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flameravenSo I saw this post on Tumblr:
Cersei vs. Alanna
Someone please write a giant meta essay on how Cersei Lannister and Alanna of Trebond both
dressed up as their twin brother
wanted to be a knight and
are called lioness
Like, what if Alanna had not gone through with the switching places? Would she have ended up as bitter as Cersei?
And what if Cersei had said a big “fuck you” to her father, cut her hair, dressed as a boy and run away? Would she have turned into a big damn feminist hero like Alanna?
Are they two sides of the same coin or am I imagining things?
And I started thinking, and then I did write an essay that is probably entirely too long. But it was an interesting diversion.
This is an interesting question.
My short answer is "no," I don't think either of them would have ended up being very similar in each other's places.
The long answer follows.
First, a disclaimer: I've only read maybe 1 1/2 of the Alanna books. I read nearly all of Tamora Pierce's books (most for the first time) in the past year, but I could not make it through Alanna's story. A lot of that I think has to do with my age-- I'm 26, and the first book is definitely a very middle-grade book. I found a lot of the things in it really over-simplified. The rest of it was, well, Alanna is just a bit too close to a Mary Sue for me. Please, hold your pitchforks until I finish.
Alanna's not a bad character, and I understand that Tamora Pierce was doing a lot of new things in the genre when the book was first published. However, since then, the girl who dresses up as a boy and becomes awesome at boy things has gotten over-used, and Alanna with her purple eyes AND her awesome healing magic AND her magic godly cat AND her Friend To All Creatures traits... it just rubs me the wrong way. I have a hard time engaging her as a character and not thinking "oh no this character has so many Mary Sue traits." I don't think she actually IS a Mary Sue, but she's a hair's breadth away, if that makes sense. In the hands of a less skilled writer, it would definitely be possible.
I will say that I enjoy the glimpses of Adult!Alanna we get in later books, so that's what I'm going to base my analysis on.
On to comparing Alanna and Cersei. I think there's a bit of trouble in making a direct comparison, because Tortall is pretty much like a Ren Faire version of medieval fantasy land. It's got all the overall trappings of medieval fantasy-- knights, castles, etc; but its values are extremely modern, right down to super easy 100% effective magic birth control. This makes sense, because Tamora Pierce writes YA, and YA in the 80's and 90's was not a place for morbid realism.
By contrast, Westeros is... well, it's Westeros, and it's intended as a deconstruction of medieval fantasy settings. This means it's much closer to the actual middle ages, where disease and death were rampant and if you weren't a noble your life was pretty much terrible for the few decades you got before you died-- if you managed to survive childhood. If you were a noble your life also sucked, but you got some luxuries and possibly an extra decade or two of life. So in Westeros we have all the worst aspects of humanity, and then, because there's a little bit of magic in the world, we also have terrible ice zombies who are probably going to kill everyone. That is, if everyone doesn't die in the massive civil war(s) first. Yay!
It's a pretty vast tonal difference, is what I'm saying.
Swapping the two characters into each others' worlds would be... interesting. I suspect Alanna in Westeros would, at best, probably end up something like Arya... but let's remember that Arya commits her first murder at the age of 9, and later goes on to become very skilled at deception and eventually trains as an assassin. Along the way she kills a LOT of other people, all before she hits age 11. Arya is a popular character, but like pretty much everyone else in Westeros, she's not a very good person, and her situation is rather horrifying.
The problem of course is that Alanna wouldn't become Arya, because she is way too noble and honorable. Alanna's attitudes are a lot more like Sansa's, with her dreams about knightly chivalry, and I think she'd have a very hard time facing the reality of someone like, say, The Mountain or The Hound. Alanna is tough enough that she could probably adjust and survive, but Westeros is not a land that tolerates idealism very well. It is worth noting that the adult Alanna we see glimpses of later seems to be much more grounded in the awful reality of the world, so she'd probably do fine, assuming she had an honorable man like Eddard Stark to serve, but I don't see child!Alanna as she is in the first book living to grow up in Westeros.
