#alex of tirragen

[morphmaker]

Song of the Lioness No. 14: Sorcerer's Sleep

[bookwyrrm]

As a kid, I was always sad that Alex turned against Alanna, but his story and ending made sense to me.

As an adult, I was recently thinking back and reading meta on it and I was suddenly struck by how much of a tragedy his narrative arc really is

[darkpuck]

Every time I go to the tag for Alexander of Tirragen, I see this snippet from a wip you were making long ago:

I have scrolled for ages through your blog in search of more and even resorted to trying to find it via searching on with tags there, but I can find nothing more

if you still have it somewhere, finished or not, I beg you to reveal it if not to your blog at large then to me

It haunts me, I think about it practically daily

I am prepared to go to extreme measures (this is only partially a joke), you want me to name my first born after you? Done. You want me to make a shirt of shame to wear everyday for the rest of my life saying that I annoyed you on tumblr over a silly thing? Done. You want money? As soon as I get a way to transfer money online then sure.

it’s of course fine if you don’t want to share, it’s your work to do with as you please, or if you don’t have it any more, it was from the little I could see very prettily written and it just piqued my interest, Alex is a very beloved character to me

have a great day

That is the merest etchings of me poking at an AU where Alex of Tirragen MAY OR MAY NOT have been reincarnated for a second chance... and ends up being a page more or less alongside Keladry of Mindelan. These are only pokes, mind you, but let me assure you that while Alex's morals are more of the blue and orange variety, more often than not he's backing Kel. He gets her. For your entertainment and from a discord conversation:

DarkPuck: i am here for the AU where he's a yearmate of joren's and while kel doesn't actually LIKE him, becuase alex is a bastard with blue and orange morality -- alex doesn't give a good fuck that she's a girl DarkPuck: like it doesn't even seem to register in his head that gender is a thing DarkPuck: "she's The Girl!" "....and?" DarkPuck: Alex just does not get why that is a problem????? who cares????????? kheradihr: Alex "I don't see how it weighs in on her ability to handle training, whereas you, [name], you're an embarrassment to this august tradition." kheradihr: Kel "By the Goddess he just threw august in to be an asshole" DarkPuck: Alex: "you get me." Kel: -DOES NOT WANT TO GET HIM-

Anyway Alex does not know what gender has to do with anything, and as for sexual preferences, while you were busy being allosexual, he studied the blade. Bonus fun fact: This Alex's knight-guardian is none other than Gary the Younger. Alex loves him.

[theladyragnell]

ooo, how about alex/thom for #29 visiting their home for the first time?

(If you are reading this and wondering why I didn't do the obvious and send them to hill country, that's because I got the same prompt twice for this round and already did that! Once again please kindly ignore the epic backstory fic implied by this ficlet.)

Roger had avoided the City of the Gods. He’d called it stuffy and hidebound and sanctimonious and staid, and Alex had believed him. He had no Gift of his own, no opinion on the place where most of Tortall’s mages trained. From Delia, from the other women who came to court from there, he’d had the idea of pampered cloisters where women and men without martial talents learned how to administer their fiefs.

When Thom of Trebond had arrived at court, with his gaudy clothes and his incessant words and his clear uselessness at anything but magic, he’d done little to disprove any of that. The City of the Gods was where people went to become decorative and, according to Roger, to stagnate magically. Alex had never expected to go there and have his vague suppositions either proved or disproved. He hadn’t wanted to.

Alex stared for a long time at the city walls of forbidding grey stone and tried to ignore the feeling of saturated magic prickling across his skin and how familiar it was. Thom, reluctant as he’d been the whole journey, seemed just as disinclined to ride the last few steps through the city gates.

“We have to do it sometime,” Thom eventually said. “If nothing else, our king commands it.”

They were, the both of them, too good at pretending not to care, not to be hurt. After the first week of travel, of the two of them reeling and snarling like wolves, they’d stopped prodding at each other and just let each other pretend. “As my liege commands, of course.” A truth, but a bitter one. Alex put his heels to his horse’s sides, and expected Thom to follow.

There were few people in the streets. Priestesses traveling in gossiping knots, or sterner and older ones shepherding along lines of girls in plain dresses. Men in Mithran robes, or scholars’ robes, or mages’ robes. Acolytes in plain clothes, their allegiances only visible from the badges they wore. All of them stared at two young lords on horseback.

“You aren’t wearing your robes,” Alex realized aloud when they’d passed a mage of about fifty, a plump and smug master of the Gift whose eyes Thom had avoided.

