The Fool (spoilers for all RotE books, including LST)

[Lady Persephone]

Sorry folks, I know I'm so obsessed with this at the moment, but I had another lightening strike of inspiration when I went to bed last night as I was mulling over what I last mentioned about how Bee was conceived in my head . . . 

You know how the Fool described for Bee the process of how she was born and described it like the way an Elderling is shaped/created?  And, I forget which book it was, FQ or AF, but when it dawned on the Fool how it happened that Bee came to be (haha! I love that, Bee came to be, hee  ) and he was explaining it to Fitz who didn't like it very much because of his petty jealousies and what not.  The way that Whites reproduce, the way it takes two fathers and one mother . . it began to dawn on me that when a White mates the process is definitely not quite the same as a simple sexual coupling, if indeed it takes a coupling in the way that we know it at all.  It began to dawn on me that, in my own opinion mind you, I believe the Fool and Fitz did go beyond friendship and perhaps didn't even fully realise they were doing it when they became one during Fitz's healing of the Fool and becoming him in FF.  I believe for the genetic information for a White to be passed on it takes such a bonding, such a oneness with another which could be how the Fool himself was conceived by two fathers in the tradition of his species.  I forget the exact line the Fool said about that but later on when I'm at home this evening I'll try to dig it up. 

I believe the feelings the Fool feels for Fitz, while they are far beyond anything sexual for the most part, are not bereft of being sexual in nature due to the way his people reproduce.  Two fathers.  Those fathers share something together as well but it takes that fertilized seed from the both of them to pass onto the female to become the White baby.  This is all my own opinion and I may be way off, but it makes so much sense and puts it all into perspective.  Fitz couldn't understand any of this and even in all his protestations that he would never "bed" Beloved, he actually did in a sense. Hee!    Remember in FF, at the beginning, that famous scene when the Fool skill-linked with Fitz and he first asked him if it was what he really wanted?  Why would he phrase it like that?  It was a "becoming" not a skilling.  It was "his lover's mouth to his" and he turned toward and was opening himself to it.  It scared him, naturally.  He wasn't ready . . yet.  I think the Fool knew what he was doing there.  He was taking Fitz to that level.  Later on when Fitz gets high off that delvenbark Poetre (probably butchered the name, sorries) gave him and wanted the Fool to try that Skill link with him again, the Fool objected because it would have been like "taking advantage of him in a drunken state" which he told him.  Why would it have been taking advantage of him?  Because it was extremely intimate, they would have become one.  At the end it did happen.  They did become one being.  They went there.  I think that seed was stored in Fitz and at the right time it got fertilized in Molly, hence Bee.    

It makes a lot of sense to me.  And no, just because Fitz was in the Fool's body repairing it doesn't mean he fully understood his anatomy.  It was so alien to him.  He probably didn't have either reproductive parts but what he did have Fitz probably excused it as being male because he had no other explanation for it.  Hobb never writes "and Fitz took a look at his nether regions and . . . " *lol*  Later on when he was trying to heal him at the beginning of FA he tries to take off the Fool's knickers and the Fool won't allow it.  Why would he not if he knew Fitz had already seen all that was there.  Fitz wouldn't have been able to comprehend what he was looking at just like if we saw an alien creature we wouldn't know what we were looking at.  Fitz gets angry and says, "Fine! Keep your secrets, take them to the grave"! Or words to that effect.

Okay ima shut up now.  I could go on and on. 

[Lady Persephone]

It began to dawn on me that, in my own opinion mind you, I believe the Fool and Fitz did go beyond friendship and perhaps didn't even fully realise they were doing it when they became one during Fitz's healing of the Fool and becoming him in FF.  I believe for the genetic information for a White to be passed on it takes such a bonding, such a oneness with another which could be how the Fool himself was conceived by two fathers in the tradition of his species.  I forget the exact line the Fool said about that but later on when I'm at home this evening I'll try to dig it up. 

OK, sorry this took forever but I finally did manage to dig up the passage where the Fool discusses this with Fitz.  It's in Fool's Quest, chapter 18 "The Changer" pgs 330 - 332:

'Of course,' he whispered at last. 'It would have to be so.  I understand it all now.  Who else's could she be?  In that moment, when she touched me, ah, it was no dream, no illusion or delusion.  I saw with her.  My mind was opened once again to all possible futures.  Because yes, she is Shaysa, even as I once was.  And I did not see her in the futures I glimpsed for you because, without me, you would never have had her.  She is my daughter, too, Fitz, Yours and mine and Molly's.  As is the way of my kind.  Ours.  Our Bee.'  