If you stuck Cersei in Tortall, on the other hand, she'd probably take over the court almost immediately. (Either as a child or an adult; Cersei loves to play her some politics.) She'd then proceed to run the country into the ground, because Cersei is awful at governing. This is actually one of the things I find most interesting about her character-- Cersei perceives herself as being this amazing political mastermind who could be awesome if only the patriarchy weren't holding her down, but she is not NEARLY as competent in reality as she is in her head.
It's notable that once Cersei actually holds the reins of power, without Tyrion or Joffrey interfering/running damage control, everything falls apart. She's paranoid, she destroys her own alliances, she doesn't understand compromise, and with the peasants getting ever more restless and upset, she actually allows the Church to form a peasant militia. She manages to handle every single situation that comes up in the worst way possible, and when people try to correct her or mitigate the damage she's doing, she disregards or even banishes them, so things continue to spiral downward even faster.
So. Back to the original question.
If Cersei HAD disguised herself as a boy and trained as a knight or otherwise had access to male privilege, would she have ended up less bitter? ....Maaaybe, but I rather doubt it. Again, when Cersei gets her goal of having political power without men telling her what to do, she completely botches it. And a female knight in Westeros does not get respect no matter how competent she is-- just look at poor Brienne.
Cersei also strikes me as someone who doesn't actually want to work very hard at anything. She just kind of expects everyone to recognize how awesome she is and do what she says Because Reasons. This is why she fails at the day to day details of governing, and why, even if she'd grown up outside the clusterfuck that is the Lannister family, even if she was in Tortall where everyone is super tolerant, I don't know that she'd be happy. Alanna worked and worked to acheive her goal, but I can't see Cersei doing the same. Cersei strikes me as someone who always thinks they deserve more than what life has handed them.
As for Alanna, I think that even if she hadn't made the swap and had gone off to magic school, she probably would have found a way to make things work. Maybe she wouldn't have been as satisfied with the life as she was being a knight, but it strikes me that there are a lot of practical applications for magic in Tortall, so surely she could have ended up as some kind of combat mage, which would allow her to protect and defend the realm, just not with a sword. Again, it comes down to personality; Alanna has the kind of core confidence that suggest to me she would find a way to be happy whatever she was doing. Alanna seems like she'd be able to make lemons into lemonade. Cersei would probably throw the lemons back at you.And then burn your house down. With the lemons.
Cersei vs. Alanna
Someone please write a giant meta essay on how Cersei Lannister and Alanna of Trebond both
dressed up as their twin brother
wanted to be a knight and
are called lioness
Like, what if Alanna had not gone through with the switching places? Would she have ended up as bitter as Cersei?
And what if Cersei had said a big “fuck you” to her father, cut her hair, dressed as a boy and run away? Would she have turned into a big damn feminist hero like Alanna?
Are they two sides of the same coin or am I imagining things?
And I started thinking, and then I did write an essay that is probably entirely too long. But it was an interesting diversion.
This is an interesting question.
My short answer is "no," I don't think either of them would have ended up being very similar in each other's places.
The long answer follows.
First, a disclaimer: I've only read maybe 1 1/2 of the Alanna books. I read nearly all of Tamora Pierce's books (most for the first time) in the past year, but I could not make it through Alanna's story. A lot of that I think has to do with my age-- I'm 26, and the first book is definitely a very middle-grade book. I found a lot of the things in it really over-simplified. The rest of it was, well, Alanna is just a bit too close to a Mary Sue for me. Please, hold your pitchforks until I finish.
Alanna's not a bad character, and I understand that Tamora Pierce was doing a lot of new things in the genre when the book was first published. However, since then, the girl who dresses up as a boy and becomes awesome at boy things has gotten over-used, and Alanna with her purple eyes AND her awesome healing magic AND her magic godly cat AND her Friend To All Creatures traits... it just rubs me the wrong way. I have a hard time engaging her as a character and not thinking "oh no this character has so many Mary Sue traits." I don't think she actually IS a Mary Sue, but she's a hair's breadth away, if that makes sense. In the hands of a less skilled writer, it would definitely be possible.
I will say that I enjoy the glimpses of Adult!Alanna we get in later books, so that's what I'm going to base my analysis on.
On to comparing Alanna and Cersei. I think there's a bit of trouble in making a direct comparison, because Tortall is pretty much like a Ren Faire version of medieval fantasy land. It's got all the overall trappings of medieval fantasy-- knights, castles, etc; but its values are extremely modern, right down to super easy 100% effective magic birth control. This makes sense, because Tamora Pierce writes YA, and YA in the 80's and 90's was not a place for morbid realism.
