inspired by this post

the importance of pov and kiriona gaia as gideon nav’s imperialist aspect

others have already made some really smart posts about how kiriona is gideon when she’s lost everything and everyone that made her who she was, and how even in the first two books, gideon was this terrifically sad creature who was disguised by the fact that she was her own narrator.

but I want to expand on that last bit, because yes. kiriona is a gideon who has lost everything, who has had to make tough decisions to survive, who has had to adapt to being primarily around her father (a manipulative asshole) and ianthe (ianthe). but this is also the first time we’re getting to see gideon from a perspective other than her own.

we’ve always known that gideon is a beautifully unreliable narrator - see her complete understatement of the fight before harrow opened the tomb, where she neglects to tell us that she almost killed harrow with her bare hands - but I think that for a lot of us, the introduction of kiriona was when we first felt that.

now, nona is not an objective narrator either (lmao). and she does actively dislike gideon (which is fascinating, and which I could go on about for several posts). but she does offer an outside perspective on gideon that we have, up to this point, been lacking.

because… yeah. sometimes, like anyone, gideon’s kind of mean. we know she’s a good person - her goodness is in many ways one of the central drivers of the plot - but that doesn’t mean she’s nice all of the time. it’s just that when she’s being mean to crux, or ianthe, or even harrow we can say, well that person deserved that. but the truth is, gideon has lived through the kind of hell that very few people could survive with any kind of goodness and softness left intact. she didn’t live through it, in fact. she’s just kind of… existed through it.

I saw another post point this out, and I want to reiterate: gideon’s goal, her whole life, has been to join the cohort. when we first meet her, we’re like, ok, makes sense, that’s the only ‘out’ available to her. and we kind of forget, even as we learn more about the empire, that what gideon wants to join is this actively and horrifically violent imperialist force. when we get to nona, and we meet hot sauce and her gang and joli and the angel and even the edenites, we expect gideon to have kept up with us somehow, to reject the empire. we want her to be one of the “good guys” (goodness in the tlt universe is another longass post I want to write…).

but gideon doesn’t reject the empire. because, crucially, she IS the empire - she is its heir, never mind the fact that that doesn’t really mean anything when the current emperor is immortal.

what I am trying to say is this: kiriona is gideon when you take everything from her, and then replace it with her father and everything he represents, and then take a step back.

that step back is crucial. it is what allows us to remember how imperialism - and by extension, or by metaphor, cruelty - works. gideon becomes cruel because she is in proximity to cruel people, AND because she is not in proximity to us.

THAT is what Muir is saying with kiriona. even the most kind, good, earnest protagonist can become a tool of evil in the right circumstances: and those circumstances include perspective. gideon, like it or not, is currently actively choosing to be a tool of empire. and if we were in her head, we might be able to - or we might be tricked into - accept her justifications for why she’s doing it.

the perspective shift is what allows us to see gideon as she - currently - truly is. it is no accident that this is when we get the outside pov. Muir allows us nowhere to hide; we have to confront what gideon has become and by extension what she always has been.

gideon nav is a good person, and I fully believe that in alecto we will watch her reject her father; I fully believe she will get to be a hero. but in order for that to happen, she - and we - must first undergo radical change and growth in terms of her worldview and attitudes. kiriona is not gideon’s final form. but in the same way that john is described by harrow as having aspects, kiriona is the aspect or facet of gideon that embraces cruelty, that perpetuates empire.

Muir tells us: even the most beautiful-hearted, trod-on girl in the world can become a tool of empire. but I have no doubt that in alecto she will tell us: this is how that girl can destroy it.

Gideon, Harrow, and "Wedding Vows"

i frequently see the interpretation that this:

"The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee," said Gideon. (GtN 438)

plus this:

"If I forget you, let my right hand be forgotten," her mouth was saying. "Add more also, if aught but death part me and thee." And, unsteadily: "Griddle." (HtN 360)

plus this:

It didn't even matter when Kiriona said, "Sure, Cam. Marry a moron, then die. I get the urge." (NtN 372)

equals Gideon and Harrow are married! crying face emoji!

i'm not disparaging that interpretation, i think it's valid and has some basis in the text, and even if it wasn't/didn't, i think fans should have all the fun they want. but for me, it doesn't fully capture the complexity of what Gideon and Harrow are to each other, and i want to explore a slightly less straightforward reading.

Catholic weddings, vows, and Ruth under the cut ;)

Gideon and Ninth House traditions

let's start with Gideon quoting Ruth. i've seen folks repeating the idea that this is a wedding vow. it's more accurate to say that this is a verse often used as a wedding vow, in other denominations of Christianity, and secularly as well. but in a (traditional) Catholic wedding, the couple can't write or choose their own vows--the Celebration of Matrimony has specific text, with one or two variations, that is always used.

now, we haven't seen a Ninth House marriage ceremony. if we do see such a thing in AtN and discover that Ruth 1:17 is part of that tradition, i will cry a million happy queer tears about it. but i think it's somewhat likely that Gideon has never even seen a Ninth House wedding, given how small and trending elderly the population is, and that we know no couples in her lifetime have had kids other than the Reverend Parents.

what i'm getting at here is that this quotation from Ruth doesn't seem, to me, to represent something that's religiously or traditionally binding in Ninth House culture. it uses some similar language to Catholic marriage vows, "until death do us part" etc, but i don't think these are words that make them married in the eyes of the Ninth or the Houses at large, i think these are words Gideon has chosen as a specific expression of her devotion. and where does she get them from, if not some Ninth House ceremony or scripture?

well, this is a slightly longer stretch, but at the point in the story when Gideon says this, she's already dead. Harrow has begun to absorb her--and thanks to "The Unwanted Guest," we know that souls are porous, permeable, and rub off on each other when they're in contact. Gideon's soul is at this moment being integrated into Harrow's; Harrow has certainly read all kinds of books on the Ninth ranging from usual to totally heretical, some of them probably extremely old, and it's not unreasonable to think writings from before the Resurrection might have been copied and recopied into something Harrow could access. And speaking of soul permeability, Harrow's had Alecto's soul clinging onto hers for seven years, and Alecto's soul is in intimate contact with John's soul--there are so many ways for this bit of scripture to make its way into Gideon's non-corporeal mouth. the STI (Soulfully Transmitted Infection) of biblical knowledge.

