The ending doesn't make sense? Spoilers Farseer & Tawny Man

[Nuytsia]

First, Hap should have been developed a little more. He was pretty much Fitz's son, yet he went was swiftly relegated to the "not important" category when Molly reentered the narrative. I know he was supposed to be finding himself as a minstrel and all that, but he lived with Fitz for years, and that's all the farewell we get?

I felt a bit like that too........ also, I had forgotten that Hap was brought to Fitz by Starling until I re-read AQ and then I though oooooh geees and then he later turns out to want to be a minstrel! You'd think he might have considered it earlier with Starling's regular visits?

However…long term with Molly…meh, I didn’t hate her but think it is so sad that Fitz has as his no.1 true love a person who would not accept so much of what had made him the person he was. He wanted peace and contentment at the end of the book but how long for I ask myself. Would he just suppress all of his wittedness for example?

I really see his marrying Molly as another escape from reality! In the Farseers books she was the person he went to when he wanted to escape all his responsibilities.... she had no idea who or what he was really. I think that is really the main thing that appeals to him about the thought of Molly when his boyhood memories return to him.

I find it particularly telling that they went to live at Withywoods. This is what Fitz had to say in AA about Chivalry going to live at Withywoods when he abdicated:

"It is a soft holding, far from the borders, far from the politics of court, far from anything that had been Chivalry's life up to then. It was a pasturing out, a gentle and genteel exile for a man who would have been King. A velvet smothering for a warrior and a silencing of a rare and skilled
diplomat."

The bit that didn't make sense for me was learning the Fool had returned to Buckeep and had missed Fitz! I felt my emotions were a bit over exploited at that point. Why I wonder did Hobb do this? There would have been other ways of presenting a farewell gift and bittersweet poem without the image of the Fool looking ‘stricken’ and in my view the tale would have been better without this additional heart wrenching particularly as the remainder of the book seems to be written in a different style altogether. I found it very hard to see Fitz moving on apparently so easily, reading the poem ‘about dancing’ (gah!) twice mind you, then popping off to see Hap or something. It might have worked had this not been the end of the story but a prelude to a second half where the Fool and Fitz meet again. I have read that Robin Hobb had always intended to write more about Fitz and Fool but had been so daunted by people's reactions she hadn’t felt able to. Perhaps this is why for me the ending felt unfinished. It was.

yeah! I felt my emotions were a bit over exploited at that point too! Nice description.