Thom’s edgy laugh was as abrasive as everything else that came out of his mouth. “It might shock you to learn, Tirragen, that I’m not terribly popular with the other mages here. My hair is distinctive enough. Add that to my age and my robes of mastery? Best to pretend at anonymity. If I’m even a master at all anymore.”

Thom’s Gift was one of the wounds Alex had learned the hard way not to press at. When he had, Thom had pinned him against a wall, and the very air seemed to be rusty violet, and then it was all gone, and neither of them had breathed right for the rest of the day. “Doesn’t matter to me,” Alex said eventually, and Thom snorted, but didn’t speak again.

The Mithran temple where Thom had trained was austere to the point of ugliness, and where Alex had expected pampered younger sons unsuited for being warriors, he found quiet men with pinched expressions. They were, on the whole, pale and delicate, as though kept away from the sun, and the older ones steered clear of Thom in the halls, seeming not to see him, as a novice brought them to the master they were there to see.

Alex had, in those last terrible weeks before the coronation, been vaguely aware of a Master Si-Cham, short and lively and kind, trying to bring Thom back from the brink. He’d expected, as much as he expected anything, the priest replacing him to be a similar sort of person. Instead, they were greeted by a sharp-featured man with the look of the haMinch, businesslike and unkind, who treated Thom with open dislike and Alex with suspicion mixed with a dose of pity as Thom explained in cold technical terms what had been done to them both.

“We’ll see what can be done,” the priest said at last. “In the meantime, Master Thom, you know where the guest quarters are.”

If it bothered Thom to be a guest where he’d once lived, he didn’t say it. He said something insincere and honeyed instead, and took the dismissal with as much grace as he took anything. There was no one waiting for them outside, but the priest was right. Thom knew the way, and brought them through the dim and dismal halls of Tortall’s biggest temple to the god of the sun until they found an out-of-the-way hallway where the sconces were barely lit. The quarters were little more than a room each with a washstand, and Thom abandoned Alex and put a thick stone wall between them as soon as he could.

Alex looked out the window at the kitchen garden crawling with novices hard at work and thought of the palace in Corus, how cold and strange it had seemed, how regimented after his childhood in Tirragen. How Wyldon of Cavall, his page-sponsor, had with grim duty told him that page training was about learning to endure, and that enduring was a privilege if it served a realm that Alex’s grandfather hadn’t been a part of. How mistrustful and mistrusted he’d been, until Gary had extended a hand, and then Francis, and Raoul, and at last Jon.

And then they’d all reached out to Alan too, years later, no matter how surly and prickly he’d been. Looking down at the boys in the garden, all of their eyes on their separate tasks, Alex didn’t think many of them reached out. Roger had always said, half-laughing, that mages were a selfish lot, that they would never help another one along if they might be competition later.

Thom spoke more, and more fondly, of the City of the Gods than he did of Trebond. Maybe he didn’t trust Alex with Trebond. Alex hoped that was it, and that it wasn’t that this cheerless place was what he thought of as home, the way Alex sometimes guiltily thought of Corus first, and clear-skied Tirragen after.

Alex wouldn’t ask. Thom wouldn’t want him to. Neither of them wanted questions from each other, just an end to their duties and thus to the reminder of what they’d done. If the home Thom knew best wasn’t what Alex had thought it would be, that didn’t matter.

Still, he watched the novices from the window, looking for signs of friendliness or care, until Thom knocked on the door to show him the way to dinner.

[shieldmaiden19]

You know, the Song of the Lioness quartet gets a whole lot funnier when you headcanon every main character as a disaster bi just losing their mind at any given point in time.

[anony-mouse-writer]

Do you ever reread something after a very long time and realize that all of a sudden you empathize with a character you didn’t before? Like. Really really empathize with them? And then you could kick yourself because you’re rereading this thing and you know for a fact that this character turns traitor and why the fuck have you gone and attached yourself to them now when you didn’t before???

[minuiko]

"If you get stuck, offer to help Alex with his extra-duty chores. He's a mathematical wizard." - Alanna: The First Adventure

[storieswritteninthesand]

Going on 16 years since I first read Song of the Lioness and I still have NO IDEA what motivates Alex.

The worst of it is that there are so many hints, suggesting it should be apparent to a reader. PLEASE. If you know. If you have any ideas. TELL ME. Save me from this Eternal Suffering.

[isnt-it-pretty]

Fandom: Tortall - Tamora Pierce

Characters: Alexander of Tirragen, Thom of Trebond,Liam Ironarm, Roald VI of Conté, Stefan Groomsman, Numair Salmalín, Veralidaine Sarrasri, Jonathan of Conté, Nealan of Queenscove, Keladry of Mindelan, Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Bittersweet Ending, Canonical Character Death (kind of), Protector of the Small au, lots of headcanons

Summary:

The dead don't rest in King Jonathan's palace, until the day they do.

