The Lachrymose Wedding (hey, wouldn't that make a great opera?)

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

I'm going to try doing a cut-in post so I don't hog the page. Thanks to Checkers for sending me the link for the directions. Let's see how badly I can botch them up.



How I doubt that it happened:

Eugenides and Irene, married, alone together at last.

Gen and Irene: "Alone at last!"
Gen: "The Guard should be reduced by half."
Irene: (flings jar of ink at his head)
Gen: (ducks)
Irene: (looks at Gen)
Gen: (looks at Irene)
Irene and Gen: "Waaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

More likely (to me, at least):

Irene and Gen are lying asleep. It is the dog watch of the night, a bad time for those haunted by nightmares.

Gen: (having a nightmare). "Please don't hurt me anymore. Please." (Cries in breathless, racking sobs that go on and on).
Irene: (Wakes up. Hears Gen's sobs. Recognizes them. Realizes what he's dreaming about. Wracked with guilt). "Wake up! It's all right. You're safe." (Remembers that, safe or not, he's lacking an arm because of her. Cries.)

Now, it may seem odd for me to think that she'd be able to speak of a scene like that to Relius in amusement and say (amusingly), "We were very lachrymose." However, since both the king and queen have very strange senses of humor, I would imagine further that at some point they both started to think it was rather funny that they're lying there on their wedding night sobbing their eyes out.

Okay, let's see if this works.

Leslie, delighted that LJ is working again

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know. I don't entirely like the nightmare idea. I like to think the nightmares in the book were triggered by the assassination attempt, and that Irene hadn't coped with them before, though I'm sure she wasn't exactly surprised. It's that "moment of gripped immobility" that makes me think this is not something they do every night -- like maybe she's been expecting this, but it hasn't happened before. I think they would have enough to cry about without nightmares -- the happy thing, as I said, but just the high emotion of the whole situation. And they both spend practically every waking moment hiding their emotions -- imagine what a flood is waiting to be released (like the waters of the Hamiathes reservoir) when they are alone and free to express their feelings.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Very well said. And Eugenides doesn't cry with nightmares, he screams his head off. :)

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

The screaming nightmare and "gripped immobility" moment comes after he's basically admitted he was dreaming she was making him blind, deaf, and mute, as she had once threatened to do and wanted him to hear that she had threatened to do.

I was thinking that the scene I described was more along the lines of a remembering-what-happened nightmare (which is why I borrowed the exact words Attolia used when she was telling Eugendes she listened outside his cell while he cried).

So the "gripped immobility" could be because she realizes that she's got to deal not with pain and regret from something that happened in the past, but that Gen, if only subconsciously, still fears what she might do to him. We're shown in QoA that she knows then that she does scare him (the scenes where she touches his face and in varying degrees he flinches), but she might have thought that a couple of months of marriage and closeness had cured that - and now realizes it hadn't. That could explain the immobility.

She wouldn't be able to do much about the remembering-nightmare because it really did happen, and no kind of apology could undo it. The fear-of-something-that-might-happen nightmare can be dealt with to an extent by reassurances (and is... beautifully... sigh................. )

Leslie

Errata (doesn't that sound like another kingdom?)

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

errr - that should be the words used in the book when Attolia told Eugenides she had heard him cry, not her actual words. And, now that I look at my original post - lacking a hand because of her, not an arm.

Leslie

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

I agree with checkers - well said! I like the Hamiathes reservoir analogy. I thought Gen's nightmare was triggered by the fight he had with Attolia though, over Teleus' release, taking him back (probably subconsciously) to a time when he was not sure if she loved him or not.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I meant that, really, not so much the actual assassination attempt as the aftermath -- though I'm sure being seriously wounded, feverish, etc. played a part.
-Philia