#also note to self are the other two entities in ‘Nona’s three thoughts’ alecto proper and the body?

[windmillcrusader]

Thinking out loud here but since you’ve framed it this way it occurs to me that this three-part division maps pretty neatly onto the roles of Father mother, Son daughter, and Holy Spirit revenant??*. This has almost definitely been said before but it’s 4am and I did one google search** that lines up pretty well with the text so I’m ready to make a nuisance of myself. Forgive me but it’s time to go back on my bullshit

* or at least more neatly than mother/maiden/crone, my usual go-to for any three fictional women standing next to each other. I can see mother and maiden, but Harrow considers the Body too fuckable for me to call her the crone

** by googling “father son holy spirit characteristics” and cautiously reading the first result, any inconsistencies are probably from me unless I lost internet minesweeper clicking on this guy’s site. If the vibes are bad lmk

Alecto as Mother: Eternal existence***, check - “not the dying kind” (Harrow ch. 51). Able to beget/produce (at least metaphorically/thanergetically), check - from ch. 37, “D’you know why you’re really the First? Because in a very real way, you and the others are A.L.’s children.” Source of Nona and the Body, sure - I definitely don’t think it’s the other way around.

*** counting time as Earth and time as Barbie, for a given value of “eternal” meaning 4.5 -3.7 billion years, depending on if it’s a biosphere thing or a geological thing, or 16,000 if we wanna go really literalist

Nona as Daughter: Nona can be read as the daughter figure of Pyrrha, Cam, and Pal,**** who work for her, teach her, and take care of her (Harrow epilogue). She’s of the same essence as Alecto - and while Alecto doesn’t physically beget Nona, we can see there being a spiritual/soulwise iteration from Alecto to Nona that makes them different and the same. She’s not the express image of Alecto - physically due to soul shenanigans, and behaviorally due to environment and the memory partition - but there were enough similarities that Pyrrha knew Nona was Alecto by day 5, and likely suspected before the story began.

**** If we wanna get into it we can call them the Mary and Joseph figures but that’s a different post. I think that post’s been made actually, if I can find it I’ll link it here

The Body as Revenant: The Body haunts Harrow. Spirit behavior. Also she’s a projection of Alecto’s essence rather than an incarnation - neither mother figure nor daughter figure. The webpage I’m referencing from gets a little hinky with blasphemy talk here so I’m not gonna get too into it, but this one feels pretty straightforward to me

Now Alecto as trinity also differs from the usual suspects, especially insofar as temperament and possibly powerset are concerned. The Body telling Harrow to lie to Mercymorn may be a kind of omniscience but I’d say we need more info. But with TM saying the divine in TLT is feminine instead of the traditional masculine, with Harrow going off at the end of Nona to find Alecto a god she can worship, with Nona dying human-ish and being reborn divine. Well this series is already lesbian jesuses all the way down, what’s one more

When Alecto woke up, she finished the sentence she'd started when she was put to rest. There's a continuity there, unbroken by her consciousness having moved on or shifted attention in the ten thousand years she was asleep or dead, despite her having been other people and done things in the interim. It reminds me of when Harrow woke up in the dream of Canaan House with her memory restored. It had been nine months, but by her perception she had only lost Gideon three days ago. She had split herself into two selves, but Harrow First and Harrow Secundarius were really all one Harrowhark wearing different clothes.

I think Alecto, Nona, the Body are the same way. They're all one person, separated by what they're wearing and what they can remember.

Alecto remembers everything up to her death, and she's wearing a body built for her as a prison out of her dirt and John's blood and bones.

Nona remembered nothing, and was wearing Harrow.

I think the Body was halfway between them. Her memory was vague, and she had no body. She knew things Harrow appeared not to, and seemed to recognize John, but she was confused when she tried to share information about herself. She was Alecto only half awake, summoned by a kiss from a crying child.

I'm looking forward to seeing how or if these three aspects of Alecto will mesh. The Alecto who woke up in the epilogue of Nona the Ninth didn't remember being Nona. She didn't recognize Harrow, or remember being the Body who followed Harrow for months, talking her through her fears and trying to hold her when she cried herself to sleep. Nona was afraid to become Alecto, because she didn't think she would know how to love anything, but that can't really be true. Every version of Alecto we've seen so far has done nothing but love. She just has to remember.