Tattoos, Luck and Addictions (spoilers all RotE books)

[londonlassie]

After he returned to Divvytown from the Others' Island, Kennit asked for a tattoo of an Other to be marked into the nape of his neck. As with the previous two tattoos (which appeared as scars on Kennit's back), he planned to have the one of the Other later burned off. To Kennit, this was the only way to "expunge the bad luck". The application and subsequent removal of the tattoos, like his luck, came to be somewhat like an addiction to Kennit.

I burned myself on my hair curlers this morning. It's now late evening and the darned burn is still hurting. I can safely say that Kennit is a masochistic loony, and should definitely have been sent to therapy

I had thoughts that they may have been of Igrot and possibly then Paragon (or just a 'liveship')

Very interesting idea! I looked, and it wasn't mentioned what his other tattoos were, but I can see the logic behind the whole Igrot/Paragon thing. After all, Kennit burns off his mistakes, things that make him hate himself, and the one person who really made him hate himself was Igrot.

I can't imagine Kennit asking for such personal connections as Paragon and Igrot to be inked into his skin and the tattooist then still be allowed to live?

It's mentioned that the same tattooist did the other two tattoos, and Ivro really seems to dislike Kennit, so this point really makes sense. My original guess was that either Kennit was bribing him to keep quiet, or Kennit had threatened him with some kind of horrible death if he so much as said a word. Fear could have been making Ivro keep Kennit's secrets. I can't think of anything else which might've made him avoid telling the world what a...unsettled...person Kennit is.

On a side note, was I the only one who thought it was a little strange that Kennit's tattooist of choice - bearing in mind getting a tattoo hurts - had a name so similar to "Igrot"? Methinks Kennit's masochism also has a bit to do with who else is involved - maybe by letting Ivro hurt him, he was trying to make himself feel like somebody else was in control (like when Igrot was hurting him) and thereby absolving himself of all responsibility for the mistake, because he wasn't in charge and that means it wasn't his fault. But maybe I'm talking rubbish again, and I'm definitely not explaining this as well as I intended to in my head

And while I'm thinking about it, Kennit let Ivro call him a "son of a bitch". I doubt he'd take that kind of verbal abuse from people normally, so I'm not sure why he puts up with it from Ivro.

What else could the images have been of though? What else do we know of from his history that he would have wanted wiped away?

Off the top of my head, his father's death, or his mother losing her tongue? Or the destruction of his hometown. But I still think that your original ideas of Igrot and Paragon are the most likely ones, Farseer.

One of the bodies Verity identified after the slaying of the Forged ones was of a woman "tattooed with the puppeteers' guild sign" so obviously they were also sometimes used to identify a line of work or group someone was in?

People in Bingtown also do this, tattooing a ship's symbol onto themselves if they're certain of continued employment. There were a couple of men aboard the Vivacia who had tattoos showing whose crew they belonged to, and this was what inspired Wintrow's face tattoo, IIRC.

Nightchade yes, I too was a bit worried about the Fool hitting the old apricot brandy so much! Your post highlights to me that it was very much more a feature of the Tawny Man series. I don't recall him getting drunk in the Farseer series? And I don't recall Amber getting drunk?
Yet, as you point out he had been drinking before he makes his very first appearance in Tawny Man. Just part of his Lord Golden persona? Or just a bad habit he picked up? Hmmmmm.

Once I found out that he more or less knew how horribly he would die, I put his drinking down to fear. Poor Beloved


Oh lord, yet another post of mine which is 99.9% Kennit, which makes probably 99.9% of my posts so far. I think Kennit's not the only one who needs some kind of therapy.