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

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Following what appears to be a report from Ash to Rosemary about approaching the Fool, “Tidings” opens with Fitz returning to his rooms to sleep and rising to uncertainty about his new role in the Six Duchies. He and Nettle confer through the Skill, with Nettle discussing a number of things with Fitz that had occurred in a meeting where he had not been present, and some matters between them are eased.

Afterwards, Fitz confers with Chade through the Skill, discussing their respective re-emergences into public life. Chade reminds Fitz that he has a role to play in his public persona and must act to suit it, noting that the same is true for private life. Fitz retreats to Chade’s hidden chamber to confer with the Fool–and with Ash, who is present–about how to put on his role. The pair delight in outfitting Fitz, who finds himself appreciative of their efforts and the results, and Ash asks Fitz about the truth of some of the Fool’s claims to him. Fitz speaks well of the Fool and invites him to dinner, but is refused, the reasons cited. At the urgings of Chade and others, Fitz makes to descend to dinner, and Ash reports to him of the Fool’s status.

Fitz is brought in by Riddle, who now sports the title Kesir in acknowledgement of his receipt of a Chyurda holding from Kettricken. The two talk together as Riddle ensures Fitz’s swift arrival with the royal party, along with whom he enters to dine. The events of the evening are glossed, among which Fitz is crowned again and publicly, and among which he is pressed socially in ways to which he is entirely unaccustomed.

Following the dinner, Fitz is again part of the royal party as it adjourns to Dutiful’s chambers. There, the group confers about next steps to take regarding Fitz and Bee, and Chade finds himself stymied at not being able to reach an agent he had dispatched to Withywoods, Slidwell. Nettle notes some annoyance at Chade’s use of Slidwell, noting “There were a number of reasons I chose to discontinue his Skill-training” (191), but she reaches out to him through the Skill, aided by Dutiful and Fitz. They find something fogging the magic, and Fitz and Chade both purpose to make for Withywoods in haste. Discussion of the fogging and its possible sources follows, and Chade briefs and equips Fitz for his journey, on which he departs in haste.

The discussion in the present chapter about the performativity of public personae–with public including any association with other people–attracts some attention. If memory serves, inhabiting a public role for any length of time, especially one seemingly at odds with his inclinations, is a strain for Fitz; his sojourn as Lord Golden’s servingman stands out as an example of his difficulties. If memory serves, the Fool is perhaps the best person to consult about the overt performativity of dealing with other people; having lived as other people than himself, as several people other than himself, across many years, affords him substantial experience with and a detailed perspective on the matter. (Yes, I know that the Fool’s presentation varies. He does seem to be presenting as masculine in the present text.) There is a temptation to read the exchange between the two–assisted by Ash, who receives some interesting comment from the Fool–as another metaphor for some issue or another, or as some level of gloss on Judith Butler’s rhetoric, but I’ll acknowledge that might just be my graduate schooling talking.

I have my role to play, as well.

Part of that role, at least as has regarded my rereading Hobb, has been that I read affectively more than is perhaps good for me. In keeping with that, I will note that my daughter, Ms. 8, has long been engaged as a performer; she has, in fact, just started rehearsals for her next show as I write this. As part of that performance practice, she has had to inhabit other personae than her “real” one (and she is branching out into costume design as part of that work, as well, which seems relevant to the present chapter); I have had some success in explaining things to her as being parts of a role she has to adopt for specific audiences she encounters. (There’s something to be said about meeting people where they are, even when they are people well known already.) My own role-playing, in an overt sense, has gotten going again, as I’ve noted recently, and I always have some concerns about what I am doing as a husband and a father. As such, playing roles, fulfilling perceivedly expected functions for other people, has been much on my mind recently. It is perhaps coincidental that the present chapter focuses so much on such things; were I more Jungian in my approach, I might be inclined to consider the synchronicity of it. But I never have been as much embedded in psychoanalytic criticism as others have been, even others under whom I did some study in years long gone away now. At this point, I’m not sure what theoretical stance I take, really, if I do take one consistently (which is another question, and an open one).

Perhaps that is also part of my role.

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