By contrast, Westeros is... well, it's Westeros, and it's intended as a deconstruction of medieval fantasy settings. This means it's much closer to the actual middle ages, where disease and death were rampant and if you weren't a noble your life was pretty much terrible for the few decades you got before you died-- if you managed to survive childhood. If you were a noble your life also sucked, but you got some luxuries and possibly an extra decade or two of life. So in Westeros we have all the worst aspects of humanity, and then, because there's a little bit of magic in the world, we also have terrible ice zombies who are probably going to kill everyone. That is, if everyone doesn't die in the massive civil war(s) first. Yay!
It's a pretty vast tonal difference, is what I'm saying.
Swapping the two characters into each others' worlds would be... interesting. I suspect Alanna in Westeros would, at best, probably end up something like Arya... but let's remember that Arya commits her first murder at the age of 9, and later goes on to become very skilled at deception and eventually trains as an assassin. Along the way she kills a LOT of other people, all before she hits age 11. Arya is a popular character, but like pretty much everyone else in Westeros, she's not a very good person, and her situation is rather horrifying.
The problem of course is that Alanna wouldn't become Arya, because she is way too noble and honorable. Alanna's attitudes are a lot more like Sansa's, with her dreams about knightly chivalry, and I think she'd have a very hard time facing the reality of someone like, say, The Mountain or The Hound. Alanna is tough enough that she could probably adjust and survive, but Westeros is not a land that tolerates idealism very well. It is worth noting that the adult Alanna we see glimpses of later seems to be much more grounded in the awful reality of the world, so she'd probably do fine, assuming she had an honorable man like Eddard Stark to serve, but I don't see child!Alanna as she is in the first book living to grow up in Westeros.
If you stuck Cersei in Tortall, on the other hand, she'd probably take over the court almost immediately. (Either as a child or an adult; Cersei loves to play her some politics.) She'd then proceed to run the country into the ground, because Cersei is awful at governing. This is actually one of the things I find most interesting about her character-- Cersei perceives herself as being this amazing political mastermind who could be awesome if only the patriarchy weren't holding her down, but she is not NEARLY as competent in reality as she is in her head.
It's notable that once Cersei actually holds the reins of power, without Tyrion or Joffrey interfering/running damage control, everything falls apart. She's paranoid, she destroys her own alliances, she doesn't understand compromise, and with the peasants getting ever more restless and upset, she actually allows the Church to form a peasant militia. She manages to handle every single situation that comes up in the worst way possible, and when people try to correct her or mitigate the damage she's doing, she disregards or even banishes them, so things continue to spiral downward even faster.
So. Back to the original question.
If Cersei HAD disguised herself as a boy and trained as a knight or otherwise had access to male privilege, would she have ended up less bitter? ....Maaaybe, but I rather doubt it. Again, when Cersei gets her goal of having political power without men telling her what to do, she completely botches it. And a female knight in Westeros does not get respect no matter how competent she is-- just look at poor Brienne.
Cersei also strikes me as someone who doesn't actually want to work very hard at anything. She just kind of expects everyone to recognize how awesome she is and do what she says Because Reasons. This is why she fails at the day to day details of governing, and why, even if she'd grown up outside the clusterfuck that is the Lannister family, even if she was in Tortall where everyone is super tolerant, I don't know that she'd be happy. Alanna worked and worked to acheive her goal, but I can't see Cersei doing the same. Cersei strikes me as someone who always thinks they deserve more than what life has handed them.
As for Alanna, I think that even if she hadn't made the swap and had gone off to magic school, she probably would have found a way to make things work. Maybe she wouldn't have been as satisfied with the life as she was being a knight, but it strikes me that there are a lot of practical applications for magic in Tortall, so surely she could have ended up as some kind of combat mage, which would allow her to protect and defend the realm, just not with a sword. Again, it comes down to personality; Alanna has the kind of core confidence that suggest to me she would find a way to be happy whatever she was doing. Alanna seems like she'd be able to make lemons into lemonade. Cersei would probably throw the lemons back at you.
