Last time on Graceling, Not-Katniss not-murdered her way through the guards, also tragic backstory.

IT WAS a land of seven kingdoms. Seven kingdoms, and seven thoroughly unpredictable kings. Why in the name of all that was reasonable would anyone kidnap Prince Tealiff, the father of the Lienid king?

Well, you just said they were unpredictable, so why would you expect a predictable reason?

The Lienid people didn’t have enemies. They shipped their gold to whoever had the goods to trade for it; they grew their own fruit and bred their own game; they kept to themselves on their island, an ocean removed from the other six kingdoms. They were different. They had a distinctive dark-haired look and distinctive customs, and they liked their isolation. King Ror of Lienid was the least troublesome of the seven kings. He made no treaties with the others, but he made no war, and he ruled his own people fairly.

So what you’re saying is you don’t get why anyone would kidnap someone valuable from an extremely wealthy but isolated nation with no allies or established trading partners?

Yes, Katsa, it sure is a mystery.

She explains that the secret council has lots of spies that managed to track down the guy. They don’t think King Murgon is actually behind it, though.

Murgon tended not to create trouble among the kingdoms, but often enough he was a party to the trouble, the agent of another man’s crime as long as the money was good.

That seems like really poor policy. Every time anything happens, he’ll have the other kingdoms on his doorstep, and before long they can just invade at will on any pretext. Plus, if he’s so mercenary, why wouldn’t he turn around and sell out whoever he’s working with?

It’d make more sense to me for Murgon to just be terribly lax about enforcing anything and for criminal groups to tend to operate in the area. An incompetent king may be annoying, but being annoying doesn’t mean you can march through his kingdom whenever you feel like it.

But anyway. Point is, they have no idea who paid for the kidnapping. All they know is it wasn’t their own king, and that’s just because the guy in charge of this sort of thing is on the council.

In truth, Randa usually took care not to involve himself with the other kingdoms. His kingdom sat between Estill and Wester on one axis and between Nander and Sunder on the other. It was a position too tenuous for alliances.

…I’m pretty sure that, historically, it’s more like that’s a position too tenuous not to have alliances. You don’t want people allying to divvy you up. Instead, you form a mutual defense pact with as many of your border countries as possible, so that if any one attacks, you’ve got three others to back you up. Sure, you’ll have to support them if they get attacked, but better to fight wars in someone else’s backyard.

The kings of Wester, Nander, and Estill-they were the source of most of the trouble. They were cast from the same hotheaded mold, all ambitious, all envious. All thoughtless and heartless and inconstant.

So, there’s seven kingdoms. Three of them are terrible, another one of them is willing to go along with anything terrible for cash and is fine leaving old men to freeze, and then there’s their own king, who they don’t seem to think much of. I’m anti-monarchy and even I think making five out of seven kings into absolute shitheads is pushing things.

Apparently all that keeps those three in check is that they keep making and breaking alliances with each other and spend their time fighting among themselves.

And the kings were no better to their own people than they were to each other’s. Katsa remembered the farmers of Estill that she and Oll had lifted secretly from their makeshift prison in a cowshed weeks before. Estillan farmers who could not pay the tithe to their king, Thigpen, because Thigpen’s army had trampled their fields on its way to raid a Nanderan village. Thigpen should have been the one to pay the farmers; even Randa would have conceded this, had his own army done the damage. But Thigpen intended to hang the farmers for nonpayment of the tithe.

And then what, Katsa?

No, seriously. And then what? Where did they go?

They can’t go back to their farms, after all. Did you bring them to your own country? Where did you put them? The feudal system works on the fact land is scarce and valuable, so there aren’t open meadows everywhere just waiting for a plow. If you did take them, what about the rest of their family, did you get them as well? What happens when someone asks them how they escaped?

And if there’s a system in your country for refugees, and your king is so much saner than another one, you should be getting swamped. And the other king or kings should be getting testy about it.

Katsa has no answers. She just says the three bad kings keep the council busy, but what are they actually accomplishing here?

