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DerynifanK

March 17, 2024, 03:48:44 PM
Happy St Patrick's Day. Enjoy the one day of the year when the whole world is Irish.

The Quest for S.Camber

Started by morgan, February 16, 2008, 08:19:02 AM

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morgan

Yeah, I know that these are "the histories of King Kelson", but I'm a little disappointed that "my" Morgan "disappeares" from page 144 to 224.
Well, I'm joking  ;D

morgan

I'm not at the end of the book yet, so I don't know if I'm "premature" to ask this question but...why Morgan hasn't tried to heal Nigel when he and Duncan came in Rhemut after the news that Kelson and Dhugal were apparently dead?

Braniana

Had to go back and check to be sure.  The damage wasn't just physical, it was also psychic.  Morgan and Duncan didn't see the latter because they didn't know to look for it.

grayblob

IIRC, Alaric and Duncan received only sporadic training on the "normal" Deryni abilities so there are some definite holes in their knowledge. It has been a while since I read this book, but I seem to recall that it took a very directed search to find the actual cause of the damage.  (wasn't Nigel essentially locked into his own mind?)   

morgan

Nigel hadn't any physical injuries, so maybe it's for this reason Morgan and Duncan didn't try..

Shiral

They didn't know to look for the psychic damage, I think. And they only knew after they'd put all the pieces together later on.

Melissa
You can have a sound mind in a healthy body--Or you can be a nanonovelist!

morgan

It's a pity, I don't like Conall at all!! >:(

Elkhound

Quote from: morgan on March 04, 2008, 10:54:20 AM
It's a pity, I don't like Conall at all!! >:(

For most of the book, I wanted to reach right through the pages and slap him. 

Shiral

Quote from: Elkhound on March 05, 2008, 09:36:41 AM
Quote from: morgan on March 04, 2008, 10:54:20 AM
It's a pity, I don't like Conall at all!! >:(

For most of the book, I wanted to reach right through the pages and slap him. 

Slap him? How mild.  ;) I thought Kelson ought to have executed him sometime back in The King's Justice.  At very least, he ought to have gone over the cliff too and bashed his head in on a nice big rock. If Nigel had to lose his eldest son, that would have been a lesser grief.

Melissa
You can have a sound mind in a healthy body--Or you can be a nanonovelist!

Elkhound

No, in The King's Justice he was just a nasty, overprivilidged brat; in retrospect, after the events in Quest we see the early signs of his going bad, but only in retrospect.  I do think, though, that he might have been saved if he had been given some substantive responsibility earlier on. 

I'm trying to be as charitable as I can here.  A villain who is just plain bad from the beginning and that is that isn't nearly so interesting a character as someone who had potential to have been good.

Look at it from Connal's position.  He was Kelson's first cousin and the nearest in the royal family in age.  It would have been natural if the two boys had developed a Bo-and-Luke type relationship.  When Dhugal came in and took the position of the young king's best friend, Connal probably felt that this border-brat was an interloper, usurping his rightful place; perhaps he didn't even put it that way even to himself, but although those feelings weren't very nice, they were perfectly natural.  If Kelson had made some gesture to say, "In spite of Dhugal's and my special relationship, you are my very dear cousin and you have a place in my heart and my life that nobody else can fill," Connal might not have turned into a nice young man all of a sudden, but I think that he wouldn't have done half the things that he got up to.  His going along with the scheme to activate his Haldane potentials, for example, would have been less likely to have happened had he felt his place in the family dynamics a secure one.  Granted, Kelson was a very young man himself and had a lot on his plate that probably got in the way of his seeing that his cousin needed a little boost to his self-esteem, but he had advisors who should have prompted him.  Duncan was a clergyman, for crying out loud; don't Gwynnedian seminary curricula include pastoral theology?

Granted, that it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting a story that way, but I find that the "might-have-beens" makes Connal's downfall more poignant than just writing him off as having been a bad seed from the beginning.

Braniana

The way I see it, the situation was a catch-22.  Kelson didn't give Conall responsibilities because he didn't feel his cousin was mature enough to handle them; Conall lacked maturity partly because he had nothing to develop it.
While Kelson could have ideally been more sensitive to Conall's feelings, Conall could have been too.  He had a shared heritage with Kelson that Dhugal didn't.  Rather than accept a friendship that was a blessing to his cousin/king, Conall was threatened by it.  And his increasingly obvious resentment may have contributed to him being pushed further aside than he might have been otherwise.
Sometimes it's the situations closest to us that we have the hardest time seeing clearly.

derynifanatic64

I personally would have shoved Conall down the same staircase where he killed Tiercel.  Or let a member of Tiercel's family do the shoving.  Since he was a Royal, Conall always seemed to have his nose continually raised upward.  He always seemed to feel that he should always be treated as a Royal.  When he visited Transha in The Bishop's Heir, he felt nothing but disdain for highland customs.  He thought the amenities offered in Transha were beneath his station--Most likely another reason Kelson didn't give Conall the amount of responsibility that a Royal would normally receive.
We will never forget the events of 9-11!!  USA!! USA!!

Elkhound

DF64 and Briyana are both correct.  I certainly didn't mean to imply that C.'s going bad was K.'s fault!  But I do think that a little more attention to C.'s development might have saved a lot of heartache for all involved; C. might have still gone bad, but not as badly bad.

Perhaps if C. had been fostered away from the capital, in one of the great ducal households, or even at some foreign court (say, the Hortic Court, or one of the Forcinn States, or with Aunt J.'s people in Bremagne), things might have been different.  Or if he had shown any sign of a vocation; having a Haldane bishop would have been useful.

morgan

I agree with DF64: everyone is threated the same way you threat another. If you give them respect, they'll give you.
Conall remained a spoilt child!

Braniana

Elk, I didn't think you were meaning it was all Kelson's fault.  Whatever he did or didn't do, the ultimate responsibility was Conall's.  While the initial jealousy toward Dhugal might have been understandable, Conall chose to let it grow and fester, and culminate in attempted murder.  And in the case of Tiercel, Conall chose to be a part of something he knew to be illegal (not caring because of his jealously of Kelson), which lead to his involvement in Tiercel's death (whether you call it murder or not).  He further chose to be a coward and hide what he'd done, rather than be a man and admit it, and tried to kill his own father.  Any way you cut it, Conall bears ultimate responsibility for what he did.
In some ways, I think Conall takes after his grandfather Donal, another royal who did whatever he wanted regardless of how others might feel or be affected.  Both, I feel, were selfish (can you tell I don't quite buy the 'for the good of the kingdom' excuse?).
About the fostering, could have been a good idea, but would it have been one they'd have seriously considered?  After all, Conall was a ducal heir, a prince who could be expected to become a royal advisor like his father.  And Nigel was certainly considered one of the best men to learn from in the 11 Kingdoms, so why send his own son away to learn from someone else?  As a thought, did Nigel spend less time than he should have with Conall?  And another: would Conall's jealousy have become what it did if his Uncle Brion had lived longer?  If Kelson had been older when he inherited?  I guess it couldn't have been easy to be a technical adult (like Kelson), but to not be listened to or have his opinions valued (unlike Kelson).