Elena, daughter of Lena

[Guest]

Matrixman, I never said or inferred that Elena was , or should be considered "an incestuous slut;" of course she is a beautiful character, beautiful in herself and to others, wonderful and wonderfully strong.

I agree she was a boon to the land and it's people, but c'mon, THE MAN is writing about "real people." HE does not to present his readers with 2 dimensional charicatures. People are not consistent, and we can accept that; what we cannot accept about other people is that they (we) are inconsistent about our/their inconsistencies. (The Dice Man.)

In the posts between Caer and I, we examined one of the taboo elements of Elena's personality, one that even admirers choose to gloss over, namely her attraction for her "real father." Yes, it is disturbing, it may even be unnatural (under those circumstances....we do not yet know enough about human relationship to be certain).

From our Western social perspective however, we know both that it is wrong , and illegal. Therefore in itself , and of Elena, it disturbs us. So what ! Is that not a legitimate and even required function of literature/art ? Freud's Electra perspective (if we understand it at all) only serves to point us in the right direction and confirm our morality base.

However, both psychiatry and psychology have moved on since his groundbreaking days. Check out Caer's posts again for a start, then try Google at least.

SRD has given us a magnificently complex character in Elena, one who moves us , as Lit should. He has also made us examine our own unquestioned morality - in general, not just specifically. No way is Elena an "incestuous and no way have I or Caer (if I may) suggested that. It was an attempt at a critical analysis of an overlooked/taboo element of Elena's character and the books.

[coercri000]

Sorry folks, forgot to log in there. THAT WAS ME AS THE LAST GUEST, DEFENDING MYSELF , AND ELENA.

My second last sentence should read...."No way is Elena an "incestuous slut"....

[Fist and Faith]

I've lost track, is coercri the guest of the "Sat Oct 26, 2002 6:10 am" post? Anyway, that's some good thinking! I don't buy it, but I am impressed with the new angle. Well done!

However, I've said before that I don't think much of Elena. We are never told why the Lords chose her for High Lord, and I REALLY with we were! I wish I could see more admirable qualities in her. But what we know is:
-Trell, who loved her dearly, says she was "flawed from birth."
-She ignored the advice of the mountain-wise Bloodguard, which lead to disaster.
-She ignored the advice of a seriously wise being - Amok - and the strong urgings of Covenant, and risked the unforseeable consequences of the Power of Command.
-She used it to call Kevin back from death, because, based on nothing more than her own fanciful notion, she believed that his despair gave him incredible strength.
-And yes, there's her Elektra complex.

With all that, I don't see reason to believe that she was smart or intuitive enough to have come on to her father for the reasons you gave.

[matrixman]

edit

[Fist and Faith]

(Matrixman collects his unpopular thoughts and runs to Zephalephaleh's house...)

I might have known! First you dis my Previews thread, and now this!!

[[Syl]]

Incestuous, yes, but not a slut. She had good intentions (the roads in hell...) and great ability, but ultimately she really screwed up, perhaps due in part to being screwed up. Well, whose fault was that?

Would the same Elena have come on to Triock if he'd been her real father? Probably not. If TC had somehow courted then married Lena, who then later gave birth to a normally conceived Elena, would she have had a thing for TC still? I'd still say probably not. But if she had never known TC was her real father, would she still have wanted to? I'd say she probably would.

Elena's rationale was very valid in her own mind. She didn't seem hesitant, much less ashamed or conflicted in her approach. Factor that in with the fact that most kids in the land wouldn't be separated from their parents for about 30 years and know very little about genetics... From someone who's willing to bring the Landwaster back from the dead, not doing something just because it was not heard of isn't keeping in her character.

It all made sense to her. She wasn't a horrible person (the opposite, mainly), but she was still a couple aces from a full deck.

[Skyweir]

excellent points syl .. and really well said!! I totally agree .. she knew honour and nobility intimately ..

she knew right and wrong .. and held fast to her role as High Lord .. he greatest desire was to serve the Land .. and though misguided .. and definately screwed up <Lena had lost it and how would it have been for Elena to have been raised by Lena and her grandparents .. Atiaran had also surrendered to despair and her grandad to bitterness and anger>

I feel sorry for Elena .. even through all this she rose to position of High Lord .. <true being the daughter of the WGW was part of that> but nevertheless .. the Council were not without ethics and virtue .. she still would have had to qualify on some level ..

