#keladry of mindelan

[petite-ursus]

It's. HAPPENING.

(July 2nd 2024)

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Seeing Protector of the Small fanart reminded me of something I wanted to say.

One of the things I love about the series is that Kel’s life gets better over the course of it. Oh, the enemies she’s facing get tougher - in the first book of the quartet she’s an 11-year-old fighting bullies at school, by the fourth one she’s an adult fighting in a war - but the number of people she’s got on her side and at her back expands immensely.

In the first book, she’s virtually on her own at the start and she has almost no control over her fate - whether she will be able to pursue her dream of being a knight depends solely on the arbitrary judgement of a raging sexist. By the second one, she still has enemies, but also a sizeable group of friends, and is a mentor to younger students. By the third, she has some of the most powerful people in the kingdom on her side, and is virtually never without either emotional support or people willing to go to bat for her. In the fourth, she has dozens of people – including the aforementioned raging sexist, who has some of the best character development in any Tamora Pierce novel – supporting her when she does something that is technically illegal.

She’s never more alone or less in control of her fate than the moment, as an eleven-year-old girl, when she says (paraphrased): “If I want to be a knight in order to help people, then I’m going to help people now even though it will probably ruin my chances of ever becoming a knight; because otherwise what was the point?” And the fact that she sticks to her principles doggedly and refuses to turn aside from anyone who needs help is why she has so much support by the end. With a lot of that support coming from people whom she helped and supported because they needed it, people whom the rest of society ignored and discarded and regarded as useless, and who turned out to be tough and talented and invaluble friends. It’s not an authorial gift, it’s the cumulative effect of the mountains of hard work she’s put in over the previous books, usually with no expectation of any return.

[minuiko]

Platonic soulmates :’)

[copperhawks]

The funniest thing to me about Kel, and maybe one of the most interesting because of how understated it is, is that Kel becomes a good commander in the end, not by emulating Wyldon who was cold and implacable and insensitive, or by emulating Raoul who mostly only disobeys orders out of principle or because he has an issue with what the order says about his personal relationship with Jon, but by emulating JON.

Kel doesn't even LIKE Jon, she BARELY respects him as a person. He's a good enough ruler that she's willing to fight for him and swear loyalty to him and to at least mostly believe that he wouldn't work with Blayce to make his own killing monsters, but that's as far as it goes for Kel. If he's kind to her, she finds it uncomfortable and almost untrustworthy because she assumes he doesn't care about her and so his kindness and respect towards her must be fake.

But from the outside, as readers, we know just how much Jon fought for Kel. We know how much he does respect her right to be a knight. Jon is the sole reason that Kel DID get the opportunity to prove herself, if he'd capitulated to Wyldon completely, she just wouldn't have ever been allowed to join. Kel doesn't KNOW THAT, obviously, but we do. We know that Jon did everything he could to find a way to convince Wyldon to let Kel become a page. While Wyldon claims later that the reason he chose to let her stay at the end of the probation year was because his better judgment convinced him she'd earned it, I'd be willing to bet that part of that better judgment also included knowing if he couldn't prove to JON that she needed to go, then he'd be in trouble. Kel was training and working in front of plenty of other trainers and teachers who could easily contradict Wyldon's lies if he'd tried it, many of whom are closer to Jon than they are to Wyldon.

Kel's experiences and feelings about that experience are entirely valid, and she doesn't have the knowledge we do about how hard Jon fought for her, so it's not shocking that she's upset with him for a good portion of her series. She never even discovers this truth by the end of her series, even though she does get a lesson from Jon and Thayet (and Raoul to some degree) about how politics and compromises work in order to make changes happen. So her opinion of him by the end is boiled down to the quote from Squire: "good kings weren't always good men." It makes sense for her to think this, but because Kel's knowledge base is so limited (and her worldview so black and white for much of her series), it makes her an EXTREMELY unreliable narrator about this particular issue.

Kel believes that while Jon generally does his duty and keeps the peace, he doesn't actually care all that much about his people as individuals. But in their only meaningful conversation in Squire, Jon is able to point out that he (and Thayet, who is actually equal to Jon in power, something Kel either doesn't know which would be a failure in her education or just tends to ignore so she can focus her ire on Jon) has to make a LOT of compromises in order to get ANYTHING useful done at all. Sometimes, often, it means making deals with people he doesn't like or people he just fundamentally disagrees with, because it's the first step in a multi-step plan to help more people in the long run. He also points out that just throwing his weight and authority around in order to be able to change everything he wants to change immediately regardless of what anyone else thinks about it is a great way to get himself and his family killed. Because even if he had good intentions, that would be tyranny. It does make Kel think a little, but she doesn't tend to like him much still afterwards, her resentment from her page years will always color her opinion of him a little.

