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

['thul]

Most likely there is no smell that a creature like NIghteyes can sense. Everything has a smell, it might not be noticeable but there is one still.

[Nuytsia]

oooh found another reference! Keffria says Amber smells funny!
(This is not necessarily her own smell though, it could be a substance she has come into contact with)

[Farseer]

Hopefully I will get to come back to this thread one day and respond to the recent-ish posts ^ but, in the meantime...

...I know we have talked about connections with Fool to his name vs being 'a fool', or 'jester' etc and how this has worked into the his role/the plot etc but what of Amber?

A lightbulb regarding her name has only just appeared over my head though the rest of the world (including you!) has possibly known this all from the very beginning. Amber is an appropriate name to match the changing/deepening colour of Amber's skin, certainly, but I've only just realised that it's the perfect name to suit her occupation and other things as well!

Of course, Althea often described Amber and her colouring, fluidity etc as looking to be like one of her wooden creations but I have never, until right this second, made the simple leap to consider that amber, too, comes from trees, as does wood. Even before obtaining the Skill power from Verity, Fool showed that he'd had an affinity with wood re his puppet creations, and Amber was also rather intrigued by Althea's declaration of 'sisterhood with wood' (Vivacia).

Even more, amber is a 'fossilized' resin that comes from prehistoric or ancient trees, adding more to the fact that a WP lives considerably longer than humans and also given the importance of trees to the residents of the Mountain Kingdom (the Chyurda were forbidden by Eyod to cut them down and therefore wood could only ever be sourced from tress that had fallen or died naturally...as was the case for the wood given to Verity as part of his marriage arrangement with Kettricken, as far as I can remember). Added to that is the Wit sense that Fitz experiences when he is near the ancient trees on the way to the quarry eg he had never thought he'd be distained by a tree. I know I have spoken about trees elsewhere, sorry!

Further, when Amber spoke to Wintrow, he felt an 'experience' that was akin to a time when he had once been struck by lightning (or the lightning struck very close to him, I can't recall exactly!) and, as we know, lightning is simply a natural electrical discharge. Some say that the origin of the word 'electricity' dates back to the ancient Greek times (elektron = amber) when it was discovered that sparks could be produced by rubbing amber against various substances.

Amber, the resin, often also provides a window into history/the past due to the objects that can be preserved in it. The Whites of Amber/Fool's line were able to predict the future, I think (!!), due to their watchfulness and knowledge of what had taken place in the past.

Okay, these are all probably a bit flimsy, at best, but still interesting to think about, and they all just popped into my head while discussing the role of a lapidary with my daughter during school....which I had better get back to!!

['thul]

the part about not being allowed to cut down trees could date back to the dragon prohibition on humans using cocoon-wood without permission.

[Nuytsia]

I'd forgotten what amber even was (ie previously tree sap), so I can sure say I hadn't made any connections!

Heh interestingly I am pretty sure that when Wintrow recollects that lightning strike right by him he says was standing under a TREE too.

Not on topic (but you did mention it), why DO White Prophets live so long? Given that Catalysts don't (one assumes).

[Farseer]

Going on from that, and for an almost complete change of subject, though still on the Fool...what is the significance of the baby etc in Fool's room at Buckkeep (mentioned in AA when Fitz went in there, against Fool's wishes)?

"A baby. I...knelt beside the basket that cradled it. But it was not a living child, but a doll, crafted with such incredible art that almost I expected to see the small chest move with breath. I reached a hand to the pale, delicate face, but dared not touch it. The curve of the brow, the closed eyelids, the faint rose that suffused the tiny cheeks, even the small hand that rested on top of the coverlets were more perfect than I supposed a made thing could be. Of what delicate clay it had been crafted, I could not guess, nor what hand had inked the tiny eyelashes that curled on the infant’s cheek.

I still haven't worked it out from my countless re-reads of all books and it makes me crazy not being able to find a Fool/Amber/Lord Golden/White Prophet link or a clue as to why it would be there !! The only reference to it after the event, that I can find, was when Fool finally answered this question from Fitz in RA, "Whence comes the Fool and why?"

