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

[o0Ampy0o]

Regarding the matriarchal nature of Sa, I have been thinking about this for a few days now. I may eventually pull together a solid post with specific references but I will not have time for a while. Right now I can at least explain the logic that was behind my perception of Sa being matriarchal in nature.

Whether it is in life or in a fictional world of a book, experience overrides theory or belief. We know an author can write in such a way that the reader feels as though they are going through experiences. An author can also describe ideas from a position of observation and/or learning.

There are characters in this multi-trilogy series that take precedence over other characters. Fitz is at the very top. With the exception of the Liveship series, everything was seen from his perspective. He might have described a general belief but his/our experience would override mere words.

The majority of characters populating this series were not particularly religious or spiritually connected. The Fool was connected yet seemed to leave many possibilities open in his descriptions. Even though he was a prophet (and The White Prophet), he did not seem to consider himself knowledgeable and was instead a perpetual student.

Wintrow's knowledge of his religion was not absolute. It was just a belief system. His definition according to the monastery was not necessary the truth. It was just what they believed the truth to be. Wintrow could have described a belief in a polka-dotted god in the form of a large duck, however, if he experienced godlike beings in another form his beliefs would not matter. He had a strong spiritual connection but that was limited to his belief and according to what he had been taught in the monastery. His later experiences with Vivacia and She Who Remembers were completely foreign and changed his perception of himself, his god, the world and life. Experience takes precedence over belief.

Fitz was not religious. He had a common man's notion of spirituality. Yet he went through various experiences that provided direct contact with levels of higher consciousness. When he was transported to Others Island with Dutiful in the Tawny Man series he was assisted by a matriarchal being. I read the series out of sequence going from Farseer to Tawny Man, then Liveships. Looking back now, the matriarchal being who assisted Fitz on Others Island could have been Tintaglia but Tintaglia had not been introduced in Tawny Man up to that point to see recognizable behavior. I vaguely recall another event where Fitz connected with a high level matriarchal being of similar nature.

I had thought that the trilogies contained enough vital information so that it was not crucial to read them in the order they were written which is also chronologically consistent with the timeline of this fictional world. If that was Tintaglia and not a god then the potential to misunderstand the event exists and I may have succumbed to it. I could ignore the countless descriptions characterizing Sa as patriarchal and even the "Sa's balls" exclamations having retained the impression that this higher level matriarchal being was potentially their true god. I think there were events/experiences in the Farseer series that lead me to think of their god as matriarchal. I will have to go through the series and look for references.

To be continued...