Ruth in context

now let's talk a little about Ruth, the book of the Bible and also the character of the Bible, and Naomi, who she is swearing her devotion to. tl;dr, Naomi and her husband and two grown sons are Israelites who immigrate to Moab, a "pagan" nation, to escape famine. Naomi's two sons marry Moabite women; then the sons both die, as does Naomi's husband. Naomi, having lost everything, decides to return home where she'll be penniless and have a bad life but at least she'll be among her people; she tells her two daughters-in-law to go back to their families. One of them goes.

The other, Ruth, refuses, and swears beautiful devotion to Naomi, as we've heard Gideon quote: "She answered: Be not against me, to desire that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee."

in a biblical context, this has nothing to do with a wedding vow. Ruth is promising to leave the comfort of her own people, religion, and homeland to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi, even though the connection they had (Naomi's son, Ruth's husband) is gone, and all they have to look forward to is a terrible life of grief and bitterness. this is frequently interpreted as a parallel to Jesus, who (in the religious perspective) made the sacrifice of leaving his place with God and becoming human out of devotion to humanity, in order to live and suffer and redeem us. woof, this is giving me flashbacks to CCD.

of course, many Christians resist interpreting what passes between Ruth and Naomi as resembling a wedding vow for homophobic reasons too--making it about Jesus is a way to make it less queer--but i think the point still stands that this is a more complicated, and less marriage-related, expression of love than it seems taken on its own.

Harrow's lamentation

when Harrow later echoes it back, she conflates it with a different biblical quotation: "On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments. For there they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs. And they that carried us away, said: Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion. How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee: If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy."

it's a lament, an expression of mourning, a longing for home from someone who has been forcibly removed from it. when combined with the Ruth quotation, in which Ruth is giving up her home in her devotion, this really reads to me as both Harrow's grief, immediate and overpowering, and a realization that Gideon is her home, and failing to acknowledge that is as disabling as the loss of a hand or of the power of speech. Gideon is the beginning of her joy, and Harrow is, in this moment, putting Gideon above the Ninth House in her devotion. above Alecto. above everything.

and again, i'm not saying all of that can't be about marriage, but it's about a relationship much more complicated than marriage can encompass in the context House cultural norms.

Kiriona Gaia, saddest girl

this brings me to Kiriona, and "marry a moron, then die." consider the context of this, and the tone. Kiriona's deeply, deeply hurt. the saddest girl in the universe. she died for Harrow, avowed her devotion to Harrow, and then (from her perspective) was rejected; buried; excised from Harrow's brain and then from her body. Kiriona, as she did when she was Gideon, covers her emotions with humor and sarcasm. i suspect she's even less able to handle being vulnerable as Kiriona than she ever was before. she's making light of Canaan House and what happened there, and it's only in sarcastically downplaying what she's been through that she recounts her relationship to Harrow as a marriage--something she has almost no positive examples of, something that is in her experience frequently political and joyless. also notably, she frames it as a marriage that occurred before she died.

Their actual vow

what Gideon (and Kiriona) really wants--she tells us over and over again--is to be a true cavalier.

and what does Gideon's ghost repeat right before she devastates us with Ruth 1:17?

"One flesh, one end," said Gideon, and it was a murmur now, on the very edge of hearing. Harrow said, "Don't leave me." (GtN 438)

it's taken me a dozen paragraphs just to propose that this is their vow. "One flesh, one end" are the actual words that need to be spoken, in Gideon and Harrow's cultural context, to bring them into an official union with each other; a union that is arguably more fundamental in the Houses, and certainly more complicated, than a marriage. a union Gideon specifically wants, and has seen in action.

in the pool, they vow to each other as cavalier and necromancer. in the moments before Gideon's death, she forgives Harrow again, and exposes her heart: "'You know I only care about you,' she said in a brokenhearted rush" (GtN 430). then she repeats their oath again, acknowledges the pain she's about to cause for Harrow, and rededicates herself to the Ninth--a place she never really belonged, Harrow's home and people more than her own, as Ruth dedicated herself to Naomi's home and people. Gideon "married" her moron in the pool, and now she dies to fulfill that vow.

and as we saw above, after Gideon's death, she reminds Harrow again of their union--of its importance, of how she's fulfilling what she has interpreted to be her whole purpose as a cavalier--and it's in response to Harrow's "don't leave me" that Gideon offers a final reassurance of her devotion. in her mind, this sacrifice is its ultimate expression, the most inextricable and undeniable union two people can achieve.

Gideon believes she'll be part of Harrow forever.

Alecto Prediction #4

Kiriona is not Gideon. At least she’s not the full Gideon. She’s a revenant tied to her own body, but she’s not an entire soul. Part of her soul was destroyed during lysis, before Harrow managed to stop the process. Part of her soul is still in Harrow, irrevocably intertwined. Part of her soul is still in the River. John’s not omnipotent as much as he’d like for people to think he is. Even he couldn’t rip all the parts of her soul from the multiple places it was. Gideon’s soul was already broken up between the River and Harrow, and John isn’t great at repairing broken things. He tends to be the one to break them in the first place.

I think Kiriona knows that she’s not fully there. And she hates it. She hates being a revenant in a dead body, even if it’s hers. She hears the call of the River and yearns to follow it. But John’s necromancy won’t let her. While she has a goal, something to fight and someone to fight for, it’s bearable. But as soon as she knows Harrow will be safe, I think she’ll accept death. Gideon will ask Harrow to kill her, really kill her. No grand lysis, just two desperate, traumatized kids. One clinging to anything remotely resembling stability or sanity, the other finally taking her life (and death) in her own hands. I think that it’s the first decision Gideon is allowed to make for herself. Throughout her life, she’s mostly been reactionary, but this time she is able to make a big decision about her own life when others aren’t depending on her sacrifice.

So Gideon dies. I think she’d want Harrow to do it. Harrow would resist, but I think she would realize that it is the first time Gideon’s been able to assert her own self sovereignty. So I think she does do it.

the souls of Harrowhark Nonagesimus: a timeline. for reference that i believe will be important in Alecto

1) Harrowhark Nonagesimus is conceived using the deaths of 200 Ninth House children. It is mentioned by Abigail in HTN that her soul shows the signature of hundreds of souls, meaning that they are still “with” her to some extent as she ages.

2) Harrow, age 10, enters the locked tomb and finds Alecto there. She falls in love with the body. she then touches it in some way that allows a piece of Alecto’s soul to form a revenant link or something similar with Harrow’s body. Alecto possibly manifests in hallucinations of the Body, though it’s unclear if Harrow’s memories of her hallucinations are real or a result of the lobotomy. I suspect they’re a mix of the two.

