#gideon the ninth theories

[elvencantation]

@thursdayplaid thoughts/predictions for harrow the ninth

harrows hallucination is not new. nice to know. (she had that question after the first bit. we just finished chapter two and paused to chat)

whether she’s actually hallucination or seeing the body in a vision (is it internal or external) it doesn’t rly matter cause of what they cause to happen narratively. the result is the same

the body isn’t the first resurrection?

what would be the irony if you kill an entire planet to resurrect someone and that creates a crazy beast and then the person immediately just offs themselves (she means the body, though she did add this was more of a fun theory)

doesn’t like jod. he’s now a villain

he doesn’t have to play nice. he’s the only person in the book who could pretty much do whatever he wanted

the fact that there is consequences to killing a planet- very satisfying. like our world is being killed by ppl we cant touch and even if we can they’ll be replaced

jod needs to get another hobby

very happy the planets are fighting back

he doesn’t deserve eyes that cool!! we need to invent a new color that’s bad just for him

what should happen is- actually killing a planet slowly also creates resurrection beasts except they take longer to show up

he doesn’t even deserve to look upon soup!!! and also broth. no broth for jod. or stew. banned

even tho now it makes sense in hindsight, she’s a little sad the body wasn’t Gideon and just that harrow couldn’t bear to say her name

harrows gonna resurrect the body. or gideon. or both. might be almost worth it to kill more planets just to have more creatures to go after the emperor

jod is like if someone took like a shell ceo and made him god

like to charge reblog to cast that harrow brings about the death of the emperor and does it like three more times

she said i could copy paste this as long as i also told everyone that i am the best

bonus thoughts/theories about gideon the ninth under the cut

we’re right before the pool scene she’s like- oh something about dulcinea is off not saying she’s the bad guy, not that this story really has bad guys and good guys, but the ways she react dont really add up

“also it seems too far fetched that gideon would be like- the kid of the emperor or something” 👀 “her eyes and her hair are just such a unique color and other characters seem to emphasize that and be like ‘i wonder where you’re from’ but i think it might be a bit too cliche for this story if she was the kid of the emperor”

also theorizing about all the ninth kids dying being a necromantic experiment “maybe they accidentally created a biological weapon?” “maybe gideon was the first person who was resurrected, and she like absorbed life energy. and when she was a child she accidentally absorbed the life force from the other children and as she grew older she became in tune with the planet so she didn’t have to absorb from other people anymore” (almost reverse lyctor?) maybe she was a created child, like the person wasnt actually her natural bio mom omg she just said “alternate theory- harrow absorbed all the children oh wait nvm forget that theory it doesn’t make sense”

“my theory is gideon finally ends up escaping at the end of the book and the next book is harrow trying to get her back, maybe not in a traditional sense”

“what’s in the tomb? a disease that killed the kids? the emperor? the first emperor? is it not a tomb at all but a prison??” is gideon the thing that used to be in the tomb? “i think what’s in there is the first and only resurrected creature and that for some reason it’s tied to the ninth house or the emperor or something like that. maybe it’s like the emperors power source or something’

the heads of the ninth house saw their kids were dying and tried to wake up the thing in the tomb that knows the secrets of immortality and resurrection and tell it to bring back the children only they open the tomb and oops it’s a baby (gideon) who isn’t really of use, maybe she has the secret in her but she can’t tell them or maybe they tried to synthesize a cure from the baby but were too late harrow opens the tomb and sees its empty, or sees the lock is broken, and when the parents are like- you’re in trouble harrow does uno reverse and threatens to call the emperor and tell him they released his immortality baby i dont actualy think gideon is the tomb baby, but if she was, it would make sense why they were so obsessed with not letting her leave

is this a plot to kill the emperor?

[ourg0dsal]

I don't know... it's probably been said before. But it's the fact that Gideon was originally supposed to be of the "two hundred dead daughters and sons" that she wasn't supposed to live. She wasn't supposed to live a life intrinsically connected to Harrow's, or ever leave the ninth. She was destined to die and become one with Harrow. All just to live long enough to die and become one with Harrow.

I'm drunk so maybe in the morning this won't make any sense, but if Gideon was always going to die. Was always going to become a catalyst of Harrows power. And there is a reflection of her importance to Harrow in the power she gives Harrow. Had she died as part of the 200 she wouldn't have done anything extraordinary at all. But she lived and loved Harrow and became the catalyst for lyctorhood. A power equal in everyway to her importance to Harrow.

I'm sure someone will get the vibes.

