#lumatere chronicles

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[provincara]

i absolutely love that froi is canonically not that attractive looking

[best-childhood-book]

the lumatere chronicles by melina marchetta

Added!

[archersgoon]

thinking about froi again. like it's so. why are you making this teenager perform your secret executions for war crimes. perri and trevanion telling him he has to join the guard when it is very clearly the worst possible option for him for three straight years then getting on his back when he skips out on lessons with the priestking like what reason would he have to even bother going? like, they clearly believe that they know what's best for him yet fundamentally misunderstand him so continually on every level (see the fact that no one has gotten any of his jokes in three years). like he is happiest doing farmer shit. we see this. he says it himself. and yet he's not allowed to be because he's just so good at killing!!! basically: you fucked up a perfectly good farmer is what you did. look at him he's got anxiety

[dangermousie]

In a trilogy chock full of disturbing content, this is still the most disturbing scenes of all to me. Yikes.

Guuuuuh, I love this book so much!

Also it’s so very descriptive, I can see it all as if it were a movie.

ETA every character in this needs a decade of therapy. Are they gonna get it? Hell no!

Also in a genre that is known for monstrous parents, it is so freaking refreshing to have a protag have an amazing father.

[darlingiswriting]

-Melina Marchetta, Quintana of Charyn

[logarithmicpanda]

ok so special interest info dump time. I’m literally obsessed with the book series The Lumater Chronicles by Melina Marchetta and NO ONE ON HERE TALKS ABOUT IT like literally there’s a handful of posts under the tag. (If there is an active fandom anywhere and I’m just missing out someone better fucking tell me about it) Anywho it’s fantasy trilogy that’s technically YA but besides the young ages of some of the characters it’s quite mature and deals with heavy shit BUT like the main moral is the power of love and family and friendship which sounds cheesy but is SO beautiful in this story. And like all of the characters are so fascinating and flawed and they fight but ultimately they love. One of my favorite characters is named Phaedra and she’s more quiet and unsure of herself but she also always does the right thing even if it’s hard and when u first read these books at like 14 she was so important for me to read, like you don’t have to be a tough warrior to be a strong female character and I desperately needed to learn that at that age. But yeah I reread this series every two years because it’s long enough that I can forget some of the minor details but soon enough that I don’t go insane from withdrawal

Hey :D hey :D hey :D guess what? I did read that series! I loved it! I was so surprised by how well it handled its characters and the darkness (very often I feel the dark elements in YA are a bit cartoonish)

I really should reread it at some point (also I wish it had prettier covers, I feel like it would be more popular if it did, which is sad)

[obscuremilfoff]

lirah of serker art by @winnie-darling

[her-wind-cleaver]

Queen of Lumatere

[obscuredilfoff]

Propaganda below the cut!

Musashi Miyamoto

The manga will never update but I swear irl he adopts like 7 kids he was a father. And he loves his fictional wife.

Garagin of Abroi

melina marchetta said what if there was an autistic father whose special interest was plumbing and everyone wanted to fuck him so bad it made them look stupid. she did that for us

[roobylavender]

What are your favourite marchetta quotes, also thank you for introducing me to her, those books are so close to my heart now!

oh gosh i have a lot i highlight so much in her books lmao! i'll try to select my absolute favorites from each:

the lumatere chronicles

[froi] just watched the way finnikin's hands rested on evanjalin's neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a part of her to breathe himself. and froi wondered what evanjalin was saying against finnikin's lips when they stopped because whatever the words were it made them start all over again and this time their hunger for each other was so frightening to watch that it made froi look away.

the gods whispered to you once, finnikin. and you listened. but they are proud and refuse to speak to those who do not believe that there is something out there mightier than the minds and intellect of mortals.

and there it was, he thought, as he looked at the women in beatriss's kitchen. the memory of a look that spoke to him of power. his. a look that made him want to kneel at the feet of his queen and worship her. because it made him feel like a king.

i fear that i will do something to bring harm to those i love, so i follow their rules to ensure that i won't. but what if you bring harm or fail to protect those you don't know? or don't love? will you care as much? probably not. then choose another bond. one written by yourself. because it is what you do for strangers that counts in the end.

if your people mean no offense, they should not speak their thoughts out loud in front of their children, tesadora. because it will be their children who come to slaughter us one day, all because of the careless words passed down by their elders who meant no harm.

you'll have to forgive my people. they are still grieving their leader. their leader is living. he's standing in front of me, and the only person on this mountain who is not acknowledging him these days is the leader himself. i'll never be as good as him. they know that. we all know that. speak the truth, lucian. what truth? you don't want him here because of the mistakes you think you're making. you want him here because you loved him and he's gone and you can't say those words out loud.

