Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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After an admonishment for Masters of the Skill to observe solo practitioners closely against the possibility of destruction, “The Secret Child” begins with Fitz considering his newborn child and thinking ahead to glorious futures for her. Fitz laughs at himself for his doubts as he pictures how matters will unfold around his second daughter, but his laughter soon dies as he considers further implications; his daughter is another Farseer, and that begins to raise uneasy possibilities in his mind.

The next morning sees Withywoods begin to adjust to the presence of a new child, however strange to many people’s eyes, among them. Fitz’s Wit-borne instincts see threats, but more of his attention is given over to marvel at his daughter and his wife who bore her. In a dream, he recalls his youth in Buckkeep, seeing the Fool made sport by the other children in the castle, and he is unable or unwilling to intervene as the other children assail him.

Fitz wakes from his dream and is afraid he has harmed his small child, against which Molly soothes him. He considers the reality of his treatment of the Fool in his childhood, as well as that of the other children in the area, and he realizes that his daughter will be as alone as the Fool was, possibly abused as he was, if he does not act to hinder such a thing.

The opening commentary on Skillmaster Clarity and the Cowshell Village Tragedy points, for one, to a possible horror story set in the Six Duchies. Whether or not Hobb will write such a thing, fleshing out an incident originally mentioned in passing as with the Piebald Prince, I do not know. I can hope for such a thing, however; I am not normally a horror reader, but the kind of deconstructive exploration that the commentary suggests possible is very much the kind of thing I enjoy seeing in those properties for which I can still be said, in some ways, to be a fan.

That same commentary also bespeaks the United States-ness from which Hobb writes. Perhaps it is another of my affective readings, but I cannot help but see a parallel between what is suggested–not only in the current chapter, but elsewhere in the corpus–about the developed community of Skill users and the US Judiciary. I also cannot help but note that there is, in the present chapter as elsewhere in the corpus, an explicit check on political power. The monarch of the Six Duchies loses the ability to appoint a major court and governmental functionary, and the body undertakes to police itself by adopting policies that explicitly constrain its highest member. The dangers of autocracy, growing greater as the power to enforce autocratic dicta and views of morality and ethics increases, are clear; how much of a comment on the world of the novel’s composition, or on the ongoing world of its reception, is to be found is an open question, but that there is one to be found is certain.

And as far as affective reading goes…my own daughter was born small, though she was born early (rather than after a two-year gestation, as Fitz and Molly’s second daughter is). I recall, and I read in my own journals, thoughts about my daughter not unlike Fitz’s about his. I still have some of them; I worry about how the other children in our part of the world do and will regard my girl. But I think it’s not something that needs forgiving that I do. There’s much in my life as does beg forgiving, but that’s not part of it.

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