Memory 11: Orphan
Nov. 12th, 2011 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baddecisiondzurI think Honor is four memories behind. Here's hoping she doesn't take all of them at once, because she's got two Neg-Sigs in there -- her death and this one.
What Happened
We never get this memory except from Tazendra's narration while she's more than a bit drunk. Also, thanks to a previous memory, she knows the contents already. But... well, the emotion is different. And, Tazendra hasn't actually remembered her parents yet. So it's easy to believe that her parents were badass heroes when all she knows about them is that.
So, Tazendra is the daughter of the Baron of Daavya. Though she also identifies her mother as a Countess, which confuses me -- presumably she'd inherit from the higher-ranking parent*, unless her parents had deliberately made Tazendra her father's heir and left her mother's title to her mother's family, perhaps because one side had more living family than the other.
Anyway, there's a lot of politics going on in the background that Honor knows from other memories, but Tazendra wouldn't know in this. What she does remember is, as a young girl**, waking up in her room in Daavya Castle because she hears loud noises.
Her parents and her nurse come into her room and her parents are both dressed and armed, which Tazendra assumes means things are happening. Even as a young girl, Tazendra notices the state of her parents' equipment -- 50 years later, she recollects that her mother was wearing her cutting sword, not her thrusting sword.
Now, Tazendra probably wanted to stay and help, because she is a Dzur, even though she's tiny, and had probably already started learning how to swing a practice sword. But her parents tell her to go with her nurse, and she's bundled up and departs her home. She's probably mostly confused and upset at this point, and it may not sink in.
Here's my inferences. Given how much Tazendra talks about extended family, she was probably sent that way with her nurse, and may have gotten the details later. What she was told was that the noise was a mercenary army, sent by someone who wanted their territory, and her parents were killed by sorcery as they fled from battle.
* The Empire doesn't have any special arrangements of male versus female. For example, Khaavren's son, Piro, inherits a courtesy title from Khaavren's wife, Daro, as Daro is a Countess and Khaavren, for most of the books, is unlanded gentry.
Or else this is a mistake.
** She's about thirty here, and she reaches adulthood at 80-100-ish. My guess is she'd be an elementary-school aged kid.
What Honor Learns
While Honor herself knows that she has nothing to be ashamed of -- her parents weren't running away, they were decoying the army away from a younger Aerich -- Tazendra in the memory has shame to go with what is genuine grief. Even Honor can feel grief, even if she's proud of how her parents died. Now she has some sense of them as people and parents, rather than spots on her family tree, so there is some loss there.
It's also fitting she gets this after Dagger's nightmare which has the feeling of loss of parents. While Tazendra has an extended family -- several times she brags about this or that cousin -- and a circle of friends, she did lose her own parents and home to a skirmish, to the point where she didn't even know where her parents' holdings were. And, in the beginning of the book, she also gets nostalgic when they set out from the capital, as this is another place she is leaving.
I wonder how much having Daavya to go home to helped in later life, when Tazendra was a Lavode and running around on Sethra's business. Sure, she might have been Baroness Log in the sense that she employed people to handle everything short of an invasion, but it was her castle in her territory with her things and her people.
What Happened
We never get this memory except from Tazendra's narration while she's more than a bit drunk. Also, thanks to a previous memory, she knows the contents already. But... well, the emotion is different. And, Tazendra hasn't actually remembered her parents yet. So it's easy to believe that her parents were badass heroes when all she knows about them is that.
So, Tazendra is the daughter of the Baron of Daavya. Though she also identifies her mother as a Countess, which confuses me -- presumably she'd inherit from the higher-ranking parent*, unless her parents had deliberately made Tazendra her father's heir and left her mother's title to her mother's family, perhaps because one side had more living family than the other.
Anyway, there's a lot of politics going on in the background that Honor knows from other memories, but Tazendra wouldn't know in this. What she does remember is, as a young girl**, waking up in her room in Daavya Castle because she hears loud noises.
Her parents and her nurse come into her room and her parents are both dressed and armed, which Tazendra assumes means things are happening. Even as a young girl, Tazendra notices the state of her parents' equipment -- 50 years later, she recollects that her mother was wearing her cutting sword, not her thrusting sword.
Now, Tazendra probably wanted to stay and help, because she is a Dzur, even though she's tiny, and had probably already started learning how to swing a practice sword. But her parents tell her to go with her nurse, and she's bundled up and departs her home. She's probably mostly confused and upset at this point, and it may not sink in.
Here's my inferences. Given how much Tazendra talks about extended family, she was probably sent that way with her nurse, and may have gotten the details later. What she was told was that the noise was a mercenary army, sent by someone who wanted their territory, and her parents were killed by sorcery as they fled from battle.
* The Empire doesn't have any special arrangements of male versus female. For example, Khaavren's son, Piro, inherits a courtesy title from Khaavren's wife, Daro, as Daro is a Countess and Khaavren, for most of the books, is unlanded gentry.
Or else this is a mistake.
** She's about thirty here, and she reaches adulthood at 80-100-ish. My guess is she'd be an elementary-school aged kid.
What Honor Learns
While Honor herself knows that she has nothing to be ashamed of -- her parents weren't running away, they were decoying the army away from a younger Aerich -- Tazendra in the memory has shame to go with what is genuine grief. Even Honor can feel grief, even if she's proud of how her parents died. Now she has some sense of them as people and parents, rather than spots on her family tree, so there is some loss there.
It's also fitting she gets this after Dagger's nightmare which has the feeling of loss of parents. While Tazendra has an extended family -- several times she brags about this or that cousin -- and a circle of friends, she did lose her own parents and home to a skirmish, to the point where she didn't even know where her parents' holdings were. And, in the beginning of the book, she also gets nostalgic when they set out from the capital, as this is another place she is leaving.
I wonder how much having Daavya to go home to helped in later life, when Tazendra was a Lavode and running around on Sethra's business. Sure, she might have been Baroness Log in the sense that she employed people to handle everything short of an invasion, but it was her castle in her territory with her things and her people.