because you may not have seen it, my darling boy, but i hated with a fierceness i can't describe. and do you want to hear something that was breaking my heart, day after day? i forgot the faces of my granddaughters in all that hatred. hatred smothers all beauty.

are you a slave? in serker, only slaves are etched. with the names of the men that own them. i'm a serker, lirah. my body is etched with the names of the three women who own me. my queen. my mother. my woman.

froi saw the foolishness of dreamers, and he decided he'd like to die so foolish. with a dream in his heart about the possibilities, rather than a chain of hopelessness. finnikin had once said it was the only way to live. that he wanted to drown in hope rather than wallow in despair.

saving francesca

take away your job and take away your kids and who are you, robert? your husband. then take away me and who are you? take away you, the kids, and my job? is this a trick question? i'm dead, right?

sometimes when i get home, i convince myself that i'm just romanticizing anyone who's actually spoken to me, but then i see him the next day and my heart starts beating fast and i can't really kid myself. it's not as if he's good-looking, because he's not. sometimes he's so plain that he looks bland. but it's his voice and his mannerisms that fill him with some kind of color. i listen to his voice and its resonance hooks me in. the worry lines on his forehead, his expression when he twists his face into a smile, and the way his whole face lights up when he laughs those short bursts of laughter.

when i was seventeen, i just stopped speaking to my father for two years. i thought he was a peasant, some kind of idiot. i was embarrassed by how simple he was. i was such a bitch. but all i can remember now is his face - his beautiful patient face, waiting for his daughter to start speaking to him again. he never questioned what was going on and he never pushed, and i saw that as a weakness. but he was just waiting.

me's easy. me got on a train and ended up in woy woy. you's difficult. you're planning on puking your way through europe at a time that i thought you were... kind of interested in me. kind of interested in you. i'm kind of interested in calculus and ancient roman warfare. you don't use words like kind of interested to describe how i feel about you.

because breaking up with her was so easy and breaking up with you would be like, i don't even want to think about it. we haven't even started going out together and you're thinking of breaking up. but that's it. when i think of you, i think of future stuff. i think of this is it and i'm not supposed to think this is it at my age. i don't look at you and think nice. i look at you and think, oh my god, i want to hold her and never let her go. i think, sex— right here, right now—

the piper's son

because i miss it like you'd never believe, and then i go away from this place and i miss here too. i'm scared that i'm going to spend the rest of my life in a state of yearning, regardless of where i am.

you looked so serious and grown-up, so meticulous with your drawing and the way you'd explain the process and i'd look at your hands and think, shit, they can do anything. like frankie's will. don't you love the fact that he builds bridges? i mean, who can say that, really?

am i hard work? yes. you could have hesitated in answering that. why? i've never lied to you before. you do that all the time, you know. you ask me questions when you know the answer will piss you off. ask me a question where the answer could be yes? ask me if you're worth the hard work? ask me if in the last seven years of my life i've woken up in a cold swear knowing i lost the most important person in my life apart from this kid i'm holding? ask me if getting you pregnant has felt like the best thing that's happened to me since my son was born? [...] see this. it's all there, georgie. everything i want in the world is all there. am i worth the hard w—? yes. yes.

and i remember thinking that exact moment, i want to change the world with her. and i remember feeling that again in georgie's attic. that's a pretty powerful gift you have there, ms. finke. to make the laziest guy around want to change the world with you.

don't let anyone take care of you. can you maybe leave that for me to do? i mean, take care of you? feel free to take care of me in return... because i think i'll need you to do that.

the place on dalhousie

he clings to her and being this needed feels better than sex. it's when rosie knows she has to leave this place. because she could easily love this guy. it's what rosie does best. she loves broken people who damage her in return.

and she found herself watching it over and over again, just to get to the part where carrie bradshaw compares the loss of the unreliable big, who stands her up at the altar, with the death of a loved one. not even close, carrie. because men who stand you up at the altar get to walk back into your life holding a pair of manolo blahnik shoes. dead ones stay dead.

because rosie is powerless. every day. all day. no money. no job. no means of identifying herself. no way of climbing out of a rut. all she has is the house her father built, and now martha's got real estate agents walking in and out, telling them lies. and it always ends with that unfathomable despair that has chased rosie for years. that she will never see her mother and father again. toto's birth was a godsend and a curse. it brought back the memory of everything she lost.

