Ianthe is for sure going around picking up gal pals to fill the empty places where she used to have companionship, but you know what? Pretty sure Kiriona is not replacing Harrow in the Coronabeth-shaped hole in her life. Kiriona is the new Babs.

totally forgot to post this Ianthe i drew… she’s evil but i forgive her

✨💫princes in the tower✨💫

nona the ninth is a very funny book but I think arguably the funniest moment is when Ianthe's like KIRIONA!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP ALECTOS IN L O V E WITH JOHN AND WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO FUCKING SAY IT OKAY!?!? not knowing that Alecto's right there in Harrow's body not remembering that piece of information and then because she does she immediately starts disintegrating and literally falling to pieces. like way to drop the ball mister girl 😭

Thinking about how Ianthe is a scheming murderous villain simply because she wants to be. She's a creep and a weirdo. She's fucking hilarious and cries herself to sleep every night. She'll give you a makeover. She's beautiful in a wet rat way, not a sexy way. She wants posters of her face and deflects every compliment with "you should see my sister". She doesn't ask for help. She wants to be kissed. She's a genius necromancer and she'll make you friendship bracelets. She would kill for her sister and solely calls her dumb bimbo to her face. She loves monologuing. She'll let you sleep in her bed when you need a refuge. She judges everyone. She wants to marry the girl she has a crush on. She's all cracked lips and gay loneliness. She'll never let you know her next move.

Ianthe...

Prince Ianthe Naberius, First of Her Name

Prince Ianthe Naberius queen of being awful

Ian

can you believe palamedes and ianthe played modified twenty questions and i suffered as if i was being slowly murdered

gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss

Initial thoughts on The Unwanted Guest below the cut:

Well, damn. There sure is a lot going on here, and I'm all about it.

Front and centre is the concept of the permeability of the soul, and there's so damn much to chew on around that. Then we have Dulcie! Dulcie! She and Pal finally get to talk, both dead but still kicking! She would have liked Gideon! And we get more direct insight into Ianthe's psychology, which is a nasty little treat.

The first place my mind went was to Paul - if Pal and Cam were already experiencing memory transference, then maybe they saw some kind of soul merger as inevitable, and that was another push towards doing it intentionally, doing it right. But writing it down now I'm less sure of that inference. And the fact that Pal and Dulcie got to talk, really talk, was both wonderful and all the more bittersweet if (I'm assuming) Pal's and Cam's individual souls no longer exist to reunite with Dulcie in Alecto. I have to say, when I first read Nona I didn't really get why people found the birth of Paul to be so sad, but I've come around on it since then. (I should write more about that sometime...)

Regarding the permeability of Ianthe's soul, one thing that occurred to me is that her genderfuckery vibes over the past two books are probably not Ianthe Tridentarius's identity, but a new thing formed of the (imbalanced) gestalt that is Ianthe Naberius. I really hope Alecto gives us more on gender and lyctorhood and soul permeability! I imagine this is all the more jarring for Ianthe with how she's so deeply anchored to her relationship with Corona, to find her ego boundaries to be permeable in relation to Babs. I firmly believe her shell-shocked reaction to the birth of Paul was at least in part her thinking "oh shit, did I eat the wrong person?" If she had wanted this kind of erosion of self with anyone (and I'm not sure she did), it would have been Corona. Having it happen with Babs by accident is a real slap in the face.

Which brings me back to my wild theory for Alecto - Corona will (at least try to) pull a Paul with Judith, and Ianthe will utterly lose her shit. This story really underscored just how little Ianthe understands her sister, which we already saw some of in the embassy scene. Sure, Corona isn't the flawless sword hand that Babs was, but in BoE she's shown herself to be a canny operator and a decent fighter, which Ianthe is steadfastly in denial of. At the end of the day I believe the story of Ianthe will be of someone who loved without understanding, who put her love up on a pedestal and at the same time belittled her as someone both more and less than she actually was.

Another thing that I latched onto was the argument about whether lyctors' cavaliers' souls provide a truly perpetual source of energy or not. Ianthe was pretty adamant that they do, but that honestly came across as arrogance or bravado. There's a strong parallel between lyctoral power and nuclear power, and all kinds of nuclear activity eventually reach a point past which they no longer emit appreciable energy, so I feel confident in saying that lyctoral power also diminishes over a long enough timespan. I'm less sure of whether this will come up in Alecto, though - I would be quite surprised if we saw a 100,000-year timeskip (but if we did that could be super fucking interesting).

Back to more direct applications of soul permeability, I have to imagine there's been some exchange of something between Jod and Alecto, at least before he locked her in the Tomb. That could go in all kinds of interesting directions that I haven't yet had a chance to contemplate adequately.

Speaking of Alecto, the John chapters of Nona seem like a pretty clear case of transference between her and Harrow. I wonder - were those happening concurrently with the Nona chapters? If so, it would make for a nice symmetry between Harrow and Alecto/Nona.

Either way, we've got a gross messy soul transference hookup graph with Gideon<-->Harrow<-->Alecto<-->John (gross) - I'm dying to know more about what this means for each of them (especially with Tazmuir's "if Gideon's soul is a happy meal" line from this interview).

So as usual, Aaaaaaa there's so much to chew on and so much more I want to know and I can't wait for Alecto aaaaaa...

I threw Locked Tomb characters into the hunger games generator, and I am losing my F U C K I N G mind

just your normal 22 year old

Once again, Ianthe tridentarius, princess of Ida, because I had to change things.

Prince Ianthe Naberius, the absolute fucking worst woman