‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭4‬:‭1‬-‭3‬ ‭

i'm dying to know what Cordelia asked Alastair - - did she tell him about the paladin situation? did she really give him Cortana? If she did, what was his reaction? How did she get through it? Did he comfort her? Did they plan to find a way out of the whole thing?

There's also something grand about Alastair as a child, demanding the blade be his, to Alastair now as an adult refusing to wield the sword at all. He doesn't just love Cordelia, he respects her as a Shadowhunter and fighter and will not take her weapon for himself 😭 I really doubt, even if she gave it to him, that he would use it.

The Water-Lily Pond by Claude Monet (1899)

Gideon: Sophie and I are having a baby.

Alastair: That's gre--

Gideon, slamming adoption papers on the table: It's you, sign here.

I don’t have links but I really want to talk about The Last Hours because I’m so excited, so I’m just gonna ramble??

The theory I heard that makes a lot of sense to me is that the baby Sona is currently pregnant with will be raised by Alastair. This would explain how Alastair had a child (despite claiming he’d never marry) and is the great-grandfather of Emma Carstairs according to the family tree. It would also explain why the third Carstairs child is nowhere to be found on the family tree itself; since CC has claimed that it’s been purposefully altered, perhaps this is one of the alterations -- Sona had a baby, for some reason could not take care of that child, and so they were taken in by Alastair and raised as his. This is a sad theory though, because Sona is lovely and I don’t want anything to happen to her at all :( 

I am really hoping there will be a very close relationship that will develop between Jem and Alastair and I base it on this one point, in Forever Fallen, where Jem mentions a specific cradle, which he’d personally seen carved over 100 years earlier at Cirenworth ---

“The cradle had been carved more than a hundred years ago from an oak felled in these woods. Jem had seen it made, with careful hands and patient love.”

He doesn’t mention who carved it by name, but Cirenworth has only been owned by the Carstairs since 1895. It was bought by Elias Carstairs, years after Jem had become a Silent Brother, so the only way this passage could make sense is if he’d seen either Elias, Alastair or a child of either of the two build the cradle. 

Now, he can’t have seen Elias, because it’s known and pretty much canon that Elias refused to allow Jem to visit or be near his family whatsoever. It can only either be Alastair or someone directly after Alastair, which means Alastair must’ve had a close enough relationship with Jem if he’s just let him casually show up for a day of woodworking or to be close enough to his child that he’d be there if his child were the one doing it.

So, there is a baby; there is a cradle built by either Alastair for a child or a child of Alastair that Jem would’ve seen at Cirenworth.

I don’t know if this makes no sense but I just wanted to write it all out. I’m really excited!

I’m looking to go down the rabbit hole of theories for Chain of Iron and Chain of Thorns from The Last Hours trilogy. If anyone wants to comment, or link me to any of the theories, I would be much appreciated.

BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER (1999) dir. JAMIE BABBIT

I completely forgot the line you mentioned about Andrew’s mind being where it should have been, but your comments about it are spot on! Andrew is too saddened by Laurie leaving, and then too distracted by refusing his demands, that he cannot think enough to come up with a way to comfort Charlot, his actual charge. It really makes the whole thing 10x sadder. I'm definitely gonna have to go back and reread that scene now, just to get a clearer sense of it all!

Re: 'the loss of that relationship feels real to me' I think is because it is a real loss. Laurie loved Andrew, and always felt their relationship to be real even when Ralph didn't, but by the end he can never see him again. It's heartbreaking.

Actually, both times I read the book, I came away happy for Laurie but also very sad and I think his relationship with Andrew (and Andrew's whole storyline) is the reason why. If you think about it, at the end of the book, Laurie is put in the exact same position Ralph was all those years ago at school: here is someone who adores him, and who refuses to believe that he's done what he's been accused of simply because he cannot fathom that he'd do it. And what does Laurie do? Exactly what Ralph did: he tells the truth, gives Andrew the Phaedrus and goes away. But what will happen to Andrew after this? We don't know and neither does Laurie. He may die in the next 5 years, but even if he doesn't, it seems hopelessly optimistic to envision a similar happy ending to Laurie's for him.

Propaganda for Andrew's moral code....

Time for a bit of Andrew love I think.

@telltaleangelina I loved your post about Ralph/Laurie’s philosophy of life compared with Andrew’s, which so resonated with me - they have a kind of heroic idealism which is very attractive, and apart from anything else it supplies most of the drama and action of the book!