3) Gideon dies at Canaan House. Harrow consumes her soul in desperation to defeat Cytheria. As Gideon’s soul is being destroyed by the lyctoral process, Harrowhark finds a way to submerge it in her consciousness, using brain surgery to force herself to forget Gideon. Gideon’s soul is trapped within Harrow, while her body is retrieved by Blood of Eden from Canaan House and refuses to decompose.

4) Commander Wake’s revenant is living in Gideon’s two handed sword. Harrowhark carries this sword with her, which allows Wake‘a soul to attempt a takeover of Harrow’s body. She manifests in Harrow’s false memories as “The Sleeper”.

5) Harrowhark and the dead souls she unconsciously summoned to rewrite her memory expel Wake’s soul.

6) Harrow’s body is being used by Gideon’s soul, which has broken free from her submersion by Harrow remembering Gideon.

7) Harrow follows her soul’s link to Alecto’s tomb, where she takes Alecto’s place. Some part of Alecto’s soul swaps with Harrow’s and takes over her body, but does not want to remember being Alecto and becomes Nona.

8) Gideon Nav’s soul somehow returns to her corpse and becomes Prince Kiriona Gaia. This part is the most unclear, but we can extrapolate that it was God Shenanigans.

9) Throughout Nona the Ninth, Harrow’s body is possessed by Alecto. Harrow’s soul is in Alecto’s body, re-living her memories with John and learning the truth. Possibly, fragments of Harrow and Gideon’s souls live in Harrow’s body alongside Alecto. (I suspect this because of how Nona describes herself as having a top, middle, and bottom part towards the end of NTN).

10) Also, as per The Unwanted Guest, pieces of Gideon’s soul may be merged with Harrow’s, and vice versa. Nona may or may not be a part of this.

11) At the end of NTN, Alecto’s soul leaves Harrow’s body and goes back to her own. Gideon’s soul is in her corpse. Harrow gets her body back and is it’s sole inhabitant. However, following the Unwanted Guest, it might be that pieces of the other souls remain in Harrowhark.

i think there’s so much to be said about the overarching themes of the locked tomb series, but some of my favorites are the sheer breadth of humanity (both negative and positive) that is held in each and every person, and a person’s relationship with life and death.

we have gideon, who spent the majority of book one making horrendous jokes, swinging her sword and being the most classic rendition of a disaster lesbian, but even then underneath you could see the cracks leading to a deeper seeded sadness and anger. this is the gideon who as a child was attempting to run away to join the military every chance she got. the same gideon who would later quite literally jump at the opportunity to sacrifice herself for harrow when she thinks they have no other option. at one point harrow makes a comment about gideon losing her sense of self preservation, as if she ever truly had it. this is a girl who has spent her life convinced she shouldn’t have lived to begin with. she’s throwing someone else’s money at anything that catches her eye, not fully understanding the wallet is hers.

later we have kiriona, whose anguish was on full display and yet still made horrendous jokes, with a bit of extra bite. who had to make a conscious effort to hide the sides of her that obviously cared. the reflex of reaching for her coat, and the choice to keep it on herself. who we assume spent months being manipulated by ianthe and stewing in her fury at harrow, yet offered to die for her again at her first opportunity. she did it once, what’s twice gonna do? the wallet is empty, bring out jod’s checkbook.

and on the other hand harrow, who seemingly so rarely allowed herself to love others, yet whose entire existence continued due to her love of the corpse within the tomb. and later due to her love of gideon. she lobotomized gideon out of her memory to preserve her existence, and even without being able to remember who she was doing it for, she commanded herself to live. she wanted to die so badly, but in her mind the only thing she could do for them was to live as no one she had loved had been able to do for her. a girl who also believed she should never have lived, forcing herself to go on because the ones who should be living can’t and she sees it as her own fault. she has chained the wallet to her wrist and counts the coins every night.

and finally nona, who loved unabashedly and with reckless abandon. whose joy shone as brightly as her rage. who, free from the knowledge of the trauma her body mind and soul have endured, could allow herself to experience all of these emotions in excess and not be bogged down by the weight of it all. she was so delighted by every life she saw. and she was so ready for death. she couldn’t put into words how right her death would be, couldn’t find the comfort for those she would leave behind because she didn’t know how to make them understand she was ready. her wallet has a hole in it, and she’s been pouring out the coins and placing them lovingly into the hands of everyone she adores. then she eats the wallet.

anyways, this probably should’ve been two separate posts but i’m tired and it’s late so have my garble merry chrysler i love these lesbians so so much

griddlehark fic recs, part 4

hello and welcome to part 4 which is locked behind a community label because tumblr sucks. as a general rule i do not recommend smut because one person's sexy can be another person's squick and vice versa. nevertheless: i have some M and E rated fic recs (not all of them are smut, btw). please remember to check the tags before reading a fic.

with that being said: this fandom has some incredible writers and i'm very happy to share the below fics with you guys. tumblr usernames have been added if i could find them (sorry for the notification!). here is part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Flinch M - InverseAlchemist oneshot set after the pool scene in gtn. a beautifully written fic in which gideon and harrow share a bed for warmth (a classic) and harrow spirals a bit about it. there is so much longing.

So Familiar a Gleam E - silverapples short oneshot, harrow nova au featuring kiriona gaia. nova has a dream about kiriona and its just as disconcerting and interesting as you’d think.

turn you inside out (lick you like a crisp packet) E - valancytrinit / @valancietrinit long oneshot, modern au. a first of many wonderful fics from one of the best griddlehark writers in the fandom. gideon and harrow are roommates and gideon has a really bad 48 hours that culminates in a really good morning. this fic is an excellent balance of chaotic and angsty and sweet.

knife to a gunfight E - dryrsheet two chapter modern au. they were roommates! they were roommates sharing a bed! gideon is extremely oblivious in this one and the irony is delicious. also has one of the lines of all time:

“Okay,” Gideon said, “I need you to act like I am actually as stupid as you pretend to think I am and explain why in the fuck you want me to do that.”

hand to heart i swear M - corpsesoldier / @corpsesoldier short oneshot. harrow heals gideon’s stigmata. i very badly want this to be a thing in alecto, but i am happy with this fic version right now. this fic is superb and i love everything about it.

you're still the one pool where i'd happily drown E - valancytrinit / @valancietrinit long post-ntn speculative multi-chapter, completed. i love everything about this fic. i was literally hanging on every word when i read each chapter for the first time. the writing is incredible. there is a shower scene that is legitimately fucking shakespearean. additionally, i absolutely love the way that harrow’s mental health is portrayed in this fic as someone who struggles with similar conditions.

illbringthestrap69420 liked your post E - imalwaysstraight / @nooomagnus long multi-chapter college/uni au, currently unfinished. the enemies to anonymous tumblr mutuals to lovers fic. listen. this fic is an incredible experience for dramatic irony enjoyers. this fic is like dramatic irony: the fic. i love this fic so fucking much. another fic that has kept me on the edge of my seat while reading.

