May the Darkness be merciful (Black Jewels and more)

Yeah, Daemon wonders why Jaenelle is so hesitant to let him see a little under her barriers and realizes that the last time she tried was with Wil and she... didn't take it well.

Which, I mean, I don't blame her! All the kids who do connect with Jaenelle instantly are from Kaeleer and haven't grown up in the toxic, anxiety-inducing atmosphere that Terrielle is consumed with. It'd be easier for them to accept someone who was darker or weirder or more magical than anyone who would ping that (even without realizing it) as 'target of destruction'.

 

strongly agree, and also I got carried away replying to the very last sentence :P

I feel like she didn't learn to hide it until after her family started accusing her of being a wild-ass liar with too much imagination - and that sort of tied into my theory that Queen status is a behavioral thing? because Alexandra remarks on how Jaenelle was never respectful in the 'right' ways, how she called Alexandra by name instead of rank or relationship. and she just generally doesn't wait for permission or approval unless she thinks she'll get in trouble, which is probably also something she learned from her relatives. higher ranked Blood are more likely to see themselves as an authority (which could be a thing Queens specifically have in common?? despite having widely varying actual jewel strength??) and she expressed that self-determination from a young age until her relatives started punishing her for getting above herself.

also, hrm. Witch got incarnated into an infant, who had to physically develop and learn to be a person while being a proto-god whatsit. she has innate knowledge of herself but also a lot of blind spots that are probably due to leveling up as a meat creature that doesn't develop full mental faculties for like two decades. I dunno if Witch is able to realize much on her own, in a meta sense. they seem pretty separate (and yet, tied together by ability and experience) for a lot of her childhood. like they're co-fronting most of the time but alternating dominance.

Alexandra's consistent, dogged refusal to pick up on the fact that Jaenelle is Queen is so maddening to me. like, she's IN Jaenelle's formal court and still thinking 'sweet darkness, they let her dress up and pretend to be in charge!' and at that point it's just, no. u are as dumb as a bag of hair. everyone else has at least a few seconds of internal 'oh shit' when they realize who she is, but Jaenelle even takes her into the fuckin abyss and takes off all her clothes human flesh masks and Alexandra can't muster up more than a 'no ur still gross, fuck off kiddo'. LIKE. ALEXANDRA ANGELLINE, HOW DO U EVEN MANAGE TO DRESS URSELF EACH DAY. MUST BE HARD GETTING SHOES ONTO A BAG OF HAIR

tfw everyone in the Angelline household is a compilation of epic fail apart from Wilhelmina (free her)

 

DONT FORGET, ALEXANDRA PULLS THAT SHIT WITH OTHER QUEENS TOO like I want to say she either does it to Morghann or Karla (oh hey, that's another thing: when the Dark Council visits in book two, they don't instantly recognize the girls as Queens, so another point for behavioral) because Alexandra is. The worst.

Alexandra vs Marithari for Worst Female Authority Figure, round one FIGHT.

 

on a lighter note, please imagine Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, whose name, when spoken, is believed to summon him, as the Realm's version of John Cena

 

but yeah, speaking of Jaenelle's terrible family, one of the things that gets to me each time I reread the series is how balls-out incompetent the Bad Characters are. some of the morally grey ones have an ounce of common sense, but Dorothea? Hekatah? they're thousands of years old and shooting themselves in the kneecaps every time they come up with a cunning plan. they're pretty much in charge because they like murdering people (ruling through fear, removing all opponents, etc) and haven't yet keeled over from natural causes. I could sort of forgive everyone else for having been born into/survived their collective centuries of fucking up Blood culture, and maybe losing the ability to make sound decisions and basic observations, but what the hell is D&H's excuse?!?

new theory: covens and courts and Protocol exist, in part, because a prolonged, uninhibited indulgence in one's Blood powers and sense of self-importance turns people straight up tit-shitting insane

Spoiler: existing theory

since the origin of Blood ability is that it was gifted to a bunch of humans by an ancient dragon, the subsequent ragelust tendencies in the darker jewels are a relic of actual living dragon behavior that humans now have to manage (poorly) through culture and social control

hey how much should we be putting under spoiler cuts, in general? I guess everyone here as of right now has def read the main trilogy

also @whoever lmk how much/what parts of my fan-complaining I should put under a spoiler, bc I don't wanna harsh anyone's vibe & am unable to chill, apparently

 

I like Bishop's writing, but man, her villains are dumb as bricks.

That reminds me of the Parasol Protectorate series (AU steampunk England with vampires and werewolves). The longer they're around and the more isolated they are, the more likely a vampire/werewolf is to go 'off', thus the importance of courts and packs.

 

I actually enjoy the villains being dumb as bricks in some cases? it's more satisfying when horrible things happen to them :P (In the Others series the stupid humans always get eaten or mauled and it pleases me.)

 

I always felt like the real downfall of Dorothea and Hekateh was that they couldn't conceive of people actually trusting one another. They assume that everyone else is as selfish and conniving as they are, and their schemes are based on this model of behavior.

I'm sure those strategies are very effective when they are working against other corrupt and selfish personalities, but Jaenelle's extended family is so interconnected that they can't drive a wedge between them, they can't undermine their trust, and they can't understand why these people don't behave as predicted.