[thewildmageoftortall-blog]

Bonus:

Alexander of Tirragen: Asexual

Thank you @folatefangirl for the head cannon.

[neednotfall]

I am re-reading all the Tortall books, and I’m on Alanna: The First Adventure, and I just noticed that Alex was punished with extra hours studying Ethics.

If only he took those lessons seriously... maybe he wouldn’t have died by Alanna’s hands.

(also, dang that foreshadowing that I never caught)

[blvckwidow]

I have so many questions about Alex. Like what happened to him. He became rogers squire and suddenly he's awful. I don't understand why he wants to kill Alanna so badly either. Like I get he wants to be the best swordsman but damn

[onlyknowwhaticando]

You know, we never do find out why Alex flipped sides - yes, he was Roger’s squire, but...

I kinda have this weird headcanon that there’s a mental link between him and Roger, and that’s why Alex seems to go almost as, well, off-kilter as Roger in Lioness Rampant. It might also explain why he seems almost robotic when he and Alanna duel in In The Hand of the Goddess.

Back to my actual liveblogging, Liam and George meeting is fun. George meeting Thayet is also fun. Reading this book the first time after I had read the Daine, Aly, and some of Kel’s books was also fun because it turned the Alanna series into a prequel of sorts.

[darkpuck]

not tagged but posting anyway

Every Sunday, share six sentences from your current WIP and tag six friends*

*Sunday is only a suggestion, please post your own any time in the week!

His earliest memory was of walking along the bank of a stream, one small hand in the firm grip of his guardian. Even in that early memory, he knew he loved and trusted the tall, unhappy-seeming duke. And as he was lifted atop a rock too big for him to scale himself, Alexander of Tirragen looked up into the warm, sad chestnut eyes of the man he wished were his father, and laid a hand on his arm. “It won’t happen again,” he said solemnly. “I promise.”

He turned, therefore missing the surprise crossing the knight’s face. “What won’t?” his guardian asked, but Alex didn’t answer: he’d seen a cat curled atop the rock, napping in a sunbeam. Forgetting entirely what he had said, he eased his way over to the cat to watch it sleep.

[theladyragnell]

AC for Alex/Thom?

(Visiting their home for the first time! You and an anon both asked for the exact same thing, I am assuming because everybody wants Thom to visit hill country, so I am doing the prompt twice. Here's Thom in hill country (implying an epic fic as backstory, but shh), and in a few days we'll get Alex visiting somewhere I haven't decided yet!)

Thom, ever the diplomat, took some time to consider his first impression of Tirragen as they rode over the crest of a hill and into the fief, and decided that “brown” just about covered it. The late-summer dead grass waving in the wind was pale brown, the recently harvested fields darker brown, the lakeshore mud was brown, and the buildings in the settlement nearest them were brown. Even Tirragen’s hold was brown, stone much the color of the dead grass.

The lake, at least, was blue. It was some relief from the monotony.

“Not as luxurious as you’re used to, no doubt,” said Alex from up ahead of him, who for someone with no Gift at all had an uncanny facility for plucking thoughts out of Thom’s head.

At least he could occasionally be wrong. Thom had only grown used to luxury in Corus, and that had lasted no time at all next to the country upbringing of Trebond and the lightless austerity of the City of the Gods. It was just that apparently a small taste of luxury was worse than none at all. “You should have seen the monastery,” he said, encouraging his horse forward a bit to ride next to Alex. “For a place supposedly sacred to the god of the sun, it wasn’t a very bright place.”

“Tirragen gets light, at least.” Alex pulled to a stop before they could descend too far down the hill, shading his eyes with a hand and inspecting his fief. “The fall crops are behind.”

It had been the same everywhere, but Thom had spent years with his teachers hammering concepts of balance into his head. The new king had spent a perilous hour holding his kingdom together with magic. Thom was going to have to write him to reiterate that they were in for a troublesome few years and just hope that he would listen, after the exhausted way he’d asked them to get away from Corus before fingers started pointing at them. “Not quite as far behind,” he said. He hadn’t particularly known anything about crop growth and its projected rates when they left Corus, but he was learning them quickly enough.

Alex, who’d known the crops and their growth rates better the closer they got to arid hill country, lowered his hand and kicked his horse into motion again. “Behind enough to give us a hungry winter, and with Eldorne and Malven even more out of favor than we are, we’re not going to get much aid. I need to see how our grain stores do, and how much we need to save for seed if the crop gets spoiled. We just need to keep hill country from raiding across the Drell and starting another war for Jon.”

