Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 10:16 am
....and the 'raising Kevin' one palpably so at the time. If you'd passed by my house as I read those words you'd have heard an anguished "Noooooo!" coming from it.
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Yes, that was the quote. Thanks! Again, I said up front that I was a bit fuzzy on it.wayfriend wrote:RE: good will come of it
First, I cannot find anyone saying something like this. Which only means I cannot find it. Maybe this is a play-it-again-sam kinda thing. What I can find is:
I don't see anything that contradicts this. Her reign seemed to be nothing but successful until her fatal decision. Perhaps she did have a "special quality".In [i]The Illearth War[/i] was wrote:"No. I mean, why is she High Lord - instead of Mhoram?"
"What does it matter?" said Troy irritably. "The Council chose her. A couple of years ago - when Osondrea, the old High Lord, died. They put their minds together - you must have noticed when you were here before how the Lords can pool their thoughts, think together - and she was elected." As he spoke, the irritation faded from his tone. "They said she has some special quality, some inner mettle that makes her the best leader for this war. Maybe I don't know what they mean - but I know she's got something. She's impossible to refuse. I would fight with stew forks and soup spoons against Foul."
In the GI, Donaldson explains it similarly, in several ways.
RE: awakening the krillIn the Gradual Interview, Stephen R Donaldson wrote:Elena was the perfect choice in the same sense that Covenant was the perfect choice. So she was discernibly unbalanced. So what? So was he. The other Lords--especially Mhoram--knew that she would (to borrow a phrase) "save or damn" the Land; and they chose to believe that she would save it, just as they chose to believe that Covenant would. None of them existed on the knife-edge of possibility in the same way that Elena--and Covenant--did. And they could so easily have been validated by the outcome, if she had simply made a different decision at the moment when she tasted the EarthBlood. Only characters with epic flaws are capable of epic victories.
(02/05/2005)
But the attitude of the Lords toward her would be comparable to their attitude toward Covenant: not distrust, but rather a kind of chosen trust (rather like a leap of faith). The reasoning might go something like this: if you choose to believe that something good will happen, and plan for it, you may or may not be right; but if you choose to believe that something bad will happen, and plan for it, you pretty much guarantee that nothing good *can* happen.
(12/31/2005)
Her fellow Lords were not fools. The Ranyhyn were not fools. Even Covenant, in his tortured fashion, was not a fool. They all saw in her the potential for greatness. "Save or damn."
(08/31/2011)
Absolutely. Covenant's awakening the krill threw chaos into everything, and continues his streak of leaving a wake of destruction behind all his careless acts.
In the Gradual Interview, Stephen R Donaldson wrote:Under the right circumstances--and the right kind of pressure--any of us might do something crazy. If Covenant had never returned to the Land, Elena might have been a fine High Lord.
(10/11/2006)
So far as I can tell, any accomplishments Elena made were as part of projects when she combined her efforts with those of the other Lords---restoring Trothgard, creating the giant banyan tree that hosts Revelwood, etc. No individual accomplishments outside of becoming a Lord and then becoming High Lord.Horrim Carabal wrote:I still fail to see these mysterious "successes" Elena is being credited with.
Can someone come up with a list of her accomplishments?
I say she was nothing but a tool of Foul. That's her legacy.
Having just reread the chapters cited above, I found it of interest that poor Borillar seems to be the first human "supported by the Waynhim" in an act of power. I doubt they had time for the Demondim-spawn infusion rite, but the fact that they found a way to 'support', which I read as heighten and strengthen, the Hirebrand's might an interesting precursor to the various others who receive this sort of prop in later books.DrPaul wrote:trace the ways in which the various acts of resistance of Covenant, Triock, Whane and Lal, the Forestal, etc., in one location, and of Mhoram, the Waynhim, Borillar, Drinny, etc., at the other, synergised to bring about two significant breakthroughs for the defenders of the Land at a crucial moment
As cool as that might be to see Borillar at the head of a Waynhim wedge, or being infused with power from Waynhim blades, I think here "support" means only that they fought as a team, as normal warriors might support each other in a battle - holding a line, defending each other, coordinating strikes, etc.In [i]The Power That Preserves[/i] was wrote:On the rim of the hollow, Hearthrall Borillar and the last of the Waynhim fought together against Mhoram's foes. Borillar used his flaming staff like a mace, and the Waynhim supported him with their own powers. Together they struggled impossibly to rescue the High Lord.