But it also made me want to think more about Andrew and his motivations. So, inspired by the 'Hot Austen men' polls, here is some propaganda for Andrew. At fifteen he had to decide whether to throw in his lot with the military side of his family or the pacifist one, and it is made clear he took this decision seriously:

“I thought all around it. I thought there might conceivably even be some circumstances when I felt it was right to kill. If I knew whom I was killing and the circumstance and the nature of the responsibility. What I finally stuck at was surrendering my moral choice to men I'd never met, about whose moral standards I knew nothing whatever."

He becomes a CO not to abrogate moral responsibility but so that he can take responsibility for his actions.  Later he and Laurie have this exchange:

“One has to draw the line where one sees it oneself."

"Is that what you call the inner light?"

"If you like, yes."

So the thing that strikes me about the Charlot incident is that his principled stance is not blind faith or rigidity of thought. His main regret is that fighting with Laurie prevented him finding a solution to the problem.  He says:

“If I ... if my mind had been where it should have been, I'd have known what ought to be done, something would have come to me."

Laurie says:

"I do this kind of thing. I get steamed up about things that happen to people till I've got to do something or burst, and if it turns out to do more harm than good, hell, what's the odds, it did good to me. At school for instance. A man -- one of the boys I mean, was going to be sacked, and because I liked him I took for granted he couldn't have done it, and I was all set to have raised hell and involved a lot of other people. And all the time he'd done it after all."

Laurie admits that actually it feels good to ‘do’ something, even if the other person doesn't want it. It is easy to see that both of them have a valid point when it comes to the practicalities.  But for me, the point is that as long as they are trying to impose their will on each other, and operating from a place of ego, there is no possibility of finding another solution.  There are a hundred things they could have done to ease Charlot’s last moments if they had stopped thinking about themselves for one moment.  I think it's interesting for example that Laurie is the only person Charlot still recognises but he wants to 'outsource' comfort to someone else.

And then I realised that when Laurie is referring back to his 16 year old self getting 'steamed up' it is Ralph who points out to him that however much he might ‘want’ to ‘do’ something, it will be hurting other innocent people such as his own family (and very likely including Ralph himself).

Often, Laurie is annoyed at Ralph's inability to stand by.  The bit on the stairs at the party, for instance, and the bit where he tells Ralph "You can't eat and breathe for me, or live for me. No one can."  Pretty strong stuff to say to the man you just made passionate love to a moment ago! And let's not forget the comment about the drunk trying to mend the watch.

Sometimes I think the really sad thing is that Laurie is locked in to a different system of morality (The Phaedrus), one which means he is Andrew’s mentor and protector and Andrew is the innocent and therefore had no real moral agency. I'm not sure that means he could have or should have been with Andrew as a romantic partner, but the loss of that relationship feels real to me.

And finally....I think you have made me understand something that has always puzzled/amused me a little bit about the arguments that Laurie/Ralph have. He uses all those military analogies that seem to suggest that even while he sees that Ralph is trying to dominate him and battles with it, he is also, kind of, comfortable with it. And maybe it is that he sees himself in Ralph, he completely understands why Ralph is behaving the way he does. I always find that so touching (a little bit funny too, especially the captain shouting 'fire'!)

City of Bones, page 62:

Jace was seated at the grand piano…She must have made some noise because he twisted around on the stool, blinking in the shadows. “Alec?” he said. “Is that you?”

Clockwork Angel, page 100:

A boy with a violin propped against his shoulder. His cheek rested against the instrument, and the bow sawed back and forth over the strings, wringing notes out of it, notes as fine and perfect as anything Tessa had ever heard. His eyes were closed. "Will?" he said, without opening his eyes or ceasing to play. "Will, is that you?"

Queen of Air and Darkness, page 19:

A door opened at the top of the steps, and light spilled onto the dark landing. "Julian?" Emma called. "Julian, is that you?"

Chain of Iron, page 383:

James was still pushing against him, stiff armed, but his movements were slower now, his chest no longer heaving. "Matthew," he whispered. "Matthew, is that you?"

Eugene de Blaas 👒🍋

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

Jane Austen also wrote "The Beautifull Cassandra" in her youth, just as Lucie writes "The Beautiful Cordelia" as a teenager.

hmm, is the title "The Beautiful Cordelia" a nod to Jane Austen's "The Beautifull Cassandra"