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Alpennia Blog: Undermining the Characters
Dec. 1st, 2015 12:29 pmSometimes it seems like one of the themes of Mother of Souls is "Margerit Sovitre learns her limitations and her ignorance." It would be easy to see Margerit as a bit of a wish-fulfillment character in Daughter of Mystery. After all, she discovers a superpower, inherits a fortune, and achieves True Love. But I hope I also succeeded in laying out the flaws in her character that will come to haunt her.
For one, Margerit is entirely too certain that her understanding of the Mysteries and the nature of miracles are true, correct, and relatively complete. She's that annoyingly enthusiastic newcomer who has just discovered something and believes herself to be an expert. The formal study of "magic" (in its all-encompassing sense that the Alpennian characters don't really have a concept for) has been so disregarded, or so secret, or so fragmented that it's all too easy for a newcomer to be in ignorance of what others have done in the field. Or in fields that she steadfastly refuses to see as related. The religious mysticism that was Margerit's introduction to the experience of magic has blinkered her more than a little with regard to recognizing how magic operates in other disciplines. And it means that she's a little over-invested in viewing her own practices solely within a theological framework.
This means that she is (has been? will be? verb tenses are tricky here) slow to recognize or accept the other forms magic can take, both in their equal validity and in the ways they fail to follow what she considers to be natural laws. Her experiences with alchemy, via Antuniet's work, haven't dislodged this misapprehension because she (along with most of her society) views alchemy as a natural, physical phenomenon, albeit one that can be shaped and understood using some of the same tools as the Mysteries. But as the books expand to take in a wider range of experience, she is scrambling to either integrate or reject the evidence of phenomena such as Luzie Valorin's musical effects, or Olimpia Hankez's artistic talents. At some point in the future, this will precipitate a crisis of faith, where Margerit begins to question whether the Mysteries are, indeed, miracles granted by God or are purely the product of human talents. (In essence, she will recapitulate the debate of the Mechanist Heresy in her own understanding.)
But the second thing that Margerit has not yet come to grips with is the inadvertent effects her projects can have on those around her -- on people who don't have the same social or economic resilience that protects her. Becoming Baron Saveze's heir may have catapulted Margerit into a level of access that she hadn't imagined, but her youth was not exactly burdened with insecurity or peril. And in Mother of Souls she's had a number of years in which to get used to the notion that she can achieve almost anything she sets her mind to, provided that she finds ways to dodge around the limitations that society tries to place on her. And she doesn't really understand on a gut level that other people live within higher and more solid walls.
The experience in Daughter of Mystery with the treasonous perversion of her castellum mystery should have been a wake-up call. Alas, her recovery from that setback more or less solidified her impression that good intentions and personal ability can overcome errors of judgment. The second lesson she needs to learn the hard way is to think more deeply before plunging into projects that will turn other people's lives upside down. And to consider just what sort of example she is setting for those to take her as a role model.
All this is by way of noting that beginning in the current chapter of Mother of Souls (chapter 21) shit begins to hit the fan. And Margerit realizes that she's the one holding the fan.
For one, Margerit is entirely too certain that her understanding of the Mysteries and the nature of miracles are true, correct, and relatively complete. She's that annoyingly enthusiastic newcomer who has just discovered something and believes herself to be an expert. The formal study of "magic" (in its all-encompassing sense that the Alpennian characters don't really have a concept for) has been so disregarded, or so secret, or so fragmented that it's all too easy for a newcomer to be in ignorance of what others have done in the field. Or in fields that she steadfastly refuses to see as related. The religious mysticism that was Margerit's introduction to the experience of magic has blinkered her more than a little with regard to recognizing how magic operates in other disciplines. And it means that she's a little over-invested in viewing her own practices solely within a theological framework.
This means that she is (has been? will be? verb tenses are tricky here) slow to recognize or accept the other forms magic can take, both in their equal validity and in the ways they fail to follow what she considers to be natural laws. Her experiences with alchemy, via Antuniet's work, haven't dislodged this misapprehension because she (along with most of her society) views alchemy as a natural, physical phenomenon, albeit one that can be shaped and understood using some of the same tools as the Mysteries. But as the books expand to take in a wider range of experience, she is scrambling to either integrate or reject the evidence of phenomena such as Luzie Valorin's musical effects, or Olimpia Hankez's artistic talents. At some point in the future, this will precipitate a crisis of faith, where Margerit begins to question whether the Mysteries are, indeed, miracles granted by God or are purely the product of human talents. (In essence, she will recapitulate the debate of the Mechanist Heresy in her own understanding.)
But the second thing that Margerit has not yet come to grips with is the inadvertent effects her projects can have on those around her -- on people who don't have the same social or economic resilience that protects her. Becoming Baron Saveze's heir may have catapulted Margerit into a level of access that she hadn't imagined, but her youth was not exactly burdened with insecurity or peril. And in Mother of Souls she's had a number of years in which to get used to the notion that she can achieve almost anything she sets her mind to, provided that she finds ways to dodge around the limitations that society tries to place on her. And she doesn't really understand on a gut level that other people live within higher and more solid walls.
The experience in Daughter of Mystery with the treasonous perversion of her castellum mystery should have been a wake-up call. Alas, her recovery from that setback more or less solidified her impression that good intentions and personal ability can overcome errors of judgment. The second lesson she needs to learn the hard way is to think more deeply before plunging into projects that will turn other people's lives upside down. And to consider just what sort of example she is setting for those to take her as a role model.
All this is by way of noting that beginning in the current chapter of Mother of Souls (chapter 21) shit begins to hit the fan. And Margerit realizes that she's the one holding the fan.
