#and then the book ends with gideon desperately trying to become that perfect cavalier and stay dead & in her role for harrow

[carnivalls]

do you guys ever think about how babs hated ianthe (or at least had a strained sort of friendship with her) but was the perfect archetype of a cavalier, while gideon l*ved harrow but was a terrible archetype of a cavalier, and those are the only two pairs at canaan house who became lyctors.

& while we're at it, do you ever think about how, despite babs being literally born and raised for the role, it was gideon who actually served as the 'better cavalier' in the end

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

What Cristabel Did

EXTENSIVE SPOILERS for Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth below. If you haven’t read both books, skip the rest of this post. In fact just get off tumblr and go read them instead. I guarantee they’re better than anything else you’ll find here. 

I think I know why John Gaius didn’t tell his disciples about the perfect Lyctorhood, and I don’t think it had to do with sharing power or with AL. I think it’s the same reason why Augustine and Mercymorn hate each other, why Anastasia was the only one to figure out the Eightfold Word, and why Mercy doesn’t want to hear her cavalier’s name.

tl;dr I think Cristabel and Alfred tried to kill some number of the original disciples, forcing them to try for lyctorhood before the ritual was fully understood, and John kept quiet because he didn’t want to tell them they’d killed their cavaliers for nothing.

The handwritten note at the end of the sermon on cavaliers and necromancers says, “valancy says one flesh one end sounds like instructions for a sex toy. can’t stop thinking about that so can someone stop cris and alfred before the sex toy phrase catches on, thanks.” This early in the Nine Houses’ history the entire concept of necromancer and cavalier is still being figured out. It sounds like Cristabel and Alfred were the main drivers behind the idea of the cavalier-necromancer relationship as a formal, sacred oath, coming up with the phrase “one flesh, one end” in the process. Much much later Silas Octakiseron brands the ritual of lyctorhood a mortal sin and heresy as soon as he hears what it entails, because he treats the cavalier-necromancer bond as a sacrament akin to a holy marriage. To trespass against that bond, he declares, was to sin against the Emperor himself. The sermon before the handwritten note backs up that idea, talking about the combination as having all sorts of profound religious symbolism.

Therefore: what if the disciples were working on the ritual of lyctorhood and hadn’t yet figured the cavalier didn’t have to die, when Cristabel and Alfred decided they had to take action to keep any of them from trying? What if, like Silas in Canaan House, Cristabel decided the idea of the adept killing their cavalier was rank heresy and had to be prevented by any means necessary, and convinced Alfred of it as well? Cristabel was from the Eighth House, though early enough that it may not have taken on its hardline personality - then again, perhaps Cristabel’s actions are why it did take on that hardline personality. Augustine calls her an idiot, but also “a fanatic,” and his own brother someone who “regretted that he wasn’t.”

Augustine says that he became a lyctor “under scrambling pressure,” and when Harrow tells the Emperor that she became a lyctor under duress, he replies, “You aren’t the first.” Then when Augustine is talking to John about Alfred, he says, “I have built an entire myriad on the idea that I could’ve made him come around, given five minutes.” That’s in response to John saying, “No one could make him do anything he didn’t want to.” That could mean either Augustine thinks he could have talked Alfred into willingly dying to perform the ritual, or that he could have talked Alfred out of doing something else dire. The way John phrases it makes me think it’s the latter, because in the context of the conversation they’re discussing Cristabel’s influence, and John knows that the lyctoral ritual can be performed even if the cavalier is unwilling. 

So: Cristabel and Alfred decide that they need to do whatever it takes to keep the other disciples from performing the ritual. Either by accident or design, they put Augustine in a situation where he’s facing imminent death - maybe not intentionally on Alfred’s part, but it happens. Augustine chooses to kill his brother and take in his soul to survive as a lyctor, becoming the first to ascend. This fits with Augustine’s loathing of Mercymorn, who in his mind forced him to murder his brother; of his own immortality, since it was gained at the cost of murdering family; and of necromancy in general. He has to convince himself that he could have talked Alfred into making the sacrifice if there were time to ask because otherwise the guilt will destroy him.

