Alanna

Of all the Tortall series, I fic most for SotL, so I have to spend a lot of time thinking about Alanna. After Kel, she's my favorite of the heroines, but I always feel at least a little bad writing her - it always feels like I'm taking something away from her, because I mostly write AUs, and things go so ridiculously, implausibly perfectly for her in SotL that literally any change makes things start falling apart. (Not that this means her life in these AUs turns out bad, just different.)

So I guess, in retrospect, what bothers me most about Alanna is how contrived her life is by the end of SotL. Also, in getting my thoughts in order to make this post, I came to realize that I unabashedly like SotL-Alanna; it's the glimpses we see of her later that drive me nuts. She really starts going off the rails for me in that first scene in FT, where it seems she's almost become a parody of herself.

I don't find even early Alanna unproblematic, though. It bothers me endlessly that the story never grapples with her biggest flaws - her temper (which is treated as cute), her self-righteousness (she's always right), or her hypocrisy (she's all about duty, supposedly, yet repeatedly runs away and encourages others to do so). The story also never grapples with how her ambition and her drive are double-edged swords. I think that her being made Champion only serves to exacerbate these flaws, not temper them; I can think of few jobs she's more ill-suited to. I honestly think she would have been better served and even more useful as an ordinary knight.

This next thing is a problem I have with all the heroines, but I might as well mention it here: they never seem to lose anything, never seem to give anything up that actually matters. That's one of the reasons I'm so mean to Alanna in fic; I want to see what she'd do if she actually lost something - an opportunity, an accomplishment, a person who actually impacts her. I firmly believe that it's how we react to failure that really matters - but Alanna never really fails.

I am endlessly intrigued by the little glimpses of more depth to Alanna that we get in SotL - I am especially intrigued by her clear interest in the Old Ones and Myles' ruins, and I wish all that hadn't been dropped like a hot potato.

Head-canon
-A lot of Alanna's success is, actually, due to the fact she's god-touched. If nothing else, it's the only way I can satisfactorily explain away the progress reports.
-Alanna doesn't have a great relationship with her kids. At the least, it's a distant one fraught with a lot of misunderstanding. How bad it is, exactly, depends mostly on how angsty I feel like writing at the time.
-Jon only sent Alanna off on that diplomatic trip to Carthage because she was getting on his nerves and he wanted her gone for a while. (In fact, I think that explains everyone he sent, since that envoy's filled with a lot of dumb choices.)
-I sometimes like to think that later, if she ever actually matures a bit, Alanna ends up retiring from being Champion to take over Myles' role as history teacher. I liked the glimpses we saw of Alanna the teacher, though I think she'd be a shitty training master, and I liked the glimpses we got of Alanna being interested in history. (I can see basically two paths for Alanna - she never really grows up, and so never really retires, or she eventually learns to accept aging with grace and finds some other way to be useful.)
-She was never afraid of magic, but she used it as an excuse enough (because she didn't like practicing it) that she half believed it. Honestly, though - even before the Sickness she's awfully quick to threaten Coram with visions, and the whole thing with the cook's visions sounds far more Alanna-ish to me than Thom-ish, not least because she seems to be the more dynamic of the twins.
-She never had the best relationship with Thom, and is not entirely sure why. I see her as a rough-and-tumble girl, and there's that line about her ducking him in the pond that she uses to basically shut him up. I suspect that what she saw as just roughhousing he saw as bullying; I also think she sees him as somewhat pathetic. She really doesn't seem to think too highly of her brother in canon.
-Alanna thinks she got over Thom's death, but never really did. (Why yes, it does rather disturb me that in canon she seems to grieve more for Liam than her own brother.) I sort of suspect that she's used to pushing thoughts of her brother aside, even while he was alive, and she just does the same here and thinks she's over it. I also suspect this colors her relationship with her eldest, because superficially there's enough similarity there to raise all sorts of old ghosts. (Again, how deeply this taints Alanna's relationship with her son depends on how angsty I'm getting.)
-I'll get into this more in a later post on the kids, but I think Alanna feels that none of them turned out quite right; I also think the one she actually understands is Aly. Alan (even my happy version of him) deeply unsettles her; Thom is different and distant in ways she can't quite get.
-At some point in the ten-year gap between LR and WM, someone actually made Alanna get some more comprehensive/official training as a healer. (Honestly, in canon this bugs the SHIT out of me - all other healers we see in Tortall are trained; Alanna isn't, but somehow that's perfectly ok, she's just as good as the trained ones. See also: WWRLAM, and how barely-trained-in-magic Alanna is suddenly competent enough to be a Bazhir shaman and teacher of magic.) Either that, or somehow despite Alanna's apparently incredible reluctance to learn, Maude somehow forced her to learn enough healing that Alanna's actually qualified to do so.

