Fortunately I don't think Iylaine has quite ruined Malcolm yet. She is putting him under a lot of strain for sure, but it's apparent from his interactions with everyone else that the old Malcolm is still in there. But I do think the old Malcolm is getting tired of being cooped up -- especially now that he's hanging out with playboy Cearball -- and he may just blow his top one of these days. Iylaine may end up ruining the good marriage she does have if she isn't careful.

There is certainly some lost potential in Iylaine. And I do think if anyone could have made the most of it, it was Vash, with his compassion and patience. But to use your own words, I don't think she would ever quite "get him".

For what it's worth, I think Malcolm "gets her" and she could "get him" too if she bothered. Perhaps she already does in some ways. She will never be his intellectual equal, but she wouldn't have to be to appreciate him for what he is. He is the strong and competent and RELIABLE man she always wanted.

Whereas I think it requires something of a poetic soul to appreciate a poet, and that's what Iylaine lacks -- which is why I never really bought into the bohemian / artist profile for her 2008 self. She has always sort of rejected attempts (especially Alred's, but also Malcolm's) to get her to better herself, through poetry or music or learning to read or whatever else.

She just wants to be loved and taken care of. I guess it's a sign that she lacked that fundamental thing when she was young and got stuck a little too far down on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but still. Malcolm would actually be quite happy providing her the simple things he wants -- he is not a poetic creature himself, and has a somewhat Sigefrith-based ideal of what a gentlewoman should be.

Oh, Iylaine! I am starting to have some ideas for a Gunnilda + Iylaine chapter in the next few weeks so maybe I will go over some of these ideas in an appropriate way, rather than spilling my random thoughts all over the forum.

Oh I do agree that Iylaine has really been handed a rotten destiny in life. No matter why they did it, her parents and her people abandoned her, and then her foster mother killed herself, and then her foster father went all unreliable, and then she started getting passed around.

Alred may have had excellent intentions, but (just like his somewhat co-dependent relationship with Egelric) maybe he should have left her alone. She might have grown up happier with Gunnie and Alwy -- there was some real solid family life in that house, even if she was more exposed to kids who teased her. (Of course she might also have been lynched by an angry mob, so who knows.)

So I do feel very sorry for Iylaine, and maybe it isn't even her fault if she's selfish and whiny since she was indulged in that and raised that way. And maybe she even had the potential to be something really sublime once. But it is far too late for that now, I think.

I also do suspect that Vash underestimates how well she would take to life in his society. She would probably go bonkers with all the rules and restrictions and tight clothes and tame conversations. (Sounds rather Victorian.) Malcolm really understood what she wanted out of a house and a lifestyle.

I don't know, maybe what Iylaine needs is a chance to have exactly what she thinks she wants and then figure out that it wasn't what she dreamt it to be, and realize that what Malcolm offered was what she wanted all along. But for that to happen... it would be catastrophic to the rest of her family, so I don't know that I want to do that.

*more angst and gnashing of teeth*

Also while I'm at it, if someone could tell me how I am going to make Magog + Lasrua work, that would be greaaat. KTHX.

That's what I was thinking when I said Malcolm "gets her". He knows her well enough that he knows what to expect from her, and has always known, and would have been satisfied with that. Heck, he would have been HAPPY with that. He really thought Iylaine was the woman for him. And maybe he thought that if he could be the strong, competent, RELIABLE man she needed, she would actually get to be a better person as she learned to trust that she would always be safe in his love.

However, Iylaine effectively lied to him twice -- once when he asked her to marry him, and again before the altar. Yes, she thought Vash was gone forever, but she basically settled for Malcolm, and Malcolm didn't know that, and when Vash came back that spoiled everything.

Maybe he should have spotted that, I don't know. Maybe Malcolm has a Sigefrith-like blind spot when it comes to understanding the motivations of women, and reading the things they don't say. It's true his usual astounding feats of observation always seem to be about men.

