#keladry of mindelan

[masterkeynobi]

rereading squire... kel's dislike of jonathan is genuinely so special to me especially having reread wild magic recently and seeing how charmed daine is by him at first <3 thing is jonathan iv is the greatest king the realm has ever seen he IS working towards social progress and some of the most powerful people living love him and call him their lord. but he fucked this up so baddd she'll serve him she'll obey him but she's never going to like him. FUMBLED! jon has turned so many strange & remarkable people into assets to the throne he's surrounded by the cream of the crop when it comes to the exceptional & the gods-touched. and while kel is for sure an asset to the realm she Actively Dislikes Him. that's the distinction, see, she's an asset to the realm not to him. it's such an L. imagine what you could do with someone like that if she was loyal to you personally instead of just as a concept! and like i think in time she will be an asset To Roald because roald likes and trusts her & his future queen does too... genuinely jon shot himself in the foot by allowing that probationary period. kel is on very good terms with his heir his daughter-in-law his knight commander his CHAMPION his spymaster his greatest spy his most powerful mage... and she cant stand him. how embarrassing your majesty

[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.

[plainselfraisingflour]

Something I really like about Page is that at the midwinter feast we have "Daine the Wildmage and her lover Numair".

Not The Super Powerful Mage Numair and Daine.

Not the mage Numair and his lover Daine.

Not even Numair and his lover Daine the wildmage.

Daine is Kel's friend (Numair is just this guy who made them freeze on the middle of a fight and wandered off, needing to be reminded to unfreeze them), so we see it from Kel's perspective as Daine The Amazing plus her sidekick.

[morphmaker]

Protector of the Small No. 5: main character energy

[redandblonde]

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

[affixjoy]

Half watching Furiosa and little Furiosa looks EXACTLY as I always imagined Tamora Pierce’s Kel.

Someone cast this girl in a Protector of the Small series STAT!

[thiatereika]

" Neal grinned, 'I respect you heaps, lady knight. I'd've thrown myself off a bridge, getting this assignment. You, you're there with lists and plans. You listen to every flap-mouthed bumpkin who thinks he can do your task better, and you answer with a smile and thanks. Why, you've inspired me to be a blessing to my fellow bumpkin, just like you. ' he fluttered his fingers in delicate farewell and trotted down the stairs. "

Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce

[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

[aladygrieve]

One of the thing that always stands out to me about Jonathan of Conté is how different he and Roald are as pages. Jonathan leaned on his royal status constantly to exert authority over the other boys. You can even say he abused it. He also had one tight group of friends and basically ignored everyone else.

Roald, on the other hand, is super hesitant to do anything that might even be perceived as using royal power, to the point that the other pages remark on it. He also makes a point of sitting with all the different friend groups so nobody feels left out. Both of these set him apart from his fellow pages, not because he's royal, but because he has to be so careful not to offend anyone all the time that he doesn't really ever get to show his true personality.

You can just bet that Jonathan told him to do all those things. As a ruler he has his problems (notably his treatment of Kel), but overall he's a much better king than he was a prince. I think he's quite ashamed of some of the things he did when he was younger, as well he should be.

[andhumanslovedstories]

I'll play the 500-word ask game! Your Tortall fanfic, please - I was thinking of this segment, but really anything you want to comment on in the fic! (Also thank you for writing it; the voice works very well and the text feels very true-to-source!)

Kel may never have forgiven the king for putting her through a probation period—a life’s first major disappointment cuts deep and leaves a scar—but her issues to him as a man did not blind her to his success as a king. “He’s formed alliances with the Bazhir, the Yamani, and Tusaine for the first time in our history. He controls the Dominion Jewel, the most powerful mage in the world is loyal to him, and our training school produces the finest knights in the world.”

Don’t forget our excellent spy operations,” Alanna added. “But people’s memories get short, especially in times of hardship. A short war unites a nation; a long one wearies it. And our war with Scanra has lasted far longer than we expected, even after your contribution.”

Kel grimaced. It was true. Even after Kel had slain the creator of the Scanran war machines, the forces of King Maggur fought bitterly for every inch of land. They had no reasonable hope of winning, not with Scanra’s weak harvest and weaker tribal alliances, but they were determined to make Tortall’s victory costly. They’d turned to guerilla tactics in the mountainous border region between the two nations, and they were willing to lay down their lives for every square inch.