Apparently the five kingdoms used to get along because they were once a single family.

Centuries back they had all been of the same family, ruled by three brothers and two sisters who had managed to negotiate their jealousies without resorting to war. But any acknowledgment of that old family bond was long gone now.

Because being related worked so great for Europe.

In fact, I’m going to say that kingdoms are vastly better off if they aren’t each other’s inlaws. The worst thing to end up with is a can’t live with them/can’t live without them toxic family dynamic on a continental scale, playing out bitter family squabbles using commoners as pieces. Ultimately, familial bonds are irrational and emotional. That’s good when you need people to work against personal self-interest for the good of everyone, but it’s not something you want involved when rational self-interest will get you stability all by itself.

And apparently they do have a setup for queens, but everyone now is a king.

Now, the usual setup is that control of the country defaults to a female kid when you’re out of males. But from the sounds of this, the place was once one giant kingdom and the original ruler hacked it up for the kids, and if women only get control if there’s no boy around, then the kingdom should only have been split into three.

Plus, you’d expect the two sisters, at least, to set things up so that their daughters would have a chance at the throne. Admittedly, it’s possible they did and it’s just bad odds, but –

Hm. Let’s start counting characters.

Female:
Katsa (superpowers)

Male:
Oll (spymaster)
Giddeon (lord)
All the guards
The prisoner, Prince Tealiff
Prince Raffin (drug maker)
All the kings
The guy who tried to grope her when she was eight
All of Oll’s soldiers
The unknown guy in the courtyard (superpowers)

Well. That’s a something.

There’s always the issue of how much is an attempt at realism, of course. If certain areas are the province of men, then it makes sense that the character would end up mostly surrounded by them.

But where are the other female fighting-gracelings? (Or really, any skill that’s halfway useful in a combat setting?) Why is the council apparently all male? Women were still involved in politics. There’s no clear reason why the prisoner had to be male as well, or why there isn’t a single ruling queen, or why the prince has managed to take on a female gendered skill of herbalism while there’s no reciprocal female character taking up a male spot willingly.

Katsa mentions the first other women so far, the wife of seventh kingdom Monsea’s king.

Not much was known about the Monsean court. King Leck was well liked by his people and had a great reputation for kindness to children, animals, and all helpless creatures. The Monsean queen was a gentle woman. Word was she’d stopped eating the day she’d heard of the Lienid grandfather’s disappearance. For of course, the father of the Lienid king was her father as well.

You know what I’d like to see for once? Something recognizing that a pacifist king kind to all living creatures is probably going to make a shitty ruler. He won’t have the strength to defend his people from the less kind kings, and generally what’s described is all on a personal level anyway – they’re never making broad social change to address systematic problems, it’s just individual things like picking a random beggar on the streets and taking him back to the palace for a lavish meal.

Also oh my god the terrible writing. For of course, the father of the Lienid king was her father as well.

a) YES YOU ALREADY SAID THAT, DO YOU THINK WE’RE STUPID?
b) COULD YOU PHRASE THAT ANY WORSE?

God damn.

Anyway. Katsa wonders for a minute if maybe Lienid was involved in the kidnapping.

A notion that might seem ridiculous, if it hadn’t been for the Lienid man in Murgon’s courtyard. His jewelry had been rich: He was a noble of some sort. And any guest of Murgon’s warranted suspicion.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that he might have been there looking for Granddad as well (either because they have spies too, or just because apparently Murgon’s always behind this), or even there to negotiate a settlement.

But Katsa didn’t feel he was involved. She couldn’t explain it, but it was what she felt.

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Look, there are many reasons to feel things. Some are rational. Some are irrational. Pick whichever fits and use that. She doesn’t even need to realize that’s the basis, just have her mention enough for readers to tell. And at least don’t rewrite the same damn sentence twice. Hell, even just not repeating “feel” here would be an improvement. Where was the editor?