we don't even have a photo of us dating to show toto one day. everyone else does. just a little glimpse of us together so we can say, "this is who we were before you came along." is that important? my favorite photos of my mum and dad are those from before i was born. because they were so into each other and i can see this love in her eyes that says, i trust this guy to fucking bits.

can you tell whoever you're sleeping with that it's over? why? you're sort of like an id thing. twenty points for usefulness, twenty points for being good in bed, twenty points for being decent, and you get triple bonus points because toto's your top-one-hundred priority. can you shave off points from usefulness and decency and give me extra for being good in bed? it would have to come out of your toto triple-bonus points. thanks, but no thanks. i think i'll hang on to those bonus points.

where did you meet? in a flood. you? here. we played each other's team on the first game of the season and during a toss up, our eyes sort of met. that's pretty romantic. yeah, so's meeting the mother of your child during a catastrophic event.

jellicoe road

my father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. i counted. it happened on the jellicoe road. the prettiest road i’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to shangri-la. we were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because i wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. i remember asking, “what’s the difference between a trip and a journey?” and my father said, “narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,” and that was the last thing he ever said. 

i look around at everyone and i can’t help thinking how normal we look and i don’t think i’ve ever felt normal. i watch raffy as she removes the pickles from her hamburger and hands them over to santangelo without them exchanging a word and i realize again there is more to that relationship than spelling bees and being enemies. these people have history and i crave history. i crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what i’m thinking. 

i remember love. it’s what i have to keep on reminding myself. it’s funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. maybe that’s why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. it’s not the pain they’re getting over, it’s the love. 

what are you thinking? that you deserve romance. let me see. a guy tells me that he would have thrown himself in front of a train if it wasn’t for me and then drives seven hours straight, without whingeing once, on a wild-goose chase in search of my mother with absolutely no clue where to start. he is, in all probability, going to get court-martialled because of me, has put up with my moodiness all day long, and knows exactly what to order me for breakfast. it doesn’t get any more romantic than that, jonah. 

what do you want me to say? that if he asked me to marry him, i’d say yes? okay. yes. but grief makes a monster out of us sometimes, taylor, and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can’t forgive yourself for. i’d forgive myself. to be with jonah i’d do anything. 

looking for alibrandi

sometimes i’m with my friends and i feel as if i don’t fit in because of you. because you opened me up to this whole new world out there. i don’t want to become a mechanic and work all day long and then at night go to the pub and marry someone just like me and have two children and whine about housing payments and gas prices and the economy. i wanted that last year. no, that’s not true. i thought that’s what life was all about last year. but this year i realized, because of you, that there’s more to life. i still want to be a mechanic, but i want to step outside my circle and look at the other options. i don’t want to do what other people think i’ll end up doing. i don’t want to be stereotyped because of the school i attend or the district i live in. i want all the things in life that john barton gave up because he was scared to step out of his circle. but i have to do that on my own. 

you’re going to go on living. because living is the challenge, josie. not dying. dying is so easy. sometimes it only takes ten seconds to die. but living? that can take you eighty years and you do something in that time, whether it’s giving birth to a baby or being a housewife or a barrister or a soldier. you’ve accomplished something. to throw that away at such a young age, to have no hope, is the biggest tragedy. 

why don’t people do things they want to do? i’d never let anyone or anything stop me. how the hell do you know that, josie? you haven’t begun to live life. come back to me when you’re forty and tell me that you’ve done everything you’ve wanted to do. when i was seventeen i wanted to be a pilot, but we moved to adelaide and the move depressed me and i forgot everything i had wanted in my life. people change. circumstances change them. 

tell the truth shame the devil

i get all the criticism about religion, you know, mr. ortley. but the thing is, you can’t take it away from people and not leave something else of substance. that’s what your generation will remembered for. taking so much away and replacing it with so little of worth. 

he hid me between the fissures big enough to fit me. it was to protect me. not leave me behind. my dad wouldn’t have left me behind. it’s what i write in my letters every time i remember something. but the police here never believe me. and bish thought it strange that seventeen-year-old girls who had sex with idiot boys could still cry like babies for their fathers. 

all those years ago, a man had tried to protect his child on this rock. etienne lebrac hadn’t come here to die; he’d come to be reminded of beauty in an ugly year. if bish was still a religious man, he would have sworn that the dead were with them in this ancient place. the beautiful dead. and he felt that the three in his arms sensed it too. 

and there it was. that slight lisp. that awful accent. that funny face that made him ache. charlie wasn’t just a cheat. he was a liar as well. because violette zidane wasn’t just the girl he was shagging, like he told the cop. she sort of owned his heart a little. kind of a lot. 

