Acting a fool
***Spoilers for the Tawny Man Trilogy through chapter 4 of Fool’s Fate.***
Hey hey – we are back! I took a week-ish long breather after finishing Golden Fool to gear up for the final installment of our Tawny Man journey. I’m refreshed and ready to tackle Fool’s Fate. Hit me with your best, Robin!
We pick things up right where we left off. Fitz and company are less than two weeks out from the spring sailing for Prince Dutiful’s Out Island frozen-dragon-slaying expedition. There’s a fair bit of checking in and reviewing the main events. It feels a bit like starting a new board game: review the rules, set the board, then embark on this new endeavor. And if the name of the game is Fitz, we already have two competitors vying for control…
Chade
If I could avoid it, I would. But alas, I’m going to start with Chade.
Early in Golden Fool, I predicted Chade would not make it out of Tawny Man. I am holding strong on this prediction. (I keep wanting to hedge, but the more confident I am, the funnier it will be when I’m wrong.) We know we still have the Fitz and the Fool trilogy to come, and as much of a fool as I think Chade is, I don’t see three books of him throwing temper tantrums serving as our capstone series.
Right out of the gate in Fool’s Fate, we get peak petulant Chade*. My current beef with him is twofold:
- He can’t accept his limitations with the Skill and is throwing off the vibes of the entire coterie.
- He’s power-hungry and wants full control of Fitz as a means to his own objectives.
This all boils over in a pretty intense showdown between Chade and the Fool over Fitz’s loyalty. After the Fool’s departure, when Fitz questions how they can quarrel over him as if he is an animal, Chade doesn’t even deign to hide his dehumanization of Fitz:
“Not a horse or a dog, Fitz, no. I’d never think of you that way. No. You’re a sword. So you were made to be, by me, a weapon to be wielded. And he thinks you fit his hand the best.”
I think I’ve heard enough.
*For now, I’m trying to mostly avoid the broader RotE fandom to keep spoilers at bay**. But I did stumble across a post ranking someone’s top five RotE characters, in which Chade was #5, beating out honorable mentions Kettricken and Patience 😦. Not gonna lie, this sent me into a bit of an existential tailspin. Is Chade beloved?? Are my opinions way off base with fan sentiment? Now, don’t worry, I am more than comfortable drinking my Haterchade™ alone on an island. Also, I fully get the brilliance of Hobb’s characters lies in their complexity, and that everyone is flawed. But… Chade?!?!
**The dive into fanart that I will be taking when I finish RotE in its entirety…
You may never see me again.
The Fool
On the other side, we’ve got Chade’s foil: the Fool. He’s noticeably absent at first, but we soon learn that Lord Golden has been living it up in Buckkeep Town, burning through his fortune on lavish entertaining and gambling.
“Golden had moved into a realm of excess that no other had approached since Prince Regal had been alive.”
WOOF. If you’re getting compared to Regal, it’s time to reevaluate some choices.
Meanwhile, Fitz has been happy to keep his distance, mostly to avoid revealing the planned deception of leaving the Fool behind on the Aslevjal quest. Fitz is so wrapped up in his own secrecy that he forgets the Fool believes his ticket to Aslevjal is one-way, final destination: death. So when they finally sit and talk, Fitz is horrified to realize the Fool thinks he’s distancing to prepare for that loss:
“Perhaps he had thought I was carefully severing the contact between us before his death could do it suddenly and painfully. The words burst from me, the only completely true thing I’d said to him that day. ‘Don’t be stupid! I’m not going to let you die, Fool!’ My throat suddenly closed. I picked up my cooling cup of tea and gulped from it hastily.
He caught his breath and then laughed, a sound like glass breaking. Tears stood in his eyes. ‘You believe that so thoroughly, don’t you? Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the one most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.'”
The angst continues to intensify between these two.
I’ve previously discussed my difficulty wrapping my head around their connection- which I suspect is sort of the point. And in that vein, when the Fool later crashes coterie training, he and Fitz share a Skill-joining so intense it defies definition:
“The intensity of it went beyond any joining I’d ever experienced. It was more intimate than a kiss and deeper than a knife thrust, beyond a Skill-link and beyond sexual coupling, even beyond my Wit-bond with Nighteyes. It was not a sharing, it was a becoming. Neither pain nor pleasure could encompass it.”
👁️🫦👁️
Which begs the question: did Fitz and the Fool just invent Tantra?
This seems like as good a place as any to dive into my musings:
I fucking knew that letter wasn’t from Burrich!
I love feeling vindicated. In my last post, I noted Swift’s return to Buckkeep with a letter from Burrich disowning him felt like a wild turnaround. And that the idea of Molly and Burrich disowning their child was hard to reconcile. Well, lo and behold, my instincts were right. Dream Nettle spills the beans to Fitz: she helped Swift stage a deception to make their parents believe he’d run off to sea, while she forged the Burrich note herself.
Chekhov’s Feathers!
Fitz tucks the treasure beach feathers into his sea chest- because you never know when some weird wooden feathers might come in handy on a dangerous quest. Except, I do know! It seems almost certain these feathers will fit perfectly into the Fool’s rooster crown. I’m going to go out on a (pretty sturdy) limb here: the union of crown and feathers is going to be crucial to the titular Fool’s fate.
