This might be the most "well duh" statement in history, but something I'm really looking forward to in Alecto the Ninth is.... Alecto.

We've seen little glimpses of her here and there, through the Body and through Nona, and the picture I see them painting is definitely of someone who has been hurt very badly, and who is very angry about it, but there's more to it. She's more complicated than that.

She's conflicted about necromancy itself:

It's not that she hates or fears necromancy—it "feels nice", she has positive associations with it, but it also makes her sad that Palamedes is capable of doing it at all. Is that regret? Does Alecto regret having introduced necromancy into the world? Does she consider herself to share in responsibility for the consequences?

Does that have to do with why she's frightened of herself, and of who she thinks she'll become if she remembers herself? She's understandably afraid to remember what was done to her, but she's also afraid of the person she'll be once she does. She thinks that person—Alecto—is incapable of love.

And it could be that her fear is only of being a person who has suffered. That she doesn't want the pain. But this series has never been shy about complicating that narrative. No one in this story is a perfect victim. Very few characters have avoided suffering terrible and undeserved harm, and few have avoided causing it.

I want to know who Alecto is. Why Nona thinks that Alecto, who is defined by love, whose final words were "I still love you," is incapable of loving. Even more, I want to know why Alecto's later actions make that fear seem kind of.... reasonable. Why the Body—who was never anything but gentle and kind to Harrow—hurts Harrow on waking, and seems to not even understand hurt has been done.

Who else has Alecto hurt, and how does she understand it? What harm has she caused, and how is she going to face up to it? What role will Harrow and her relationship with Alecto play in that?

I have some ideas, but I don't really know. And I dunno. I'm pretty stoked to think we might find out.

Wait hang on you guys, you know when Nona dies in Ntn how her body and organs split at the seams and her skin kinda starts to slough away? That’s like strikingly similar to what happens to people with acute radiation poisoning i.e. nuclear weapons. Irradiated soul Alecto causing Harrow’s body to fall apart?

Hi again I am on a Nona reread and having thoughts. This may be obvious (?) but I'm thinking the devils found on Antioch and the Ninth must be the souls of the people who were killed and not resurrected by John.

From John & Harrow's final dream conversation:

Hm. Sounds like we have some missing souls. Could they have gone beneath the River? Did John shove the souls he deemed unworthy through the stoma? Why aren't they in the River?

Kiriona seems to describe the devils as revenants, which are, as we know from HTN, only created by something with a soul experiencing a sudden violent death:

Varun, speaking through Judith, implies that the devils are coming up from under the River via the Tower. He also says that they have been "left too long," which, you know, ten thousand years is a long time:

From GTN, regarding the Canaan House spirits Teacher is so afraid of, who possessed Colum's body in the way the devils do:

Hey, you know what's another way of saying ten thousand million? Ten billion. Now why would that number sound familiar....?

Hm. Interesting.

---

Editing to add that this post from @demolitonlcvers has laid this all out and then some!!

“I hope the ATN marriage is Griddlehark!!!”

Is it not enough for you that they are soul bound? That they reside inside each other? That Gideon gave herself as a sacrificial lamb to Harrow, and Harrow rejected this sacrifice even though it would have honored the god they were both supposed to worship? I hope Gideon marries Ianthe and everyone is miserable about it. I hope Naberius’s body is married to Noodle as some sort of sick prank on Ianthe’s part. I hope Alecto marries The First (the planet, no one else). I hope Varun marries Dominicus so the solar system remains habitable even after John is dethroned.

Alecto ends with Griddlehark wedding because we have to bring back the “cavalier primarried” joke.

Alecto Prediction #7

On the Ninth, there is a very specific face paint design that is only used when you’re gonna go fuck someone. Harrow wears this one day in front of Gideon. And the scene goes as thus:

Gideon: “huh. Never seen that design before. Lame.”

Harrow: “if you ever attended to your studies of the Ninth’s traditions, you would know that this, the Skull of the Penitent Taken to Church, has a very sacred and specific purpose.”

Gideon: “wow, so interesting. Maybe you go tell Paul about it and let me get back to polishing my sword.”

Paul, who recently read the Ninth’s new postulant hand book and has popped up out of nowhere: “it means she wants to fuck.”

If Alecto’s body is made of John’s, what power does he have over her? Is that how he managed to entomb her in the first place? Because we know from the soup incident harrow was only able to get inside another Lyctor’s body with her own cells. So imagine John making her a body was not only an act of desperation but also ended up giving him even more control?

Can John sense Alecto? Is that how she knew how to find him in the epilogue? Is that how he put her to sleep? I have so many questions!

Rereading Nona the Ninth and just saw Judith/Varun's speech to Nona and.

Oh.

Oh.

They love her.

The resurrection beasts have been searching for her, for ten thousand years. They want her back. They love her. They're not crazy monsters, they're trying to get their sister back. They call her green thing because of all the plants on Earth.

And they're all intelligent. They're sapient. They're seeking vengeance. They're being entirely reasonable. They're being almost human.

