The Big Reveal
Here's a pattern that shows up time and again in the Tortall books. The heroine has a huge secret: Alanna's a girl, Daine ran wild with the wolves and forgot she was human, and Aly is the daughter of Tortall's spymaster. She's convinced that if her secret ever becomes known then her world will fall apart, and therefore keeps it clasped tight to her breast.
Then the big, bad, world-destroying secret is revealed, and…nothing happens.
In Wild Magic, this makes sense. Numair knows how to help Daine center herself so she never forgets she's human again: her big secret, awful as it is for her (her fellow villagers hunted her! Led by Hakkon Falconer who was almost her stepfather!), is something they can fix, so of course they don't freak out about it.
Alanna is a special case, because when the fact that she's female is revealed to the whole court, there are some repercussions. King Roald is evidently irritated enough that Alanna decides to go hang out with the Bazhir for a while.
But leaving was her decision. She's not ordered out of the court. Nor is she banished, or imprisoned, or otherwise punished for lying to everyone about her true identity for eight years; no one considers taking her shield away. It may not be possible to take someone's shield away, what with the Chamber of the Ordeal. Tortall's rulers may want to reconsider this policy. Not just Alanna, but also the base and treasonous Alex of Tirragen and Duke Roger made it through the Ordeal, so clearly the Chamber isn't infallible.
You could argue, I suppose, that Roger hadn't yet started down the road of high treason when he went through the Ordeal, but I think it's pretty clear that Alex had already been suborned to Roger's plans by the time he had his Ordeal. Shouldn't the Chamber have caught that? "Not trying to overthrow the crown" strike me as pretty high on the list of desiderata in new knights.
And Aly? At the end of Trickster's Queen there's this scene where Aly's all, "So guys, I'm the daughter of Tortall's spymaster. Thought you should know!" And in the book everyone's all "We couldn't have rebelled successfully without you, Aly! No harm, no foul!"
No! The revelation that their spymaster grew up in the thick of the Tortallan spy world - and, through Alanna, has such close ties to the Tortallan crown - ought to make the Copper Islanders reconsider her motivations for doing so. Possibly while they keep her locked up, so she can't spy on them anymore. There are a ton of reasons why Tortall might want the crown of the Copper Isles destabilized, and most of them aren't altruistic.
But it would be a total bummer if Dove reacted realistically to Aly’s revelation. Who wants to read two books about a rebellion, ending with the heroine being thrown in jail or shipped ignominiously home by the people she helped? Or about Alanna winning her shield, and promptly being stripped of it? (Exile, however, has real story possibilities. Alanna the Outlaw!)
This is the thing that makes Tortall so much fun to read, but so frustrating to analyze: they're chock full of fun things, secrets and duels and dinosaur battles. But if the logical consequences of keeping secrets or destroying palaces would bog down the story, those consequences just…don't occur. And it's hard to make sense of a world where cause and effect doesn't function.
Then the big, bad, world-destroying secret is revealed, and…nothing happens.
In Wild Magic, this makes sense. Numair knows how to help Daine center herself so she never forgets she's human again: her big secret, awful as it is for her (her fellow villagers hunted her! Led by Hakkon Falconer who was almost her stepfather!), is something they can fix, so of course they don't freak out about it.
Alanna is a special case, because when the fact that she's female is revealed to the whole court, there are some repercussions. King Roald is evidently irritated enough that Alanna decides to go hang out with the Bazhir for a while.
But leaving was her decision. She's not ordered out of the court. Nor is she banished, or imprisoned, or otherwise punished for lying to everyone about her true identity for eight years; no one considers taking her shield away. It may not be possible to take someone's shield away, what with the Chamber of the Ordeal. Tortall's rulers may want to reconsider this policy. Not just Alanna, but also the base and treasonous Alex of Tirragen and Duke Roger made it through the Ordeal, so clearly the Chamber isn't infallible.
You could argue, I suppose, that Roger hadn't yet started down the road of high treason when he went through the Ordeal, but I think it's pretty clear that Alex had already been suborned to Roger's plans by the time he had his Ordeal. Shouldn't the Chamber have caught that? "Not trying to overthrow the crown" strike me as pretty high on the list of desiderata in new knights.
And Aly? At the end of Trickster's Queen there's this scene where Aly's all, "So guys, I'm the daughter of Tortall's spymaster. Thought you should know!" And in the book everyone's all "We couldn't have rebelled successfully without you, Aly! No harm, no foul!"
No! The revelation that their spymaster grew up in the thick of the Tortallan spy world - and, through Alanna, has such close ties to the Tortallan crown - ought to make the Copper Islanders reconsider her motivations for doing so. Possibly while they keep her locked up, so she can't spy on them anymore. There are a ton of reasons why Tortall might want the crown of the Copper Isles destabilized, and most of them aren't altruistic.
But it would be a total bummer if Dove reacted realistically to Aly’s revelation. Who wants to read two books about a rebellion, ending with the heroine being thrown in jail or shipped ignominiously home by the people she helped? Or about Alanna winning her shield, and promptly being stripped of it? (Exile, however, has real story possibilities. Alanna the Outlaw!)
This is the thing that makes Tortall so much fun to read, but so frustrating to analyze: they're chock full of fun things, secrets and duels and dinosaur battles. But if the logical consequences of keeping secrets or destroying palaces would bog down the story, those consequences just…don't occur. And it's hard to make sense of a world where cause and effect doesn't function.