Snippet #17

I seem to be in a minority, as I read this as 'Nimue Alban's friends browbeat her into marrying someone, when her good sense promises this will be a baaaaad idea.'. To my ears this is as bad a reason for marrying him as can be imagined. Of course, the actual outcome is under authorial control and might turn out well. After all, the author never does anything mean to any of his characters.

phillies wrote:I seem to be in a minority, as I read this as 'Nimue Alban's friends browbeat her into marrying someone, when her good sense promises this will be a baaaaad idea.'. To my ears this is as bad a reason for marrying him as can be imagined. Of course, the actual outcome is under authorial control and might turn out well. After all, the author never does anything mean to any of his characters.

I think you are missing the point here. It was obvious to all of those friends that she dearly wanted to marry him. Don't forget that these people have seen the two of them together for a long, long time now, and she's been his lover for years at this point. He is asking her to marry him and make that relationship formal even "knowing" that they can never have kid, and she isn't fighting that part of the idea at all. She is refusing for his sake because whatever he may be saying now, she fears that one day he will regret the lack of children. That's her official reason. Her real reason is exactly the one that Merlin Athrawes discussed with Olyvva Baytz when he explained to her why Nimue Alban had never allowed herself to love someone the way Nahrmahn and she had loved one another. She hasn't shifted gears to the point of fully exposing herself to that risk, and children --- the other thing Nimue Alban never allowed herself even to contemplate --- is the last ditch her subconscious is defending against something she wanted so desperately (and the inevitable death of her entire species had forbidden her to embrace) that her present incarnation knows she can't have. That if she reaches out for it, then in some perverse way that very action is what's going to doom all of Merlin's efforts, because not only can she not conceive children, but the universe won't let her have them. It's irrational as hell, but she and Merlin are carrying a lot of PTSD around with them, folks.

A lot of this scene is about her friends enabling her to find a solution to her problem. On a deeper level, though, its about her friends --- the people who love her --- forcing her to see the way she is wounding herself and Koryn because of old fears when she no longer has to. And part of the unstated subtext is that, in many ways, her situation is almost worse now than it was when she was Nimye Alban because at least Nimue Alban knew, one way or another, if the end of her world was coming. No one in the inner circle has that certainty, however cold and gall bitter it may have been.

There's a lot going on here, but none of it is her friends nagging her into doing something she doesn't want to do with all her heart.

phillies wrote:After all, the author never does anything mean to any of his characters.

Mmmm...Honor Harrington would disagree I think...

I should not forget "...she's been his lover for years at this point. ..."

Ummh, was there a volume that I missed somehow?

OOK, that makes more sense.

phillies wrote:I should not forget "...she's been his lover for years at this point. ..."

Ummh, was there a volume that I missed somehow?

OOK, that makes more sense.

I misspoke. I said "been his lover for years" when what I should have said was "been his lover for over a year". The sense is the same, but I was thinking that an additional year had passed when I wrote my original post. Sorry.