After ascension, Augustine’s probably fighting Alfred’s soul, but he’s a powerful spirit magician. Like Ianthe he may be scattered but he’s still present. So now he rounds on Cristabel and probably mortally wounds her. He means to finish the job but Mercymorn intervenes, alerted to what’s happening by all the chaos. She finds her cavalier dying. Cristabel asks her to avenge her and kill Augustine and, since she’s already dying, to use her soul to do it. Mercy finishes Cristabel off and swallows her soul, becoming the second lyctor. So from the very beginning Mercymorn is absolutely set on Augustine’s death and blames him for Cristabel’s death and, in an indirect way, forcing her to become a lyctor as well.

After that it gets a little fuzzy. Events could go several different ways and we just don’t have enough info. I favor the idea that maybe the rampage continues - or maybe Cristabel and Alfred had set all of them up to be in mortal peril (possibly in space, where an adept’s powers won’t work but a lyctor’s would) - because of Mercy’s quote at Cytherea’s funeral: “I never saw her cry except once. The day after. When we put together the research. When she became a Lyctor. I said, There was no alternative. She said, We had the choice to stop.” Mercy saying “there was no alternative” and Cytherea answering with “we had the choice to stop” makes me think everyone was in duress. Mercy saying, “the day after. When we put together the research,” makes me think that they hadn’t fully pieced together the ritual even though six people had already ascended; Augustine improvised. “The day after” also makes me think that most of the lyctors ascended in a single night. If Augustine through Cassiopeia ascended in a group, only Cytherea and Anastasia would be left. Loveday volunteered for the rite in hopes of curing Cytherea, so that’s a non-distress motive for them to ascend as well. That leaves only Anastasia, who now has plenty of time to figure it out on her own.

Where’s John in all this? Remember what Ianthe said when she was trying to regrow her arm? She thought John would tell her to try it on her own first to build her own skill. Maybe John was letting his disciples work out lyctorhood on their own, expecting that they’d figure out the full ritual in time. If they’d planned to try the imperfect ritual, he probably would have stepped in and said, “No, no one has to die, yes now you’re mad at me because I knew the answer all along but it was a learning experience okay.” But because Augustine had to make a scrambling improvisation, John didn’t get the chance to intervene. So before he can do anything, Augustine and Mercy, plus some number of the middle four, have already killed their cavaliers and swallowed their souls (meaning no resurrection). He’s faced with the choice of telling them that those murders weren’t necessary, or keeping the secret and letting Loveday and Cytherea go through with the imperfect ritual. John tells himself that it’ll hurt them all too much if he tells them they killed their cavaliers for nothing, and Loveday’s willing to die already. He stays quiet.

That leaves only Anastasia. With the benefit of time and the others’ experience, Anastasia realizes the ritual can be done without killing the cavalier. She plays this close to the vest, uncertain of her results and unwilling to traumatize the others unless she’s sure. Just in case she’s right, she bans everyone except John from watching her attempt. If she succeeds and Samael lives, they can figure out how to break it to the others. But something goes wrong - or John sabotages her - and Samael dies, leaving Anastasia thinking she didn’t have it right after all.

A myriad later, John and the other lyctors have yet to allow or invite any other adepts to attain lyctorhood, believing the cost is too high. But now they’re down to four lyctors and three Resurrection Beasts, and those four lyctors are showing the strain. So John invites the heirs and their cavaliers to Canaan House. He knows his first disciples left the necessary information behind to put together the rite - only the imperfect rite, but that’s okay because this time there won’t be anyone making the choice under duress. As he tells Harrow, “I intended for the new Lyctors to become Lyctors after thinking and contemplating and genuinely understanding their sacrifice—an act of bravery, not an act of fear and desperation. Nobody was meant to lose their lives unwillingly at Canaan House.” If the cavaliers are okay with it, he’s not on the hook, he reasons. He’ll keep his secret and get new lyctors without any fresh guilt on his conscience.