Still, the gaudiness of the Midwinter’s Festival felt tasteless to Kel, a slap in the face to the soldiers who died and the ones who were still there fighting in the bleakest of conditions. “If everyone could put some trust in each other and go without the things they don’t need, we could redirect all this wealth to ending the war.”

“If people could trust each other and go without, we wouldn’t be fighting this war. We’d be living in some happy utopia that would be very boring for people like you and me.”

Oh my god, I wrote this Tortall fic in 2011. Sometimes the passage of time just hits. Especially because of the time I remember Kel has always been my favorite of Pierce's leads. It would be difficult to overstate the impact Kel as a character has had on me over the years. I wrote this fic in October 2011--that was during my first semester of college, when I was 18 years old. I'd brought The Protector of the Small books with me to college for emotional support. There was a hurricane on the east coast during our freshman orientation that knocked out the power in my dorm. I remember reading all four books by a window while it was raining like crazy, and then thinking ruefully that I should have saved them for later when I needed a pick me up.

That makes it an extra pleasant surprise when I reread it and really liked it! (I even had the very odd feeling of being inspired by my own ending.) I remembered the broad strokes of it--Kel and Alanna talking at a banquet while on the lookout for Tortall's second openly female page--and absolutely none of the details. I can't believe the only relationship tag I had in there was Kel/Dom. I'll be honest, I don't even really remember who Dom is. I went back and added Kel & Alanna as the main relationship because, like, duh. Yeah.

It's doubly weird to me I tagged the barely mentioned romantic pairing considering the story was written for a livejournal community challenge to specific write gen fic about women outside of the context of romance and shipping. This was a weird transition time in fandom where lj communities were still very prominent, but more and more fic was getting posted on AO3 instead of in a community or on a personal journal. I remember some debate about what female characters counted for femgenficathon (the community/challenge I wrote this for). It might have been a debate about trans women, but I remember more specifically discussions of whether genderswapped male characters counted.

Anyway, back to this fic specifically, it's funny the author's note is me talking about the difficulties of writing fanfic for a book because I want to match the author's style when that's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately writing for Scum Villain. What I remember most about this fic is specifically the work I put in studying Tamora Pierce's writing style so I could ape it. A sentence early--"Her closest tablemate, a small but sturdy red-headed woman Kel regarded with equal parts affection and awe, chuckled at Kel’s distress."--is the direct result of me studying Pierce's first paragraphs in her work to see how she reintroduces the reader to characters they have met before. There's also a simplicity and directness to the language that isn't my default. I can get pretty flowery. In my default state, I love a paragraph long metaphor.

These two women have this shared experience but also could not be more different. When I was a kid, I really wanted Alanna and Kel to be best friends, and I was disappointed when they weren't, but I understood why. They are very different people, almost in different genres. Alanna and Kel are two very different takes on the lady knight. Having to pretend to be a boy versus openly being a girl leads to such different dynamics. Alanna's story is so much about identity and self-definition, but also about being extraordinary. She's gifted with magic, she's touched by the goddess, she has a magic cat. She's a fantasy heroine. She's indisputably extraordinary.

Kel meanwhile has no magic. Her story emphasizes continual, endless practice, discipline, training. Her adventures are human-sized. Alanna's book one ends with defeating magical monsters in a cursed city. Kel's involves helping a bunch of other pages fight off bandits. She doesn't deal with gods; she gets put in charge of a refuge camp. Her story involves a lot of practical logistics in a way Alanna's doesn't. So she ends up being this character that's such a mix of realism and idealism, seeing the world the way it could and should be while also seeing the work and frustration of getting there. That was what made her such a huge inspiration to me as a kid--god, between her and Tiffany Aching, I have gotten so much from the tales of hard working girls.

That's why Kel in this fic looks to everyday and mundane examples of female fighters. Because she works so close to the ground, she appreciates the grassroots. I thought that hit a good balance of her faith in the future without making it sound like she thought gender equality would be easy. Actually, to be honest, I got...comforted, I guess, by my own ending. (Again, a very pleasant surprise.) Kel's hope always feels earned. That's what I was aiming for.

[minuiko]

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

[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.