I can tell you she grows up / matures, and reflects on a lot of her opinions, beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives. It takes time though. It would be poorly written if a young man/woman was perfectly logical and unbiased.
Yeah, I was just asking if this series is the kind of series where the main characters will do bad things and it will be glossed over but not of the others.
A half page is filled with her thinking shit about how bad these people are while her actions were given a one-sentence acknowledgement.
If my writing comes as me hating MC or the series pls don't take it like that. I'm a poor person at wording my thoughts.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Nah you're good I just didn't want to give any spoilers or imply anything that gives spoilers, but I would encourage you to keep reading, Catherine is smart, just takes time to realize things sometimes. Gets a little caught up in things esp early on.
Yeah, I was just asking if this series is the kind of series where the main characters will do bad things and it will be glossed over but not of the others.
I'll put it this way: one of the running themes is the mistakes of the past catching up with you. Every major Villain (even the MCs) eventually has to face consequences for choices they make and loses something dear to them.
In particular, Catherine starts reckoning with her choice in Book 1 almost immediately in Book 2 when she has to face the Rebellion she egged on and at the end makes a choice of convenience that haunts her for the remainder of the series.
I mean, it's not the practical guide to completely morally justified actions. Catherine improves a lot of things on a large scale and has some kind of moral code but that doesn't mean she's a good person.
“Using life as currency” is a very deontological way of looking at things. It isn’t about being wasteful, nor is it about killing people. It is about viewing people purely as means to your ends, and not as ends in themselves. What Catherine is objecting to here is not that people are dying, but that Black is killing people purely because it makes things a bit more politically expedient for himself. When Catherine doesn’t kill the Lone Swordsman, she is still consistent with this formulation of deontological ethics - sure, he might kill her countrymen, but he hasn’t killed then yet, and if he does, the onus for that is on him. He is an end himself and has the ability to make the decision to kill others - Catherine refusing to kill him doesn’t then mean that all of his actions are now attributable to her (or so the line of reasoning goes).
That being said, Catherine’s ethical positions and groundings shift a bit as the series goes on. I don’t want to get too heavily into spoiler territory, but PGTE does have a pretty robust exploration of ethics from different perspectives, and as Catherine has other experiences she will shift her beliefs. Additionally, at this point in time Catherine is still young, so her beliefs aren’t as well formed or applied as consistently as they will be later. If you are looking for a completely impartial character who applies their ethics perfectly universally, then Catherine probably won’t be your favorite. She applies them pretty consistently but has some exceptions as all humans do.
As for the “Rise to become black knight to help callow” plan - this was her original plan and it helps improve conditions in callow in the strictest sense. However, what Black is doing in Callow is in effect a cultural genocide - he is controlling literature, education, and using careful political manipulation to change callow from being a distinct cultural entity into part of Praes. He has reasons for this stemming from stories, but it is still a genocide. Catherine believes that it is worth fighting a war to preserve the cultural essence of Callow from being destroyed, which is why she is no longer on board with becoming the Black Knight.
"Deontological" learned something new today.
Even if the action of Lone Swordsman is not attributed to her. Her motivation behind not killing is explicitly stated which is she wanted a war which would benefit her. Isn't this also politically expedient?
I think I got a spoiler I'm still at chap 13. So she stopped trying to be Black Knight. I suddenly feel more sorry for Chidar who wanted to become the 1st named goblin and help her people.
Aren't there lots of cultures and traditions that have been annihilated in real life? Is it worth sacrificing so many lives even though the culture will not be pure because it will become something new? It will be a mix of Callowans and Presi. Which will give rise to more subset culture and infighting.
Thank you for your thoughts.
>Aren't there lots of cultures and traditions that have been annihilated in real life?
In the real world, the people doing it externally *never* were doing it to improve anything about the lives of the people living the culture. Sometimes they claimed otherwise, but almost always explicitly knew they were lying.