She was a good person .. misguided and confused by a broad range of factors .. the raynhin thing notwithstanding.

[Fist and Faith]

From someone who's willing to bring the Landwaster back from the dead, not doing something just because it was not heard of isn't keeping in her character.

That's very true. But why, in your opinion (Everybody else too. We know one of the guest's, eh? ) did she do it? (Come on to Covenant, that is.) There had to be a reason. I've never really understood it. Was it simply that, when she first saw him, she was overwhelmingly attracted to him? So much so that she didn't care about the taboo of it?

And for the record, I agree that she was a good person. I just don't see any wisdom. A tragic character, one who never had a chance.

[[Syl]]

If I understood why any woman does the crazy things she does...
*ducks*

[Skyweir]

LOL


heterosexual relationships =synonymous with a borg encounter .. LOL resistance is futile - you will be assimilated lol

[theDespiser]

in the Robots and Empire series by Isaac Asimov, the race of people known as the Spacers often had "relations with their children/parents...the way the culture evolved made it absurd for it not to happen...

i dont have the books with me at the moment to elaborate further, but its kind of the same thing(though it IS just another book)...

[duchess of malfi]

Perhaps she had incestuous feelings, but she never really struck me as being...slutty.
I would like to point out, though, that she was NOT in her young adulthood when she met Covenant. She was actually older than he was. He was about thirty, she was in her early forties.
She definately had her good qualities, or she could never had been made High Lord. The speech she makes to the Warward is quite inspiring...
If I had to fault her in anything it is in what I see as her arrogance, an example of this being using the Earthblood without consulting anyone else, or informing the Council about it.
Reading the appropropriate chapters in Dissecting the Land helped me understand this character much better than I did before. If anyone else has trouble "getting" this character, I would recommend heading over there...

[Fist and Faith]

That's all well and good, Despiser. And we, with our awareness of so many different cultures, real and fantasy, can prehaps be less harsh in judging Elena for this. But the thing is, Elena didn't have that same advantage. Other than her own, she probably didn't know much beyond the Haruchai and Giant cultures. Either incest is so common in the Land that it's not worth mentioning, or it's so uncommon that it's not worth mentioning. I suspect the latter, and that it is as much taboo there as here.

[birdandbear]

hmmmm....this is going to make her sound bad, but I don't see her that way...

I always thought that Elena would have offered herself to Covenant regardless of whether she was attracted to him. The Lords knew so little about him, and he was so crucial to the fate of the Land....one of the few concrete things Elena knew about him was that he raped her mother. I think she took that to mean he likes beautiful women, and that if she slept with him, he might be more likely to save than to damn.

That sounds terrible, but I think she would have done absolutely anything to save her beloved Land, and If he had been a horrible smelly gnome, she would have done the same, and counted it a small price to pay for even a hope. And given that she was attracted to him....


I think Covenant gave himself way too much grief over trying to manipulate Elena. She was willing to use the oldest trick in the book on him....

But she was willing to do so because of her love for the Land. Maybe that's what Triock meant.....she had no boundaries to what she would do for love.

[Fist and Faith]

b&b, I think she probably would have done that out of her love for the Land, but I think she loved him anyway. I never got the impression that she was faking her feelings at all. So even if she went into it with the idea of sacrificing herself, she ended up happy in that role.

[Skyweir]

I think Elena was in love with the idea or notion of Covenant aka White Gold Wielder ..

yeah and i think she wasnt out to trick him .. i think she genuinely felt drawn to him ..

but i think she was also confused ..

a very strange mix indeed

[birdandbear]

Oh yes! I never meant to imply that she didn't love him. I just think she thought about it as a possible tactical manuever long before she summoned him.

But I think that when she actually did it, it was mostly out of real love for him.

[Guest]

[quote="Fist and Faith"]I've lost track, is coercri the guest of the "Sat Oct 26, 2002 6:10 am" post?

