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

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Another excerpt from Bee’s journals precedes “A Princess of the Farseers.” As the chapter begins, Bee reflects glumly on her new status as a royal. The passage from Kelsingra to Buckkeep is glossed, Bee noting complaints about the necessities of royal travel as she rehearses events. A reunion with a maid from Withywoods prompts emotional release, and Bee begins to be integrated into the courts. She and Shun are initially polite but cool after their shared experiences, and Bee finds herself beset by duties and tutors and the sniping of pampered court ladies that she adeptly addresses to Shun’s relief.

Bee begins to settle into routines, one of which is with Beloved, now masquerading as Lord Chance. Some of them also touch on the Skill, in which Bee remains untutored and therefore of some vexation as her thoughts leak out at night. Reunions with Hap and others do ease her, however, even as she continues to struggle with the changes and comes to better and better understandings of a father she has mourned. Bee does take some opportunities to act out, struggling for reconnection and earning some rebuke.

One evening, Bee finds herself wandering the halls of the keep and stumbles upon Thick. From him, she begins to find a new friend and to learn more of the Skill. It is, for her, a strange taste of normalcy she had lacked.

The present chapter reads as sort of a passing thing, one intended primarily to move action along to its next point of importance rather than to do anything on its own. For the most part; there are some rather pointed goings-on that might well be read as toothing-stones from which another series might be constructed. The exchange in the present chapter between Bee and Violet over Shun is one such; Bee even remarks upon being certain to come into conflict with Violet again (780). While, in effect, a bit of petty sniping, it is one that serves a useful purpose–Bee is to be commended not only for taking up for one who had helped her, but also for rebuking scorn unearned–and it is one that gestures towards ways in which Bee is being set up to succeed the Fool. Speaking uncomfortable truths to adjust behavior is a function of the character-type the Fool has been by the in-milieu time of the present chapter, and Bee seems well positioned to keep on doing that very thing.

I note, too, that the present chapter does much to address the tension surrounding how Bee is and should be treated. While her numerical age is not entirely clear from the narrative, and her growth has been noted to have proceeded at a strange pace, Bee is somewhat ambiguously a child. She is not an adult, certainly, but given her experiences and her nature, she is not a child as other children are; she knows too much and too well, and much of it unpleasantly. As with the Fool, she crosses a number of categories, multidimensionally liminal, and how others must react to her is uncertain. Given the presence of the Skilled, however, with whom she might be able to share more (and “might” does a lot of work, here), those around Bee might (and, again, “might” does a lot of work, here) well be expected to understand her position better. She has responsibilities to those around her, certainly, but they also do to her, and it seems to me as I read the chapter again that the latter could use more attention.

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