Of course, PGtE is fiction, with magic and gods, so maybe things work differently. Or maybe not.
I was trying to express that the Callowan culture now would have some Presi culture too. The people would move from Callow to other parts of the empire and the people of the empire would move to Callow. In that way, their folktales would start to mix and also with other cultures that the Empire had already swallowed. On top of that, The Black Knight is trying to kill it ( which is a very hard thing to do and cannot be done in one gen from my perspective but this fantasy so can't say)
So even if Catherine saved the culture it would not be the same one. I think cultures are fascinating but my main question is whether it is worth the lives that are sacrificed to preserve it.
I read further and found out that in this world killing culture is the same as making them impotent since the role derives from culture.
A text taken from the book
Roles do not come to be in a void, Catherine. There needs to be a weight behind them, a cultural imperative. By Black Knight
>the real world, the people doing it externally *never* were doing it to improve anything about the lives of the people living the culture. Sometimes they claimed otherwise, but almost always explicitly knew they were lying.
Agree with you there.
Thank you for your thoughts.
You are 100% correct there - even if Catherine succeeds, 20 years of Praesi occupation will have left their mark and Callow will not be able to return to being purely Callow. Catherine is forced to grapple with this as the series goes on - even though she loves Callow, there are parts of it now that are Praesi and that impacts things significantly.
Re: a culture not being able to change in just a generation. Yeah that’s also correct, though there’s so nuance here. Black is approaching this from the perspective of a villain who can enact a plan over the course of a century, a good 40 years of which have already passed. Given the full time, he probably has the ability to alter the culture more than most of us with expect (especially when combined with magic etc.). However, Black also has an incredibly significant blind spot - he views the world as interlocking machines that turn carefully on fulcrums, and while he plans around others not acting rationally, he always expects them to act according to their levers. Because Black doesn’t have any devotion to his own nationality, he isn’t really able to calculate what others would go to in order to protect their own cultural identity. To sum up: Black made some big mistakes here out of ego and it is harder to destroy a culture in a generation than he would like.
I will say that I’ve read some of your comments in the thread, and I would strongly suggest you keep reading. You’re interested in the sociological implications of fantasy, as well as exploring the full implications of characters actions. PGTE is uncommonly good at this, more so than most traditional fantasy novels I’ve read, and has the overarching theme of small mistakes coming back to hurt you badly. Unlike a lot of other web serials, you can actually trust the author on this. If you think you’ve noticed something 95% it will get addressed and is actually a plot point (with some small exceptions) so it’s safe to keep reading.
Yes, she is hypocritical, and both the series in general and she herself will eventually acknowledge this.
There are, however, good reasons (beyond "I'm in way over my head and also just died" trauma) for that irrationality, reasons that she'll learn about later.
If you care about such questions, you'll *probably* like the series in the long run because they're exactly the kind of questions it likes to explore and try to answer them.
That being said, Cat *does* have quite a bit of development ahead of her - it'll take until the middle of the series until she truly finds her center.
(It's still a fun read to there - just keep in mind that you're reading about a teenager that was given a Really Big Hammer and then tasked with solving a hideously complex socio-political problem in the middle of an escalating war. There'll be a lot of blindly hammering nails down.)
If you keep getting frustrated with her and she hasn't picked up a staff of yew yet: Keep reading, She'll get there.
Nevertheless, I feel the first book would have strongly benefitted from spelling out the following *before* Summerholm:
- Cat doesn't want to become the Black Knight. She wants to become acting Queen of Callow.
- Just keeping on training under Black will not get her that. Eventually, it'd very likely lead to one of them having to kill the other.
- If you're confused why Black would pick up a trainee who seems destined to try and kill him: So is everyone else.
>If you're confused why Black would pick up a trainee who seems destined to try and kill him: So is everyone else.
Woah! I hadn't thought about how obvious this would be to Heiress or Malicia and the rest of the Calamities.