As for Rua and Magog... I like your image. Even they do seem both to the the type to brew up the hurricane in the first place... so maybe they will just look at each other one day and realize they could just take life easy. (as the grass grows on the weirs *twitch*)

In order for their relationship to seem like THE ONE for both of them there has to be some major turning point in their character development -- that's my task. Maybe getting Magog to court her is really the way, however I choose to frame that. Magog is so arrogant and such a playboy that I guess he needs to learn to humble himself and really commit. But yeah I guess that is so high-level that it doesn't really guide me in finding something to write.

(Also, do you ever get a strange word stuck in your head and suddenly it comes up all the time in your conversation? I swear that's the fourth time I've said playboy in the last two days.)

As for Rua, I am not sure what her angle is. She's kind of aloof and bitchy, but life has actually treated her rather badly. And if she just got warm and sweet and squishy because of Malcolm's looooove that would be so formulaic as to be lame. Maybe her thing is just that she has become so obsessed with Malcolm that she needs to find the strength to say, "You know what, thanks but no thanks" if he comes to see her -- especially if it's as his playboy self.

Or maybe Rua is the type that needs to die to reach that level of beatification -- and Magog can be all NOOOOOO! and figure out the meaning of life a minute too late. Or maybe she could even die due to his own selfishness or something. Oooh!

(I fear I may turn this into a Magog + Rua thread...)

Devin, I think you and Caedwulf are the only two people left who have not moved on after Maud's death.

I definitely think Malcolm is over her. The question is: is he over Maire? He's still wearing her ring, after all.

Has he stopped loving her or you mean he's moved on and ready for someone else?

Are those two mutually exclusive?

Now that I think about it, I wonder whether people ever really stop loving -- in some way -- people they lose before their love for them dies.

If Maud had lived and they had run off together, they probably would have ended up hating each other. And Malcolm knows that, and has all but said it himself.

Or if Elfleda had lived, Egelric might have gotten to the point that he would have said "good riddance to that bitch"... but since she died before he got to that point, he does still have a misty fondness for her.

So I wonder if the question is even valid. It's easy to love the dead, and one is rarely given a reason to stop. (Maybe if you learn about infidelity after their death or something.)

I don't think Malcolm pines for her, though. I don't think he even wishes she had lived or wishes they had somehow been able to be together. He is probably glad that period of his life is over, to tell the truth. He made himself feel like a dog over what he did to Sigefrith, and I don't think he likes that one bit.

He might fancy that he still has a certain affection for Maud -- "He had a particular respect for dead sweethearts and those who still loved them." -- but it may be as much to make himself feel deep and noble and loyal as much as because he really still loves her. No one has a higher opinion of Malcolm than Malcolm does himself.

Probably his strongest feelings for her at this point are manifested in his love for their son. Cubby has her eyes. But you better believe he loves Cubby for Cubby's sake, and not for Maud's.

Like I said, if there is anyone he's not ready to leave behind, it's gotta be Maire.

I believe I hinted that Magog was the one who hadn't long for the world, but maybe I am just itching to kill someone. Hey, if pulling the trigger on Rua or Magog saves Sigi or Eirik, I doubt there would be many protests.

Maybe Alred will pass his slight creepy attraction to Connie on to Yware?

Maybe Egelric will do the same with Gwynn and Finn?

I think there could still be a future for Malcolm and Iylaine. He definitely still loves her. But (again, especially now that Cearball is there to remind him just how whipped he is) things are starting to get really strained at the seams.

Yeah, Iylaine could blow it. Malcolm is a big enough man that he could forgive her a few times or for a few things, but she could definitely blow it.

Oh yeah, Rua's death would be a terrible tragedy for her family. They've already suffered so much. It would be interesting to see the effect on Malcolm, especially if her death was his fault in some way, but I guess I wouldn't like the effect it would have on Osh or Paul, or even Kraaia as you said.

Not to mention Paul would totally be on a mission to kill Malcolm if anything ever happened to Rua because of him. I'm already a little nervous about what is going to happen between those two if Malcolm tries even to "court" her in a normal, polite way. Paul absolutely does not like him.

It would be sad if Malcolm & Iylaine got stuck together in a miserable relationship, but it would not be surprising. They already sort of ARE. Since there's no way for them to divorce, and since they have the kids, they're at least stuck together. It's up to them to not be miserable. And frankly, it's up to Iylaine, because Malcolm has been bending over backwards for her for all these years, and Iylaine just seems to think that that's how she ought to be treated and he would be selfish to offer her anything less. Maybe Malcolm should have put his foot down earlier.