Bid My Blood to Run M - winterkill / @thebrimmingheart short oneshot. another fic where harrow heals gideon’s stigmata! the banter in this fic is wonderful. again, i really hope there's a scene like this in atn.

Let Me Hold It Lightly M - downjune / @itstartledme short oneshot set during htn. a classic ‘harrow sees gideon in her dreams’ situation. very tender and bittersweet.

Wormian E - BonesforTime long oneshot, postcanon au/spec. harrow works through some religious trauma. ok full disclosure: my favorite thing about this fic is the way it’s written. when i first read it, the prose had me completely fucking bewitched. the fic gets more speculative towards the end, and as it was written pre-ntn there’s some pretty big discrepancies with current canon. regardless, the fic itself is extremely well written and compelling.

east of the sun, west of the moon E - zealotarchaeologist short oneshot set during htn. another dream situation, this time featuring harrianthe and harrow/the body. the writing here is exquisite.

let's drink to feelings of temptation not rated - overnights / @televangelists long oneshot, modern bartending au. gideon gets hired at camilla’s bar and harrow is not having it. there’s women who hate each other. there’s customer service shenanigans. there’s ianthe in a grocery store. it’s a very solid modern au.

Mors Vincit Omnia M - WalkingDisaster / @four-for-fidelity long multi-chapter modern au, currently unfinished. a murder mystery where gideon is a witness in an investigation and has to assist forensic scientist harrow. it’s really well written and the mystery is very fun and macabre! it is currently unfinished but i am excited to see where the plot goes.

grab me by my ankles (i've been flying for too long) E - valancytrinit / @valancietrinit long oneshot, college/uni au. harrow is a competitive diver and gideon is a mechanic who ends up carpooling harrow to diving practice. there is a truly astounding amount of dyke drama going on here and it is excellent. the dialogue is incredible as well.

Living Souls and Alecto

Okay, so it's time for TLT theorizing. There's a line that's always stood out to me in Harrow the Ninth, and I've never seen a theory really grapple with it: "You are alive, Harrowhark—that does mean something where souls are concerned."

This is Abigail, who follows up with a description of how Harrow's soul will be drawn to her body no matter what. And the concept comes up a few times: It's important when Gideon comes back as Kiriona Gaia. She has not been resurrected; she's a revenant, haunting her own corpse. I thought it would come into play in Nona with Palamedes - I thought him being dead would make it too late, but that was not the case. Everyone mostly acts like Palamades, Wake, Gideon hanging about as revenants are just the same people, and the text bears this out. However, the text also wants you to know there's a difference between a dead soul and a living soul. These differences are unclear, but we know some things:

For one, there's the question of where they go. Revenants are drawn into the river, but can stick around through thanergetic links; living souls are drawn into their bodies, which are notably thalergetic. I think this might imply that dead souls are... converted? like plants? that they become thanergetic; there's mention of thanergetic cascades upon death, which is what makes revenants in the first place. This is also supported by not being able to get Thanergy for a reaction from Kiriona in Nona.

For another, there's the wild panic. Revenants flee their deaths; a living soul seperated from the body, again, is drawn back to it. This also seems to be what happens with 8th style siphoning: the soul returns to the body eventually.

This brings me to the Alecto part of this post. Because while it's common to describe Alecto as Earth's Resurrection Beast, I don't think that's true. While the part of Nona where John triggers nuclear Armageddon and then stuffs the earth's soul in a humanoid body is... unclear, there noticably is no part where john actually directly says he kills her. he says "i tried to hurt you" and "That stung, when i ate every single death." He describes putting his hand around her throat, but not twisting it. Now, that might be implied from the next sentence being him cupping her soul, but it's not clear at all. Further, Varun, through Judy, Calls Alecto-as-Nona "Green and breathing thing," which further implies that Alecto is in some way still alive, still green and breathing.

That implies some interesting things, however! Like... What is Alecto's body? There's the barbie one, yes, but there's also earth. When John became Alecto's lyctor, he claims he remade them; it's with Alecto's power that John became what he is. He had to make a body to house her but it's not clear why - she had a body! right there, he was standing on it! It could be he wanted to make her a body because her old one, the earth, was sick. But there's another option: because if he gave her back, he would give all of her back. There's a sliver of Alecto in John, but that's not the body it belongs to. Maybe, just maybe, the fear that John has isn't that Alecto can kill him, or that Alecto gets killed and that breaks their Lyctor bond, but something else: that Alecto, freed from the tomb, can leave the two bodies he made her - the barbie doll one, and the one he remade that houses him and a little of her, "his" body. This might also be why John calls it "a beautiful labyrinth to house you in." It's a trap, it's a delaying mechanism to keep her from just... returning to where she's supposed to go, as a living soul: her own, original body, the Earth. I don't know what that would do to John, but I think it's entirely possible that it will just... pull the part of Alecto in him out.

I think this stuff about living vs. dead souls is also why John talks about remaking, and why the Lyctoral process involves "reconstructing," to make the Lyctor, a suitable long-term host to the soul it's eating. This may also have to do with resurrection - the difference between revenanting around ala Kiriona and a proper, actual resurrection. That implies that Lyctorhood is a sort of self-resurrection where your cavalier is resurrected in you, but that's a theory for another day.

Alecto, Gideon, and Nona are the Holy Trinity of Space Lesbian Death Catholicism, and Here’s Why

Spoilers for basically everything ahead

Short version: Because Earth is the actual man who became God and God who became man, get fucked John.

Long version: Because there are three minds in Nona’s brain.

Or rather, her mind is divided into three parts, top-middle-bottom, with Nona identifying as the middle. Each part seems to be separate and distinct entity that still, somehow, comes together to be one larger whole. In other words, her head is three-in-one. A Trinity.

And wouldn’t you know it, three of our four main ladies fit the traditional Trinity almost perfectly.

