Gernia vs RotE *spoilers all Hobb books*

[Chrischa]

Hmm... good post. I want to set my teeth in this.

Yup, same for me! As soon as this became apparent, it was hard for me to separate the two. Nevare could just as easily have been given the title of ‘Changer’ or ‘Catalyst’ as Fitz had.

Of course, storywise that is logical. You'll always follow the most interesting path in a story. What's the point telling this from, say, Epiny's point of view when it's Nevare who is in the center of things.

That being said, imagine the sort of book it would have been had this story been told from Soldier's Boy's point of view.

And, going from that, isn't it incredible that RH manages to tell a story where for one third of it's lenght, her main character and narrator is a powerless entity trapped in someone else's body? Wow!

Yes, I thought of these similarities too! Not only did they display these drawing and writing talents but they also documented their lives, and saw the importance of it. While Nevare obviously had his soldier’s son journal, Fitz worked hard at writing an historical account of the Six Duchies on his many scrolls (though just as often wrote about himself and his own experiences, somewhat like a journal). Fitz also showed a talent with creating inks...something that even impressed Chade when he first visited Fitz in FE.

I think that for Fitz, his writing was a form of therapy, trying to make sense of his life and to deal with the hurt it had caused him. After all he could hardly run to a psychologist.

Yes, although Nevare attests that he did also freely choose the military path.

Of course, he never even considered anything else. I do wonder if Nevare had the right kind of character to be a soldier. I'm thinking about the one of the worst scenes in the book, when those soldiers watch that tribe of Plainspeople drown themselves and their families in the river, rather then to live under Gernian rule. It broke many of the soldiers and if I think about Nevare, with his kindness and his respect for all living things, I wonder if he could stomach murdering for nothing then the profit of his king.
But then I guess that the Nevare we know is the leftover, after Lisana took away his tougher side.

I would add that they were also forced by a major degree into the greater roles of ‘Changer’ or ‘Great One’ simply by the custody of their magics. While one could say that they still had ‘choice’, I’m not sure if they could ever have truly walked away from these roles.

Very true. They both had too strong a sense of responsability to let someone else solve the problems that they knew were theirs.

No, I doubt anyone could disagree that Fitz lived well, and was most certainly exposed to the standard of training and life befitting a noble-born child, just as Nevare was eg educated in manners, social etiquette, numbers and letters, weaponry, history, horsemanship etc.

Interesting there how the boys get their days filled with lessons and purpose, while the girls and woman are forced to wile away their lives with nothing but idle pastimes - and how Nevare absolutely doesn't see this.

One of my favorite quotes in Robin Hobb's books is from Kettricken when she says the Six Duchies talk about time as something you want to get rid of.
That opened my eyes! Everyone wishes for more time, yet we spend so much of our lives with "pastimes".

Maybe I should put this in the favourite-quotes thread.

It’s also interesting that, while they both experienced this and other periods of ‘plenty’, they had to experience periods of serious ‘lack’ as well.

Yes, very true. RH does love putting her characters through their share of misery, doesn't she?

One other thing I found similar was their openness to, and awareness of, nature.

I thought that for Nevare, this was very remarkable. First of all he is raised to be a soldier, which is according to a book I read derived from the life of a hunter, which stands in direct conflict with nature. In fact, this book claimed that one of the reasons that humanity can do the atrocities it does, is because of the hunter's fight with nature, and the resulting feelings of guild and shame.

But I'm drifting off. What I want to say is: a boy who is raised as a warrior is less likely to show respect and reverence to nature and other living things. They have to form a sort of callous over their soul to protect themselves from the acts necessary in a warrior's life.
That being said, Nevare never actually performs any of the warrior's acts. He is trained to deal with them, yes, but he never kills anything or anyone in his training. For many warrior-cultures throughout human history, the act of killing was the central part of their boy's training.

Secondly, he is raised by a man who spend his life fighting nature, inside a mansion which is created as an unnatural anomaly in a natural landscape. The Plainspeople always managed perfectly well to let the Plains sustain them, but the Gernians need to create this artificial island around themselves.
I think that while a child growing up on such an island might never actually reflect on the wrongness of this, it would certainly have an impact on their character.

I also think that if you grew up like Fitz, in constant contact with nature, you couldn't help but respect it. Very similar to that movie Avatar, actually, where the natives can link to all living things and thus they live in harmony.

This brings me to another similarity between the two series, but rather to the theme of lives/souls able to be contained rather than just Fitz and Nevare.

Ah, of course! I knew it sounded familiar when I read about the Kaembra trees, I just didn't make the connection!
The main difference being that people's amnas seem to dissolve into the memory stone, until they aren't really the same beings anymore that they were in life, wereas the trees seem to not only preserve people's character, they also allow them to carry on although with a different body.

Lots more to come...!

Looking forward to it!