Wintrow/Kennit SPOILERS ALL HOBB BOOKS INCL COD

[Farseer]

I can empathise/sympathise with him in many respects...and going off at a tangent here, I felt the same way about Theon Greyjoy in ASoIaF.

Without adding umpteen ASoIaF spoilers, ^ this I understand with but not so with Kennit. More later, especially as I felt that what took place between Althea and Kennit just had to happen. I thought it was inevitable and a confirmation of the road he'd gone down and could never come back up. A confirmation of Kennit.

It *is* sad, for those he hurt and especially himself and the life he may have had in place of the one he actually did. I can sympathise, empathise and understand about all he experienced and the consequences of those earlier experiences, with some wrong choices made, with his need for distain and domination, his general lot in life...but I can't sympathise with his ultimate choices where he was able to create change within himself but chose not to. Nobody can deny the change he created in the realm but, in himself, no...and it's sad.

Maybe, just maybe, if he had not given so much to Paragon, he'd never have got to that point. Possibly this contributed more to his decisions and choices than even the events of his past. We only have to look at Fitz. While he didn't go and rape someone while essential parts of himself dwelled within a stone dragon, he did make decisions based on what he had left, and different decisions to what he'd have made if whole. Just putting this here to remind myself to come back to this point. ^

If anything, I feel sorrow for Paragon, for how he must have felt knowing that Kennit was capable of the things he was capable of. We talk about the love between Fitz and Fool and Nighteyes etc a lot, but I'm not sure that there's a greater or truer love within the RotE than Paragon's for Kennit.

Coming back to respond to all of the other good stuff...