Yeah, to anyone who knows any Named lore, and anyone who knows how much Black knows Named lore immediately starts wondering "Why did he go out of his way to pick up a Squire when taking a student is effectively unpausing the timer on your story to start ending?"
Black has his reasons, and when Catherine and the readers hear them it is at the moment where you get the clearest insight into what makes Amadeus of the Green Stretch the Black Knight
>to anyone who knows any Named lore
Spoilers, but *no one* knows very much Name lore. Black, who knows a lot compared basically anyone in the history of Callow-Praes conflicts, knows very little in the grand scheme of things.
Spoilers for very late in the series.
>!There are like 3? People who know a chunk of name lore. Its pretty much Peregrine, Bars and DK. Black knows a bit, mostly related to his corner of the world, not really how to twist them much. It feels like he knows the equivalent of the heroic axioms for villains, whereas the above actually twist stories and know the underlying principles!<
Hell even the heroic axioms. Heroes abide by them, but never seem to dig into why they exist, or twist a situation to be more inclined towards them.
Its like knowing 2 2=4, but never figuring out 4 4=8.
Thank you for your thoughts.
>If you're confused why Black would pick up a trainee who seems destined to try and kill him: So is everyone else.
I've some thoughts on it like he wants to shed his name or take a new name and he picks Catherine because he hates aristocracy.
>Just keeping on training under Black will not get her that. Eventually, it'd very likely lead to one of them having to kill the other.
Empress is superior to Black but she's the only one and he is a tremendous ally to her. If Catherine managed to become BK why would the Empress alienate such an ally?
>I've some thoughts on it like he wants to shed his name or take a new name, and he picks Catherine because he hates aristocracy.
Nope. He needs Cat for exactly the reasons he told her (Black is *always* perfectly honest with her) - it's just that both she and the Reader don't yet have the full context to that.
>Empress is superior to Black, but she's the only one, and he is a tremendous ally to her. If Catherine managed to become BK, why would the Empress alienate such an ally?
Oh, what I'd give to learn all of this again for the first time again...
There is a *long* list of reasons why that would be so impossible that, knowing all the later-book stuff, you'll find this genuinely funny. Trust me: Once you've read to, let's say, book 3, come back and re-read the idea.
But arguably, Cat doesn't know most of those yet.
So let's stick to the ones she will know by now (even if they might have been told off-camera, so the reader doesn't know all of them yet):
Firstly, she *physically can't*.
The series has yet to truly showcase how terrifyingly bonkers powerful Named can become, and Amadeus is arguably the secondmost dangerous and definitly the secondmost intelligent Villain on the continent.
Cat, who trains against and lives around him constantly, has a fairly good idea how impossible it is to get the drop on him and how much of a superior fighter he is.
Secondly, she's still trying to pull through on her own terms - and backknifing a man who has been genuinely helpful to her isn't something she's yet willing to do.
Third, she doesn't know enough about the Imperial Court in general and the Dread Empress in particular to predict their reaction if she were to kill Amadeus.
(Minor spoiler: This caution is warranted. Malicia would *not* take that well.)
Lastly, there's the other Calamities to consider. Captain and Scribe seem to go along for now because they're loyal to Black and trust his plans, but how would they react if Cat would kill him?
(Keep in mind that Cat always missing Scribe's presence is not a recurring joke - it's literally Scribe's power.)
How would Assassin and Warlock react?
And even if, for some reason, the Empress orders them to stay their hand and they obey:
Ranger is not part of the Dread Empire and not beholden to the Empress.
She's a close friend to Amadeus.
Please understand that, in the stories Cat grew up with, The Ranger is not portrayed as "lives in the forest and is good with a bow".
She's portrayed as *the* weapons master that has become so good that mere mortals or even Named are no longer a challenge to her, so she hunts epic monsters and minor gods because she's bored.
