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

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Following a commentary on a semi-judicial proceeding, “Family” begins with Fitz and company returning to Buckkeep Castle, their progress to that point described. Fitz does not take the journey well, and he does not receive the news of a royal summons well when it reaches him. He takes some time to respond to it and appear as bidden.

When Fitz reports as ordered, he finds the Farseers in array awaiting him, as well as Hap Gladheart and the children of Burrich and Molly, their arrangement described. Soon after, the Fool is led in, as well, and Dutiful calls proceedings to order. The announcement is made to the family that Bee is lost, and Fitz is called upon to report how events have come to that pass. He does, in detail, falling to his knees as he does so. After, the family begins to grieve, and Fitz is surprised to find his kin reaching out to comfort him amid his grief, feeling himself to blame for all that has befallen.

After a too-brief time of offering up shorn hair in token of grief and commiserating with Fitz, the assembled Farseers and others begin to disperse. Dutiful leaves Kettricken and Fitz last, and Kettricken refuses to allow Fitz to vanish once again, bidding him escort her to her rooms. He does so, and she tends to him, dosing him with a soporific and noting the justice of it.

Fitz wakes in Kettricken’s bed in the morning after commiserating with her in the night, and they part. Fitz proceeds thence through the hidden passages of the castle to rejoin the Fool, with whom he confers about how to proceed. Their talk is interrupted by the delivery of a message summoning Fitz to another meeting with Dutiful, and as they part, Fitz and the Fool make mention of the latter’s lost fingertips.

The prefatory materials in the present chapter present another of the callbacks to earlier materials that my nerdy self appreciates seeing. The prefatories make reference to the use of a duel before the Witness Stones to determine justice, something long established as practice in the Six Duchies (see here). In my comments on the early depiction of the practice, I do raise some questions about it; the practice of judicial dueling is fraught, at best. Consequently, with the present chapter’s prefatory materials adding to those questions (one Kitney Moss, accused of murder, maintained his innocence despite appearing to be on the losing end of a judicial duel before the Stones, and dashed into them, inadvertently using one as a Skill-pillar despite a lack of training or understanding, and disappeared, with later circumstances bearing out his innocence), I find myself pleased; even within the milieu, the accuracy of the judicial duel is suspect, and I remain egotist enough to like to be proven right (usually; there have been times I’ve wished I’d been wrong).

Similarly, I appreciate being right about Dwalia’s glove from before. I am less pleased, however, that that pleasure reminds me that it’d been too long since I’d read the book; I’m running into things and only dimly remembering them, if at all, and then taking delight as if I’ve discovered something that I’d already seen before.

Also similar to the preface in referring back to the earlier parts of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus is the shearing and burning of hair as a token of grief. It is mentioned in the first depicted interaction between Fitz and the Fool, if memory serves (see here), and it does reappear throughout the series (as noted here). Again, my nerdy self delights in such consistencies, which I know are not easy to maintain across decades and series and thousands of pages; that they are, here and elsewhere in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, is part of why I keep coming back to Robin Hobb, again and again.

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