[provincara]

[gallavich-headcanon]

i have a confession to make. the gods au was actually just a little snack, a tiny distraction for in between until i got around to bother you with an au of my favourite book series. i could say i'm sorry, but we both know that ain't true. does it make a lot of sense? probably not. does it feed my needs? absolutely fucking yes. that being said, if the below sparks interest, check out the lumatere chronicles by melina marchetta. needless to mention. huge spoiler alert for the series. anyway-

i'm mostly taking ideas from the latter two books, what you need to know from the first is,

- it's set in medieval-ish times. what can i say. i'm weak.

- the whole world comes with a map of several countries, the most important ones for us are lumatere and charyn.

- the kingdom of lumatere had been cursed for ten years. nobody had been able to enter the kingdom.

- some of its people had been trapped inside the country. they could not communicate with those (of their people) outside the country.

- the curse was brought onto the country after their royal family had been slain in a nightly ambush. the ambush had been led by the king's brother or cousin (i can't quite remember), with the help of soldiers sent to aid him by the kingdom of charyn. he claimed the throne. he's called the impostor king; i don't think we ever get told his actual name.

- only the young prince was believed to survive the massacre. turned out, he sacrificed his life for his little sister.

- ten years later the protagonist of the book has a dream that tells him to pick up this young novice in a cloister. turns out, it's the princess, there's some magical soulmate thing going on between them. they free their country, lead it with justice and kindness and are beloved by their people.

- on their travels to gather their people they met a boy on the streets. some things happen, they free him from some slave traders, he's bound to them by them -mainly the queen- saving his life, he becomes the main protagonist of the next two books.

i think that covers all, now let me get to the fun part that is the canon story of book two and three!

- one of the main characters' first words are literally, “but if your mouth touches mine, i will cut it out.” which is honestly the main reason i am now here to bother you with all this.

- it's revealed that the kingdom of charyn is cursed, too. after their princess was born, no child was born to the kingdom. everybody who was pregnant lost their child, nobody could get pregnant again. i think it had something to do with someone killing their saint/oracle, but i would have to go back to read all of it to be entirely sure.

- this has been going on for eighteen years.

- the prophecy says the two last born children of charyn will break the curse by “making the first”, which they interpret as them producing a child.

- charyn is devided into provinces. year after year the last born of each province makes his way to the palace to see whether he is the one last born they need to lift the curse. It does not work.

- the queen of lumatere is still angry about her family being slain and her people being cursed in the wake of it. due to circumstance they get the chance to send an assassin into charyn to kill the king, and the princess.

- the assassin, you guessed it, is the boy the picked up on the streets. they had him be trained by the royal guard for this specific reason. so far, he had been sent after those who collaborated with the impostor king.

- long story short, he's obviously sent into charyn to execute the killings. one thing leads to another, he falls for the princess, it's revealed he's actually a charynite, surprise surprise, he's the other last born they need to lift the curse, there's a lot of running to be done, a lot of heartbreak and push and pull between the protagonist and the princess.

- he returns to his kingdom without having fulfilled his task (obviously), it's apparent he's heartbroken. there's also that period where he believes the princess -and their unborn child- to be dead.

- turns out that isn't true, and despite how much their hearts break over it, the king and queen of lumatere send him back to charyn. they disguise him as the son of two of their nobles so he's of proper stance to marry the princess.

- their marriage leads to peace between the kingdoms, everybody is happy. practically.

now to what i thought about for the crossover-

- it's mainly still the original storyline. terry gets to be a mixture between the charynite king and his asshole advisor kind of guy. the latter assaults the princess because he thinks he's destined to break charyn's curse. reminds me of mandy's tragedy with the pregnancy and all. obviously, it does not work like this here, but you get what i mean.

- to have this make sense, hear me out. mickey is the last born royal child. his and mandy's mother is actually from one of the other kingdoms and not a charynite by blood. mandy is the result of an affair of hers, thankfully she looks enough like mickey so it doesn't get caught. sorry to mandy, but i need you to fit my agenda.

- thankfully, ian already kind of fits the plans. (if anybody reads the actual books, yes, the original protagonist from book one is a redhead, too, leave me alone.) while he shared the same mother as his siblings, his biological father is a charynite. the main part i'll have to change about him and mickey is making them born close to each other, probably on the exact same day, because i really

- i'll have the gallaghers originally be farmers, because i can.

- while their country was cursed fiona, debbie, carl, and liam were trapped inside the country, him and lip among those who could flee in time. they're picked up by the queen (still in disguise) and her entourage. basically the substitutes for the orphan boy.