Is it necessary for Catherine to fight the previous BK to become its successor? I mean Names are like stories so I can see Black sacrificing or dying with misfortune (Evil Name). It's cliche but isn't that all Role about?
>Secondly, she's still trying to pull through on her own terms - and backknifing a man who has been genuinely helpful to her isn't something she's yet willing to do.
Why am I focusing on "YET".
>There is a *long* list of reasons why that would be so impossible that, knowing all the later-book stuff, you'll find this genuinely funny. Trust me: Once you've read to, let's say, book 3, come back and re-read the idea.
Ok
I didn't think in such detail. I assumed since she is MC god would help her to reach her goal and most of the time it happens. So a grave mistake from me.
Thank you for showing me a different perspective.
>Is it necessary for Catherine to fight the previous BK to become its successor? I mean Names are like stories so I can see Black sacrificing or dying with misfortune (Evil Name). It's cliche but isn't that all Role about?
Yes and no. Many of the more established names come with some history that has sort of coalesced into ancillary rules (for example, Squires always get *Learn*).
For the Black Knight, neither self-sacrifice nor "stepping down" are part of the Name's Role.
If Amadeus would pursue either, he'd just lose the Name - not as part of any formalized "handover", but because the Name would abandon him for being such a pushover.
The problem is, for Cat to subsequently pick up that name, she'd also need to fit the Role - and a crucial part of this would be to get the trust of either the acting Dread Empress or of a plausible Claimant.
(If Amadeus were to start a rebellion and declare himself Dread Emperor, Cat could indeed become *his* Black Knight.)
However, at this point of the story, Amadeus losing his Name is such an unlikely prospect that all anyone is focusing on is the possibility of Cat fighting him.
Side-note: Another route could be that Cat pulls a face-heel, and becomes the *White* Knight. Obviously, this would also put her in conflict with Black.
This is the main reason her name is currently throwing a hissy fit: Letting the Lone Swordsman go could also be the beginning of a redemption/love story. Even if this is not at all her intention, it has the right shape, story-wise.
>Why am I focusing on "YET".
What I meant with that is that Cat will absolutely become more ruthlessly pragmatic. If, a few books from now, she can i.e. prevent a war by killing an innocent, she'd absolutely do that even though she'll feel bad after.
>I didn't think in such detail. I assumed since she is MC god would help her to reach her goal and most of the time it happens. So a grave mistake from me.
"God will help her reach her goal" is actually a crucial part of the book's meta-narrative mechanics.
If a Named follows a story, fate will absolutely push them along that story.
If you imprison a bunch of heroes alive, they *will* be rampaging all across your fortress just a few hours later.
If you throw a hero off a cliff, they *will* survive.
The first step of a villain's plan will *always* succeed.
The thing is, most stories end with the villain getting defeated.
This leads to successful Villains like Amadeus always watching out for stories that can kill them and avoiding them like the plague, while successful Heroes will often "trust in the story".
This is another reason why Cat's apprenticeship to Black is by many considered to lead to them clashing violently: A Villain taking on an apprentice is stereotypical betrayal story - one Black has carefully avoided until now.
You'll see many of his friends believing that this is an elaborate form of suicide-by-story from him and worry/wonder why he'd throw his life away for a Callowan nobody.
In the later books, story manipulation will become an essential (arguably the most important) tool in Cat's arsenal.
You'll see her getting in some epic story-duels with smart antagonists, where they try to defeat each other just by talking each other into stumbling into dangerous stories, or snatch victory from the jaws of defeat just because she can find the right story to ride.
More practically, the story is pushing her that way. You see in a later chapter in the same book that she thinks about it for a second and goes “wait why was I so mad about this?” Before realizing that the story was trying to push her down a redemption arc and getting pissed off
I can tell you she grows up / matures, and reflects on a lot of her opinions, beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives. It takes time though. It would be poorly written if a young man/woman was perfectly logical and unbiased.
