#that karna thought the only way deli could love her was to be his skald

[a-couple-of-notes]

You know, despite the jokes going around about Deli bouncing the skald title back to Colin after three seconds, I find it incredibly sweet that in her last moments Karna was "just Karna" to him.

Deli's whole arc over the series is learning how empty those titles, and the ambition and power contained within them, are. He starts off a bright-eyed 19-year-old kid eager to prove himself and his nation, proud and protective over his titles. His relationship with Colin falls apart partially because he can't see past the chief-skald dynamic to meet Colin as an equal. And after the assassination, he spends years steeped in the political game of reinforcing Basha Myaso's title. It's a testament to the depth of his relationship with Karna, then, that even with all of this ambition, even having failed to do it for Colin, Deli absolutely doesn't see Karna as her title. He sees Karna first and foremost as a full, real person. And loves her for it.

And on Karna's part? This kid's been a lot of things to a lot of people, but (just like all of our Scrumptious Scoundrels) never allowed to be just herself. She's a spymaster or an orphan or a collaborator or a kingmaker. She's Deli's skald, his right-hand woman. She's a pawn of the FDA. Being herself is so anathema to Karna that at the beginning of the story, it's literally a danger to her, and she tries to murder a man about it. So again, at the end of all things, it's incredibly sweet that the man she loved so dearly loved her back--not as his skald, but as Karna, the authentic self she so rarely was able to be.

[sea-buns]

The overlapping themes that were woven through everyone’s stories. The strengths and weaknesses of age. Deli lost himself to the allure of youth. He pushed away everyone who tried to warn him, quickly growing into the man he thought would prove them wrong. Prove to them that he was destined for greatness. Just to be betrayed. Manipulated for having the nerve to act his age. Karna never had the chance to be young, aging far beyond her years. When she found someone that made her want in a way she’d never felt before, she latched onto it and refused to let go until life left her. Though she never had a chance to act the age she deserved, she spent her final years and moments alongside someone who gave her joy and love and companionship and the barest hint of what it might’ve been like to die young. Colin never truly had a childhood either. When he wasn’t scraping under the boot of his drunkard father, he was running as far and as fast as he could. Constantly looking over his shoulder. Never settling in anywhere for long. But where Karna took to cold violence in exchange for the life she’d been handed, Colin invested himself in looking out for innocence wherever he could. Always acting with the intent to see people as people, rather than stepping stones for his own gain. From day one, Amangeaux’s one goal, her reason for living and fighting, her justification for killing in the face of crippling guilt, was to protect her child. To create a world that would allow him to have the childhood she wished she could have given Karna. To keep him from having to experience the grief and blood that she’s soaked herself in. Raphaniel started misguided and already missing several screws. But as he aged and became more unstable, he only got wiser and wiser to the bigger picture. Ultimately choosing to give his life to destroy a great evil, rather than step through the door that he’d spent his entire life kneeled in front of. Begging and pleading to be let in.

The significance of titles and names. Deli was a thane and a chief and then a warlord, just to discard all of those when all they did was remind him of the tool he’d been. Karna was the greatest spymaster that Calorum will never know. She wore many names of those she killed. And for 5 long years she stood beside Deli as his Skald. 5 years that were perhaps the best of her life; the ones she’d be most proud of. She didn’t die a spymaster or an assassin. She was Skald Karna Solara of Scoville. The only title she chose. Deli invented the position of Skald for Colin, who held it up until he left. Leaving behind the truth and fear of his secret, his name, to join Raphaniel in a cause he could get behind. He took up the title of Sir Colin Provolone, a knight of the Bulbian Church. Though it only made him feel empty, pretending to serve a faith he held no belief in and the church that led him here to begin with. In the end, he renounces every title he’d ever been given and sticks to the name he chose. And he lives out his years as Colin Provolone, without fear of where he came from and with an unyielding determination to finish what he started. Amangeaux shifted from a high profile figure in society to a shadow. She ended up finding more freedom and power the lower she moved down the ranks. Raphaniel’s demotion from Bishop to Archdeacon was one of the first falling dominos that drove him to a madness that would have consumed him, had Colin not been there to give him the push he needed. 

You either start as “just a guy” or you end as one. In the end, there were no chiefs or assassins or warriors. Just people. Deli was a son swept up in the rush of power and young love. He is a partner, and a friend, and a protector. Karna lived as mouth to the Hungry One and the Skald to Warlord Katzon. But more than anything, she died as a sister and a daughter, a friend and a partner. Surrounded by the only aspect of her life that made it worth living, that gave purpose to her death. The family she carved out with her bare hands for her and her alone. Though Colin’s entire life was defined by the people he came from, he was never really a son, in the way that his father was never really a father. What he was most of all, in every circumstance, was a friend and protector. Of Deli as his Skald, of Raphaniel in his decline, of this odd group of strangers he’d come to trust with his life. People he’d come to know as family, even if he has no reference as to what that’s supposed to look or feel like. Amangeaux was a mother through and through. Kept alive by the sheer drive to nurture and protect her child. Raphaniel was brought lower and lower every episode. Reduced to an old man who spent his last moments committing a rare act of selflessness, a far cry from the malevolent man he began as. A father figure to both Karna and Amangeaux.

The nature and complexity of humanity that The Ravening War explores.