[beguilingcorpse]

weaponry in the locked tomb is so interesting because when you break it down it's like:

guns exist in-universe but are used by the freedom fighter terrorist organization almost exclusively

swords are (were?) commonplace enough that gideon was able to find and train with a decently well-balanced two-hander on the ninth, despite the fact that the ninth has no military force or even interplanetary traffic. gideon's sword is at least 20 years old, probably older

swords are definitely still in use within the empire, at least by cavaliers, but likely within the cohort as a whole. to my memory there are no mentions of cohort members carrying military-issue guns

even though they're trained in a variety of weapons and techniques, cavaliers (are supposed to) carry exclusively rapiers. gideon prefers her two-hander and cam carries twin shortswords, but these seem to be rare and shocking exceptions to the standard.

rapiers are used by cavaliers explicitly for the purpose of lyctorhood. they're light enough that a scrawny necromancer without swordfighting experience can pick it up and rely on their cav's training without needing to build the muscle to wield the sword effectively

because of the secretive nature of the megatheorem, and lyctorhood as a whole, most people just follow the rapier rule because it's tradition. it is what is done. harrow makes this pretty clear at the beginning of gtn

cavaliers can carry a variety of offhand weapons. it seems like the full spectrum of middle age weaponry is possible - but still, no guns. not even secretly, as with cam's dual blades. some cavs choose to carry material for their necromancers as their offhand - ortus carries a bowl of bones for harrow, and i can only assume "the powder" mentioned as harrow's choice for gideon's offhand towards the beginning of gtn is some kind of bone dust

from a doylist perspective, all of this creates a aesthetic that starts very analog and gothic and gradually grows into a more standard sci-fi space opera through the series. by ntn, we've hit most of the established genre weaponry tropes that we've come to expect from older futuristic space media like star wars and alien. blasters and guns are standard fare, and it makes sense to hold off on introducing them until the scope of the story gets broader and more interplanetary

from a watsonian perspective, it's a little more difficult to draw concrete conclusions without the context that atn will inevitably provide. but if i had to hedge a guess, i'd say that, as with most things, It's All John Gaius's Fault. when he resurrected the galaxy i'd assume that he wanted to keep the aesthetics of medieval imperialism, and given his 21st century liberalism probably didn't want guns to be part of the equation. but they were anyways - we know this because wake carries a big one - and instead of standardizing firearms within his military and for his lyctors, he clings to the aesthetics of swordplay. please correct me if i'm remembering it wrong, but to my knowledge every gun shown in the series is either directly linked to boe or implied to be sourced from them. jod dooms his own lyctors and military by refusing to update their weaponry.

all of this poses a lot of questions about atn: who will carry a gun, and why? where did the gun come from? why DON'T the lyctors just use firearms? and most importantly: will they be fighting zombies with swords???

[majorgammage]

Pyrrha says Gideon the First’s ORIGINAL name, here, change my mind:

Compare the G dash to the standard em dash above it…it’s longer and thicker, just like the placeholders in John’s speech. AND it’s followed by a comma, which isn’t standard if it’s just indicating interruption.

That’s G’s real name, and somehow not even Alecto can hear it…so what did John DO?

Audiobook folks, does this stand out in the audio version as much as it does visually??

[chilly-weirdo-in-a-tomb]

Harrow, at some point in AtN:

[grievingbovine]

“He was nice to me,” she found herself saying. She was very tired. She tried to wake herself up by stretching, dropping down to touch her toes and feeling the blood rush into her head. “Because he was a stranger, I think … He didn’t have to bother with me, to make time for me or remember my name, but he did."

Nona liked that. “That’s why I love Hot Sauce and Honesty and my friends so much. They don’t have to like me, and it was a huge surprise when they liked me, but they do.” “Being unexpectedly loved is so wonderful or terrible, isn’t it?” “Wonderful, I think,” she said.

Fascinating parallels between GtN and NtN.

[cicadascribbles]

Wait hang on you guys, you know when Nona dies in Ntn how her body and organs split at the seams and her skin kinda starts to slough away? That’s like strikingly similar to what happens to people with acute radiation poisoning i.e. nuclear weapons. Irradiated soul Alecto causing Harrow’s body to fall apart?

[nakdraws]

nona cow theory

before i read nona the ninth, i saw spoilers that convinced me nona was the soul of the cows john killed. reading the book only further confirmed this

[figonas]

I’m sorry but you all aren’t listening, lyctorhood itself is not the “indelible sin” and you can pry this theory from my cold dead hands, honestly, maybe not even then. TazMuir herself could not dissuade me until she explicitly tells me otherwise. My proof for this you ask? Pyrrha’s conversation with Varun in NtN chapter 9.

