#daughter of mystery

[with-my-murder-flute]

One of the things I really like about Alpennia's ~magic system is that it's historically coherent with Western history, where the Catholic church held total supremacy over much of Europe for over a milennium, BUT, you can definitely see the cracks that mean an alternate interpretation would totally blow the whole system wide open.

One of the things about being an ex-Catholic history nerd is, it's hard for me to really invest in "our world, except magic" AUs where magic is this totally separate branch of institutional power in Western society, where there is the monarchy/government, there is the Church, and then there is The World of Magic—because the Church, being the largest branch, has always tried to eat its lesser kin; there has been so much warfare about whether the Roman Catholic Church holds precedence over secular governments, or whether secular governments can tell the Church where to GTFO. So it is very fundamentally implausible that, if magic truly exists, the Church has not annexed it and claimed to be its only true source.

Daughter of Mystery is about the "mysteries" of the saints, where "mystery" means both "a secret ritual" (like the Elusinian mysteries) and "an act of religious ministry" (like medieval "mystery" plays). It's an adaptation of things that exist in our world, where Catholic veneration of the saints has always included asking different saints for different things, and honouring them with specific actions, prayers, pilgrimages, and items. That means everything from walking hundreds of miles with bare feet to worship at a shrine, to sighing and chanting, "Anthony, Anthony, turn around, something's lost that must be found" while spinning in a circle, before continuing to look for your car keys.

In this world, the mysteries work. Not all the time, not for everybody, but just often enough to be miraculous. And the Church traditionally holds that God and the Saints are just very choosy about when they bestow those miracles, and it's the job of ordinary people to pray humbly and dutifully and bow their heads when the blessings fall down.

But slowly over the centuries, theologians, philosophers, and eventually, thaumaturgists, have been observing that there is a pattern to when and how the mysteries generate miracles. There are some people who are especially sensitive to seeing or hearing the working of miracles, who can say whether a prayer was answered or a mystery was successful; and there are some people who, much more reliably than others, have their prayers answered. If they work together, they can use trial and error to create far more effective mysteries that produce more reliable results.

This has led to the creation of "mystery guilds", because the guild was the medieval framework for a closed group of people who meet to work together for a specific cause; in this case they were not tradesmen regulating a profession or philanthropists raising money for a cause, but people working to celebrate mysteries in hopes of creating a desired miracle. (I don't know if it comes up in later books, but I imagine the Freemasons in this world are buck wild.)

The Church officially condemns what is called "the mechanistic heresy", which says that miracles don't come from God, but are the sum of the people involved and the thoughts and words and actions they perform. Thaumaturgists have to step very carefully around this issue, because it is actually pretty clear that either case is equally possible, but they want to not die at the hands of the Inquisition. So there's this very real tension where thaumaturgy that was scandalous and near-heretical in its day (which I'm guessing to be the 12th century?) is now essential to understanding modern philosophy, so a nun who disapproves of the field as a whole nonetheless has to teach parts of it if she wants her student to understand why Christian thought and worship of the early 1800s is the way it is—but she won't give that student access to the entire book, just carefully chosen excerpts. And even if that book can be obtained from other libraries, other books of thaumaturgy are so at risk of being deemed heretical that reputable printers won't print it, and reputable booksellers won't sell it.

It reminds me a lot of the practice of human dissection in European history. During the Early Middle Ages, the Church discouraged the practice, which had been more common in Ancient Rome; it held that human bodies were sacrosanct, and could not be in any way damaged or altered after death, because when humans will be given our "new flesh" on the day of the Resurrection, it will be our actual physical bodies that will be revived—so your body had better be in a revivable state, and not cremated or taken apart or anything else.

But slowly, in the 11th and 12th centuries, it became clearer and clearer (thanks in part to physicians from Jewish and Islamic traditions) that dissection was a necessary part of medical science, because doctors and surgeons will just be fundamentally worse at their jobs if they don't have the kind of detailed knowledge of anatomy that only human dissection can provide. So in fits and starts, various regions and bishops and popes made the procedure more legal, even as they limited who could be dissected to those least likely to be deemed fit for the eternal hereafter.

Which, like... it is completely off the chain for us to live in a world where autopsies are performed on everyone, good citizen and hardened criminal alike, in the case of suspicious death; where it is routine to take the vital organs of a dead person out of their body and transplant them into a new one. We couldn't imagine law enforcement without forensic pathology, and we're comfortable with medical science experimenting with the human body in a way that treats nothing as sacrosanct, except knowledge and truth.

So Alpennia is at the jumping-off place for this brave new world. They've been a solidly Catholic country, wedged between France and Switzerland, only slightly touched by the wilder excesses of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution; Napoleon's wars ravaged them somewhat, but a new generation that barely remembers them is coming of age, with the knowledge that all the old truths can be thrown down—if you throw hard enough.

These books are so deeply nerdy. So very much. I love them so.

[wearethekat]

August Book Reviews: Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones

Recommended by @with-my-murder-flute​! This was a very fun combination of a Ruritanian romance and something in the line of a traditional Regency. But sapphic. Which is fun to see in a adult book, since so many sapphic novels seem to be either fairly dark and gritty or YA. And sometimes you just want a fun romp through an imaginary Germanic country with an obviously overdesigned invented language (the author’s a linguist, you see). 

Margerit Sovitre is uncomfortably positioned as a poor relation, pressured by her extended family to get married off quickly so she can stop being a burden on them-- even though her secret dream is to attend university. But, in a truly Regency turn of events, her godfather abruptly dies and leaves her his outrageous fortune-- as well as responsibility for his extremely competent bodyguard with a mysterious past, Barbara. But with the baron’s fortune comes an angry disinherited nephew and a host of political complications...

