#anastasia not being a first gen lyctor OR being a lyctor at ALL is so….she is just a human!!!

[visenyaism]

Anastasia is THE ghost haunting the lockedtomb narrative. Failed the lyctor trials because she could not bear to ask her cavalier, someone she loved, to die for her. Her punishment for that act was to be asked to guard the tomb and die for Alecto, who swore a cavalier oath to her quietly in the cold dark. Anastasia was too human and Alecto wasn’t human enough and so they got sent into the dark together to waste away. And she died. But she’s the only Cavalier whose name is remembered by her house!!!!! The Ninth was never supposed to exist but carried on and on for a Myriad because of the resilience and love and devotion Anastasia, the only human on the Mithraeum, had for the world.

All of her descendants have to be necromancers because that’s what love is, and that’s what god is: someone has to pass the candle to the next one forever. Anastasia died for Alecto, so now all her descendants have to LIVE for her. That promise is too much to ask of anyone. It’s what kept the Ninth House and their memory alive in the face of the negligence of god himself, but it’s also a curse. Anastasia’s oath is what dooms Harrowhark into being a war crime since her birth, it’s Gideon dying for Harrow because she doesn’t know how to live for her, but it’s also what made baby Harrow sneak down into the tomb and see Alecto and decide that she wanted to live…..love is god and love is a curse and god is a promise to endure made between a fallen angel and a failed disciple sent to languish in a tomb ten thousand years before the story even began. and they were both girls

[shouldhavebeenpersephone]

In GTN chapter 36, Cytherea says “None of you have learned how to die gracefully. I learned over 10,000 years ago"

Do you know/have a theory as to how Cyth could have learned anything pre-resurrection? She was not one of the original lyctors present for the resurrection and it was only 10,000 years ago. It could be hyperbole but I am suspicious of the “over 10,000 years”.

Thank you so much for the ask! I wanted to take my time with it, I hope you didn't mind the wait.

I actually had been chewing on this with my most recent GtN reread. Bear with me as I cut and paste all the pieces that form my thoughts on this - hopefully it's somewhat coherent to read.

Could "over 10000 years" be a hyperbole? Maybe. A lot of characters tell the 'truth' as far as they believe it to be so even if it's factually incorrect. I don't think, however, that Tamsyn would make Cytherea say it in this specific way if it was a hyperbole. In GtN chapter 35 where Palamedes confronts Cytherea we get the following lines, which are what feed my intuition about this:

"Don't lie to me, please."

Dulcinea said, "I have never lied to any of you."

Cytherea has no reason to lie, especially not after being confronted by Palamedes. She tells him herself - she has been giving pieces of the truth and using those to manipulate the narrative. Because of this and because it's much more fun if it isn't a hyperbole I see no point to dismiss it as an emotional inaccuracy.

So let's say she is over 10,000 years old. How does that work?

First thing I went looking for while trying to figure this out was the question of Cytherea's birth. On the fandom wiki, it states that Cytherea was born into the established Seventh. I have been combing through the books, and I cannot find anything in canon that truly confirms this. What we do know of the timeline and her age is the following from HtN chapter 9:

"When they first brought her to Canaan House, I thought there'd been some mistake. - She was just shy of thirty then, I recall. -

-Was she the first gen, or second?"

"Second," said God. "Early second. We were still experimenting with getting the Sixth installation up and running. Some of the Houses were empty."

Mercymorn spoke up: "No. We had it running by then. Because Valancy was with us, and Anastasia."

-"Yes, you're right. We were all there to meet her. All sixteen of us -

'Some of the houses were empty' is the important line here, because in NtN John 5:4 Harrow describes how the resurrection happened:

-You resurrected some of them. You wake up fewer still. You start out with a few thousand, then, later, some hundred thousand, then millions, but never more than millions. You teach them how to live all over again. You teach yourself. -

The houses are named in order of resurrection. The Seventh, then, comes after the Sixth, which should make it obvious that by the time Cytherea arrived the Sixth was already established - or the Seventh wouldn't have existed. Yet, for some reason, for John this is not as obvious. I have found what could be an explanation in HtN chapter 2:

He said, "No. I haven't truly resurrected anyone in ten thousand years. But at that time... I set many aside, for safety... and I've often felt bad about just keeping them as insurance. They've been asleep all this myriad, Harrow, -

The difference wouldn't be as obvious to John, because he didn't resurrect the houses one by one. He resurrected a chunk of the earth's population, kept them dormant, and piece by piece woke them up to populate the houses. Beyond the fact that Cytherea is never said to have been born on the Seventh in canon (again, to my knowledge - please correct me if I missed it), the following from HtN chapter 2 really seals the deal in my eyes that she was not born on the Seventh but rather woken up for the Seventh.

The emperor said gently, "She needs to go home, Harrow."

"That was never her home," he said.