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My Alanna Fics
Alanna is a secondary or background character in a lot of my fics, and in compiling this list, I realized that I have written a lot of fics that are about her but do not have her in them. Those fics aren't linked below, only ones in which she is a major character.
Canon compliant:
Midwinter Tradition - It's Midwinter, and Alanna has someplace to be. So of course she has to kick Neal out of bed for it.

Canon-compliant but I consider it AU:
Red and Yellow - Jon really shouldn't have sent her to Carthak.

Miscellaneous AUs:
Kiss and Tell - Delia figures out a thing or two about Squire Alan. Could, with some juggling, be considered canon-compliant.
Song of the Seer - My first "the twins don't switch" fic. I am not nice to Alanna in this fic, at all.
Stricken to the Bone - Thom and Alanna both go for page training.

Allegiance AU:
Difference - Daine comes to Tortall. Things are different, in this world.

Discovery AU:
Discovery - Lord Alan gets two progress reports.

The Iron King AU:
This AU is all about Alanna, in a way, as it is her decision to marry Jon that starts the divergence. The only fic so far directly featuring Alanna is The Iron King.

Making the Best of Things AU:
Another series heavily featuring Alanna; the fics where she is a major or main character are the only ones listed below, but she shows up in others.
First Impressions - Jon and company meet Alanna.
Odd Couple - Francis attempts to woo his ladylove.
Burning Brightly - Jon attempts to clear out the Black City.
Heroism - the major Alanna fic in this 'verse. What happens to Alanna when she goes to convent instead.
Scrap of a Dream - Alanna dreams.

Patchwork AU:
Another AU that heavily features Alanna, though so far she only shows up in the founding fic. In this 'verse, the Grimhold Mountains are their own country, and Tortall itself is very small.
Ten Scenes from Another World - A short history lesson, and what happens when Tortall sends an embassy to Grimhold.

What a Flicker Brings AU:
This AU diverges because of and centers on Thom, but you can't really write any AU about Thom that doesn't heavily feature Alanna. She's central to these two stories in particular.
What a Flicker Brings - Thom gets a glimpse of the future in his mug.
Three Months - What happens during the time skip in What a Flicker Brings.

Thom of Trebond

Thom is probably my single biggest reason for ficcing SotL so much. I just like him. (Dunno why; he's an utter ass.) Also, he's one of the most vexing examples of something that's an unfortunate trend for Pierce: the derailed character.

Let me get this out of the way: yes, I think it's totally possible for an author to write their own characters out-of-character. Pierce does it repeatedly.

Through most of SotL, Thom is actually more paranoid over Roger than Alanna is. He's also the one who pieces everything together, and keeps having to nag his sister via letter to remain on her guard.

Then he randomly raises Roger from the dead. Why? Because Delia said he couldn't.

Are you kidding me?

The other vexing thing about this is that Alanna is very clear in the very first book: among other things, Thom can see the future. So, uh. Was he just not looking that day? Paranoid Thom? Who suspected Roger all along, who played dumb for years to avoid drawing Roger's suspicion, who was more sure of Roger's perfidy than Alanna was?