Gideon as the Son. Indisputably. The Son as God who became human and lived among humans and died for humans and was resurrected. God that was at once both Human and Divine. God that said this is my flesh, eat-this-in-remembrance-of-me. Y’know, Gideon.

Nona as the Holy Spirit. The infinite love of God. God as helper and intercessor (Hi Varun!). God as the piece of the divine that exists within all of humanity.

Alecto as the Father. Alecto as the wrathful God of the Old Testament (at least in Christian interpretations thereof). God as the Judge and as Justice. God with the salt pillars and the smiting, which definitely seems to be Alecto’s vibe so far.

And here you might say wait a second, that doesn’t make sense? Alecto and Nona are the same being, sure, but isn’t Gideon’s daughter-of-godness it’s own separate, Kiriona-esque thing? And to that I’d remind you of two things: John wasn’t born with golden eyes, and there’s a red headed toddler in the River.

:readmore:

Two hundred plus dead children creates a thanergenic boom strong enough to take out a whole planet, according to Harrow. That has to have consequences. It definitely did something to Wake, who went from being the barely tethered spirit initially summoned to a super powerful revenant. What if it didn’t take out a planet, but instead it woke one up?

What if the soul of a recently wakened planet goes searching for a new vessel, and finds an empty one in a recently vacated red headed toddler, who’s soul has joined the other Ninth children in the River that Harrow sees in HtN (and red hair isn’t native to the Ninth)? This red headed toddler who is perfectly preserved, who just so happens to be made of the same genetic material as its last vessel? Who’s thus “built for it” in a way that say, Harrow, isn’t?

And so Earth becomes a girl called Gideon Nav, who has golden eyes that she couldn’t have genetically because her father wasn’t born with them. Who then lives as Gideon and dies as Gideon and is consumed by Harrow. And Harrow consumes the hamburger core of her but preserves the Happy Meal parts that are specifically Gideon, which John is then able to remove entirely, leaving behind the aspect of the soul that becomes Nona - who is then both Alecto and Gideon but is also her own person who is neither of them.

Because Gideon isn’t actually immune to poison or gas (GtN mentions shitting blood and a tonsillectomy, respectively). Because the Body didn’t speak to Harrow until she ate Gideon. Because Nona has an established history of kissing herself.

Because Nona also has Alecto’s tectonic anger and Gideon’s love of ass jokes, and in her darkest hour she speaks with Alecto’s voice and fights with Gideon’s two handed swordplay. Because Nona doesn’t like red heads and she and Gideon both find the Body hideous, but Nona also loves her face and body, and Gideon and Alecto hate themselves but love Harrow and Anastasia. Because Gideon hates to be locked up anywhere.

Because of course in their act of great cruelty to preserve their oath to the tomb, the Reverend Mother and Father would actually unleash its contents. Because if Gideon had followed Harrow into the tomb it would have changed everything in a very spoilery way, according to Word of God. Because John knows perfectly goddamn well his eyes aren’t genetically golden and is familiar with pneumatic reversion, which based on Pyrrha and Nona’s conversation seems to imply that a possessed body touching it’s original host can pull the soul back inside—and Kiriona becoming Alecto again definitely would make her his cavalier (dickhead).

Because we see at the end of NtN that the tomb that Harrow’s resting in is within Alecto, but at the end of HtN that tomb is full of Gideon’s things—her magazine and her beloved sword. Because like Kiriona, the Son can exist both separate from and within the Trinity simultaneously. Because Gideon and Alecto were abused and used and betrayed by Harrow and John and still loved them despite that, the way the Earth still loved and tried to save humanity despite everything.

Because my GOD would it be funny if Mercymorn was right the first time.

Insomniac thoughts about consistency of characterisation pre- and post-Resurrection, surfacing mid-morning because I couldn’t cope with the post editor in the iOS app at a quarter to three… *ahem*

My impression is that Jod and most of his OG duplicitous sluts were in their thirties, up to fortyish, at the time it was all going down. Old enough for some of them to have multiple tertiary degrees and be leaders in their fields; not quite older adults yet. In HtN Augustine tells us Pyrrha (the “stone-cold fox”) was ten years his senior, so probably in her late forties or fiftyish. In NtN:

I didn't have to worry about the public or the media — we had a pet cop, P—. She'd made detective by that point; was going on to big things in the MoD. Knew G— from way back, and G– and I were both hometown boys, so P– kept the heat down for us.

Later on Jod reiterates that he and G— grew up on the same street.

We also hear that P— “adored being a cop”.

This is of course off-putting for a lot of readers. But I understand that the New Zealand police, while by no means a squad of saints, are not abusive and murderous on the same level as the American kind we may be more familiar with (e.g. they don’t normally carry guns). So I’m fairly sure what we’ve got here is a character who might actually have been a good cop, in a country in which that concept is not implausible beyond belief — who then, crucially, turns her back on the law (and on her own successful career) to protect the kids from her neighbourhood. Because that was what it was about for her all along.

I don’t think the Dad Pyrrha we love to see is separable from Cop Pyrrha. I think in each life she lives her priority is to look after and protect her people, and she does that in specifically masculine-coded, paternal-coded ways. The Pyrrha we get in NtN is — as with the other Lyctors we know, charming Augustine becoming a man of plex, reproductive justice advocate Mercymorn stealing semen, dutiful Gideon obeying even the command to launch multiple violent murder attempts against a tiny traumatised teenager — someone whose best qualities have been worn out and warped by too many centuries of Jod’s unliving, undying empire. But, perhaps because Pyrrha was awake and aware for less time than the rest, that kind of love does palpably linger on in her.

Pyrrha practically stumbled away — she dropped to her knees before the chair and Palamedes — she reached out and took Palamedes's hand, and then Camilla's. Her face and hands showed only dumb despair. "I've loved you two," she said. "Not well. Not even wholesomely. I don't have it in me. But I've loved you — in a better world I'd be able to say, 'Like you were my own,' but I don't know what that would even mean anymore. You've been my agents ... you've been stand-ins for something I haven't had for longer than either of you can understand."

You can feel it every time she bribes Nona into eating, or carries her when her legs fail, or buys a birthday present and hides it away under the sink for the big day. (And when she looks at her lover's daughter with that mute hunger to have been a parent to her, too.) It’s a feature of the system Jod designed, that Lyctors don’t get much of a chance to love anyone but him. His hands, his gestures… raised by him, bound to him, renamed by him… God must be able to touch all of creation... He’s the epitome of the kind of parent who can’t imagine or allow their child to have an existence apart from their own, who’d rather stunt them than let them grow. He claimed Kiriona as his child, but he also made her his construct. And we know what he did to Alecto. But six months with Pyrrha (and the Sixth, likewise good at modeling love) and Nona just blossoms. The betrayed soul of a murdered planet has learnt anger management techniques — and now she’s learning to dance.