- in the meantime, fiona married the son of a lord who was close to the royal family. (jimmy-steve possibility, maybe?)

- after they reunite, ian has troubles finding his place with his family. during his and lip's time outside the country's walls, he met a ton of people and learned a lot about them. his heart is yearning for – something. someone?

- through his brother in law and the relationship built during their travels, he gets a position in the royal guard. obviously, he becomes a trusted soldier and trained as an assassin. he's sent to charyn after they hear about their curse, to basically make sure they never get another heir. jokes on. practically everonye.

- now where it gets interesting is the prophecy. i'll have it be a classical misinterpretation. “make the first” - what. nobody said anything about a baby. for all we know they could make handprints on the palace walls as the first people ever and tada, the curse is broken.

more quotes from the books i think would fit our favourite idiots,

- most days he feared that a monster of great baseness lived inside him, fighting to set itself free. killing the traitors […] made sense. but killing also fed the monster. → maybe hinting at ian's bipolar? i'm not sure how it could be properly brought into this.

- as always, the intimacy between them made [him] ache. / it wasn't magic or curses, this thing that lay between them. it was more profound than that. he couldn't even put it into words, and at times it made him want to walk away and take refuge from the ties that bound them both.

- in a kinder world, one i promise you i've seen, men and women flirt and dance and love with only the fear of what it would mean without the other in their lives.

- he was as wild as ever and full of rage at the world. at himself.

- do i have to be here to belong to you? can't i belong to you wherever i am?

- our bodies aren't strangers. our spirits aren't strangers. tell me what part of me is stranger to you, and i'll destroy that part of me.

- “i'm not worth the valley.” “you're worth a kingdom.”

this is very many words (according to my word program 1,476 words, precisely) for saying i have an unhealthy obsession with two pieces of media and desperately need them fused. i will go and bury myself now, thanksokaybye.

Good morning my darling! This is fucking amazing, let's dive the fuck in!

Listen man, you can't come up to me with a medieval kingdom soulmate AU without a warning like that, I need to sit down.

The first book sounds so good! Like is it mostly about their journey? I am a sucker for a good soulmate storyline!

“But if your mouth touches mine, I will cut it out.” -> No fucking way! this! this is exactly! It's meant to be.

the original protagonist from book one is a redhead, too, leave me alone. -> Hahaha to be honest Ian Gallagher changes me into a redhead enthusiast, so I think this is very valid. However, I will not leave you alone.

I'll have the Gallaghers originally be farmers, because I can. -> yes you can. You can also have all my money to continue telling me this story.

Ian and Lip being able to escape and being picked up together reminds me of the CPS plot in s3!

Fiona married the son of a lord who was close to the royal family. -> Jimmy-Steve !!! I love how we manage to slip him into so many AUs! Maybe his dad is the royal family doctor / advisor?

Thinking back about Lip trying to help Ian get into west point and JROTC, this make so much sense that Ian would become a solider. Maybe running away, joining the army, like in canon? not sure what would set it off... Maybe people discovering about him and Ned?

Nobody said anything about a baby. for all we know they could make handprints on the palace walls -> hahaha okay but what if it's make the first true love? Like all the royal couples in their kingdom before them were arranged marriages or something of the sort and this was they first time the prince got to chose someone he loves?

This is so fucking incredible because I am getting so much of the "I want the gun back Mickey" vibes but more in the "prepare to die" kind of way... Ian sneaking into Mickey's bedroom to kill him but getting distracted and somehow ending up fucking? (the curse only breaks when they 'make love')

Alternatively, maybe they make the first united country as Ian grew up in a different one (if I understood you Ian's dad is from charynite and his mom from lumatere, terry is the king of charynite and Mickey's mom is as well, but maybe she cheated with Mickey's real dad?) hence no one thinks they are the couple that will break the curse, but they're both mixed, and make the first mixed couple? I don't know if this makes sense at all.

quotes from the books I think would fit our favorite idiots (I am so ready for this!) - in a kinder world, one i promise you i've seen, men and women flirt and dance and love with only the fear of what it would mean without the other in their lives. -> "In what fucking world do you live in?" straight to my heart. - do i have to be here to belong to you? can't i belong to you wherever i am? -> "I want to be where you are, Mickey!"

1,476 words of pure fucking gold, Nosho. I am dying. This is too good. I feel blessed. You better come back from the dead so we can talk about it more!

[archersgoon]

isaboe/finnikin werewolf au bisclavret style. you understand