And when Mercymorn saw Varun she said "it knows what we've done to its sisters" or something like it - I don't have the quote at hand.

That's going to be the plot of Alecto the Ninth, isn't it? About understanding the planetary revenants. About maybe making peace with the resurrection beasts. And that can't happen until Jod dies.

And Jod can't die unless Alecto dies. Alecto is going to kill Jod.

GEE I HOPE THIS ISN'T MORE FORESHADOWING

GRIDDLES DON'T BELONG IN THE SUN

THEY WILL OVERHEAT

AND MAKE ME CRY

But seriously, wtf is TM planning here. Knowing that John's death will turn off the sun makes it pretty obvious they will have to avoid that somehow. So I'm pretty certain this is not a throwaway line. And I will die if my darling girl ends up stuck in the sun.

we all love to speculate about the supposed wedding in alecto but i’d like to remind everyone that wedding can also mean:

and idk but that sounds kinda like uhhh

lyctorhood

just saying!

Clinging like a piece of driftwood at sea to that interview bit where muir said we get to see in alecto what Gideon and Harrow's relationship looks like when Gideon has the upperhand

Absolutely fucking hope that means we get to see the girlies interacting. One hundred percent here for our precious baby girl prince to be a petty pile of dogshit about it

Listen. I am 90 percent positive we are still waiting on the Alecto the Ninth wedding, and also that it will be between some combination of Gideon and/or Ianthe and/or Harrow.

But also. John caught the bouquet at the last wedding ever. Sarpedon should start ring shopping

what happened to the ten billion?

I just finished another reread of Nona and there were a few lines that I missed the first two times that I picked up on this time– namely, about the rest of the ten billion people John killed during the Resurrection. The simplified version of the theory is: I think the rest of the ten billion went through the stoma into hell, and I think the thing that possessed Colum Asht at the end of Gideon, as well as the things that were in Drearburh at the end of Nona and that Kiriona talks about fighting on Antioch are the ten billion. I also think that the first act of Alecto, which is titled “Harrow in Hell,” is going to be Harrow descending into hell and setting all of those souls free. I also think they have something to do with the Tower, but since we know so little about the Tower my evidence on that is shaky at best, and the Tower could also be something of John’s. If you want my full in-depth explanation with quotes and everything, it’ll be below the cut: 

Someone has probably already figured out that whatever took control of Colum Asht’s body in Gideon (+ the things that were in Drearburh + the things the Cohort are fighting on Antioch) comes from the stoma, but it was something I just put together myself today and I’m very excited about it. The first piece of evidence is the fact that they have a similar appearance– the bodies possessed by these revenants’ eyes turn into mouths, with teeth and tongues, and the tongue they’re supposed to have in their regular mouth gets bigger. The stoma described at the end of Harrow has teeth and a bunch of tongues (also this is off-topic but the appearance of the stoma resembles the sea monster Charybdis from Greek mythology to me, I wonder if that’s intentional). All of this I’m like 95% sure I’ve seen in a post on here before, but I also found this quote in Harrow, spoken by Augustine to Mercymorn– “You never did take the stoma seriously, which is why your whole damned house sucks at it like a grotesque teat…” (htn 340). Weird gross description aside, this is what cemented this theory for me– the Eighth clearly worships the stoma in some way, probably because of their soul siphoning practices, which can let something from the stoma into the body of the cavalier if they are siphoned too much. Also, close to the end of ntn, Kiriona is explaining these things to Paul and says John calls them “devils:” “They shouldn’t be here. We would have gotten word if they were back in the home system. they’re confined to Antioch— he said they’d only be on Antioch… (Paul asks where they’ve seen this before) Silas Octakiseron’s poor bastard cavalier… I didn't understand then… we call them devils. I mean, Dad calls them devils… they can't be here. He said they couldn’t travel” (ntn 448). Devils = from hell, et cetera et cetera. More on the fact that the devils “shouldn’t be in the home system” later.

But what do the revenants from the stoma have to do with the ten billion? I have a few pieces of evidence for this, but two of them are from Varun possessing Judith to speak to Nona, so they don’t make a lot of sense. The first quote is from the scene where Nona and Varun-in-Judith are talking on top of the trucks: “They are coming out of their tower, salt thing. There is a hole at the bottom of their tower. I will pull their teeth. I will make it blank for you” (ntn 393). I’m not even going to try to figure out what “I will pull their teeth, I will make it blank for you” means, other than the fact that the stoma has teeth so maybe that has something to do with it? I was very confused over what “they” were until I got to the second quote, from the scene when they’re driving in the River and see the Tower for the first time: “He left them too long— you left them too long, my salt thing” (ntn 440). The ten billion, if they are in hell, have certainly been there for too long, long enough for them to turn into the revenants they are now. What complicates this is the fact that Kiriona and Ianthe are called the “Tower Princes–” why would John name them after the Tower if it has something to do with the ten billion people he killed, who he’s now presumably losing a war against on Antioch? Unfortunately, I don’t really have an answer for that other than “this whole theory could be totally wrong and Tamsyn Muir will completely contradict everything I’ve said up to this point in Alecto.”