Except of course it doesn’t work out that way. As usual, John’s future plans are sabotaged by his past plans coming back to haunt him. He ends up gaining one and a half lyctors at the unexpected cost of one old lyctor, so that’s a net gain of half a lyctor with several heirs dead in the process. And then an even newer plan gets sabotaged by an even older plan, leaving him with one and a half, possibly two functioning lyctors. Meanwhile Camilla and Palamedes are out there probably as a functional lyctor-cavalier pair that he doesn’t know about, because Palamedes has been stuck in freeze-frame hell for long enough to come to the same conclusions as Anastasia. It’s not gonna go well for John, ey?

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Okay so. I read the locked tomb books because of you, and at some point you mentioned fics where gideon was raised as part of the first house and now I have a mighty need. So, do those fics exist? If so, where can I find them?

Also, what are your thoughts on gideon raised as the First?

BIG SPOILERS FOR HARROW THE NINTH THROUGHOUT

Anyway, my favorite kind of GtN fic is fic set in Harrow’s dream of the ball, competing to marry the Flower of the First House, Gideon, Daughter of God, I have read a great many.  There aren’t that many Locked Tomb fics all told, so a leisurely trawl through the Gideon/Harrow tag on AO3 will get you there, but these are the highest highlights of my own search:

The Process of Elimination: this WIP is basically “Gideon is the Bachelor and she and Harrow are running a con that Definitely Will Not End In Feelings” and I love it. 

Once Upon A Time With Her Divine Highness: complete, this one is ALSO Bachelor!Gideon, ft a fake relationship, and I love it also.

Stay With Me, My Darling: complete, this one features very real feelings and also some very cool timeline warping in order to make it all really work, 10/10 would read again.

The Emperor's Daughter: this one-shot is basically just Harrow having an internal crisis and declaring her intent to melt Ianthe's face, but like, also with HSH Gideon, it really spoke to my id.

Honorable mention to A Mild Sort of Resurrection: this one-shot is NOT what you asked about, but “God gets coffee in the Cohort and has a very small heart attack” is an underexplored AU with similar Daughter Of God potential and I want more of it, so I figured I’d toss it in for good measure.

Now, regarding my own thoughts about Her Serene Highness, I think Gideon would be...desperately bored in the First House.  Like, “probably tries just as hard to break out as she did on the Ninth” levels of bored.  She’s the heir to a throne that will never be open.  She’s a cavalier with no necromancer--indeed, with no one who would ever even permit her to be a cavalier.  She has no friends.  In fact, her options for company are pretty goddamn limited, with John and the Lyctors perpetually on rotation through the systems--if her father decides that Gideon should grow up on a planet, it’s Teacher and the skeletons; if it’s the Mithraeum, it’s John or no one.  

Gideon of the First House is too infinitely precious to be allowed to do anything (especially since she has the potential to raise a lot of big questions just by existing), but also, there’s literally nothing for her to do.  She’s been trying to make a break for the Cohort since she was old enough to realize that she was basically doomed to permanent limbo, and when her father turned her down (gently), she started trying to give her minders the slip.  The second she meets the Reverend Daughter at the ball, a Reverend Daughter who doesn’t particularly care about getting a wife but cares a lot about getting in good with the Emperor for the sake of her House, Gideon is FULLY on-board for the pair of them faking a marriage for the sake of solving both problems at once.

Now that I’ve said the easy thing, let me throw my saddest HSH headcanon at you real quick here:

When Gideon is a little girl, she cherishes the private dream of becoming her father’s cavalier.  None of her father’s fingers or gestures ever bring their cavaliers with them, but Gideon knows what a cavalier is, and she knows that even Mercymorn, who doesn’t like anyone, talks about her cavalier like just the name is worth more than every jewel Gideon has ever touched.  Cytherea is the best with children, so Gideon sees her the most, and she says Loveday like it’s the only word that exists.  

Gideon wants her father, who is perfect and kind and gentle and hardworking and unreachably distant, to love her that much.