I was torn between utter confusion and deepest insult.  I had a faint memory of him telling me once that he'd had two fathers, brothers or cousins, in a place where folk accepted that arrangement.  [Skipping some rambling from Fitz here] 'Fool.  Bee is not your child.  You were never with Molly.' He smiled at me.  'No, Beloved.  Of course I was never with Molly.' His fingertip tapped the table, once, twice, thrice.  He smiled gently.  Then he said, 'I was with you.'   [skipping a bit here] 'Fitz.  You can deny it.  But I have been with you, in every way that matters. As you have been with me.  We've shared our thoughts and our food, bound one another's wounds, slept close when the warmth of our bodies was all we had left to share.  Your tears have fallen on my face, and my blood has been on your hands.  You've carried me when I was dead, and I carried you when I did not even recognize you.  You've breathed my breath for me, sheltered me inside your own body.  So, yes, Fitz in every way that matters, I've been with you.  We've shared the stuff of our beings.  Just as a captain does with her liveship.  Just as a dragon does with his Elderling.  We've been together in so many ways that we have mingled.  So close have we been that when you made love to your Molly, she begat our child.  Yours.  Mine.  Molly's.  A little Buck girl with a wild streak of White in her.'

 God I love these books!  I love the depth of emotion and feeling and beautiful expression of deepest love that Robin Hobb infuses into them.  She writes her heart and out it flows.  This is why we love them so--sleep, breathe, and eat these books. 

[Mervi]

You're connecting some very interesting dots here, Lady Persephone!
I rrrreally need to make the time to re-read the latest trilogy and make notes about all the Whites/Clerres related terms that are still missing from the wiki.

I don't have much to add except that I love the fact that we actually finally got an explanation for something that at the time just felt like a bit of an intentional mystery ("two cousins as fathers... as is the custom") in the background of a mysterious character that would probably never be resolved. I remember it has generated some speculation over the years (does it mean simply that the custom was for three people to raise children? Does the custom demand the fathers to be cousins specifically or can they be unrelated?  Are they both biological fathers? How does that biology work etc?) but it never seemed like it really mattered for the story what the answers were. But here we are, all these books later and that old little mystery has become a major plot point! 

[Lady Persephone]

I don't have much to add except that I love the fact that we actually finally got an explanation for something that at the time just felt like a bit of an intentional mystery ("two cousins as fathers... as is the custom") in the background of a mysterious character that would probably never be resolved. I remember it has generated some speculation over the years (does it mean simply that the custom was for three people to raise children? Does the custom demand the fathers to be cousins specifically or can they be unrelated?  Are they both biological fathers? How does that biology work etc?) but it never seemed like it really mattered for the story what the answers were. But here we are, all these books later and that old little mystery has become a major plot point! 

It seems to me that based off of how we get Bee from Fitz and the Fool sharing such a strong bond, I don't believe two men have to be related, but I do think they have to share a strong bond with each other.  It probably helped for the Fool's two fathers to be related, such as cousins, because they probably shared a strong bond already, blood being thicker than water and all that.  In the case of Fitz and Fool, they were bonded in so many ways to mingle the stuff of their beings.  Neither of them could deny (even homophobic Fitz *lol*) that they loved each other.  That love was so strong that we can see how it affected them both throughout the books, most poignantly during the Golden Fool and Fool's Fate where we see Fitz longing to spend time with Fool and unable to simply let him die.  At the end of FF, half of Fitz wanted to follow the Fool and be by his side forever and likewise half of Fool wanted to return with him and never leave his side--had circumstances been different and had Pilkrop minded his own damned business (sorry sorry, I was so upset with him, even if there was a logic to it).  It wouldn't have worked for Fitz to have followed the Fool because Bee would not have been born.  If the Fool had stayed with them, he could have watched Bee come into existence and so much turmoil could have been avoided, but Bee's fate would have been changed and certain prophecies wouldn't have been fulfilled. So it had to work out this way.  

Are they both biological fathers? How does that biology work etc?

Good questions!  I think they are both biological fathers, contributing to the fertilisation of the egg.  How that biology works, well, how do Elderlings come to be Elderings?   Some of the dragon's being is infused into a human.  How does the white rose get some of the red rose's tinge?  They grow so close together, the stuff of their beings get mixed.  It's hard for us to understand it because it's not possible for us as humans.  

Everyone's spent all the time arguing about the Fool's gender and sexuality when none of that actually mattered.  It didn't keep the Fool from producing Bee with Fitz, after all, and we needed Bee to come into existence to tie everything together.  She wound up tying together all the plots from all the trilogies there at the end.   And no doubt she shall continue to change the world.  She might not even need a catalyst.  I think she might be both--White prophet AND Catalyst mixed together as one.  Think of it!  She is the product of a White prophet and his Catalyst after all.