THEY REACHED Randa City before the sun did, but only just. When the horses’ hooves clattered onto the stones of city roads, they slowed their pace. Some in the city were already awake. They couldn’t tear through the narrow streets; they couldn’t make themselves conspicuous.

…so, they don’t have any established safehouses to sneak into to even get a change of clothes or something? How the hell have they lasted this long without anyone finding out?

Don’t worry, though – they have a PLAN.

She passed her reins to Giddon and took the reins of Tealiff’s horse. Giddon and Oll turned down a street that led east to the forest, leading Katsa’s horse behind them. This was the arrangement. A grandfather on horseback and a boy at his side climbing to the castle were less likely to be noticed than four horses and four riders.

So, Step One: Pretend that one boy is behind stealing the prisoner instead of four people, one of which is a girl.
Step Two: Sneak into another city by pretending to one boy leading a guy matching the prisoner’s description instead of four people, one of which is a girl.

I can only assume that later on someone from Mumu’s court will show up and Katsa will try to throw them off the trail by disguising herself as a boy so they won’t connect her to what happened.

And of course he’s going onto the castle itself, but it’s okay, they’ll be entering through a high doorway in a defunct section of the castle wall because that sure ensures no servant will notice! Brilliant.

Katsa pulled the old man’s blankets more firmly around his head. It was still fairly dark, but if she
could see the hoops in his ears, then others would be able to see them as well.

Or you could just take them out if they’re so horribly distinctive…?

She tries to get him to wake up because she says she’s not going to be able to carry him up the stairs.

The Lady Katsa, is it?”
“Yes, Lord Prince.”
“I’ve heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky.”
“Yes, Lord Prince.”
“I’ve heard you could kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger.”
She smiled. “Yes, Lord Prince.”
“Does it make it easier?”
She squinted at his form hunched in the saddle. “I don’t understand you.”
“To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?”
She laughed. “No, Lord Prince. I’d happily do without both.”

I…don’t see why she thinks this is so friendly. I mean, I could see with the right tone this working, but on its own, it’s taking a terribly negative look at things. He’s defining her immediately by her Grace, then saying her Grace is evil, then saying that at least she’s pretty – the last bit particularly raises my hackles.

I’d think she’d be taking this rather badly, given how hard she worked to not kill anyone today and the fact she was trying to use her Grace positively, and here the guy who she rescued makes their first conversation topic Why Your Powers Suck.

Katsa goes on to say she likes that he was willing to talk about her Grace, as if that conversation qualified. He didn’t actually ask her jack shit about it, he made a bunch of statements.

She passed the horse’s reins to a child crouched beside the wall, a girl whose father was a friend of the Council.

How many people are in on this secret? Even if you assume they can somehow be completely sure they can trust everyone involved, people talk. Kids talk.

Anyway, gramps used up all his energy telling her she has pretty eyes, so he’s passed out and she needs to drag him up the stairs alone.

“The whole city has likely heard your approach,” he whispered. “Honestly, Kat, I wouldn’t have expected you to be capable of such a racket.” He bent down and eased her load onto his own thin shoulders. She leaned against the wall and caught her breath.
“My Grace doesn’t give me the strength of a giant,” she said. “You Ungraced don’t understand. You think if we have one Grace, we have them all.”

This seems interesting too. It suggests that Katsa’s powers are more a mental or perhaps probability based thing, with little or no connection to her actual physical condition. That would mean she needs to train like a normal person to accomplish anything else. And it would be really counterintuitive from an outsider’s perspective because we usually connect how dangerous someone is to how strong someone is, so the idea you could snap a person’s neck but struggle to carry boxes is hard to keep in mind. I wonder if this is one of the limitations in using Graced people effectively, people instinctively assume one trait means basic competence in other areas because it’s not normally possible to have such a narrow or disconnected specialty.

That’s the end of the chapter, she dumps the guy off to Prince Ragamuffin and leaves.

Well. The names are just getting more ridiculous by the chapter. Thigpen is the worst, it sounds like pigpen. I hope we’re not getting a big cast in this.