This all just doesn't add up.

I'm also not entirely convinced that his random stealing of Alanna's Gift is all that in-character for him, either.

Leaving that whole matter aside. It's pretty clear in canon he's a genius; he's a Master at seventeen, has been ready for it for at least a year, and was playing stupid for literally years beforehand. (Which, come to think of it, is probably what really annoys his teachers. Speaking as a substitute teacher and sometime tutor, there's nothing more obnoxious than a smart kid playing dumb. And yes, it's always horribly obvious, too.)

I also think that while he and Alanna may have been born with the same strength Gift (we really don't know either way), it's pretty clear he's got a broader affinity, and with his training, by the end of ItHotG if not sooner, he's probably both stronger and a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than Alanna, with her limited interest in magic, will ever be.

My other big problem with Thom is that his death is so random. It feels wasteful, like Pierce wanted some pathos but didn't want to off a character we (or Alanna, apparently) actually cared about. I think one major reason I do so many SotL AUs is that I'm utterly fascinated by all the possibilities of what could have happened if Thom had lived.

Also, I think it's hilarious that Thom is apparently a Mithran priest. Can you imagine anyone less devout?

Head-canon
-He's gay. I have written the rare fic where he's not, but my head-canon is still that Thom's gay.
-Roger planted a compulsion in Thom at some point - that if Roger died and thus triggered the Sorcerer's Sleep, Thom would, when triggered, raise him. This is literally the only plausible explanation I can come up with for why on Earth Thom would raise Roger.
-Honestly, and I don't know where this comes from, but I always see him as being more aware of others' feelings and thoughts than Alanna. (Oh. Wait. I know where part of it comes from - Alanna's mention that among other things, Thom can read minds.)
-I think, given that he was initially trained by the village healer, he's probably a pretty decent healer himself, even if he's not that interested in it.
-Roger either seduced or compelled Thom into sleeping with him. (Or some combination of both; I think compulsions need something there to glom onto.) I see this happening both before Roger died the first time, briefly (and thus being when Roger managed to plant the other compulsion mentioned above), and after Roger's resurrected. I also don't usually think it was all that happy a relationship.
-Along with the above point, I am fairly certain Thom was in Corus for at least a few days prior to Alanna's knighting. Probably longer, given what we're later told of the state of the roads from the north.
-Thom is pretty wary of his sister. I mentioned this in the Alanna post, but we know basically two things about their childhood relationship: Alanna was the more physical one, and Alanna ducked him in the pond at least once (and brings this up, years later, to get Thom to shut up and stop needling her). I suspect that what Alanna sees as just her playing around or getting a bit exasperated, Thom would see as bullying. The first thing I flashed to, reading the ducking-in-the-pond line, was Raoul and all holding Ralon underwater, which was probably not what Pierce was going for (and it's pretty clear that we're meant to cheer Ralon being half-drowned, which is disturbing), but has tainted that line for me ever since.
-Thom likes the cold north, and heights, and the simple dark stone construction in the mountains. He is really not a people person (understatement of the century, what), and is not at all fond of busy places like cities.
-Thom is nearsighted. It occurred to me that the two major things Alanna mentions Thom being bad at - archery and tracking - require decent distance vision. I can't do either, without my glasses. (Idly, I wonder if there's any way to correct vision in Tortall.)
-(that stupid crap about Gift color aside) Thom, Roger, and Numair are all roughly about as powerful as each other. Actually, I'd peg Roger as the weakest of the three.
-(I have NO canon support for this next bit at all) Thom is in a tricky legal situation when it comes to Trebond, after Lord Alan dies. Somehow, in my head-canon, Mithran priests can't inherit property. I think this came about largely because I was sort of wondering why we never heard of any other noblemen going there, and why Jon would feel it necessary to start up another institution for learning magic if the City of the Gods was already there. (Maybe he pissed off all the Mithrans?) I'm pretty sure that this issue would have cropped up before, but I suspect that the probable solution - give up his Mastery to go run the fief - would not sit well with Thom at all. (Honestly, most of this came about because I love complicated situations with no easy solution. That I can make it work with canon is a bonus.)
-Given half a chance, Thom is a terrifyingly good strategist.
-Thom sees glimpses of the future. A lot. It's his primary affinity, and he can scry in anything - often not even deliberately.
-Thom had too strong a Gift to have safely avoided training it. (My head-canon seems to be on the side of "yes, Thom is stronger than his sister".) I do think we see enough evidence that untrained Gifts are potentially dangerous that it's fully possible an undertrained Thom would have been a walking disaster.
-Thom is a sappy and affectionate drunk. This disturbs him, so he rarely drinks. (Though I can also see him faking drunk, for the freedom it'd give him.)
-And now for a bit of AU-canon: in any 'verse where Thom takes up the sword, he's the natural that Alanna had to learn to be. (Mostly just because it would vex Alanna terribly.)