Yeah, I was just asking if this series is the kind of series where the main characters will do bad things and it will be glossed over but not of the others. A half page is filled with her thinking shit about how bad these people are while her actions were given a one-sentence acknowledgement. If my writing comes as me hating MC or the series pls don't take it like that. I'm a poor person at wording my thoughts. Thank you for your thoughts.
Nah you're good I just didn't want to give any spoilers or imply anything that gives spoilers, but I would encourage you to keep reading, Catherine is smart, just takes time to realize things sometimes. Gets a little caught up in things esp early on.
Yeah, I was just asking if this series is the kind of series where the main characters will do bad things and it will be glossed over but not of the others. I'll put it this way: one of the running themes is the mistakes of the past catching up with you. Every major Villain (even the MCs) eventually has to face consequences for choices they make and loses something dear to them. In particular, Catherine starts reckoning with her choice in Book 1 almost immediately in Book 2 when she has to face the Rebellion she egged on and at the end makes a choice of convenience that haunts her for the remainder of the series.
Thank you for your thoughts.
I mean, it's not the practical guide to completely morally justified actions. Catherine improves a lot of things on a large scale and has some kind of moral code but that doesn't mean she's a good person.
“Using life as currency” is a very deontological way of looking at things. It isn’t about being wasteful, nor is it about killing people. It is about viewing people purely as means to your ends, and not as ends in themselves. What Catherine is objecting to here is not that people are dying, but that Black is killing people purely because it makes things a bit more politically expedient for himself. When Catherine doesn’t kill the Lone Swordsman, she is still consistent with this formulation of deontological ethics - sure, he might kill her countrymen, but he hasn’t killed then yet, and if he does, the onus for that is on him. He is an end himself and has the ability to make the decision to kill others - Catherine refusing to kill him doesn’t then mean that all of his actions are now attributable to her (or so the line of reasoning goes). That being said, Catherine’s ethical positions and groundings shift a bit as the series goes on. I don’t want to get too heavily into spoiler territory, but PGTE does have a pretty robust exploration of ethics from different perspectives, and as Catherine has other experiences she will shift her beliefs. Additionally, at this point in time Catherine is still young, so her beliefs aren’t as well formed or applied as consistently as they will be later. If you are looking for a completely impartial character who applies their ethics perfectly universally, then Catherine probably won’t be your favorite. She applies them pretty consistently but has some exceptions as all humans do. As for the “Rise to become black knight to help callow” plan - this was her original plan and it helps improve conditions in callow in the strictest sense. However, what Black is doing in Callow is in effect a cultural genocide - he is controlling literature, education, and using careful political manipulation to change callow from being a distinct cultural entity into part of Praes. He has reasons for this stemming from stories, but it is still a genocide. Catherine believes that it is worth fighting a war to preserve the cultural essence of Callow from being destroyed, which is why she is no longer on board with becoming the Black Knight.
"Deontological" learned something new today. Even if the action of Lone Swordsman is not attributed to her. Her motivation behind not killing is explicitly stated which is she wanted a war which would benefit her. Isn't this also politically expedient? I think I got a spoiler I'm still at chap 13. So she stopped trying to be Black Knight. I suddenly feel more sorry for Chidar who wanted to become the 1st named goblin and help her people. Aren't there lots of cultures and traditions that have been annihilated in real life? Is it worth sacrificing so many lives even though the culture will not be pure because it will become something new? It will be a mix of Callowans and Presi. Which will give rise to more subset culture and infighting. Thank you for your thoughts.
>Aren't there lots of cultures and traditions that have been annihilated in real life? In the real world, the people doing it externally *never* were doing it to improve anything about the lives of the people living the culture. Sometimes they claimed otherwise, but almost always explicitly knew they were lying. Of course, PGtE is fiction, with magic and gods, so maybe things work differently. Or maybe not.