That was, Thom was almost sure, the most words Alex had strung together at once since they’d left Corus. When Thom had met him, those first awful months of trying to establish his place and letting himself be lost in his own pride, he’d picked his words carefully, with a talent for compliments that could make a man feel like he’d been slapped and a sly turn of phrase. On their journey, he’d simply seemed too tired to speak. Trust a man’s home to get him talking again. “We?” said Thom, when Alex twisted, seeming to expect his commentary. That was fair enough. Thom had certainly led him to believe he had commentary on everything. He suspected Alanna found it embarrassing, the way he’d learned to rattle on over the years.

“I assumed that if you were so interested in taking all your magical measurements about crops, you might have plans for what to do with them. The raiding is my business, unless you have insight from Trebond, you must get Scanrans across the border.”

Less often than they might. When their father had told Thom rare stories about his childhood, before everything, Scanran raids had featured heavily, the reason he’d gone for his knighthood instead of to the cloisters. King Jasson’s ambition, though, had given Trebond breathing space. “No plans yet,” Thom admitted. Saying that Jasson had made Thom’s life as a baron better, for all he was in the process of disinheriting himself, seemed cruel when he was riding across old Hurdik lands. “Agricultural magic was never my specialty. I’ll have to come at it from the side of the Dominion Jewel, and that’s half a country away, so it will take some work.”

“I’ll send out for any books you need, and our crop records are at your disposal.”

Thom hated crop records. He’d been spoiled, letting Coram deal with them, but that was why Coram would be a better baron than Thom would, especially given Alanna had more than enough to do and no interest in inheriting the mausoleum herself. “Fascinating evening reading, no doubt,” he said.

Alex twisted again, gave him the level look that meant You’re the one who wished yourself on me, remember, but didn’t comment, just kept riding on. “It will be hard work,” he said eventually.

Hard work, like Thom didn’t know the meaning of it. Like he hadn’t gained his Mastery young while leading everyone to believe he was too stupid to do it, playing a double game and advising his sister from a distance. If there was one universal among the young knights of the palace, no matter which side of the attempted coup they’d fallen on, it was that they thought life in the Mithran cloisters must have been soft and easy. It was disappointing that Alex, generally one of the more intelligent of them, seemed to feel the same. “Somehow I’ll survive.”

Alex frowned a little, with an assessing look that reminded him of Alanna’s George, who did not like Alex at all. Not that Thom could blame him. There was a reason Thom and Alex were rusticating in hill country for the foreseeable future, and they were lucky not to be doing it under guard like Delia. “I imagine we both will,” he said eventually, like it was a burden and not the best piece of optimism Thom had heard in months.

Thom looked off into the distance again, at the various shades of brown, at the blue lake reflecting the blue sky. In the distance, at the keep, they were raising the flag as their lord approached, the black and purple standing out in the landscape. It wasn’t home, but then again, he wasn’t sure, after so long, precisely where that was.

“It’s all very brown,” he drawled, at his most affected and court-mannered, and hoped Alex could hear the joke and the truth all braided together.

Alex just smiled a little, eyes on the flag at the keep, and dug his heels in, and Thom did the same, until they were cantering toward Fief Tirragen, and all the work that waited there.

[valentinegoestotortall-blog]

Hi! I loved your POTS rec list! Some great fics on there. Do you have any favourite SOTL fics?

Thank you! The POTS series is my favorite, so I don’t have nearly as many recommendations for SOTL. Some of my SOTL recommendations are in the POTS time period, but focus on Alanna. One of my previously recommended authors, devilinthedetails, also writes some SOTL works, especially about Alex. I’ll especially recommend this piece and this piece, but if you go through the Alex tag, anything written by her won’t disappoint. LadyLingua writes (exclusively?) SOTL fanfic. I recommend a couple specific pieces below, but you can also look at her page for more.

it’s a dangerous business, going out your door (you never know where you might be swept off to). Series about Kourrem bint Kemail. 30k words

Hear Her Roar. Moments in Alanna’s life.

Raising Lion Cubs. Moments in Alanna and her family’s lives as her kids grow up.

The Decision. About Alanna, set after POTS. New Life is devilinthedetail’s take on the same situation. Both are well done. 

War Crimes. Alanna and Buri during their time in Sarain.

First Frost. Alanna and Thom as young children.

Terrifying Sweet. Alanna and George.

In Hand. Alanna and George get married. Really cute.

The Lioness and Her Cubs. Alanna as a mother.

That Time of Year. This one’s a bit silly, but cute and funny.