After a loved one's death, you probably start to idolize that person little by little until you have a hard time remembering their faults.

Totally. But you make me think... have I ever done a relationship like that? I mean where someone loses a lover and goes on to get another one, and over time they get more and more sentimental over the dead one because real life with the living one is not perfect?

Alred does not fall into this category of course, because (a) he was remarkably conscious of Matilda's many faults and hasn't forgotten them, and (b) because he's just Alred, and he loves Matilda forever because... because he's just Alred.

But otherwise it seems like the 2nd relationship has either been a bit better than the previous (like Elfleda < Sela < Lili, or Hilda < Wynflaed, or Maud < Eadie, or Friedrich < Alred (< Leofric...)) or the 2nd relationship was never one of love at all so there was no gradual disappointment (like Githa > Eada for Theobald).

The only example I can find is maybe Gunnilda and Ethelmund. She has gotten rather nostalgic for Alwy at times. But on the other hand, she did not marry Ethelmund for love. And I think she has only gone on to love him a little more over time, and not less. Plus she still has her knight in shining armor that would prevent her from ever idealizing either Alwy or Ethelmund.

Or maybe Leof and Eadgith and Leila? Eadgith wasn't dead, of course, but after a while with Leila, Leof decided he was better off with Eadgith. I don't think that really counts though since he was well aware of Eadgith's faults too (and she was alive to squawk at him and remind him of them).

Can anyone think of an example? Otherwise I think I have a new storyline idea. Which may involve killing someone. (Who is not Sigi or Eirik, because see reason (b) above.)

I think the main kind of relationship where the person grew evermore sentimental about someone after their death was Leof and Matilda. I think those two would have fizzled out whether she had died or not, and instead he had all this romantic nostalgia about her for years to come. As poor Lady Eadgith said, Matilda could never get old in his mind, never gripe or whine or hate him. I mean, he certainly knew her faults before she died, but not in the way Alred did. (Obviously!) But that's a whole other conversation...
One of the problems with Iylaine is that I don't think she wants to change. I don't think she really has enough depth and self-awareness to understand that there is a big, big problem within her and I don't see someone just coming out of the woodwork to show her. The obvious choice would be Gunnilda, but honestly, she's not really the best example for transcending kind of crappy circumstances and learning to love her husband and be good to him anyway. I mean, she did do that quite well on the outside, but I don't know how happy she ever was with Ethelmund or Alwy. Not that people can choose who they love, or choose to be happy, obviously, but I'm not really sure if she ever gave either of them a chance.
I feel like we're all being mean to Iylaine. I do love her, and I've been one of her big defenders because I know how hard it is for people to be good when everyone around them has broken them down for a very long time. I hope she can redeem herself somehow.
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I'm romantic, literary, cynical, and a diehard Alred Sebright groupie.

I'm not offended, Carmen, I love feedback like that. And I have so many characters in this story, in fact I am afraid I have fallen into a few patterns too easily. For instance, I seem to be incapable of making really deep and strong female characters -- the good ones are mostly all men. I discard women right and left in this story, and the role of mothers seems underemphasized. Discuss. *stirs tea*

I do think Iylaine has the potential to become a good person. (I think that potential is always there. Even in Lar.) I do think she could be happy with Malcolm, and I do think she could learn some self-sacrifice and compassion. So don't get me wrong... I still think she has the potential to be wonderful with others as well as at peace with herself, so I hope I didn't say anything that makes it sounds like I have totally given up on her potential to change. On the contrary! I am setting everyone in that triangle up for massive changes over the next few months. I think she could easily be everything Malcolm could ever hope for in a woman... and Malcolm is probably at least clever enough to see that true potential, which is why he loves her still.

Maybe you just misunderstood my use of "sublime"... In my mind, Vash is really one of those special, once-in-a-generation people, and especially as he gets older and grows out of his whiny angsty emo boy phase over his loss of Iylaine, this will become clearer. (Sometimes I do think he has appeared rather silly -- pining, as I said, over someone or something that isn't everything he dreams it to be.)