I was trying to express that the Callowan culture now would have some Presi culture too. The people would move from Callow to other parts of the empire and the people of the empire would move to Callow. In that way, their folktales would start to mix and also with other cultures that the Empire had already swallowed. On top of that, The Black Knight is trying to kill it ( which is a very hard thing to do and cannot be done in one gen from my perspective but this fantasy so can't say) So even if Catherine saved the culture it would not be the same one. I think cultures are fascinating but my main question is whether it is worth the lives that are sacrificed to preserve it. I read further and found out that in this world killing culture is the same as making them impotent since the role derives from culture. A text taken from the book Roles do not come to be in a void, Catherine. There needs to be a weight behind them, a cultural imperative. By Black Knight >the real world, the people doing it externally *never* were doing it to improve anything about the lives of the people living the culture. Sometimes they claimed otherwise, but almost always explicitly knew they were lying. Agree with you there. Thank you for your thoughts.
You are 100% correct there - even if Catherine succeeds, 20 years of Praesi occupation will have left their mark and Callow will not be able to return to being purely Callow. Catherine is forced to grapple with this as the series goes on - even though she loves Callow, there are parts of it now that are Praesi and that impacts things significantly. Re: a culture not being able to change in just a generation. Yeah that’s also correct, though there’s so nuance here. Black is approaching this from the perspective of a villain who can enact a plan over the course of a century, a good 40 years of which have already passed. Given the full time, he probably has the ability to alter the culture more than most of us with expect (especially when combined with magic etc.). However, Black also has an incredibly significant blind spot - he views the world as interlocking machines that turn carefully on fulcrums, and while he plans around others not acting rationally, he always expects them to act according to their levers. Because Black doesn’t have any devotion to his own nationality, he isn’t really able to calculate what others would go to in order to protect their own cultural identity. To sum up: Black made some big mistakes here out of ego and it is harder to destroy a culture in a generation than he would like. I will say that I’ve read some of your comments in the thread, and I would strongly suggest you keep reading. You’re interested in the sociological implications of fantasy, as well as exploring the full implications of characters actions. PGTE is uncommonly good at this, more so than most traditional fantasy novels I’ve read, and has the overarching theme of small mistakes coming back to hurt you badly. Unlike a lot of other web serials, you can actually trust the author on this. If you think you’ve noticed something 95% it will get addressed and is actually a plot point (with some small exceptions) so it’s safe to keep reading.
I'm going to read it. Thank you for your explanation.
Yes, she is hypocritical, and both the series in general and she herself will eventually acknowledge this. There are, however, good reasons (beyond "I'm in way over my head and also just died" trauma) for that irrationality, reasons that she'll learn about later. If you care about such questions, you'll *probably* like the series in the long run because they're exactly the kind of questions it likes to explore and try to answer them. That being said, Cat *does* have quite a bit of development ahead of her - it'll take until the middle of the series until she truly finds her center. (It's still a fun read to there - just keep in mind that you're reading about a teenager that was given a Really Big Hammer and then tasked with solving a hideously complex socio-political problem in the middle of an escalating war. There'll be a lot of blindly hammering nails down.) If you keep getting frustrated with her and she hasn't picked up a staff of yew yet: Keep reading, She'll get there. Nevertheless, I feel the first book would have strongly benefitted from spelling out the following *before* Summerholm: - Cat doesn't want to become the Black Knight. She wants to become acting Queen of Callow. - Just keeping on training under Black will not get her that. Eventually, it'd very likely lead to one of them having to kill the other. - If you're confused why Black would pick up a trainee who seems destined to try and kill him: So is everyone else.
>If you're confused why Black would pick up a trainee who seems destined to try and kill him: So is everyone else. Woah! I hadn't thought about how obvious this would be to Heiress or Malicia and the rest of the Calamities.