Not me , pal, just discovered this site recently.

I judge not Elena , I chastise not Elena , I merely try to understand her and share this understanding with others of The Land.

It is clear that while some accept Elena as High Lord , they do so unconditionally , unlike Caer , and poss even Big Bear , I however cannot accept anyone unconditionally and will now retire from this thread.

I thank you all.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

Elena's "Weird" Feelings Toward Covenant
Keep in mind that Elena grew up in the care of Lena, the poor girl who went mad after being raped by the reincarnation of Berek Halfhand. Lena had by that time decided that she was actually privileged to have been raped by Covenant, which esteemed her above all others in the Land.
Now, Elena as an adult probably was wise enough to know that what Covenant did to Lena was very, very wrong, but as a child was probably taught that her father walked on water. Combine this with the time-warped age non-issue, the fact that she grew up with Triock as her father-figure instead of TC, and the fact that she was strongly attracted to Covenant [Sidebar: my wife has perhaps done a great dis-service to her gender by telling me that many women are powerfully attracted to men sometimes in spite of their physical appearance or actions, because of the man's inner qualities or other traits that the woman has--healthily or not--- associates with psychosexually-charged power----which may just be her nice way of saying that I'm ugly as sin But seriously, look at Bill Clinton: he's no Brad Pitt, but he was POTUS], and the Land's great need for a saviour which had been answered by Covenant's summoning, and Voila! Instant powerful sexual attraction, despite taboos or just plain wrongness.

Elena's Other Actions
Elena was powerful because she was passionate, and this drive got her all the way to the High Lord's seat at the Lord's Council. I think that her heritage made her especially likely to violate the OoP, and remember that she was the one who placed her knowledge of the RoD into the anundivian yajna bust she crafted. Her extreme passion, which Covenant saw as insanity in the "otherness" of her gaze, was responsible for her both being more powerful than the other Lords, and also made her susceptible to rash decisions.
Her decisions before they got on the VAD (voice-activated-dinghy) inside Melenkurion Skyweir were made as High Lord and in her mind maybe the last big-honcho Defender of the Land before Foul re-destroyed all. When Covenant made his second duck-and-weave inner bargain, she gladly took on the additional Land-Saviour responsibility [for EVERYTHING] to shield her Beloved---problem was, she didn't have a leper's dread/moxie, nor did she possess white gold---and she failed.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the nature of her choice allowed Foul to make her into the thing she hated most: a helpless tool of the Despiser---with 'helpless' being the part that stung---and gave Foul mastery over the Staff of Law. [stupid Covenant internal bargains] .

I think Elena should have received both counsel and counseling before she made her big, bad Power of Command decision. When Triock said she was flawed from birth, I think he was speaking badly about Covenant, who he blamed for Elena's wild passions, and probably every other fault.
[Poor Triock. Life did not treat him kindly. I've known a few Triocks in my years...]

DW
[Weird, warped, and Waynhim-Proud!]

[danlo]

Here's what I wrote in Dissecting Elena, TIW chapters 21 & 22 about a half a year ago. Thought it might add a little more fft...

Maybe Elena's 'faraway' look comes from 2 factors, 1. The 3 days she was away with the Ranyhyn and the knowlege the ceremony of Kelenbhrabanal gave her, and 2. The fact that she is, though blood, literally half from our world and may have some feeling and thoughts beyond the Land. Perhaps she is a much more substantial, and mortal, being because of her seed coming from our world...

During the 3 days Elena spends as a child with the Ranyhyn the horses call up ancient lore that teaches her Anundivian yajna, or marrowmelding. In chapter 5 she shows Covenant the sculpture she has crafted of Myrha her Ranyhyn mount. Covenant says Saltheart Foamfollower had mentioned it to him but the art had been lost in the Land. There is a special need for this art. It seems like Elena and the Ranyhyn almost have a telepathic connection rooted in earthpower and devotion 2 the Land.

She talks like a Ramen
She rules like a queen
She communes with the Ranyhyn
She gazes at alien vistas

She forgives like her mother
She lusts for Covenant
with the desire that overwhelmed him
so many years ago...