Fool talked about how much he had been loved as a child and Fitz "...remembered the time I ventured into his room, and the exquisite little doll in its cradle that I found there. Cherished as the Fool had once been cherished."

It intrigues me because it sounds like an Elderling-wrought form of artwork. Before he saw the baby, Fitz even said, "I tried to imagine the pale cynical Fool in the midst of all this colour and art."

Not to mention the loom with all of its bright-hued threads in the corner (a reference to or even a physical manifestation of the tapestry threads of Fate he wields as the White Prophet and speaks of at times to Fitz?!), I wonder if the baby simply denotes the future Farseer heir, or could it be something more personal to Fool?

Regarding when Fitz went to the Fool's room and saw the doll that looked so life like. I just read a bit in Ship of Magic where Althea describes the wares they sell in the Bingtiwn markets on Rain Wild St, it reads:

"The toy shops always lured Althea the strongest: there one could find dolls whose liquid eyes and soft warm skin mimicked that of a real infant..."

Just had a thought...if Elderlings/Skilled Ones carved simulacra so that they could gain wings and fly like dragons (such as they often longed to do), why could they not also carve a baby for a similar reason? Possibly the babies, such as are sold as toys on Rain Wild Street and that Fool had in his room in Buckkeep, are not toys but simulacra carved in the form of babies to fill an Elderling longing to have children? After all, Elderlings did and do experience difficulty in this area of childbirth etc...thus a longing for a child would be understandable.

Further, aside from filling it with an Elderling's own memories during the creation process, they could even have been filled with memories/anmas of miscarried babies or those who have died in infancy or childhood, and possibly even woken from time-to-time just as the simulacra in the Stone Garden were woken when required.

Unlikely but just a little thought that popped into my head while I'm here searching threads for my 'Skill throughout the realm' theories. This is why I can never follow up on promises to find things...I get tangled up in all of the other great things here in the forums!!

---

Or, if not carved from stone, possibly the babies could be gifts of wizardwood that have since been carved into the shape of a baby and this wizardwood was gifted to an Elderling by a dragon to ease their sadness or loss...just as a dragon gifted a minstrel with wizardwood to fashion a rooster feather as a reward. I doubt this but just thinking aloud...

[Peet75]

"At the core of the White Prophet heresy is the concept that for ‘every age’ (and this space of time is never defined) there is born a White Prophet. The White Prophet comes to set the world on a better course. He or she (and in this duality of gender we may see some borrowing from the true faith of Sa) does this by means of his or her Catalyst..."

I think that's incredibly significant!

Chapter 24 - Book 2 of The Tawny Man Trilogy

[Farseer]

I concur!!

[Narya]

Although catalysts are not consumed by the reaction itself, they may be inhibited, deactivated, or destroyed by secondary processes.- Wikipedia

This might explain why prophets last longer than catalysts.

[londonlassie]

...I'm now convinced she's really female but the Tawny Man is convincingly male and Fitz never even considers the possibility...

Personally, I think the Fool is male. Maybe because I read Liveships first, and so didn't get the connection between the Fool and Amber until I'd already read the Tawny Man and Assassin trilogies, and by then, he was firmly cemented in my mind as a guy. I find it difficult to connect the pair of them, though - when he's "Amber", I can't think of him as male. But when he's "Beloved" I can't think of him as female.

To begin with, I wondered whether all white prophets were androgynous or hermaphrodite. It even crossed my mind that they might be sequentially hermaphrodite, alternating between male and female as the need arose. The greatest evidence against this is that the Pale Woman was utterly female. Then again, the Pale Woman was a failed white prophet who had become incapable of changing colour. Maybe she had become incapable of changing sex also.

I think Maulkin may just have it. This idea is pure genius. I've never heard of sequential hermaphrodites, but I think this could easily explain The Fool.