Any storyteller at all: Do you want to hear a story about a guy who was never meant to be king, but ended up having to take the throne? And it was hard.

Me: Oooooooh?

The storyteller: And not just hard in itself - there was sinister plotting beneath the surface, and interpersonal stuff was complicated too.

Me: Oooooooooh!

The Goblin Emperor has the funniest answer to "why am I the only one in my family who wasn't assassinated" and the answer is that the assassin forgot you existed. Thought they could overtake the government by killing the entire royal family but oops they genuinely just forgot that the emperor had a 4th son.

A neat thing about The Goblin Emperor is that while it's a classic trope of the lost heir plunged into a morass of courtly intrigue where he has no idea whom he can trust, the very first thing it does is emphasize how much he has to choose to trust anyway. Maia has to trust the head of his household to appoint his body servants, and he has to trust those servants. He has to trust the adremaza to appoint his nohecharei, and he has to trust his nohecharei. Any one of these people could kill him. Any one of them could carry gossip to his enemies, or make him look bad in public and thus weaken him in the eyes of the court. But if he so much as implies a discomfort with these choices, he'll offend powerful people without cause – and anyway, how could he possibly pick better? He has no idea what he's doing. He's forced to rely on people. He's forced to trust. The only person he actually personally chooses is Csevet, and what he chooses to do is essentially hand Csevet the keys to the empire. He got so fucking lucky there, that could have gone so incredibly badly.

But it didn't. Because, as the book emphasizes, trust is the right choice. Even when it does go badly, even when he is betrayed, that doesn't mean the trust was wrong. Because when one person betrays him, every single other person around him shows how truly loyal they are, not only by rushing to his aid, but by caring so deeply and obviously about him.

That's why this book feels so odd for its genre: there's a bunch of complex courtly intrigue going on, but Maia never plays the game. He never schemes, he's never playing 5D chess with his enemies. He has to navigate the factions of the court and try to win them to his side, but he does so by being kind and forthright. He's completely blindsided by the coup attempts, and frankly so are we, because he's just been focusing on other stuff! And he survives them, not through his own cunning, but through the love of those he placed his trust in.

New commission!

I had started this in good time, then impulsively peeled off my screen protector because it got too dirty, not realising that I’m now so used to drawing with one on that I was incapable of continuing without ordering another, so I just got finished in time to retain my coveted Etsy perfect shipping record. Stressful!

Which of these have you read?

I read The Goblin Emperor last week and it lives in my head rent free now I guess

Csevet is a morning person. Maia… is not

A quick review: The Goblin Emperor

I binge-read the last of the The Goblin Emperor today and my brain is still buzzing. Everyone knows that I'm a big fan of stories about people in power choosing consistently to be kind, especially when it's hard and it does not benefit them, and this book DELIVERED.

I loved reading about Maia choosing, over and over again, to be compassionate, even though he was miserable and overwhelmed and it would have been easier to be cruel. Maia felt like the purposefully isolated, abused teenager he was, overwhelmed and powerless when he first came to court, but I adore that we saw the slow, hard-won changes that hebrought about: winning allies simply by being kind and honest, making REAL change for the betterment of his people

Maia has only been ruling for a less than a year (I think) but already the world is benefiting from the care of Emperor Edrehasivar the Bridge-Builder (and what a title!!!). All the birthday messages Maia received - not just platitudes but warm gifts from people whose lives he'd changed - made me tear up

And I also really liked all the hurt/comfort scenes with Maia being surprised by being liked and treated nicely, and winning the loyalty and affection of so many just by virtue of being himself :'))

Anyway if you haven't read The Goblin Emperor, you should definitely give it a chance!! Especially if you also read and enjoyed The Hands of the Emperor

what i like especially about the pronouns in the goblin emperor is that this language doesn't just have the T-V distinction (aka informal vs. formal second-person pronouns, in this case 'thou' vs. 'you'), it also has informal and formal first-person pronouns. having BOTH of these distinctions in the same language lets you fine-tune your tone by mixing and matching. with only one axis of formality, when you use informal pronouns, are you being familiar in an intimate way, or in an insolent or dismissive way? when you use formal pronouns, are you being polite or standoffish? you can't tell just from the pronouns; there's ambiguity. but a language where you can use a formal first-person pronoun in the same sentence as an informal second-person pronoun allows you to distance yourself (via the formal first) while also being familiar (via the informal second), thereby achieving the conversational tenor known to linguists as Fuck Thee Specifically.

my favorite three creatures from The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Totally forgot that Maia should be loaded down with earrings, d'oh

every once in a while I think about how Celehar is basically like a noir detective

[ID: a three panel comic depicting maia, cala, beshelar, and eshevis tethimar from the goblin emperor. 1) maia seated at the throne, his nohecharei behind him. he looks very weary and is saying, "what is your concern, dach'osmer tethimar?" the nohecharei look on past maia in suspicion and disapproval. 2) a closeup of tethimar, looking darkly upward and saying, "our concern...? our concern is..." he launches up, pulling a long, thin knife through the air, cloak billowing behind him as he says, "A KNIFE!" 3) cala and beshelar crowd in front of maia, who looks horrified. cala holds up a hand crackling with maz, and beshelar raises one arm in front of him, the other shielding maia. both are yelling, "NO!!!" end ID]

let me see what you have!!!! A KNIFE

this was @lollians 's idea thank you my beloved

redbubble

shhh sh they're planning the ethuverazheise ubi system

Maia receiving his daily dose of court gossip from Csevet

the whole courier fleet idea from the goblin emperor is simply so good, like YEAH it's a job for people that would have otherwise been prostitutes and instead only SOME of them are prostitutes but ALL of them are sneaky conniving little runners who know everything about everyone and read your mail

one thing about maia's characterization i find really fascinating is how a recurring source of anxiety for him is potentially having to have sex in front of his nohecharei, and more specifically in front of beshelar.

like the first time i read the book all i really clocked was how much of a teenager anxiety that is but after the fourth read it’s so-- it’s so fascinating and so sad because it’s not about sex at all it’s just that sex is where all of his complexes collide. maia is deeply embarrassed by his ignorance, he is incredibly ashamed of his appearance, and he feels suffocated by and resentful of his loss of privacy. he doesn’t mediate in front of his nohecharei because he worries they will think less of him, and now he is faced with a marriage he did not want to a woman who views their entire relationship as a duty and has to come to terms with the possibility of consummating that marriage in front of people whom he thinks not only do not like him as a person but do not approve of him as an emperor. like. just. holy shit.

maia cannot bear to be judged for his sexuality the same way he cannot bear to be judged for his spirituality. he experiences sexual desire but the act of sex itself is not something that he finds… sexy. he has very little sexual education, and thinks himself ugly and thinks everybody around him also finds him ugly. all that he anticipates from sex is embarrassment and shame and judgment, from his household and also from his partner. it's not about the sex just like it's not about the meditation it's about how every private and intimate thing in his life is now going to be on display to people he does not trust.

More sketches from The Goblin Emperor. It’s quickly becoming my favourite comfort book.