In which desire carries risks
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| Cover illustration by John Howe |
In last month’s discussion of Fool’s Errand, I discussed the complications involved in love – specifically, with relation to Fitz. This month, I’d like to have a similar discussion, but a bit more broad-reaching. I want to talk about the role of desire, and the complications it brings for everyone.
Golden Fool is at its heart, all about desire. Yes, there is sexual desire, and we’ll get there, but so many other types of desire can drive characters’ decisions and actions, both small and large; and part of navigating the urges of desire is understanding the consequences and potential harms of satisfying them. So: let us examine some desires. We’ll start small. We’ll begin with Thick.
Thick is very intentionally written to have Down Syndrome1. For our purposes, in this discussion of desire in Golden Fool, I will say only that he is incredibly powerful in the Skill, and that he is treated unkindly, regularly called halfwit, and indeed his own name, in this world of virtue names (King Shrewd, Prince Dutiful, etc.) reflects how he is seen2. Up until Fitz takes him under his wing, Thick’s primary goal in life has been to remain unseen and unnoticed. But Thick's strength in the Skill will be useful to Prince Dutiful, and so Fitz, a Farseer to his bones, decides he can't let that go unexploited, and sets about to woo Thick to his cause. There’s a certain amount of persuasion that Fitz presents as cleverly manipulative psychology, but really, as I see it, Thick is unique in being unmanipulable. The approach that works best is when Fitz just asks him, straight out, what he wants. Thick answers, equally straightforwardly: He wants pink sugar cakes, not burned, from the kitchens. He wants a red whistle on a green ribbon, like the one his mother gave him. He wants a peacock feather, because it’s pretty. When Fitz persuades him to take a bath, Thick realizes that he likes being groomed, and having his hair cut. Thick’s desires are for simple things, but their significance is anything but simple. Small details throughout the book show that these desires reflect Thick’s past, his love for his dead mother, his own self-image; and in gratifying them and thereby winning Thick’s compliance, Fitz gains a vastly powerful ally in future plot elements.
Yet no desire is harmless, in this book. Thick himself, in holding such humble desires, proves a weakness in Chade and Fitz’s need for secrecy. Yes, Fitz wins him over by giving him sweets and toys; but the Piebalds – those terrorists who wreak havoc on the Witted denizens of the Six Duchies both directly and indirectly, by commiting violence in their name – get to Thick first. They offer him pennies to buy sweets if he will tell them what happens in Chade's rooms, and what Chade and Fitz talk about, and what Chade calls Fitz when no one is listening. This is important because at this point no one except Chade and Kettricken know that Fitz is not Tom Badgerlock, servent to Lord Golden, but in fact that Witted Bastard, Fitzchivalry Farseer. The Piebalds stand to make serious mischief based on what they've learned from Thick, from the simple expedience of offering to gratify his simple desires (and, to be sure, threats to gut him if he tells anyone).
The more ambitious the desire, the greater the danger that comes with gratifying it. Chade’s desire for the Skill is one of the more dangerous ones. Using the Skill carries with it its own inherent desire-based element, because Skilling can be addictive. Unwary users can lose themselves entirely: their minds disintegrate and become part of the background stream of Skill that runs underneath the mundane world. Sensible fear of exactly this end was a large part of why Fitz resists Chade’s job offer to come tutor Prince Dutiful in Fool’s Errand for so many pages. However, Chade’s desire for the Skill compounds this inherent risk of personal destruction, because for him it represents more than just the immediate pleasure of the act of Skilling. Chade sees it as part of his inherited right as a bearer of Farseer blood, something that goes along with his power and political influence as Kettricken’s trusted advisor. So for Chade, the risks of misusing the Skill will not only destroy his own mind; they have implications for the future of the Six Duchies.