 

Thoughts on caste and hiding it:

Surreal ID's a Warlord in the second book and it scares him because he didn't realize she was strong enough to do it. Black Widows can be born or made, so some degree of hiding your caste there is normal. Sylvia was the first Queen born in Halaway in a while, and she's presented as comfortably youngish middle aged-- the long lived races get screwy with caste and childbirth rates I think.

So, darker jewel ranks can ID caste more easily. It seems like males pick up on caste quicker too, but most of the males who do are hypervigilant and it seems like Protocol for males is much more precise in the dick waving contest arena, so they might be trained into recognizing it. Warlord Princes do it the easiest and recognize each other the easiest, though the text specifically mentions a particular arrogant danger in the way they carry themselves, so it might be primarily social signalling.

Saetan can pick out caste and jewel strength reliably, only beat out by Jaenelle. Daemon's good at twigging onto jewel strength but doesn't pick up on caste as fast, but Lucivar seems to be the opposite? Divergent teaching of identification methods, maybe? Eyrien culture is definitely more caste and gender structered whereas Dorothea's Hayll is balanced around jewel strength and bloodlines.

So... there's some level of inborn trait signaling, but definitely social signaling as well. Maybe it's something on a psychic scent level, which would explains the Benedict-Angellines-- they're all dense as concrete when it comes to emotional and psychic scents. Since psychic scents are at least partially personality/psychologically influenced, I could see that affecting whether or not someone presents as their caste.

Jaenelle is obscenely good at hiding hers, but only towards those who aren't meant to serve. A function of Witch, maybe?

 

Considering the constant room cleaning, and what was going on in that family re: Robert, i feel like the Angellines aren´t so much bad at psychic scent and picking out caste as having trained themselves into denial. especially Alexandra. basically she didn't recognize Jeanelle as Witch or a Queen because she didn´t Want that to be true, and held onto that right up to the end. (Which is also why she had no "Oh shit" moment. Part of her already knew and was sticking it´s fingers in it´s ears and singing "lalala" the whole time.)

 

I can't find my copy of The Invisible Ring anywhere and this feels cruelly ironic, I'm almost positive I have it but where did it go

also, I managed to find the bit in book 3 where Alexandra clarifies that she's always perceived Jaenelle as 'muted' like a non-jeweled Blood would be, and since she experiences this while straight-up watching Jaenelle make a potion, it's definitely some kind of difficulty on Alexandra's part, whether mentally or magically. denial is more than a river in Egypt; it's also an entire aristo family in Chaillot

 

Oh man aint this a blast from the past x3 couple years into my Barnes and Noble job, I thought they looked interesting and read the main trilogy over a progression of my breaks and lunches.

My takeaway is pretty much identical to what I'd say about what bits of the Anita Blake books I read; I disliked the plot and virtually all of the main characters and all the sex scenes and (imo) unnecessary mentions of genetailia ( but in fairness I detest all sex scenes in anything ever). But what I DID like was the world setting, so much so that now and again I longed for an RP site set in the setting. ( I did find a great Anita Blake-verse game, but sadly it eventually got taken down ;3; had tons of fun there though)

 

oh man the Anita Blakes... I really liked Bloody Bones. and I heard that Obsidian Butterfly was supposed to be great but I never made it that far. tbh I really incredibly disliked Jean-Claude van Damme so when they finally banged I went BLUH and noped out. does anybody have recs for supernatural mysteries without weird hetero banging? this means Dresden Files is out, I tried them already :P

 

ANYWAYS I also got hooked on the Black Jewels largely due to worldbuilding. there are just. so many questions I want answered. and maybe they're dropped as tidbits during something seemingly unrelated, or maybe I have to make them up on my own. regardless: this is the kind of content that gets into my brain and makes me crave more of it.

 

Patricia Briggs writes some pretty good stuff, though her Alpha and Omega series is a little harder on the "mystery" aspect than the Mercy Thompson-- Mercy isn't trying to solve things half the time, half the time she's trying to live her goddamn life and the mysteries just keep happening.

I still think that Black Jewels would make an incredibly interesting tabletop setting. It's got enough of a structure that it'd carry over well. It'd make for a really good group roleplay too, but I've never actually found anyone up to roleplaying it outside of one-offs though, which is sad.

 

I remember having an impression that Jaenelle's power was so dark that anyone lighter than Black would have trouble sensing it, at least when she wasn't actively exerting herself. (did Daemon have trouble with it too? I want to say he did, when they first met.) I think that 'muted' effect was just a matter of how distantly she was separated from the rest of the Blood.

 

wait, Daemon was interested in Surreal?? I thought he basically adopted her, for the most part, but I didn't think he had any romantic or sexual interest. he seems pretty thoroughly sex-repulsed with anyone other than Witch.

 

I believe it happens in one of the books after the orginal trilogy.

 

hm, that could be it. I need to go look up the titles and find out if there are ones I haven't read.

 

also, before I forget again - does anyone know how the hell Dorothea ended up with the SaDiablo name? she apparently married Lanzo for his surname and not much else, so it existed as a lineage somehow. and yet, Saetan - arguably the most well-known SaDiablo - was a bastard who came to power without a shred of social backing, just his jewel strength and good grasp of Protocol. so, did he adopt a more or less worthless name that then rose to prominence simply because it was shared by him? or did other people just start calling themselves SaDiablo after he retreated from public affairs? did any of his sons marry or breed that prolifically??? srsly this has baffled me for ages