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My Fics
Canon compliant:
Compulsion - Thom never knows why he sleeps with Roger. Canon compliant.
Nothing But Pleasure - Roger is a sadist.
Both of the above are part of the What a Flicker Brings AU, but they are also canon-compliant.
Foretelling - Thom has always been able to see the future.
Growing Pains - Si-cham vs. a certain ornery student.
Letters from the Dead - Fifty letters to the living. Thom's not a major character here, but really, no one is.
Making Conversation - Jon and Thom have precisely one conversation.
The Meaning of Life - Four universes in which Thom doesn't die young.
Radiance - There are only two things Thom has ever loved.
World On Its Head - Also includes the sentence-fic "Sacrifices". Two glimpses of a pivotal moment not seen in canon.

Miscellaneous AUs:
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Song of the Seer - My first "the twins don't switch" fic.
Stricken to the Bone - Thom and Alanna both go for page training.

Discovery AU:
This AU centers on Alanna, but Thom is a secondary character. He does get a short little fic, though.
Sounds - To George, Thom isn't silent.

The Iron King AU:
Glass - Killing someone while they're Sleeping is not a wise idea.

Making the Best of Things AU:
Thom is a major character in the whole AU. Here are the main fics where he appears.
Burning Brightly - Jon wants to go explore the Black City. Fortunately, Thom is there to stop him.
New Things - Roger always knew that page was insane.
Some People - Ten people who weren't ever wary of Thom, and one person who should've been.
Irony - Of all the ways Roger could die, it is the Sweating Sickness that fells him.
Jollity - Owen needs a knight-master.

Patchwork AU:
In this 'verse, the Grimhold Mountains are their own country, and Tortall itself is very small.
Ten Scenes from Another World - A short history lesson, and what happens when Tortall sends an embassy to Grimhold.
Away - The twins are celebrating Midwinter separately, and Thom is pensive. This fic may no longer be canon for this 'verse.
Epiphany - Roger figures something out.

Snake in the Grass AU:
Another AU all about Thom. I am not sure how to describe this, save to say that I am ridiculously proud of it.
The Morning Star - Thom is stuck visiting his family at the Swoop when a certain fleet attacks it.
Caduceus - A traitor gets a visitor.

What a Flicker Brings AU:
This AU is all about Thom, and he is in every fic. I am only listing the main fic and a few of my favorites below; for the full list, click the series title.
What a Flicker Brings - Thom gets a glimpse of the future in his mug. The foundation fic for this 'verse.
Bitterness - Thom does not like Carthak.
Ethics - Page training is about to start, and Lord Wyldon's ethics teacher has just up and quit. Of course King Jonathan has a suggestion. Major spoilers for an in-progress fic.
Talking Treason - Thom and Kel have a conversation.