However, then she gets to Haven and she's suddenly tossed into a position of leadership over a lot of other people, many of whom disagree with each other or disagree with her or both. And all of the sudden, Kel has to make compromises. She doesn't LIKE the way the sergeants often treat their men, especially the sergeants whose men are convicts, but there's very very little she can do about it without really pissing off those same sergeants and that's not something she can afford to do. There's a moment when Neal starts getting frustrated about the treatment of the convicts and she takes him out to vent to her so he doesn't vent to the sergeants, something that the sergeants would then take out on their men. Kel's reasoning as she does this is that she "preferred to avoid battles with them now so she would have authority with them later if she needed to use it." Later, Kel is talking to Daine and she says "That's all this job is... Trying to please everyone and pleasing no one. And it will only get worse, not better."

Both of these moments showcase Kel choosing to make compromises. She may not like the way the sergeants treat the convicts, but she needs to stay on the sergeants' good sides because she doesn't have enough resources to butt heads with them nor enough authority to just force the issue, and even if she DID, it could cause the sergeants to become troublesome or take out their frustration with her on the men in ways she can't see as well. But staying on the sergeants' good sides might mean letting some of their maltreatment slide if it's not physically harming the convicts. And even setting that aside, she's dealing with nearly 500 refugees eventually, all of which are from different towns in the area and have different needs, not all of which she can accommodate. This requires compromise. Sometimes she can please some of them and not others, but mostly she probably just ends up not pleasing anybody because that's often how compromises WORK.

She never makes the active connection to Jon and his lesson on leadership from Squire while she's in Haven, but that quote up there about how this job (aka being a commander) is all about trying to please everyone and pleasing no one? It sounds a HECK of a lot like "good kings weren't always good men." You can try your best to help others, but often doing the right thing can involve making everyone unhappy. You can't be everybody's friend if you're going to get anything done.

Some of this she might've learned from Raoul's style of command, but Raoul commands a fairly small amount of people (at least in comparison to a King), and so we see him able to be pretty friendly to the people he commands in a way that Jon is perhaps unable to do. And she might believe that she learned some of this from Wyldon, but Wyldon had a tendency to be very unfair and biased due to his raging bigotry and conservative values, as well as the fact that he doesn't actually even LIKE being a training master and that likely impacted the way he treated the pages (he's almost never that kind to the pages, whereas we see him capable of being quite kind with the refugees later, which is where Kel comes to the conclusion that he hadn't enjoyed being a training master).

But Jon makes an entire speech about how he (and Thayet) have been working THEIR ENTIRE REIGN to change laws that help people. He explains how they have to consider the needs of merchants, nobles, farmers, street people, priests/priestesses, and mages. They have to consider not only what these people might need or want, but also what they could do when they feel sufficiently offended and how that could impact not just the royal family or the nobility but the realm as a whole. Jon points out that they HAVE made changes, for the better, and that just because they don't always succeed at everything or because they have to compromise sometimes, doesn't mean they aren't working at making changes or that they don't care about helping people. Not everyone you have power over is going to be your friend, they might not even be someone you like. But if you're going to take on the job of leadership, that's something you have to be willing to accept and work with, which often means making compromises with people whose needs and values are contradictory to your own.

Jon probably knows when he makes the compromise with Wyldon that it will likely impact a lot of people's good opinion of him. Alanna is right there and clearly angry, and we know Thayet doesn't like the decision, either. And it's entirely possible that Jon knows in the moment that Kel herself will put the blame on him because he's the King. But he also knows that if he insists on Kel being allowed to be a page without trying to compromise with Wyldon, Wyldon will quit over it and he'll end up with ten DIFFERENT problems that could cause a lot bigger issues to far more people than just one girl. So he makes the compromise. He sacrifices Alanna and Thayet and even Kel's good opinion of him in order to ensure that Kel gets the opportunity to become a Knight without turning all of his nobles against him which could ultimately lead to a civil war. Is it fair? No, and he knows it. But it's the best option he has in order to get the outcome they all actually want which is just for Kel to have the chance to prove herself.

Kel has to make similar choices once she's finally in a position of leadership of her own. And whether she realizes it or not, without ever even spending more than a few minutes with Jon, she ends up emulating his leadership style more than anybody else's because it WORKS and it works WELL. She'll probably never admit it, she might never even realize it herself, but she's so much more like Jon than any of the other men she sees as role models. And I love that. I love the dramatic irony of that, that the one person Kel only barely respects because of a compromise he made on her behalf that she'll never even know about, is the person Kel ends up most resembling. Jon is the reason she has the opportunity to become the Protector of the Small in the first place, Jon is the person who created that environment that allowed her to nurture those values, and she'll probably never even really be able to acknowledge that, because sometimes that's what being a good leader means.

