Gwynna and Kenhodan (Sword of the South Spoilers)

andrewtater wrote:

phillies wrote:Is there some reason to suppose that 18 is of any significance in this culture in terms of marriage? We may contrast with Romeo and Juliet at one end (rather, with Juliet's peers) and with middle-class more or less Germans in the 1632 series at the other end. One might propose alternatively that she will be at full physical size, for some spellcasting or combat issue, except she is half non-human, and I have not heard how long the other half takes to mature physically.

In WMC, Leeana says that men are considered "adults" at their 18th birthday and women on their 21st. Granted, this is the Sothoii, but it is likely that 18 is also the age of adulthood throughout Norfressa, aside from Saramantha, the Land of Purple Lords, and the various Hradradi lands.

Also, I agree that she isn't targeting 18 for political or social reasons, but for physical ones. My theory is that her 12 year old body can't do what she needs it to do. She will lose some fine control over her mage powers with age-control, but she likely won't lose any of the power, and with a body that can channel it (say, 18 years old), she can access even more than she can now.

Well, there might be some social reasons. An adult (even if legally she really isn't) will be treated differently than a child. Fewer people will have issue with her going to war if she looks like an adult. (Yeah, if they know she's actually not 12 yet, they will mostly go back to having an issue - but she won't obviously be giving that away.)

How about her wanting to be able to control more than enough power to handle any other dragon that she might happen to run into next time?

I pity her mage guardian the next time that she has a crisis. Or, perhaps with enough power, she just won't let that happen again???

Remember her 'youth' ended when she merged with a personality at least a couple thousand years old. Mentally she is not 11 yo anymore. She needs to build her stamina and ability to channel power. There has been an implication that power grows over the years for mages and wizards until it fades in very old age.

She is accelerating her physical self but her mental self had a warp factor applied when she absorbed so much of Wencit's personality, plans and mental content. One Burning Question is 'does Wencit know' she has done just that??

I think it's primarily about having a physically-approximately-mature body for what she'll need to do more than anything else. As otherwise noted, it won't make a lick of difference legally.

That requisite physical maturity is itself probably mostly for the physical demands she's going to be placing on it, but social reasons may be an issue.'

And somewhere down the list, it may be a matter of "I've got my eye on a man; I really, really need to keep him from looking at me like a kid; I may have competition with a floozy assassin woman; ergo, I need breasts, soon!"

PeterZ wrote:

jcochran wrote:
Yes. Marriage. Reason being is that the other options military, espionage, etc., don't require her to be in an adult body as she can perform them right now in the body she has. Since she can perform those other actions as she is now, why does she have to be eighteen by a specific deadline?

Gwynna will be 18 when she has lived 18 years regardless of what her body looks like. She needs to have an adult body that can withstand the rigors coming her way. With respect to marriage, she won't be old enough to marry until she has lived the requisite number of years however many that is. No spell will allow her to live more years than she has experienced. Her body might mature at a faster rate, but she will have lived only those number of years she experiences.

Look, I certainly agree with you regarding the sexual aspect, although I also think that you're slightly blinded by the prejudices re age of connsent which prevail in your own society. In the kind of society which Mr Weber created in this series, it would not be uncommon at all for girls to get married by the time they enter theirr adolescent years - by fourteen or fifteen years of age. There are plenty of historical and contemporary examples of that in the real world.

My concern about her age goal is not the purpose of her accelerated aging - I think it's plenty clear that it's because she'll need an adult body for military reasons - but that no matter how mature a child might appear, no child (and despite her near-future physical age she'll still be a child) can have true emotional and mental maturity to face the horrors of war without severe psychological damage. Just look at the child soldiers of Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Of course, Gwynna is her parents' daughter, and as we've already seen in the book, she inherited a full measure of both their intelligence and their stubborn sense of duty.

I don't believe I expressed any opinion in the proper age for marriage. I only stated a fact. Maturing the body does not translate to living more years as it relates to the legal age to marry. That's true here and in the jurisdictions that pertain to Gwynna.

If you are referring to my "Oh, John Ringo, no!" comment, that was just a recognition that David Weber does not write those sorts of stories. He simply doesn't.

hanuman wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
Gwynna will be 18 when she has lived 18 years regardless of what her body looks like. She needs to have an adult body that can withstand the rigors coming her way. With respect to marriage, she won't be old enough to marry until she has lived the requisite number of years however many that is. No spell will allow her to live more years than she has experienced. Her body might mature at a faster rate, but she will have lived only those number of years she experiences.