More deadly still, there is humanity’s desire for dragons. The whole thrust of the Realm of the Elderlings thus far (and continuing into the future) is about the return of dragons to human lands. But dragons – whether biological, like Tintaglia from the Liveship Traders, or simulacrum, like Verity’s flock in Assassin’s Quest – are desperately dangerous. Verity’s flock, sculpted of memory stone, may rescue the Six Duchies from the Red Ship Raiders, but they will suck the humanity out of people who are shadowed by the dragons flying overhead. And Tintaglia, we have already seen, believes that humanity has no right to freedom or self-determination in a world where dragons reign. And yet, despite these risks, humanity still desires dragons:
The skies of this world were always meant to have dragons. When they are not there, humans miss them. Some never think of them, of course. But some children, from the time they are small, they look up at a blue summer sky and watch for something that never comes. Because they know. Something that was supposed to be there faded and vanished. (pg 627-628).
It is tropey to build a story in which the plucky humans, refusing to bow to any masters, must fight for their freedom. Only Hobb can build a world in which humans are forced to bend their knee, slavishly, obsequiously, to a greater power, and make the reader think, ‘Well, I mean, after all, if it’s dragons…’
Desires are dangerous, yes. But that does not mean they should be denied. Because only by gratifying the most primal desire of them all do we make more humans. That's right! It's finally time to talk about sex.
I want to start with the Narcheska Eliania, the Outislander who has been chosen as Prince Dutiful’s arranged bride. She’s got all sorts of things going on back home that she’s got to balance in her role as affianced peace treaty token, one of which is a mysterious woman who encourages her to use her sexual wiles to bind Prince Dutiful to her will. This is deeply gross, since Eliania is only 13 or so, but it also clearly lays out how sexual desire is a tool, a weapon that Eliania can wield. And it is a dangerous weapon -- not just for the Six Duchies, but also for Eliania herself. Especially since she is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a literal child3. Fortunately, Dutiful is not particularly interested in 13-year-olds, so everyone manages to sidestep the risks that come with gratifying sexual desire.
Sidestepping the issue of sex is also something that Fitz and the Fool have been dancing around for a few books now, but no longer. Remember, the Fool is totally, hopelessly, helplessly in love with Fitz. He has been flirting with Fitz for ages, as we saw with the whole ‘Beloved’ exchange in Fool’s Errand; he dresses him up in clothes that make Fitz look incredibly sexy; and he embodies a persona as rakish Lord Golden who chases after women and men (and boys) alike, to the extent that most of Buckkeep starts whispering about how Lord Golden is undoubtedly bedding his servant, Tom Badgerlock (i.e., Fitz). Fitz looks the other way when he can, about the teasing, but eventually he decides that Words Must Be Had about it all. Which, to be fair, is reasonable. No point letting the UST between you and your very best friend fester when it’s causing real problems in your professional life.
So Fitz forces a confrontation with the Fool, and the Fool, for all that he teases and snarks and plays games with words, does not lie. He admits that yes, actually, he desires Fitz. And in return, Fitz, here, becomes cruel. It’s one thing to clear the air, or to gently say no to a friend who confesses that they’ve caught feelings for you. It’s entirely different to force the friend to admit to the feelings, only to follow up that forced confession with something as bald as, ‘I could never desire you as a bed partner. Never.’
The Fool responds, ‘That, too, is a thing that we both have known for years. A thing that never needed speaking, those words that I must now carry with me for the rest of my life… We could have gone all our lives and never had this conversation. Now you have doomed us both to recall it forever’ (pg 404).
This forced confession results in a rift between Fitz and the Fool, between the White Prophet and his Catalyst, that lasts for hundreds and hundreds of pages. It is the last, sharpest danger of desire. If satisfying it is dangerous, denying it can be worse. If the White Prophet and his Catalyst cannot work together to save the world, then that will lead to skies without dragons.
1 I have already cut out hundreds and hundreds of words about how that works in
this book, and indeed in the context of disability representation in general.
Please feel free to have that conversation in your head, where no one will get upset
at what I say or you think.↩
2 Although I do rather wonder why he gets a virtue name. Thus far the
tradition has been reserved only for nobility, and Thick has never been noble↩
3 By even the in-world definition of child, I should add. She doesn’t reach puberty until the next book.↩
Reference: Hobb, Robin. Fool’s Errand [Voyager, 2002].
CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social