It seems as though at every step of Pyrrha’s story (and, just to confirm, I shall be going on a bloody rampage if we don't get the missing pieces in AtN) she knows she can’t save everyone and get everything right. Sometimes she can't save anyone at all. She has often been a casualty of her devotion. But she keeps on and on still trying, also like the Sixth, to make the best and kindest and truest choices she can in this myriadic shit sandwich. And she never stops loving the people she loves. Wouldn't know how to.

In conclusion… since I should probably conclude something… let's see. Whatever she thinks of herself, Pyrrha’s a good dad. Her accidental agents are lucky to have had those six months with her. It's not ‘playing’ house if the love there is real. And you can’t take ‘loved’ away.

Took me the whole year to realize the reason Gideon picks up the rapier so readily as Kiriona is that Nona has her hands. Nona's hands instinctively use a two-handed grip, the part of Gideon that loves her zweihander is still with Nona in Harrow's body, so of course she doesn't have any hesitation in wielding a rapier she once disliked.

That Eighth House art I just reblogged has me thinking: do they know this is a risk? Does Colum know what might happen and object to being siphoned because of that? Does Silas know what he's risking?

Ianthe sure as hell seems to have some idea what's going on when Colum's body gets possessed, and she knows enough to be able to take down the demon. Mercymorn references "an outside predator" and implies something might possess Harrowhark's body while they're in the River, so presumeably the lyctors and John have some idea this can happen. On the other hand, Kiriona says she (and presumably everyone else involved) didn't realise what was happening on Antioch immediately, and thought they had "a weird disease", so while "something fucked up can happen if you siphon someone too hard" seems to be a somewhat known fact, the exact form that fucked-up-ness takes may not be. My related Eight House Thought is that Silas is wearing mail, which is odd enough for a necromancer that Gideon's narration comments on that when she sees him for the first time. It's not the greatest armour in the world if you're dealing with blunt force, but it's reasonably cut-proof and is more use against stabbing attacks than people sometimes think. Is that because an eighth house necromancer is intended to fight while their cavalier is out of it, like we see Silas do when he takes on Ianthe? Or is it because an eighth house necromancer might have to deal with a demonically-possessed cavalier getting up in their shit?

Silas' arc hasn't been wrapped up after he Hit Da Bricks from the river bubble in HtN, and something similar to what happened to Colum is now happening to a whole bunch of people. Mayonnaise Man is coming back in AtN in some form. Also while I'm rotating these weirdos, how did Colum lose a finger? Aiglamene lost her leg fighting for the Cohort, but according to the Cohort Intelligence files, Colum was bred to be Silas' cavalier and was paired with Silas basically at birth. Would the Eighth have risked one of their specifically-bred cavaliers for their Master Templar sending him off to fight in the Cohort? Colum's in his thirties, Silas is like 17, so they might well have been paired before Colum hit Cohort age anyway. He lost that finger doing something fucky and eighth-house-related. We can reattach a finger with modern medical technology, so presumably the Nine Houses can do at least that much if you lop off a finger in a training accident or crush it in a door or something. Also Colum's leather armour apparently looks like it's seen some use as well. There's more than meets the eye with those two, and I really hope we get some idea what it is in AtN.

AND ANOTHER THING!!!

I want to punch Jod in the mouth for like, ten billion or so things, but rn I'm just fucking pissed at him for taking Gideon's identity and just erasing it.

"Gideon Nav? No no, that's not your name. Kiriona Gaia, that's much better, much more suited for the child of God. I didn't know you existed until like an hour ago but that doesn't matter, now you have a much better first name and a proper diminutive of my last name (which isn't even my original last name it's one I gave myself after ascending with the soul of the literal Earth but anyway) instead of that ugly Ninth House name.

Speaking of the Ninth House, here's some new duds that are as far from black as absolutely possible. And some flowers for your hair. Isn't that better? Not so dreary.

Your sword? Of course, here's a sword for you. A two-hander? No, no, you'll take a rapier, it's much better. [Speaking of, where the fuck IS Gideon's sword?]

Cavalier? No, no, now you're a Tower Prince.

The cohort? Oh sure, you can have an honorary title.

Never mind that you're inhabiting your body as a ghost, that you don't need to eat or drink or sleep or feel human in any way. You're above that! You're my child. You're my heir. (You're mine and will do what I say without question because why would you defy someone who gave you so many gifts? You're not of the Ninth House, you're of me.)

Now, sweetie, would you mind doing me a teeny little favor? Go back to the Ninth and destroy the thing they hold dear. Yes of course you'll be safe- I've made your skin into armor and your blood into ash and left a gaping maw where your heart was, don't you feel fearsome? And once it's done you'll be my cavalier. No, I don't care about immortality anymore. My fingers definitely aren't crossed behind my back.

Haven't I been nothing but kind to you? Haven't you seen me at my most vulnerable?

Don't you trust me?"

And of course Gideon takes takes it, because she's never been anyone's child before. She's never had someone extend their hand in offering or their voice in praise. But now the most important guy in the universe is giving her everything she ever wanted and more, and if in exchange she has to give up everything she knew and everything she was then fine. Nobody on the Ninth ever loved her, and her mother certainly didn't love her, but he says he does.

Nona the Ninth, Chapter 29

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one!)

(First House icon) In which oh yeah, that WAS in the day's events preview, wasn't it?

Everyone makes to get into the big truck, and Nona thinks longingly of her home. Pyrrha sits Nona in the chair Cam no longer needs. The new person herds everyone, stopping and healing all the worn-down people. The Angel and Pash show up, with Noodle as well. Nona asks if they're coming with, and Pash says not to get her started. She goes where Aim goes, and Aim is going with the crew, to the Nine Houses. Aim says they are a liability, and the commander will get some breathing room once they're safe.