The last piece of evidence that pulls it all together for me, though, is Harrow. In the last John chapter in Nona, she says to him– ““I want to understand the mathematics, now that I have seen them for myself. I want to know how many of the Resurrection are left, and how many you began with, and what the discrepancies are. I want to know where you put them. They didn’t go in the River” (ntn 435). Right after this, she walks into the River towards the Tower. To add to this, it’s confirmed that the first act of Alecto will be titled “Harrow in Hell,” and Tamsyn has said before that Harrow’s name is specifically a reference to the Harrowing of Hell. The Harrowing of Hell is the period of time between Christ’s death and his resurrection, during which he descended into hell and freed all of the souls who had been trapped there since the beginning of time. I think what’s going to happen in the first act of Alecto, presumably in between when Harrow walks into the River in Nona and when she comes back to her body in the epilogue (it’s been established that time works differently in the River, and probably underneath the River, too), is she’s going to go into hell and set the ten billion free (and also maybe Augustine and Ulysses, both Lyctors who were trapped down there, but I could be being too hopeful). Also, as an extra note, the harrowing of hell has a name as a subject in Christian art: Anastasis, which is Greek for “resurrection.” And another note that I don’t know where else to put: Anastasia’s cavalier being named Samael may end up being important, what with all this discussion of hell and devils. 

My last point has to do with how the devils ended up in Drearburh. This part of the theory is very tentative, but I don’t really see any other way it would be possible from the information we have now: at the beginning of Harrow, in a scene I forgot about the first two times I read it, John sends some of the ancient dead to the Ninth House:

“Oh my God,” you said, forgetting that the deity in question was right there. “The ancient dead. You’ve committed resurrection.” 

He said, “No. I haven't truly resurrected anyone in ten thousand years. But all that time… I set many aside, for safety… and I've often felt bad about just keeping them as insurance. They’ve been asleep all this myriad, Harrow, and it’s frankly a relief to my mind to wake them up.” (htn pg 36)

I think this is, somehow, how the devils ended up on the Ninth. However, it clearly isn’t something that happened to every single resurrected person sent to the Ninth– at the end of Nona, she mentions seeing people of all ages in Drearburh, something they definitely didn’t have at the beginning of the series. I also want to point out how insane and fucked up it is that John’s been keeping a bunch of resurrected people from ten thousand years ago in his basement “for insurance.”

Again, all of this is very very tentative and I'm sure when Alecto comes out I will have predicted maybe 2 things correctly

whattif. IANTHE is responsible for the appearance of the devils

I’m rereading Harrow for the first time after Nona and noticed a very subtle but very disturbing trend when Resurrection Beasts come up.

The wording is careful, but quite specific when it comes to why the Resurrection Beasts come for the Lyctors; for John, it’s related to him killing the planets, but for his lyctors, it is very clear that the reason why the RBs want them is because they consumed their cavaliers’ souls.

This is pretty obvious in theory, but I didn’t really think much of it when I first read that. Like, it just kind of makes sense as some kind of abstract concept linking them with John while also being “unnatural” enough to invoke the wrath of eldritch monsters. But the more you look into it, the more it seems that the Beasts have some sort of connection to the cavaliers.

They see the consumed souls of the cavaliers and they are physically drawn to them. It’s like some base instinct that draws them to the lyctors at all times, that they just have to get to the cavaliers, but it’s not clear why. THEN, we get to Nona.

In the first conversation we get with blue-madness Judith, Varun the Eater shouts at Nona that he saw Gideon— and ALL the other cavaliers— in the River. The other cavs seem to be fighting the RBs, but Varun’s opinion on them isn’t exactly clear yet. What is clear is that wherever cavaliers go when their souls are consumed is the same place that the RBs go. There is something of them that is alike, where they are called to each other, where they are trapped together, and it has to be important.

Back to image 2 with Mercymorn’s cries about it seeing her cavalier’s mortal soul, she describes the RB (Varun) as “blue like Loveday’s eyes,” aka Loveday Heptane, Cytherea’s cav. You know, the one from the Seventh House.

Varun the Eater. Neptune. Number 7. Resembles the eyes of the consumed cavalier of the Seventh.

No way in hell is that a coincidence, especially with how important eye color is in this series.

It’s also worth mentioning that there were originally NINE Resurrection Beasts, including Alecto; one for each planet. Harrow is the Ninth Saint to Serve the King Undying. Including Gideon (but not Samael), there are NINE dead cavaliers.

THEN, thinking of Alecto, the gold-eyed gold-haired RB who already favors the Ninth House—whose cav has some Very Interesting eyes and a history of body hopping… do you see where I’m going with this?

My thoughts aren’t fully cooked on this one because I’m not that smart, but there’s clearly something here. Like, the Resurrection Beasts are drawn to cavaliers, they go to the same liminal space when they’re dead, they resemble cavaliers, there’s the same number of them as cavaliers… add to this the fact that John keeps all of the corpses of the dead cavs around and we know RBs can possess bodies… let’s just say he’d better start settling his affairs :/