#sorry for the recent verbose tortallposting it will likely continue

[masterkeynobi]

usually i loathe when a protagonist gets turned into a "bad" parent in a sequel series but tortall does it so well and so realistically that i can't help but think it'd be ooc any other way. of course alanna is gruff and sometimes unkind and not always present. of course jonathan must do what is best for realm and reputation; of course he's king first, father second. jon's parenting style is visible from the start in how roald acts during his page years — jon as a page sees ralon held down and beaten for the crime of bothering little alan; roald, much as he wants to, can't so much as join kel on her nighttime patrols for fear of how it'd look. jon takes alanna on as a squire because they're good friends & lovers; roald has had his knight-master picked out for him for years before he's even made a squire.

alanna gets along well enough with alan and thom, her knightling and her scholar, but she can't for the life of her understand how aly works. in my opinion this has something to do both with the fact that aly is a lot more like george in the most dangerous ways and with the fact that aly is rather significantly more of a Girl than alanna ever was. alanna had no (0) female friends growing up and only one older female mentor figure. she grew up and still lives the vast majority of her life surrounded by men of similar status. is it any surprise she finds her sons easier to talk to?

there's a passing sentence in trickster's choice that alludes to aly having once been jealous of how effusive her mother was about keladry of mindelan. i can't help but think also about kalasin ii of conté, kally whose mother's people are matrilineal, kally who should by rights have been her mother's heir. kally who calls the lioness aunt and wanted as a child nothing more than to be a knight, who will spend the rest of her life in carthak and likely never see a lady knight again. i think she was jealous of kel too, but in the opposite direction. aly couldn't and wouldn't be who kel was, too protective of her own freedom and too much like her father to ever want a shield. aly envied the easy understanding alanna had of kel's ambitions and grit. kalasin had those same ambitions but never got the chance to show that same grit. kalasin spent the four years of kel's page training at king's reach learning to be an empress.

it's the. not wanting and choosing not to do vs the wanting and not having the choice. it's the jealousy someone so distant from alanna got so much of her attention when her interactions with her own daughter were constantly snippy vs the thought that kally should've been there first, should've gotten to prove the conservatives wrong, should've been able to show kel around and shield (ha) her from the worst of their ire. no little girls will grasp wide-eyed for tales of aly cooper or empress kalasin the same way they do for the lioness and lady kel. i don't think aly minds, but i think kalasin very, very quietly does.