Nona said: “Who are you?” Then she explained, “Everyone asks me the same question, so—I feel like it’s my turn.” “You don’t get to ask,” said Pash roughly; which Nona thought was a wonderful and very cool answer she wished she had come up with herself. But the Angel leant down and looked at Nona. There was something settled in her face: a calmness that had not existed there before—a kind of immovable, fixed-concrete resolve. [...] She suddenly reached up and grasped the Angel’s hand, and the Angel grasped hers, and the Angel looked at her. “I’m the Messenger,” said the Angel simply. “We are the Message … the message has two parts left, and you are looking at one of those parts. The name for this part of the message was ‘Aim’ when the message was passed to us through my forebear Emma Sen.(1) The message is too simple for human beings like us to understand. What do you think the message is?”(2) Nona couldn’t guess. “I hope you hear it one day,” said Aim. She reached out—she ruffled Nona’s hair—she smiled. Then she said, “Noodle, let’s go,” and she stepped resolutely up the ramp and into the truck.

Pash makes a joke about having to shoot Nona now,(3) waits a beat, then says it really was only a joke, and goes up the ramp. Pyrrha picks Nona out of the chair and remarks that she's been very calm. Nona says there's not long left, and asks if they're going to find her. Pyrrha says yes, it might be time to wake her up.

Pyrrha brings her to a huge cockpit with massive wraparound windows. Kiriona is already there, strapped into a seat.

She did not speak to them, even when Pyrrha said, “Hey, kid.” She had not said much of anything since Camilla and Palamedes had become Camilla-and-Palamedes—seemed withdrawn and lost in thought, unwilling to look at anyone or anything.(4)

The new person enters, with We Suffer, and Crown supporting Judith. The new person takes the biggest seat at the front.

“Mind showing me how this thing starts?” they said to the commander. “Oh, dear God,”(5) said the commander. “For what I am about to do, I will go down as history’s greatest monster.”

Nevertheless, she leans down and gives instructions. Pyrrha asks to be allowed to drive instead.

“No chance,” said Palamedes-and-Camilla comfortably. And: “Commander … thank you. Leave everything to me.” “I do—I have,” said We Suffer. And— “Every single hope of Eden(6) now rests within this clapped-out vehicle.” “Same for the Nine Houses,” said Palamedes-and-Camilla. “You know what I want,” said We Suffer. She turned to address the rest of the driver’s cockpit. “To complete what she started. Troia, listen to me. Every so often there is invoked a Blood of Eden mission protocol—we call it Protocol One. It is used in times of either terrible joy or the worst possible outcomes. Protocol One means there are no more formal orders—if given in the field of battle, often it is understood as ‘Scatter. Retreat. Disunite,’ but it is not quite that. There is a different protocol that is simply used for retreat, protocol that means ‘Save yourselves.’ I received the order to save myself when I was young … and I saved myself, which is why you hear me now, starting this terrible truck, putting my life’s work in the hands of my enemies and of strangers I do not understand. But now I give you Protocol One … and Protocol One is ‘Live.’”(7)

Crown and Pyrrha salute WS, and the new person asks what mission protocol she'll give the local forces. WS replies, basically the standard, "Fight like hell and do not shoot any civilians." She starts wishing them luck in turn, Crown, Nona, even Pyrrha, but when she comes to the new person…

We Suffer paused. Camilla-and-Palamedes cocked their burnt head to one side. “Paul,” they suggested.(8) “Paul. Good luck, Paul,” said We Suffer. “Now … you have my coat, which you can keep, but my wallet is in the breast pocket, so hand it over.”

Paul obediently hands over the wallet, and WS leaves to give final orders to those not in the room. Pyrrha asks how long they'd been planning the conversion, and Paul says "They had a lot of rainy-day backup plans."

“Yeah, but—Paul?” “Just Paul,” said Paul. Crown suggested, “Paul … Hect?” “Just Paul,” said Paul. “U Lap,” said the corpse prince, from the back of the cabin.(9) “Thanks for your contribution,” said Paul. “Aulp,” said the corpse prince. “No,” said Paul.

There's a final burst of radio comm with WS, wishing luck and such, and then Paul starts up the truck. Nona feels so strange, insulated from the mechanical movement feelings by being in Pyrrha's lap, with her body feeling so numb. Pyrrha asks, what now, and Paul releases a lever allowing the truck to lurch forward. The cabin grows cold. An automated fan starts whirring to clear the condensation from everyone's breaths, and a heater melts it into water that pools, then starts to run up into the windshield.

Paul leant forward on the accelerator, and then—

=====

(1) The Messenger. I think I already alluded to AOL Instant Messenger in a previous chapter. This just confirms it. Emma Sen, MSN messenger. I can't tell if I think this was just an incredibly elaborate setup for a joke, or if I think Muir is going to pull something out of this reference in Alecto. Both, really, I suppose. (2) What do you think the message is? Why are there two parts? Who, or what, is the other? The message is too simple, but they didn't say the message, they said codewords that imply a message. I can't wait to see if this comes back, honestly. (3) The classic "you know too much" beat from spy movies. Is it really a meme or reference, in the modern senses, or just… universal language of storytelling, at this point? (4) Wondering what it would be like to have fused with Harrow so thoroughly. Wondering if there's still a chance they could. Wondering if it's better not to know the insides of Harrow's thoughts so intimately after all. Thoughts wandering (intentionally confusing usage) onward down through all the questions she still has about and for Harrow. I see you, Kiriona. (5) Very likely, a very different God from the one most of the Nine Houses characters have invoked. Though, maybe the same one as John. (6) Every hope of Eden. What does We Suffer hope for Eden? There's so much symbology in the choice of the name of the organization, after all. We just saw in John's recounting the way that the ancestors of the modern non-House civilization cast themselves out of Eden, out of the origin world, out of the safety of the garden of home. How much has the Blood of Eden mission changed in ten thousand years? How far have they warped? What do they even want anymore, besides… no, not besides, what do they want after elimination of the Nine Houses empire? Do they even know? Do they have the faintest idea? (7) I can't find a good specific reference for this, it's so vague as to be unsearchable, but it's a beautiful backup mission statement to have at the ready.

(8) This one word, this one line, is quite honestly what made me want to do this whole project. It's been percolating in my brain for the entire 10 months since I first read the book. Honestly I don't even think I have space for my entire yell about it, so the shortest version is "go look up some articles about Paul the Apostle, and yell with me." The next shortest version is that Paul was born Saul (which calls back to the longish ah sound that Muir said in the GtN bonus materials tied Palamedes and Camilla's names together as a matched pair) and was an enemy of Jesus, before he had a revelation, and converted. As many as fourteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are sometimes attributed to his writing, though only seven can be undoubtedly verified. Contrary to common belief, Paul wasn't exactly a name given on his conversion. It was fairly typical to have a Hebrew name and a Greco-Roman name at the time, and the names are used somewhat interchangeably in some contexts within gospel. Using "Paul" would put a lot of his converts more at ease than using "Saul" in the same era. At any rate, Paul was one of the biggest names in the early Church, big on conversion this guy. And I think the symbolism of all that, rolled up into this new unfaithful Lyctor who started faithful to John and now is faithful to their own ideal… it's just very interesting. Especially since Kiriona the actual son (daughter) of God has shown up just as the final stages of conversion were underway. (There may or may not be an even longer version of this essay but it's better done by someone with more professional biblical scholarship and possibly as a degree thesis.) (9) Sorry, Kiriona, but Paul is a lot less anagram-able than Sex Pal.