You did not look. "And will the Seventh House accept her?"

I also considered John might feel Cytherea belongs at home with the other Lyctors and therefore denies that the Seventh is her home, but then remembered the following from the same chapter:

He said, "No Lyctor has ever returned home, once we understood the reprecussions... no Lyctor except one, who knew I would come to intercept her for that very reason."

He is talking about how Harrow cannot go home to the Ninth, and referring to Cytherea going home by returning to Canaan house located on earth. John also talks about the kind of people he resurrected in NtN John 5:4:

-We'll get them all back... some of them, anyway... or at least, the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn't do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive. -

Part of the same chapter I included above in combination with this one make me itchy almost. Harrow says 'You teach them how to live all over again.' That almost feels like it should be people who recently learned how to live. Like John only resurrected kids.

Think about it. He resurrects his loved ones and ones he can forgive. People who did not take part in the destruction of earth in his eyes. Who other than children could he really be talking about? Children, babies, who have no power to decide or influence to exert, who - even if they did have the power - do not have the capacity to understand the consequences of their actions. Whose memories will be easiest to erase because there is so little to begin with.

It then also makes sense why there were two generations of Lyctors. The population he woke up had to grow up into adults first. Why else would he have half a band of Lyctors trying to settle all of the Houses? If he was able to pick adults worthy of resurrection, he would have been able to pick adults capable of establishing his houses and becoming his hands and gestures.

One final point that drives this home is the following from the very beginning of GtN in chapter 7 when Teacher tells the Ninth about Dulcinea's condition:

"Dulcinea Septimus was not meant to live to twenty-five,"-

Dulcinea's hereditary disease is the same as Cytherea's. John did not know she was sick when she first was brought to Canaan house, which means that when he resurrected her, she must have been young enough to not be actively dying yet. Perhaps a toddler or a child who had been sick for some time - long enough to know what it feels like to slowly be dying.

So, all in all, my answer is that Cytherea was not born on the Seventh. I am not sure where the idea that the second generation was born on their planets of origin came from, but I honestly doubt any of them were born instead of woken. Cytherea claiming to have learned something 10,000 years ago would be a great way for Tamsyn to give us just enough to figure it out - this is, after all, the same author who gave us the big reveal of the second book in the first sentence of the first book of her series.

[llovelyclouds]

notes on pyrrha dve

heres all the relevant info i took note of on pyrrha during my tlt reread, in one place!

(you can find all the other posts from this project here!)

PYRRHA DVE

titles:

Gideon’s cavalier, first gen, founded the second

greek mythological orgin of the name pyrrha

also, pyrrhic victory

notes from gideon the ninth:

G1deon & Pyrrha's room in Canaan house includes a drawing of a chimaera that Gideon describes as "familiar" and a picture on the wall of John and his pals (presumably) with everyone's faces scribbled out with a thick black marker. Also guns (gtn. pg. 205)

notes from harrow the ninth:

presumably lead the development of her and G1dieon's trial at Canaan house, as Mercy refers to it as "Pyrrha's trial" (htn. pg. 97)

 The reason G1deon is named the Saint of Duty (htn. pg. 177)

Asked Wake to kill G1deon quickly (htn. pg. 205)

Was most likely the one conscious in G1dieon’s body when Harrow caught her fucking Wake in Cytherea’s body????? (htn. pg. 216)

"I will remember the first time you kissed me- you apologised- you said, I am sorry, destroy me as I am, but I want to kiss you before I am killed, and I said to you why, and you said, because I have only once met someone so utterly willing to burn for what they believed in, and I loved him on sight, and the first time I died I asked of him what I now ask of you / I kissed you and later I would kiss him too before I understood what you were, and all three of us lived to regret it- but when I am in heaven I will remember your mouth, and when you roast down in hell I think you will remember mine" -Wake's note (htn. pg. 252)

All the lyctors and John loved her (and also thought she was super hot) (htn. pg. 274)

Augustine developed his smoking habit to impress her (htn. pg. 275)

Was ten years older than Augustine (htn. Pg. 278)

G1deon & Pyrrha liked Alecto despite the fact that the other lyctors (at least Mercy and Augustine) didn't (htn. pg. 479)

Mattaius Nonius fought G1deon, and seems to owe Pyrrha a debt (htn. pg. 455)

"We compartmentalised from the Eightfold Word, just like you and your girl- though I'm an accident, and he took more from me than got taken from you. I was able to go underground, even from him."- Pyrrha (htn. pg. 494)

notes from nona the ninth:

Used to be a cop, made detective, knew Gideon from "way back" (ntn. pg. 74)

