Dragaera

Spoiler thread on Brokedown Palace, need to know.

Davdi Silverrock davdisil at gmail.com
Sat Feb 4 10:48:03 PST 2006

On 2/4/06, Maximilian Wilson <wilson.max at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/4/06, Francesco Nicoletti <francesco.nicoletti at pacific.net.au> wrote:
> > [snip] Fenario. That seem to leave a subset of with one member, Cawti.
> > If Cawti did write Brokedown Palace & Brigitta is her mother, perhaps
> > Cawti sees herself in the same catalyst role in Dargaeria as she wrote
> > for her mother in Brokedown Palace.
> > It would be interesting to see Fenario from another narrator's
> > perspective. Vald's would be nice. Would he see a shining new palace by
> > the river ? How unreliable is the narrator of Brokedown Palace?
>
> As far as I'm concerned, this is a Cool Idea.
>

The idea that Cawti is the narrator of /Brokedown Palace/ is indeed
Cool.  It works well with the fact that she is a poet (which we learn
when she recited a poem to Vlad on the return from Greenaere in
/Phoenix/), which might further explain some of the odd depictions of
things and events (I'm thinking of the River and the Tree, here) -
she's using poetic license to recast events she doesn't quite fully
know about.  Assuming she wrote BP before she met Vlad, it also might
also explain why she believes that with sufficient will and effort,
the Cycle *can* be defeated, or at least made less important, and the
downtrodden raised up. That is, Cawti has the example of the events of
/Brokedown Palace/ to inspire her, and even if various events did not
occur exactly as she depicted them, we have Verra's own word that as a
result of the actions of a prince of Fenario, she (Verra) can no
longer manifest in Fenario, so that core of truth has been confirmed. 
And perhaps Cawti hopes that something similar can be done against the
Orb and the Cycle in the Empire.

Also, finding out more about her own roots might explain why Cawti no
longer uses a patronymic (that is, she discovered that she is in fact
illegitimate).