Whither the cheeseburger?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Nona, and who has combined to make her who she is. Some things are quite clear in the text: Nona’s body is Harrowhark’s body, and Nona’s soul is, either in part or in whole, Alecto, the body in the Tomb, the soul of Earth.

Some things are less clear, because we know almost nothing about Alecto’s personality pre-Nona. We know she seemed inhuman to Augustine and Mercymorn; we know John loved her, and Pyrrha and Gideon were fond of her. But did she laugh at upholstery jokes, and like hugging well-endowed women, and not think very much of red hair? Did she hate being locked up? Did she wield her sword two-handed?

All of these are entirely possible, and some of them are probable: with her body chained and trapped in the Tomb and her soul previously trapped in a body she called “a hideousness,” it’s easy to assume she doesn’t want to be locked up. We know that, as John’s cavalier, she wielded a sword: we don’t know what kind, but given the many parallels made between Alecto’s sword and Gideon’s two-hander, it’s not unreasonable to guess Alecto might fight two-handed as well.

The other things are possible too! Any attributes we see in Nona could easily come from Alecto’s soul and Alecto’s soul only. But I picked out what I think are the most deliberate parallels being made to Gideon, the status of whose soul is unknown for a good chunk of the book. Gideon, of course, definitely loves a crass joke, definitely has a healthy appreciation for well-endowed women, and could very well dislike the color of her hair--one aspect of her appearance she never brags about, in her efforts to cover her own self-hatred. Of course, she wields a sword two-handed, and she spent the majority of her life trying to escape the Ninth, and a good chunk of her death trapped inside Harrow. As Kiriona says: “’Nobody locks me up anywhere.’”

So! This brings me to Prince Kiriona Gaia. I am fully, absolutely on board with the offscreen emotional journey that transforms the Gideon we saw in GtN and HtN to the Kiriona we see in NtN. I don’t think she needs to be explained away by soul shenanigans. She suffered a number of traumas, died traumatically too, and then (from her perspective) was utterly rejected by Harrow. She was left alone in Harrow’s body, lost and endangered, and confronted with the reality of her parentage packaged in yet more trauma.

When last we saw her, she was in the River, likely being ejected from Harrow’s body by the soul of the woman Harrow told Gideon she loved. Then she spent her offscreen time with her father, a masterful manipulator, and Ianthe, another masterful manipulator, clinging on as a revenant to her own gory dead body and fighting devils in between being paraded around in a mockery of the Cohort heroism she used to dream of. Most importantly, we don’t get to hear her internal monologue, which is most of what makes Gideon Gideon to us as readers. Kiriona is brash, angry, deeply depressed, has nothing to hold on to, and then is confronted with Harrow’s familiar body without Harrow actually in it.

All this is to say that I don’t think any soul weirdness is needed to explain why Kiriona seems different. But I do think that soul weirdness is happening. Tamsyn said in a recent interview that “if Gideon’s soul is a Happy Meal, Harrow only ever ate the cheeseburger; whither the fries, the soda, and the tie-in toy?” Well, we find out in NtN that probably the fries, the soda, and the tie-in toy are in Kiriona Gaia. But whither the cheeseburger Harrow ate? I think, still attached to Harrow’s body.

In the latter chapters of NtN, when Nona is struggling to stay Nona, she talks about middle-of-the-brain thoughts (identified as Nona thoughts), and thoughts above and below that she can’t look at without losing herself. One of these, I’m presuming “above,” is Alecto. Her own repressed memories, repressed personality, which breaks through more and more.

I think the other, I’m presuming “below,” is Gideon. The part of Gideon that Harrow couldn’t help but absorb, in the few days she was a Lyctor before altering her brain. Enough of Gideon to laugh at upholstery jokes and kiss the reflection of Harrow’s body in the mirror and wield a two-handed weapon, in easy harmony with these aspects of Alecto. Perhaps, metaphorically, her missing heart. And though we know from Alecto’s narration in the epilogue that Harrow, awake in her body, has her own black eyes back, I think we’ll discover that little bit of Gideon continues to exist inside her.

So, whither the cheeseburger? It was right in front of us all along.

NONA SPOILERS

Ok so let’s talk about Gideon Nav the Christ figure.

In GtN we see her live the life of Christ, her forgiveness of humanity (Harrow), and her sacrificial death on behalf of humanity.

In HtN we see Harrow living eternal life in Gods kingdom which Gideons life bought her. We then see Gideon risen from the dead on the third day and we learn about her divine conception.

I could go into much more depth about the first two books, but for now I want to focus on NtN.

Specifically: Kiriona.

In Nona, we learn Gideon has continued along the Christ journey by ascending to the right hand of the father until her return at the end of days (aka the opening of the tomb).

But we also get the curveball that is Kiriona. So wtf is up with that.

Well, I think Muir’s choice to reintroduce Gideon as Kiriona was a deliberate move meant to represent the difference between who Christ was in the Bible, and who Christ came to be as the church evolved. 

In the bible, Christ is portrayed as a figure of pure love and forgiveness. Sure, some of the stuff he says throws people for a loop, and at one point he starts flipping tables in the temple, but it’s part of his charm; you can’t help but be fond of the guy. 

Then, after his death, the way Christ is interpreted begins to change. People recognize there is power in claiming Christ, and he is transformed into a powerful tool of empire. The symbol they use to immortalize Christ is a depiction of his corpse with gaping wounds, strung up on a cross. This symbol is paraded at the head of armies, this symbol is used to champion imperialism.

Thus, Gideon is transformed into Kiriona.

And Kiriona is meant to feel wrong. You’re supposed to look back at Gideon in GtN/HtN (Christ as depicted in the Bible) and then look at Kiriona (Christ interpreted as a tool of empire) and go ‘ok yes this is recognizably the same person… but something has gone very wrong in translation’