[morphmaker]

Protector of the Small No. 5: main character energy

[rikashmoonsword]

How do i find Tortall fans I know they exist i just don't know Where

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

I FEEL SO STRONGLY ABOUT THE CHAMBER'S REACTION TO KEL OK

kel is the lump, a stone, the calm surface of a lake- but ONLY on the outside- ONLY to make dealing with people work better

the chamber hammers your weak spots trying to make you BREAK, but KEL, WENT TO THE CHAMBER, AGAIN AND AGAIN, she GREW AROUND it like a TREE

the day came when the chamber had it's chance- to strike her as HARD AS IT COULD

and

there was almost nothing left for it to even aim at

because kel had stuck HERSELF already, had BEEN hammering herself this whole time- had been TESTING herself every step of the way QUESTIONING HERSELF AND asking herself how she could be and do better next time

for the sake of those who need someone when no one sees them as people. for the sake of unwanted animals and overlooked humans- kel became her own ordeal

the chamber couldn't break Kel. SHE broke IT

so it had nothing to do, except make her an ordeal in the real world-

the nothing man, child killer, the promise she will stare evil in the face somewhere somehow, that tantalizing and USELESS knowledge burning her as she is given charge of convicts and refugees and not enough soldiers to defend them and her old desire to be like the Lioness, her inspiration, to go out there and STOP THIS SUFFERING FROM HAPPENNG HERSELF

the chamber jammed this thorn into her heart and THEN it chose to Watch Her out there

as she.... chose people. Again. chose care over glory. everyday duty over heroics. obscurity to wider world- but a friend to a small corner of the world that desperately needed someone to see them, fight for them, and not ever look away... or abandon them

the chamber saw that. it NAMED HER- didn't chose her- didn't make her- gave no gift other than pain to her

but it was glad, to have seen her

Protector. of the Small

gently burying dead sparrows and scoffing at such a silly name

[figmasefield]

my health has been pretty bad the past week so most of these were from last week, Ive also posted the fanart ones I was proud of

[where-our-stories-start]

Tobe: Why are you being nice to me? Kel, internally: This is the most important conversation we'll ever have. I have to be very careful to say exactly the right things. Kel, out loud: Well, my horse likes you.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Keladry of Mindelan at age 10 is a better human that I am as a grown-ass adult woman. When she finds out that Joren handed her a weighted lance, my first instinct would have been to figure out how to use the totally bullshit patriarchal martial power structures to end his ass. Kel though? She gets past the emotional reaction admirably fast and then jumps right to "How do I make this work FOR me?"

This girl has her eye on the goddamn prize and I respect the hell out of that. But I would have found a way to beat Joren to paste, because I am not as good a human as 10-year-old Kel.

[tathrin]

Heads up everybody, @tamorapierce's First Test graphic novel is on FOC at comic book stores in the US this weekend! So if you're planning on getting a copy, and have a local comic shop you can order from, now would be a great time to do your pre-order!

Especially because for some reason it seems that the publisher decided not to solicit it in the "Previews" catalogue properly!? but only as an additional late supplement, which means it doesn't go in the catalogue that customers see, and it doesn't necessarily get seen by shop-owners either unless they take the time to check the updated additional items stuff online, which is usually toys and imports and stuff like that, not graphic novels??? Especially not actually popular bestselling author graphic novels...!?

(I cannot think of a better way to not sell your comic than to not put it in the damn catalogue that people order from.)

So I'm worried that there will be much fewer orders for this book than there should be, and it won't sell for crap, and then we won't get any more, so if you want one and you have a comic shop near you PLEASE consider ordering it from them, or at least letting them know it's a thing you would be interested in purchasing if they had it on the rack, so that they are least know that it exists and can maybe order some copies to sell!

(because what the heck why would they do that...!?)

Please reblog to let people know asap!

Have a sneak-peek at some of the artwork inside, too:

[motherofmabari]

Kel: ...and I've been getting expensive presents from this mysterious benefactor ever since my first year as a page. 🫤 It's baffling, I mean, who could it possibly be? 🤷🏼

Raoul: Right, absolutely baffling. Excuse me for a sec

*sounds of running feet and a door slamming open*

Raoul: ALANNA WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME I WOULD HAVE HELPED 😭

[obi-wann-cannoli]

It is with a heavy heart I must acknowledge Keladry of Mindelan was in fact a jock who ignored history class.

Source: Squire ch 9 after the king explains the need to compromise on laws due to competing interests, including farmers and street people. “Kel blinked. she had never guessed that even the lowliest could exact revenge against their betters, if they didn’t mind the cost”

Girl’s a full squire and just now realizing that poor people might rebel. I *know* Tortall’s had some peasant uprisings or city riots they would’ve gone over.

[minuiko]

Scene from the end of Lady Knight - Kel digging her own grave 💀

[whimsicallywiddershins]

You can really tell when fantasy book art started to go downhill when people started bringing computers into it. I really miss the days of gorgeous, highly detailed hand-drawn cover art. When did stock images and barely detailed photos become mainstream for book art?

[morphmaker]

Protector of the Small No. 4: Neal