovers, so I decided to make more of Dalemark tarot!

[ksfoxwald]

Fire and Hemlock Readalong - Chapter 4

In which our heroes acquire a horse.

Here the relationship between Tom and Polly starts to get a little weird - a grown man asking a little girl to come visit him in another city? But note also that Polly's mother only thinks of how it makes things convenient for her to "dump" Polly somewhere other than Nina's. Ivy is similarly oblivious in later chapters when her boyfriend starts acting inappropriately toward Polly.

This is actually very much an Ivy chapter, because Ivy is also Edna, which actualizes at the end but is still very much present throughout. Polly herself doesn't realize who Edna is, really; she's sort of pasted pop culture stereotypes over her own anxieties about her mother. Which is why when she encounters "real" Ednas - Carla the landlady, and later Edna in Stow-on-the-Water - she is surprised at how nice and normal they are. Because she is expecting her mother.

This is a good chapter to look at intertextually too, because there's a line in Aunt Maria/Black Maria about how young children don't think of their parents as people, and it's quite a shock when they realize their parents do in fact have histories and personalities as individuals. And that's part of what's happening here. The other part is that Polly is being pushed out of her role as daughter and into a role as Emotional Support. Too relatable.

The other DWJ book that echoes here is The Crown of Dalemark, where our heroines are mortified to find themselves unheroically crying for help in a dangerous situation. Polly, however, has a much stronger reaction than Maewen, and kicks off her hero training. Next chapter is going to have a lot of interesting gender in it.

"I don't think I will get married," Polly said. "I'm going to train to be a hero instead." But she could tell her mother was not listening.

[Editing to add some shower thoughts]

Why does Tom want to see Polly again anyway? He hasn't yet realized the extent of his gift or how it works. I think at this point his motivations are the same as Polly's: Laurel doesn't want him to, therefore it must be important. I think he knows that Polly is the key to his freedom, even if he hasn't yet realized how. Which is a little unsettling still; later on he even admits to using Polly. But also, because of the way the power dynamics work, he is also very child-coded; yes part of him is using Polly, but part of him is just lonely and wants a friend to play with.

[quietflorilegium]

"Been here before, Mitt was thinking. It’s only what I’m used to. Only to be expected, really. Hildy’s back in the life she was bred for and that’s that. But though this stopped his hurting—a little—he was still hurting in other ways he was not used to at all. He had thought Hildy was his friend. He had not known friendship could be such a fragile thing."

Diana Wynne Jones, "The Crown of Dalemark"

[dianawynnejonesfan]

Is Gull Old Ammet?

Old Ammet calls the One "grandfather" but neither Wend nor Cennoreth calls him their brother.