A fun read in one of my particular favorite genres. Recommended. 

[yaworldchallenge]

🇱🇮 Liechtenstein

(*inspired)

Region: Eastern Europe

Daughter of Mystery

Author: Heather Rose Jones

376 pages, published 2014

Original language: English

Native author? N/A

Age: Adult

Blurb:

Margerit Sovitre did not expect to inherit the Baron Saveze’s fortunes—and even less his bodyguard. The formidable Barbara, of unknown parentage and tied to the barony for secretive reasons, is a feared duelist, capable of defending her charges with efficient, deadly force. Equally perplexing is that while she is now a highly eligible heiress, Margerit did not also inherit the Saveze title, and the new baron eyes the fortunes he lost with open envy. Barbara, bitter that her servitude is to continue, may be the only force that stands between Margerit and the new Baron’s greed—and the ever deeper layers of intrigue that surround the ill-health of Alpennia’s prince and the divine power from rituals known only as The Mysteries of the Saints. At first Margerit protests the need for Barbara’s services, but soon she cannot imagine sending Barbara away—for reasons of state and reasons of the heart. Heather Rose Jone debuts with a sweeping story rich in intrigue and the clash of loyalties and love.

Other reps: #lesbian

Genres: #alternate history #historical, medieval to 19th century #romance #political

My thoughts:

There were close to no books at all for the tiny country of Liechtenstein. This novel is set in the fictional country of Alpennia, in the European Alps, same as Liechtenstein. Though I can’t tell if this novel uses German names (as Liechtenstein should) or French.

Review to come.

Bookshop.org link | Kobo ebooks

[bigfatbreak]

"hey rat it sounds like Gina tried to help but what about Rolland, Tom's dad, did he help-" no

[aimer-arts]

ready to go exploring!

[cozybells]

Take care.

[mi-spark]

i cleaned up and colored some doodles from a few months ago! these two genuinely helped me get through my finals

+ a bonus, they are simply Children

[fujii-draws]

Investing in your own guilt.

[filmgifs]

DAISY RIDLEY as Helena Pelletier in THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER 2023 — dir. Neil Burger

[svtskneecaps]

see everyone worried and fretted and panicked and yet quesadilla island looked at pepito and went

[losthavenmine]

Russell Crowe Filmography Series || Hugging

[mvshortcut]

I was thinking about Kate and Milligan (as usual) but specifically about what Kate calls Milligan. Because he's Milligan to her, but that doesn't make him any less her dad, but she doesn't call him Dad, yknow?

How did it go? Was it an unspoken agreement where they just knew and understood the other despite just having met as father and daughter for the first time? Did she just bounce up to him and go "I'm not calling you Dad. You're Milligan and you're going to stay Milligan." and did he reply "Alright, Katie-Cat" without even a twinge of hurt because it's just so right? He just found his daughter, how could he ever be sad about anything ever again?

Or- maybe it wasn't that easy? Maybe she bounced up to him, and everything felt right, but he couldn't help but wonder... and so he went to the one place he always knew he could go when he felt lost. When he presented his troubles to Mr. Benedict - "No, it's going great, but I can't help wondering ... she doesn't want to call me Dad. Which is fine, of course, but ... maybe she doesn't see me in that way?" - when he presented his troubles to Mr. Benedict, how long did he laugh and slump unconscious for, before waking up and apologizing profusely, before helping Milligan sort it all out. (Which really meant sort himself out. Kate had it all figured out, apparently.)

Or- did she try at first? Did she try to press at a puzzle piece that just wouldn't fit? Her dad left. He left a long time ago and she's lived with that her whole life. But - her Milligan is here now. Could he ever understand?

Or- maybe it just slipped out one day, years down the line? When she was teasing him - "Extra coat, Kate, it's brisk out!" / "Da-ad, I'm nearly sixteen, you know, you don't need to-" - did they both freeze? Did she not realize what she'd done until she was halfway down the sidewalk? Did she catch him wiping at his eyes and blowing his nose? Did she tuck that away in her back pocket for later?

Just. It's all good, ya know?

[wheresurboytonighthelookslikeenj]

murdoch beginning as incredibly sceptical of and kinda pissed at the singing to ultimately being first compelled to sing by julia singing about their daughter. if you even. CARE.

[askblueandviolet]

You don't love your daughter...?

She loved you so much and yet you killed her...Maybe she's feeling disappointed in her father now:(

MASTER POST

Previous 💙

Next 💙

[0multifandomweirdo0]

So, Runaan has been gone for like two weeks (?) and, in that short time, his daughter fell in love and started dating a human prince. Runaan might not be scared of death, but I bet this must be his nightmare.

[science-lings]

"A Magician never reveals her secrets!" is the rule but Trucy's family has always been completely made up of other magicians. They've taught her all she knows, cards and throwing knives and sawing people in half and how to smile no matter what. So she may call Phoenix 'daddy' pretty much immediately but when she starts really thinking about him as her family is when she starts to teach him some magic.

She can tell that he's already a bit of a performer as well, his false smiles are practiced and perfected, he appreciates some theatrics, he knows the security that comes with an act. He's her father now, so she teaches him some sleight of hand and how to throw knives so he stops coming back from work all bruised from a card game gone wrong.

Just... the Wrights being a completely in-sync duo who above all, are performers, acting out the life they want others to think that they have. They have smiling iron masks that can only be seen through by each other and they're all each other has.

Phoenix didn't adopt Apollo when he figured out his parentage, no, he figured it was too late when Trucy started making him her magical assistant.