"'You should be draining and replacing her fucking brain fluid,' said Pyrrha. 'When Gideon and I designed that trial, I used to crack his skull and sieve it myself, just as a control variable. It's aggregative. I doubt you're testing her white blood cell count either. The only other people I put through that damn trial were Mercy and Cris, because only Cris didn't mind being trepanned on the regular. Fucking around with souls is the problem, Sextus… you can't ever get data on souls.'" - Pyrrha, discussing when Cam & Pal "overlap" (ntn. pg. 84)

"I visited her hometown back before Anastasia got settled, and it was grim as fuck then. Just spooky caves all the way down…" -Pyrrha (ntn. pg. 86)

"'Do they still do gravid carry where you come from?' 'On the Sixth, only for research,' said Palamedes. 'I helped at a birth once. Theres a lot of noise and run-up before the real thing happens.'" -Pyrrha and Palamedes (ntn. pg. 121)

"P- was great, but like, Ministry ties or no Ministry ties, a big part of her career was going around to the local high schools and telling the drugs kids that they shouldn't be doing drugs. She'd won medals for competition shooting back north in Hamilton, but we're not talking Jesse James. We're talking Hamilton."- john (ntn. pg. 191)

"She chose us that day, not her career. I always loved her for that. She'd adored being a cop." -john (ntn. pg. 191)

"and it was P- of all people who said, First things first. If they're going to let us fix the world, you've got to make them take us seriously. Get some leverage. If they want to make you into a bad wizard, be a bad wizard. We can write the history books to say you were a good wizard. Or at least an okay wizard. They're not going to listen because we talk nicely, they're going to listen because we scare the shit out of them. He said, Which goes to show you that only getting to NCEA Level 2 isnt going to stop you making waves in life, right." (ntn. pg. 271)

"Nona had thrown exactly two tantrums in her entire life. She couldn't remember anything about the first one, but Pyrrha had told her about it. Pyrrha had been laughing with her mouth, but not with her eyes: her eyes had been very brown and distant and uneasy, as though this tantrum had reminded Pyrrha of something her brain didn't want to bring back." (ntn. pg. 275)

She mentions disco?? how does she know what disco is??? (ntn. pg. 362)

"Gideon… G-, you died for nothing." -Pyrrha (ntn. pg. 390)

“I remember P- behind a barricade… not dead yet… telling me, John, run.” (ntn. pg. 406)

Died pretty immediately after Mercy and Augustine, but before G1deon (ntn. Pg. 407)

“Who are you, foreigner, that you know the mysteries of the Anastasian?” “I was here before it was the Anastasian,” said Pyrrha absently. “Painted a nursery. Mint green.” (ntn. pg. 453)

“Cass and Mercy and I worked on cell thanergy- we need thanergy, fresh thanergy, to activate…” - Pyrrha (ntn. pg. 471)

“And Alecto said, Pyrrha, he laid me down as an appeasement to them; he fed you to them as an appeasement to them; but he has never appeased me, and now all he has done was teach me how to die.“ (ntn. Pg. 476)

[darkveracity]

Yessssssss... Sweet sweet love that’s gone rancid. Saying horrible things that hurt each other while physically being incredibly gentle and tender. It’s deeply unpleasant for the baby lyctors to watch. Palamedes never asked her to marry him again after they ascended and they’re both hurt by that.

Jumping tracks completely because my brain is just pinballing  between different topics as I think through this AU, there’s a bit of a numbers problem where the first gen is supposed to have 9 pairs and the second gen 8. If we swap them I don’t know what to do with the extra pair of second gen teens (do John and Alecto steal Anastasia and Samael’s spot on the Ninth? Do they just not exist? Are they from the first house somehow?).

I think I have a solution for the missing first gen pair though. The Ninth House only gets founded after Harrow and the lyctors leave Canaan House (so it doesn’t send a disciple to ascend) and she’s so neurotic about making sure Gideon’s tomb is tended to perfectly that she pulls double duty and sets the whole thing up herself. This is the perfect excuse for her to still dress the same way she does in HtN - she founded the Ninth and modeled all of the horrible skeleton nun stuff after her own preferred personal aesthetics.

Also, can you imagine Mercy finally getting to meet God and realizing that She’s a black vestal?

ok this is just my leftover homestuck fan energy and we all know this but,

locked tomb generation swap AU,

featuring harrow as: god. gideon as: her freaky shadow and fated death. frankly beyond that you can do a lot with narrative echoes and i’m not set on who gets to be cytherea — ianthe’s an obvious augustine parallel but wouldn’t it be sexy if she killed coronabeth and turned on harrow 10k years later? palamedes is also furious but i think is more likely to go the Sneaky Detective Plan route than the Kill A Bunch Of Bystanders route. and we don’t know dulcie well enough for me, but you could swing it. OPTIONS

meanwhile teen mercymorn is storming out of rooms whenever she sees anastasia (because she’s a heretic) or augustine w/alfred (because he is a D I S G R A C E), which let’s be real is the main appeal of this for me