For my first act of thread necrophilia:
Feanor1999 wrote: ↑
I will always wonder how the hell Covenant never made the connection between her and Lena in the first place. Their names are virtually the same after all
What gets me is when they first meet, he notices that her eyes are “gray like his own.” And the description of her hair is exactly the same as of Lena's, “brown with flashes of honey.” Hmmm...
But I'm thinking he was distracted by some of his other feelings about her and maybe just didn't want it to be true. Also, even knowing how time moves differently in the Land, it's a little disorienting that she's actually older than him by about twelve years at this point. And of course, he had no way of knowing he'd made Lena pregnant.
One of those intriguing moments where readers know something the main character hasn't figured out yet.
Some other good takeaways from this thread:
Elena was raised in an emotionally unstable environment.
Yes. I just want to dig into that a little, because it's so...Southern Gothic, almost. Change the setting and it might be a lost Faulkner story:
Her mother idolized the man who raped her and believed that she had stopped her own aging in order to be appealing to him upon his return—her great hope in life was that he would come back for her.
Lena being caught up in her madness, you would expect Elena to be raised by her grandparents—but Trell and Atiaran were each in their own way also consumed by the injury Covenant did to their daughter, undone by Lena's response to it as well as their own.
So Elena was more or less raised by the man who would have been her stepfather, had her mother not been so completely mad. And while he was certainly “dour,” Triock did a pretty good job, under the circumstances; Elena grew up to be brilliant and powerful, not only getting accepted and making it through the Loresraat and onto the Council, but becoming High Lord—when someone like Mhoram was also available for the job. Not bad for a bastard child of rape from Mithil Stonedown.
She was crazy.
Of course, she's not quite right. Who would be? On top of her family, there was Covenant's ill-advised “gift” of sending the Ranyhyn to visit once a year—bad for the Ranyhyn, not so great for Elena, either. Because, the Horserite.
The Ranyhyn aren't to blame. They were trying to communicate, trying to warn her, as later they tried to warn Linden. They meant for the story of the Father of Horses to show her the risk of hubris, of taking on the Despiser one-on-one (unless you happen to be the white gold—and even then, extreme caution is advised...) But Elena apparently took it as encouragement and carried this ambition into her career on the Council.
She was a tool of Foul.
So is pretty much everyone in the books, except possibly the Creator. The thing is, it doesn't matter; real victory comes from understanding this.
She made a terrible choice about how to use the Power of Command.
Her flaw, the terrifying face Covenant sees and no one else appears to, the tragic focus of that otherwhere gaze, is a single-minded, all-out hatred of Lord Foul. I mean, no one likes him—but while she does ardently serve the Land, up under that she has devoted her life to becoming a weapon against him. Not in the sense of overpowering him in a confrontation, she's smarter than that, but more in terms of winning the chess game that is Foul's multi-layered plot(s) against the Land. IMO, she sees summoning Kevin as a masterstroke in that game—because she's blinded by her own hatred and confidence.
And it all comes back to a larger theme of the first three books: hatred. What is it good for? Can it be a force against Despite? An answer?
Not directly. This is clearly shown by Elena's fate, as well as by the outcome of Covenant's solo journey though the snow in Power That Preserves. Hatred on its own doesn't work, nor does raw power, or intelligence in either lore or battle.
But mixed with other intentions and emotions—balanced, contained, controlled...maybe that's part of the answer. Witnessing Elena's tragic story, among other tragedies and gifts, makes it possible for both Mhoram and Covenant to figure this out. His own participation in her tragedy gives the lesson an extra edge for Covenant.
It doesn't end well for her personally—did anyone else catch the full horror of that title the Raver gives her, “Foul-wife?”
But at least she is set free as any of the Dead by the destruction of the Staff of Law. Until Last Chronicles, of course...but that's literally another story.
Then again,, there's not really any good way to use the Power of Command.
Speaking of larger themes: the powerlessness of power. Still working my way into that one.
She is beautiful, tragic, doomed—one of the most appealing characters in the Chronicles.
When I first read these books, I was a very young nineteen, and what interested me most about Elena wasn't her power or her craziness; it was her love for Covenant. I wanted her to get the guy she wanted so badly. I wanted Covenant to have something more than just a doomed yearning for his ex-wife. And I was horrified that if this happened, it would be—technically at least, even if not in Elena's view—incest.
I identified with both of them. Despite their obvious flaws, I loved both of them. I wanted it to end well—and I knew there was no way it could.
So yeah; she's one of my favorite characters, and one I feel sorriest for. I may disagree with some of her decisions, but can't help responding to her as most of the other characters do: with longing and dread.
“Weave a circle round [her] thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For [s]he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”
(Apologies to Coleridge.)
Milk of paradise, waters of the tarn, Blood of the Earth. It's all about the holy madness—and the need, too often neglected, to protect oneself from it.
"Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
--Carl Sagan
"In that moment the earth made no sound
But you were there
You helped me lift my pain into the air"
--Remy Zero
I think the eye of the paradox just winked at me...
I haven't gotten far enough into the series to understand how important that is, though.