Look, I certainly agree with you regarding the sexual aspect, although I also think that you're slightly blinded by the prejudices re age of connsent which prevail in your own society. In the kind of society which Mr Weber created in this series, it would not be uncommon at all for girls to get married by the time they enter theirr adolescent years - by fourteen or fifteen years of age. There are plenty of historical and contemporary examples of that in the real world.

My concern about her age goal is not the purpose of her accelerated aging - I think it's plenty clear that it's because she'll need an adult body for military reasons - but that no matter how mature a child might appear, no child (and despite her near-future physical age she'll still be a child) can have true emotional and mental maturity to face the horrors of war without severe psychological damage. Just look at the child soldiers of Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Of course, Gwynna is her parents' daughter, and as we've already seen in the book, she inherited a full measure of both their intelligence and their stubborn sense of duty.

Gwynna is no longer 11 years old. She has much of the plans, memories, experiences and knowledge of Wencit.

She has to get her body strong enough for the challenges of the War she is going to be a key figure in fighting.

Will her relationship develop with KenHodan . . . Yes but probably along the lines of her parents. Kenhodan will be noble and see her as a child still.

Tangent thought ....................

Is Kenhodan (Torren) a champion of Tomanek? Is the Sword of the South a Sword of Tomanek?

dwileye13 wrote:Gwynna is no longer 11 years old. She has much of the plans, memories, experiences and knowledge of Wencit.

She has to get her body strong enough for the challenges of the War she is going to be a key figure in fighting.

Will her relationship develop with KenHodan . . . Yes but probably along the lines of her parents. Kenhodan will be noble and see her as a child still.

Tangent thought ....................

Is Kenhodan (Torren) a champion of Tomanek? Is the Sword of the South a Sword of Tomanek?

Gwynna might have had a bonding experience with Wencit, she might have learned all of his secrets and plans and hopes, she might even have glimpsed his unfathomable pain and loneliness, and yet NONE of that changes the fact that she has not lived any of those things for herself. She is NOT Wencit all of a sudden, she can only ever be Gwynna.

How on Earth do you think any child of eleven can even begin to make sense of the kind of experiences that Wencit carries in his mind? Nevermind make sense of those memories in a way that will suddenly turn her eleven year-old psyche into that of a fully-matured adult. I'll grant that she is more mature than her peers, and I'll even grant that she's dealing exceptionally well with her new knowledge, but accept that her mind has somehow skipped a decade of maturation in a few minutes? Never.

hanuman wrote:
Gwynna might have had a bonding experience with Wencit, she might have learned all of his secrets and plans and hopes, she might even have glimpsed his unfathomable pain and loneliness, and yet NONE of that changes the fact that she has not lived any of those things for herself. She is NOT Wencit all of a sudden, she can only ever be Gwynna.

How on Earth do you think any child of eleven can even begin to make sense of the kind of experiences that Wencit carries in his mind? Nevermind make sense of those memories in a way that will suddenly turn her eleven year-old psyche into that of a fully-matured adult. I'll grant that she is more mature than her peers, and I'll even grant that she's dealing exceptionally well with her new knowledge, but accept that her mind has somehow skipped a decade of maturation in a few minutes? Never.

There was too much in her mind, now. Too many new abilities, too much knowledge she hadn’t found yet, hadn’t laid mental hands upon. She needed to master those abilities , to discover the secrets hidden in that knowledge, and understand what it meant, why all of it had poured into her and what she was supposed to do with it all. And somehow, for any of that to happen, she had to get Master Trayn to help her without showing him what she knew. The little girl with bottomless blue eyes and a heart of harp music watched the flowers and longed to tell someone all she knew or suspected. But she couldn’t. They probably wouldn’t believe her even if she did —she wasn’t certain she believed it all herself— yet she knew she couldn’t tell anyone. She’d never before been aware of how young she truly was. There was too much she’d never been told, too much she’d taken for granted. The mage crisis was enough to destroy any childhood, but hers had been further ravished by a brief, magnificently terrible melding with a personality thousands of years old.

David Weber (2015-08-04T04:00:00+00:00). The Sword of the South - eARC (Kindle Locations 4271-4279). Baen. Kindle Edition.

Agreed she is a precocious 11 year old with weapons training and raised in a tavern with special parents and their friends.; She has had a wealth of knowledge poured into her brain and she is trying to assimilate it all.

To think of her as a child is a mistake. She has been trained by a War Maid and a Champion, her friends are Ships Captains, Wizards, Mages and an 800 lb cat. It is true she has a lot of catching up to do but we have to admit . . . she has a large head start.

agreed. young and immature (physically) she may be. Child? that is something she has not been since her mage crisis