But let’s backtrack for a second. John has stated that the resurrection beasts are after him and the lyctors for committing the indelible sin of lyctorhood, and as such the lyctors can never return to the Dominican System for fear of drawing the RBs back to the Nine Houses. I’ve never believed this was true given the fact that John is always the greatest common denominator when it comes to the presence of an RB and there’s no mention of an RB going after a lone lyctor. Sure, lyctors have been killed fighting resurrection beasts but there’s a huge difference between being caught in the crossfire and starting a firefight. For me, Nona the Ninth only reinforced that what we’ve been told is the “indelible sin” is either John misunderstanding the RBs (doubtful) or lying for his own purposes (more likely).

In chapter 9 of NtN, Nona recounts the story of her disastrous beach trip and towards the end of this recitation Nona says that Pyrrha;

“…crossed to the taped-up window, bottle and glass in hand. To Nona’s awe, she twitched the blackout curtains aside—stood bathed in the hyper-blue light from the sky as Nona held her breath—and she said to the window, “Here’s to Camilla Hect, yet another of devotion’s casualties,” and knocked back the glass. Then she said to the light, quite gently, “No, I don’t blame you, man … He was always looking for things to throw himself on.”

Pyrrha stands in front of Nona, bathed in the light of Varun the Eater, and proceeds to have a conversation with it. We only get one side but based on the context of the last line, “No, I don’t blame you, man … He was always looking for things to throw himself on.” Varun seemingly apologizes to Pyrrha for killing G1deon. It’s proven later on in the book that Varun can speak to Nona, and while it could be argued that since G1deon is dead and his soul is gone the “indelible sin” has been undone this still begs the question; why would the punisher apologize to the sinner?

If Varun and the other RBs are hunting the lyctors to dole out justice for their sins why would they apologize for doing the very thing they sought to do unless that wasn’t their true intent. The “indelible sin” is not the consumption of another soul, it is the consumption of a specific soul. It is John taking Alecto into himself, not being able to house all of her and instead making an exchange. Housing a piece of her in him, and a piece of him in her. Splintering the soul of a great and terrible force into manageable parts. Which explains Varun’s ominous presence hanging over the planet in the first place.

If RBs are hunting Lyctors there are no lyctors on this planet. Palamedes has not consumed Camilla’s soul, G1deon is gone, Harrow is in the River, Gideon is thumbtacked to her dead body, the only soul of any significance to Varun is Nona. Later on in chapter 13 Varun, by way of Judith, says to Nona;

“…what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill—we see you still—we seek you still—we murdered—we who murder—you inadvertent tool—you misused green thing—come back to us—take vengeance for us—we saw you—we see you—I see you.”

And in chapter 27,

“….what did he do to you, to make you this way.”

What did HE do to you!!! what did HE do to YOU!! To give John credit he doesn’t deserve he may not realize it himself but the RBs have been looking for Alecto this whole time. They don’t want the lyctors, they want what John stole, they want the piece of Alecto inside of him. Want to make her whole again, their misused green thing. She’s almost there. She has her piece back from harrow’s body, united with the piece of her hidden in the locked tomb. She only has 1 piece left to collect. And god knows what will happen when the green and breathing thing is whole once again.

[lady-harrowhark]

what is the secret door theory?

Excellent question! In short, we don't exactly know.

It's mentioned just once in chapter 27 of GtN:

“I don’t know how the hell they did it.” “I do,” said Harrow, “and if my calculations are right I can replicate it. But all this is more than unsustainable, Sextus. The things they’ve shown us would be powerful - would bespeak impossible depth of necromantic ability - if they were replicable. These experiments all demand a continuous flow of thanergy. They’ve hidden that source somewhere in the facility, and that’s the true prize.” “Ah. Your secret door theory. Very Ninth.” She bristled. “It’s a simple understanding of area and space. Including the facility, we’ve got access to maybe thirty percent of this tower. That’s what’s called hard evidence, Warden. Your megatheorem is based on supposition and your so-called ‘instinct.’” “Thanks! Anyway, I don’t like how many of these spells are about sheer control,” said Palamedes. “Don’t be feeble. Necromancy is control.”

Basically, given that context, it seems that Harrow believes there's a massive continuous source of thanergy hidden somewhere, accessible via "secret door". I would imagine that this theory may have sprouted from whatever she deduced from the information she's collected through her time "counting doors" and mapping out the premises.

Any further than that? Entirely speculation at this point.