And that is where I think Iylaine would fall short. I don't think she is a once-in-a-generation sort of person. Her destiny -- the role she was supposed to play in this tragic setup where she was sent to live with the men, to be followed by her triumphant return to the elves -- was larger than she personally ever was, I believe. I don't know that I believed that when she was 3 or 8 or 10 years old, but I do believe it now, looking back, and seeing how she has grown. (This may in part be due to my growth as a writer and my relative inability to create deep characters then, but so it goes.)

I mean, take Sigi for instance. How many random women would you have to put into her situation before you found one who rose to the challenge the way she is doing? She is a Great Lady in some difficult-to-define way, and I know self-help books would have you believe otherwise, but not every woman has the potential to be Great. And not just because our life experiences are different. Otherwise why is it that some people start out in horrific situations and end up magnificent, and vice versa?

I think it is easier to accept and understand when we talk about Great Men -- I think everyone would agree that not every man has the potential to be an I dunno... Winston Churchill, or dare I say Barack Obama ().

So there is that. I do think it's too late for her to become utterly self-sacrificing, as the situation may require of Vash in the future. I just can't see a change that FUNDAMENTAL coming to her now -- it would be the 180-degree opposite of what she has become. I don't think she ever could become a leader, with all the denial of the self that that requires.

Lar, on the other hand, has been really awful at times, and he doesn't realize how self-serving he is, but there is still a definite nobility to him, and a potential for him to embrace the noblest cause at any cost, if someone can just help him see what it is. He's a born leader, the way Vash is. Iylaine... I just don't see it.

Now, the other thing -- and this is actually orthogonal to her ability to be noble and self-sacrificing and so on -- is that I don't think she has the intellectual or "poetical" depth that would put her on a level with Vash.

Sigefrith is in this situation with Eadie, but he's OK with that because he doesn't expect it from a woman, and he has his male friends to provide that. I expect that Malcolm himself is the same way. However, I do think Vash is an Alred-like person, and he really believes in the sort of relationship we are describing as "soulmates", and he would be disappointed there.

Honestly I shudder to say "poetical" because that sounds like she just wouldn't understand his poetry, and I know some of you out there don't dig poetry yourselves... I don't really know how else to describe it except as a certain sensitivity to certain... ugh. I don't know.

It all comes down to an ability to "get things" that the other person would also "get", and obviously there are more things in life than poetical, artsy things that have this property. However, whatever those things are for a particular person, it seems to me that if you ever want to have a soulmate, you have to "click" there. Like how the wife of a fireman needs to "get" what that service to his community means to him, or how the wife of a farmer or fisherman needs to "get" his love for the land or the sea.

Now, Kraaia is smart as a whip, and furthermore there seems to be something about Osh and his non-flowery, non-decorative paintings that causes something to tingle in her... and I suspect it's the same sort of something that is in Vash, once he stops writing poetry about how life is despair. In fact, Kraaia seems to be the type who would say "What is this shit? Write something real!" if she ever got her hands on his current corpus, and that may be what Vash needs. But I bet she would "get it" if he did.

Yeah, I feel like we're being mean to Iylaine too. Not everyone can be a Matilda or a Sigi. I don't despise her, and I don't dislike her, but I don't think she has shaped up to be what I originally thought she would be, nor what Vash needs.

Cassie doesn't seem to think anything WILL happen to cause her to fundamentally change (and certainly, not realizing you have a problem is a big barrier to cross right there), but I would go so far as to say that nothing COULD cause her to change fundamentally enough to make her a soulmate for Vash. If it was ever possible (and obviously it was at one point, since she is a fictional character and I could have made her anything) it no longer is now (because her life to date has been written).

And Carmen, I am not sure what in particular you don't like about some of my characters... based on the preceding sentence:

People come out of hardship with more to give than ever before.

I guess you meant the fact that some of my characters come out of hardships worse off than before? (Oooh Egelric I'm looking at you!)

Hmmm. I will sound harsh but I don't think that statement is universally true... or even very often true. Except in books and movies. (And OKAY I am writing fiction here, don't nitpick, people! )

I think a lot of times, hardships do break people down and make them bitter. I don't believe that "that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger"... not always.