We also get more evidence for my theory that the Fool will transform rather than die in the traditional sense:
“Even if you manage against all the foreordained grinding of fate to keep me alive, well, Lord Golden still must vanish. He’s lived to the end of his usefulness. Once I leave here, I shall not be him again.”
Best Comedic Moment:
Hap: “You think she is toying with me, and that when Reften comes home, she will throw me aside?”
Fitz: “That does seem possible to me.”
Oh, Hap.
Most Relatable Moment:
“I could recall a time when a journey anywhere was something I anticipated eagerly.” … “I didn’t know when I had lost that ebullience for travel, but it was definitely gone.”
Big approaching-40 energy. Welcome, Fitz.
Quick question: are we certain restoring dragons to the sky is a good idea? God forbid I start siding with Chade, but the Fool’s argument that we need dragons because they will keep humans in check might not be the best sales pitch to humans. And the counterpoint – “Cool, so who keeps the dragons in check?” – is pretty valid.
And HBIC Tintaglia isn’t exactly helping her case by bullying everyone in their dreams. I hope they end up freeing Icefyre, because homegirl needs to get laid.
Who the fuck is Web? And what exactly is his deal? After casually calling Fitz FitzChivalry, he drops:
“Your wolf still looks out of your eyes. You think that if you stand perfectly still, no one will see you. That won’t work with me, young man.”
I guess I’m down for someone helping Fitz embrace his Witted identity, but he still weirds me out.
Small but satisfying detail: Fitz casually learns the Outislander language to assist on the voyage. Because we live inside Fitz’s head, where he is never one to tout his accomplishments, I love reminders of how freakishly competent he is. Assassin, Skillmaster, dreamwalker, wolf-man, poison master, axe wielder, language learner, spy, clothes mender, cottage minder, wayward boy-raiser, heartbreaker – just to name a few. It’s quite the résumé he’s crafted.
We get many versions of Fitz. My favorite, of course, is loverboy Fitz. But coming in a close second is lonelyboy Fitz. And this may be one of the loneliest Fitzs we’ve seen. (Even in his 15ish years of cottage seclusion, he still had Nighteyes.)
On that note: I’ve given Hobb (deservedly) high praise for her depiction of grief, and she continues to nail it. As time passes, the wound of Nighteyes’ death is less raw. But then comes a memory, a flash, a mention that brings about an acute stab of the lingering pain.
“My desperate longing for someone to confide in only made me more aware of how isolated I had become. I missed my wolf Nighteyes as I would miss my heart’s beating.”
I can be cozy and content, reading along, and then who appears: Starling. Their interaction is unhinged as always; perhaps most disturbing is her musing about joining Dutiful’s entourage for the journey. Fitz and I had the same reaction: Oh, no.
But I did appreciate her bluntly asking if he had considered trying to get back with Molly. I’m sure Starling is a talented minstrel, but she may have missed her calling as a hard-hitting interviewer. Fitz points out that Molly is married to Burrich, but Starling (on brand as ever) doesn’t see the issue:
“‘So?’ She brought her gaze to meet mine. ‘I saw him when he came to Buckkeep to fetch wift home. He was closemouthed and grim when I greeted him. And he was old. He walks with a hitch and his eyes are clouding.’ She shook her head over him. ‘If you decided to take Molly back from him, he could offer you no competition.'”
And that’s not our only Molly-Fitz crumb:
“Restlessness vied with loneliness. I found myself passing the tailor shop that had once been a chandlery where Molly had worked.”
First Hap and Svanja. Now hints of Fitz and Molly. Are we headed for an elusive double uncucking?
(Here’s an idea: instead of Starling joining the expedition, how about Molly, Burrich, and Nettle sneak aboard Fitz’s ship in search of Swift, who they think is at sea? I would love to get them all stuck together on a boat.)
Choked-Up Watch 2025:
🥇 First place: the Fool leaving Fitz a carving of Nighteyes.
“He’d left his gift on the table beside my chair. I walked over to it and ran a finger down Nighteyes’ spine. My wolf was in his prime in the carving. A dead rabbit sprawled between his forepaws. His head was lifted, his dark eyes regarding me intelligently, patiently.”
…
“Then I sat down in the chair and stared into the fire, my wolf cradled in my hands.”
🥈 Runner-up: the father-son-father-son-father sword exchange.
Fitz (bio-dad of Dutiful) gives him Verity’s sword (his spiritual-dad). Dutiful then gives Fitz Chivalry’s sword (Fitz’s bio-dad), which Patience just happened to find in a closet while spring cleaning. (Side note: I’ve never been disappointed by a Patience cameo.) Tangled web of fathers aside, this scene was beautiful. Fitz, of course, says he’s unworthy of Chivalry’s sword, as it’s a King’s sword, but agrees to hold onto it until Dutiful takes the crown.
You’ll always be my king, Fitz.
It seems like the sailing is imminent. I’m really excited to see how Fitz and Chade’s master plan to leave the Fool behind – “oops, sorry, no room on the ship” – plays out. Somehow I’m not super confident that this is going to work on our resident shapeshifter. OOOH idea: what if he has to call in his old pal Paragon (aka ShipFitz) to charter him to the Out Islands? A girl can dream!
Call in a liveship, load it up with the ghosts of Fitz’s past, and let’s get messy at sea!
wizardwordship 