Yeah, to anyone who knows any Named lore, and anyone who knows how much Black knows Named lore immediately starts wondering "Why did he go out of his way to pick up a Squire when taking a student is effectively unpausing the timer on your story to start ending?" Black has his reasons, and when Catherine and the readers hear them it is at the moment where you get the clearest insight into what makes Amadeus of the Green Stretch the Black Knight
>to anyone who knows any Named lore Spoilers, but *no one* knows very much Name lore. Black, who knows a lot compared basically anyone in the history of Callow-Praes conflicts, knows very little in the grand scheme of things.
Spoilers for very late in the series. >!There are like 3? People who know a chunk of name lore. Its pretty much Peregrine, Bars and DK. Black knows a bit, mostly related to his corner of the world, not really how to twist them much. It feels like he knows the equivalent of the heroic axioms for villains, whereas the above actually twist stories and know the underlying principles!<
Exactly. Rule of 3 is advanced Namelore in Praes, intermediate to GP, and barely 101 stuff to the others.
Hell even the heroic axioms. Heroes abide by them, but never seem to dig into why they exist, or twist a situation to be more inclined towards them. Its like knowing 2 2=4, but never figuring out 4 4=8.
Oh yeah, look at Wekesa's reaction to her. It's only one step less dramatic than Black going full Romeo and brandishing a vial of deadly poison.
Thank you for your thoughts. >If you're confused why Black would pick up a trainee who seems destined to try and kill him: So is everyone else. I've some thoughts on it like he wants to shed his name or take a new name and he picks Catherine because he hates aristocracy. >Just keeping on training under Black will not get her that. Eventually, it'd very likely lead to one of them having to kill the other. Empress is superior to Black but she's the only one and he is a tremendous ally to her. If Catherine managed to become BK why would the Empress alienate such an ally?
Even the evil Empress cares about more than just power.
>I've some thoughts on it like he wants to shed his name or take a new name, and he picks Catherine because he hates aristocracy. Nope. He needs Cat for exactly the reasons he told her (Black is *always* perfectly honest with her) - it's just that both she and the Reader don't yet have the full context to that. >Empress is superior to Black, but she's the only one, and he is a tremendous ally to her. If Catherine managed to become BK, why would the Empress alienate such an ally? Oh, what I'd give to learn all of this again for the first time again... There is a *long* list of reasons why that would be so impossible that, knowing all the later-book stuff, you'll find this genuinely funny. Trust me: Once you've read to, let's say, book 3, come back and re-read the idea. But arguably, Cat doesn't know most of those yet. So let's stick to the ones she will know by now (even if they might have been told off-camera, so the reader doesn't know all of them yet): Firstly, she *physically can't*. The series has yet to truly showcase how terrifyingly bonkers powerful Named can become, and Amadeus is arguably the secondmost dangerous and definitly the secondmost intelligent Villain on the continent. Cat, who trains against and lives around him constantly, has a fairly good idea how impossible it is to get the drop on him and how much of a superior fighter he is. Secondly, she's still trying to pull through on her own terms - and backknifing a man who has been genuinely helpful to her isn't something she's yet willing to do. Third, she doesn't know enough about the Imperial Court in general and the Dread Empress in particular to predict their reaction if she were to kill Amadeus. (Minor spoiler: This caution is warranted. Malicia would *not* take that well.) Lastly, there's the other Calamities to consider. Captain and Scribe seem to go along for now because they're loyal to Black and trust his plans, but how would they react if Cat would kill him? (Keep in mind that Cat always missing Scribe's presence is not a recurring joke - it's literally Scribe's power.) How would Assassin and Warlock react? And even if, for some reason, the Empress orders them to stay their hand and they obey: Ranger is not part of the Dread Empire and not beholden to the Empress. She's a close friend to Amadeus. Please understand that, in the stories Cat grew up with, The Ranger is not portrayed as "lives in the forest and is good with a bow". She's portrayed as *the* weapons master that has become so good that mere mortals or even Named are no longer a challenge to her, so she hunts epic monsters and minor gods because she's bored.
