olreid:

FURTHER POST to say that even though it’s tragic that we didn’t get any gen pov in the final book, the fact that the last of gen’s pov that we DO get is at the end of the queen of attolia, and the last scene of that book is when irene finally accepts his proposal.. like literally the last time we are WITH gen is at the moment he becomes king… and so like of course we can never have his pov again, because the fate of kings is to seen always through the eyes of others, to never be alone with their own thoughts, to never be free of the distorting powers of rumor, myth, and legend…. and so we are with costis as he learns the king, and then sophos, and then kamet and then pheris… but all of them have different relationships with the king and different stories to tell about him… and even when, as in pheris’s case, their accounts are specifically about the king, they are also using the king as a mirror through which to reflect themselves… it’s so interesting how mwt plays with gen’s power and agency throughout the series bc like. yes history is written by the winners and so return of the thief is written by the king’s historian because gen ultimately succeeds in uniting the nations of the peninsula, but the king’s historian is not the king himself… the only time gen tells his own story in his own words is when he is the thief… whereas when he is king he has the power to shape nations, to command armies, but he can no longer give his own account of himself, because he has become something more than a person, and his office and his mythos are both co-created with people outside of himself,,, and so he gains all this power but he is no longer his own person and as such cannot tell his own story…. and how the fact that we never return to gen’s pov implies that whatever he gave up in becoming king he can never get back….. loving it here