KoA Section Two (Chapters 6-10)
Welcome to April, the month before the month of Thick as Thieves! This week, we’re reading from “The stool hit the wall with a satisfying crash” to “Costis returned to his room, freed himself of belt and breastplate, and fell, otherwise fully dressed, onto his bed.” As always, these discussions are spoiler free for “The Wine Shop,” “The Knife Dance
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With the wine cup scene, Gen laughs, knowing she wouldn't poison him, but the court thinks she wants to (and could!). And in the dance scene, Attolia doesn't want to reveal anything of herself to the court or to make a spectacle, but Gen doesn't care because he loves her and wants to show off. I just re-read QOA and realized Irene and Gen make a personal commitment to each other at the end of that book, but in KOA they seem to be unsure of how to conduct themselves in public. With a brood of vipers around them, hiding their true feelings seems the safest option.
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I wondered, too, if he laughed because she was showing that dry sense of humor she has by mocking herself. As in, "Ha ha remember that time I poisoned my first husband?"
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I'm sure Gen is laughing because he knows that she's joking but the court thinks she isn't. She exercises her dry, terrifying sense of humor a number of times similarly to this across the books (there's the other part of KOA where she threatens to have him flayed.
Her dominating, masochistic sense of humor, while abrasive to those who feel more sympathy for Eugenides, I appreciate its presence in the story. It makes sense to me. It's human nature to joke about things that we are uncomfortable with in hopes of lightening their weight. It shows that even though Irene's been historically capable of wrecking people literally in the exact way she jokes about it later on, she's not really comfortable with that part of her, and so regularly references it sarcastically. When all is said and done, she does so self-mockingly. For someone who appears on the surface to have so much pride, deep down we know she has painfully low sense of self worth. She brings up that part of herself in her sense of humor in hope of lightening it enough to heal from it. And I think Eugenides is helping her heal from it by receiving her "threats" as jokes and turning them into humor himself. There's a part in KOA where he says to Irene, ("loftily"):
"I shall throw something at you. You are embarrassing me in front of my attendants."
(As if any of us could EVER imagine Gen throwing something at Irene.)
I positively cherish how MWT describes her response to Gen. It's one of my favorite exchanges in the whole series. I LOVE the part right before it where MWT gently describes Irene starting to soften into what might be her first experience with truly unconstrained laughter (right after Gen describes just how jealous he was of Dite for having loved the queen too:.... "WILDLY."
*The queen's lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed, but even her control was not equal to the task, and she had to lift her hand to cover her smile and then duck her head. Her shoulders shook lightly as she laughed... The queen lifted her head, but kept her hand in place a moment more.*
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The first time I remember him doing that was in QoA when Helen and Irene come to release Gen from the room he's been locked. Irene threatens to cut off his other hand and he laughs. At the time, it really threw me and later I realized this was just how they interacted and, really, sort of flirted.
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After reading your answer above, I realized there might be an interpretation to these scenes that I just haven't thought about yet, and that makes everything clearer if I just shift my perspective a little. If you don't mind, I have another question. Why does Irene get so angry when Gen suggests cutting down the guard by half? I mean, she's angry enough to have thrown an inkpot on his head, and judging by the fact that Gen's inkpots created dents in the plaster of his room, then Irene must have been angry enough to want to dent Gen's skull, lol. I'm not sure if I understand the reason for the intensity of her anger.
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As for why she’s personally angry at Gen, Attolia does seem to switch between supportive and angry at Gen a lot. Even though she wants him to take the Kingly role, maybe she struggles with actually giving up some power herself.
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I think the totality of her anger comes from a number of places.
There's this one heartbreaking part in KOA where MWT describes how the "embattled queen" takes great comfort, as if it is her only comfort, in how loyal her guard and soldiers are, not to her, but TO THEIR PAY, even though as a result her treasury is nearly empty. It makes me so sad for Irene because it describes how she knows she has nobody to protect her in the world unless she pays them. Although money can't buy love/friendship, it can buy something that vaguely resembles it. She clings to inauthentic loyalty because she's never experienced authentic loyalty... except in Relius and Teleus but I don't think anyone really knows how deep their feelings are for each other until Eugenides helps them all realize it.
Attolia is very aware of how vulnerable she has been and her gradual loss of her old control of things is happening in a good way through Eugenides but she fears that the loss of control is happening in a bad way, and that's why she reacts so strongly to anything that threatens her precarious sense of control over her surroundings.
If I remember correctly, before Eugenides came along and started chiseling away at the walls around her heart and getting "her entire palace up in arms and her entire court in chaos" just as Helen said he would (QOA p. 343), none of her court or staff or attendants had ever even seen Attolia angry. "Phresine had never seen the queen lose her temper..." (QOA p. 198) There's even a part where her youngest attendant Chloe, naive to the nature of transcendent relationships, despairs, "Why does she stay with him when he makes her SO angry???"
She spends a lot of KOA hysterically, violently angry at Eugenides, for all to see, a HUGE contrast to how she presented herself publicly in QOA.
Irene is angry because she is so afraid and Eugenides brings up her fears one after another to be faced and danced with until they are nothing but dust. And one of the ways he brings up her fear of losing control is by reducing the guard-- because he sees that their loyalty is not really to her, but to their pay, and he knows that she deserves better. And he makes sure to KEEP the love and loyalty that IS real and authentic in her life, by pardoning Teleus and Relius. And she is so angry because this loss of the facade of loyalty and protection are what she is most afraid of even if it means clearing a space so authentic loyalty and protection can replace them...
In this slow, arduous, painfully conflicting process, MWT paints so magnificently the real learning curve that precedes trust for an individual who's lived a lifetime never having known it. There's so much angst in how Irene is wrought with guilt over having hurt Eugenides, physically cut off his hand and destroyed his constitution and yet she's so overpowered by her own fear that she physically hurts him again by striking him that first time he undermines her power in public, showing that in addition to being triggered by the thought of losing half the guard, she is triggered by the thought of losing half her sovereign power.
Also, it's not the main reason for it, but like frosted_feather said, "she made the guard what it is." Maybe it's not a masterpiece, but with all the strategic promotions and demotions, she does take pride in how she molded the guard into the only well-oiled machine she has amidst the other disasters that surround her.
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