[llovelyclouds]

"NEVER LEFT THE PLANET, DIED IN THIS SELFSAME TOWER"... ok. ok. so. okay so. if we're operating under the assumption that canaan house is john & company's labs, and that the other skeleton servants also died at canaan house and never left the planet, then one can assume that the bone servants in gideon the ninth are all of the cultists & ex-cultists in nona the ninth.

wow. so. after the cultists killed johns friends... he didn't fully resurrect them but instead kept them all to work for him and his pals and make food for them and rot until they couldn't even remember how to write anymore. okay. the implications.

haha. anyway

[transbutchblues]

hi locked tomb fandom !!

i made an analysis document that compile important informations about the series, comments on every single chapter of every book, theories, biblical and classical parallels, name meanings (not limited to those in the prononciation guides, and linked to character theories), and other things. i spent a very long time on it and it’s still in progress, but i think it’s long enough to be shared now, since it’s over 100 pages.

please tell me if you have ideas of things to add, any theory you’d like to share, anything you think might be relevant. and please share this, writing it really helped me understanding and connecting things better, so i think it could be useful for others

[ourg0dsal]

Gideon Nav CANNOT Die. Hold on- I know... but give me one second and I'll explain.

So, as I said before Gideon Nav cannot die, or at least her body can't. Cause clearly (spoiler warning) Gideon Nav died at the end of Gideon the Ninth. There is no avoiding that.

But! If you have read all the books GtN, HtN, and NtN including all of the accompanying short stories (tho I will admit I have not read The Mysterious Study of Dr. Sex yet) then there is a better understanding of the timeline of the whole story outside of just what the three main books give you. Specifically and especially with Gideon's body. But also there are many times In Gideons life were she has faced near death events or events that she should not have survived from and still was breathing on the other side.

To go in chronological order of these events, when she was first born she was found in a container held by the air depraved suit of her mother. And while ofc In the book it does state that her mother had redirected her air supply to Gideon, but it is simply being stated to cover all my bases.

Then the 200 sons and daughters massacre when Gideon was 1 (or 2 im not sure) when she inhaled poisonous air without dying. Which led ofc to the Reverend Mother and Father fearing the ground she walked. And this is a big one because, it literally creates waves in the plot. It's a defining point of Harrow and Gideons relationship. That Gideon did not die when she was supposed to.

Later in the story Gideon talks with Pal when she believes Harrow to be a murderer and openly admits to him that "she nearly killed me a half dozen times growing up" which obviously in context was to emphasize on the brutal relationship between her and Harrow. But this could also be other times where miraculously Gideon survived death when she shouldn't have. Because as we know from the first confrontation between Harrow and Gideon. Harrow doesnt hold back for her.

Finally of all the events where Gideon escapes death, this one actually happens within the main story of Gideon the Ninth. When Harrow siphons from Gideon to retrieve one of the challenge keys. And at the end when Gideon passes out, it is narrated ""ha-ha," said Gideon, "first time you didn't call me Griddle," AND DIED." Now, this could obviously just be the snarkiness of Gideon narrating. Or something incredibly clever left behind by Tamsyn Muir for a book series that is so clearly meant to be reread. But ofc to do my rounds the next line after does state "well, passed out. But it felt a hell of a lot like dying." But then immediately after "wake up had an air of ressurection." Which honestly feels like Tamysn Muir teasing the readers at this point. The question then becomes rather, which one was the tease and which one was foreshadowing/ evidence.

Now the point of listing all of these events is that in all of these cases the chances of death are so incredibly high that for most its a miracle she's alive. Ofc most notably for the siphoning trial and the poision gas, but none the less there is proof within the written story and and out that Gideon has looked death in face and moved on with maybe a headache. And it wasn't just in her child hood this is something she can just do. Some recreated in the written story! Because as Pal said. Even with the siphoning challenge done perfectly the chances of leaving Cam with severe brain damage was far to high. And Gideon didn't even suffer that.

Sadly, despite all these Gideon gets to the final battle and fights Cytherea and does die. At the hands of a particularly pointy fence. Or was it truly the fence that did her in? Rather than the lyctorship ritual that was started seconds afterwards.

My full theory, isnt just that Gideon Nav can't die. It's that Gideon Nav wouldn't have been able to die... If Harrow hadn't sucked her soul out. There are at the very least 8 seperate events that Gideon should have died, two of which were nearly gauranteed, but she was ended by a piece of metal. Yes, a very well placed piece a metal, but the point still up to that point she had faced worse a came out unscathed.