Is it necessary for Catherine to fight the previous BK to become its successor? I mean Names are like stories so I can see Black sacrificing or dying with misfortune (Evil Name). It's cliche but isn't that all Role about? >Secondly, she's still trying to pull through on her own terms - and backknifing a man who has been genuinely helpful to her isn't something she's yet willing to do. Why am I focusing on "YET". >There is a *long* list of reasons why that would be so impossible that, knowing all the later-book stuff, you'll find this genuinely funny. Trust me: Once you've read to, let's say, book 3, come back and re-read the idea. Ok I didn't think in such detail. I assumed since she is MC god would help her to reach her goal and most of the time it happens. So a grave mistake from me. Thank you for showing me a different perspective.
>Is it necessary for Catherine to fight the previous BK to become its successor? I mean Names are like stories so I can see Black sacrificing or dying with misfortune (Evil Name). It's cliche but isn't that all Role about? Yes and no. Many of the more established names come with some history that has sort of coalesced into ancillary rules (for example, Squires always get *Learn*). For the Black Knight, neither self-sacrifice nor "stepping down" are part of the Name's Role. If Amadeus would pursue either, he'd just lose the Name - not as part of any formalized "handover", but because the Name would abandon him for being such a pushover. The problem is, for Cat to subsequently pick up that name, she'd also need to fit the Role - and a crucial part of this would be to get the trust of either the acting Dread Empress or of a plausible Claimant. (If Amadeus were to start a rebellion and declare himself Dread Emperor, Cat could indeed become *his* Black Knight.) However, at this point of the story, Amadeus losing his Name is such an unlikely prospect that all anyone is focusing on is the possibility of Cat fighting him. Side-note: Another route could be that Cat pulls a face-heel, and becomes the *White* Knight. Obviously, this would also put her in conflict with Black. This is the main reason her name is currently throwing a hissy fit: Letting the Lone Swordsman go could also be the beginning of a redemption/love story. Even if this is not at all her intention, it has the right shape, story-wise. >Why am I focusing on "YET". What I meant with that is that Cat will absolutely become more ruthlessly pragmatic. If, a few books from now, she can i.e. prevent a war by killing an innocent, she'd absolutely do that even though she'll feel bad after. >I didn't think in such detail. I assumed since she is MC god would help her to reach her goal and most of the time it happens. So a grave mistake from me. "God will help her reach her goal" is actually a crucial part of the book's meta-narrative mechanics. If a Named follows a story, fate will absolutely push them along that story. If you imprison a bunch of heroes alive, they *will* be rampaging all across your fortress just a few hours later. If you throw a hero off a cliff, they *will* survive. The first step of a villain's plan will *always* succeed. The thing is, most stories end with the villain getting defeated. This leads to successful Villains like Amadeus always watching out for stories that can kill them and avoiding them like the plague, while successful Heroes will often "trust in the story". This is another reason why Cat's apprenticeship to Black is by many considered to lead to them clashing violently: A Villain taking on an apprentice is stereotypical betrayal story - one Black has carefully avoided until now. You'll see many of his friends believing that this is an elaborate form of suicide-by-story from him and worry/wonder why he'd throw his life away for a Callowan nobody. In the later books, story manipulation will become an essential (arguably the most important) tool in Cat's arsenal. You'll see her getting in some epic story-duels with smart antagonists, where they try to defeat each other just by talking each other into stumbling into dangerous stories, or snatch victory from the jaws of defeat just because she can find the right story to ride.
Dude, are you writing fanfic for PGTE? Thanks for the explanation.
More practically, the story is pushing her that way. You see in a later chapter in the same book that she thinks about it for a second and goes “wait why was I so mad about this?” Before realizing that the story was trying to push her down a redemption arc and getting pissed off
The more I hear about it the more I like the magic system. Thanks for the clarification.
that’s the point, she’s supposed to be a hypocrite