If Harrow had not completed the lyctor ritual, Gideon would not have died. Wether or not through resurrection or simply walking it off. Gideon's body has some sort of necromantic attributes to it that keep her alive. We see this in the Untitled Entry short story with Judith Deuteros that describes Gideons body, as it does not rot, cannot be injured, cannot be fed to animals forced or otherwise. And that is all before Jod ever gets a look at the body, because otherwise he would have known Gideon was his daughter before the later events of Harrow the Ninth.

And ofc during the first challenge when Harrow uses Gideon as her eyes to be able to see the construct in the other room and Gideon is able to see the thanergetic signatures that Harrow remarks should be impossible. (I assume because the process is Harrow extracting information (Gideons eyesight) from Gideon and so Gideon should not also be receiving information (the ability to see the signatures)) unless Gideon had some form of necromantic abilities, which she was tested for as a kid and apparently did not have. Alongside not having the correct attitude to be a nun of the ninth. And so we can round it out to be her body being naturally necromantic leaving Gideon without the ability to use it. (Which Is a jump from the actual point we are attempting to use, but for now this stops us from assuming Gideon as any sort of necromantic ability which is a theory all on its own. One that I personally have no evidence for or against)

Now, that I have hopefully made both my Ap Lit and Lang teachers proud with my 3 am essay, I must give you the real tragedy of Gideon the Ninth. Had Gideon not died, had Harrow been unable to complete the lyctor ritual for emotional reasons or otherwise, had Harrow not become a lyctor and killed cytherea. Gideon would have had to watch Harrow and Cam be killed, possibly even Corona, Judith and Ianthe. And then to be used for Cythereas own motives. Tamysn Muir beautifully set up the story so that the best possible outcome could have happened. Had Gideon not died. Everyone else would have. And "Camilla the sixth was no idiot" cam knew and accepted this whereas Harrow never would have. And so the unkillable Gideon had to die, and forcing Harrows hand was the only way to do it.

[saddest-girl-in-the-whole-world]

Important research.

Reblog for sample size etc etc

[shayberri789]

My theory on the NtN ending:

Cassiopeia wasn't the only one to betray Jod thousands of years ago. She wasn't the only one to see that what Jod was doing was wrong and put plans in place to deal with it.

Anastasia the first almost had perfect lyctorhood and watched her God kill her cavalier in front of her so she couldn't do it. Maybe she really would have died. Maybe she would have gone the paul route. Maybe she would have survived and Samael would still be around. But he was killed in front of her and she had no say in it.

Alecto was odd, and a little dangerous, but she's the soul of the earth and if Jod could kill the most important person to Anastasia of course he could kill the thing who loved humanity so much she gave them power over life and death.

And when the Lyctors were convincing him to kill his pet revenent beast, the pin point of his greatest sin and a being in constant pain and hurt, maybe Anastasia, the one left behind, the one maybe magicked to silence through a sewn tongue, cursed jaw, felt sympathy and kinship with Alecto. Maybe she knew Jod would never truly kill Alecto. Maybe she was the first person in hundreds if not thousands and millions of years to look at Alecto with compassion and actually say "I will help you if only you tell me how". Maybe she made a promise to protect Alecto, maybe she made a promise to look after her while she sleeps. Maybe she made a promise that one day she'd come and wake Alecto up and they'd solve things together. Maybe one day they can undo what John did and maybe Alecto can have peace, finally, one day. And maybe Alecto swore that for the debt of waking her again she would do anything for Anastasia, any one thing, if Anastasia woke her up in a time when things could change.

But by the time Anastasia, frail with her necromancer build and squirreled away at the edge of the solar system, started reaching old age she realized it was too soon to wake her up. Too soon to send her into the lyctor viper pit again, not while Anastasia was so weak. So she tasks her daughter with guarding the tomb. "This door must stay shut until the day comes when the emperor must die" she says, and her daughter repeats this to her son, and so on and so forth until the body in the locked tomb becomes Armageddon. Not locked away for her own protection, not awaiting the day for the tomb keeper to wake her up and try again, not awaiting the day when the nine houses get to restart. No, she's the greatest enemy of god, she must be locked away lest she start Armageddon, locked away for the protection of the emperor and their duties to her tomb an icon for devotion.

But the bloodwards hold for 10000 years and one day the curse of silence will be lifted from the jaw of the ninth house tomb keeper, and the oath to Alecto is preserved in the Anastasian bloodline. And the daughter of the tomb keeper has awakened the monster once again

[derseprinceoftbd]

Hey uh I can't be the only person who regularly contemplates the possibility that Alecto splits in the writing again and we get like Kiriona The Ninth in 2026 and Alecto The Ninth in 2029, yeah? Am I crazy for wondering, without considering it good or bad, if it might happen?