And I don't think character development (in stories but especially not in life) is always a monotonically increasing function. OK I just lost 90% of you non-math-majors... I mean that it's not like people get constantly better throughout their lives, or at least get no worse. Some people start out generous and optimistic, but life beats them down until they get stingy and pessimistic and even lose their ability to sympathize with the plights of others.

Now, if I were writing The Story of Iylaine, I might have to reexamine her situation. It takes a better writer than I to pull off a novel where the protagonist "loses at life". However, I am writing a non-linear story with dozens of main and hundreds of minor characters, so if anything I feel obliged to have a fair number who get broken down and beaten up. We have to have some unhappy marriages, some abusive families, some betrayals, some bitterness, and so on.

It may be that this is a bad way to structure a story (I am totally learning this as I go along, and in fact it is still really only intended to be a framework for my experiments with writing), but that is the structure I'm working with. If this story turned into storyline after storyline of The Triumph of the Human Spirit, now that would be an unfortunate pattern to fall into, if you ask me.

This story certainly has not shaped up to be the story of Iylaine, and over the years she has become rather a minor character. Her absence in Vash's life has become a more important factor than her presence in anyone's. I don't know what to do about that, or whether I should do anything at all. This may simply change in the future in the natural course of things.

I do wish the Man-Flann virus hadn't infected the story to the extent it has... in the last year or two (of story time) I have written far too much about those young ladies, to the detriment of other well-loved characters such as Gunnilda or even Iylaine and Malcolm themselves.

I also feel like I am in too deep with this angel stuff, like this story was already plenty far-fetched enough with the elves. But here we are.

In the future I hope to focus more on The Kingdom of Lothere itself -- which is what the story is supposed to be about -- and not all these pesky Scots, and do a bit more with foreign relations as the Kingdom gets important enough to matter. I hope you guys are down with that. More Eirik and Sigi that way.

Oh, and Cassie, Leof and Matilda are the perfect example of what I was thinking of, thank you. Of course Eadgith was his first wife, but he was separated from her at the time, and after they got back together there was the ghost of Matilda haunting them for the longest time. It's sad that he got over her only to move on to Hetty.

And sad that Alred still hasn't gotten over the Leof + Matilda betrayal, now that Leof's own love for her is dead. He might have actually LISTENED to what Leof said about the way he was treating Hetty if he hadn't been thinking of Matilda the whole time. Oh, Alred!

I see what you mean now. Perhaps the root cause is my habit of letting characters drop out of sight when all the DRAMA! dies down. And this is particularly a problem now when the story is progressing SO slowly through time.

The last time we saw anything significant from Paul's POV was in "The Unspoken is Said" from November 4, 1085 (which I wrote in early September *2007*, to give you an idea of how slow things are going). And actually in that one I do think there is some sense that Paul has grown through his experiences. It has at least given him a perspective on what it is like for Eithne to be cast out by her own sister.

And more recently, when he saw the blood on the wall his first thought was to know whether Kraaia was hurt while Cat & Flann were squawking about the paintings... or even the hints about his relationship with Alred since Alred's injury. I do think Paul is deepening, but we just get such rare glimpses of him.

As for Cat... yeah it is really hard for me to guess how a young woman's recovery would go after what she went through -- rape and near death. I may have undershot that a lot.

I did think that when she finally slept with Paul it was time for that to happen though. They had been married for months by that point, and she had slept beside him every night... and we did see her go from afraid to be touched on her wedding night, to beginning to want him (with undertones of a lingering fear of Lar), to barely daring to touch him and panicking at the first sign she was doing it wrong, to a very nervous but ultimately fulfilling first time. I don't know that I could have or should have dragged that out for much longer.

Cat seems to have regressed to a certain amount of pettiness (dare I say cattiness) recently. She's still snooping and gossiping and prying. That bugs me a bit about her, and it may be because I too find it a bit shallow for someone who has been through what she has.

This may be a symptom of the NEARLY TWO YEARS that have passed since I wrote her rape. We are coming up on the 3 year anniversary of this story, and as I said, maybe it's time I think about taking a break and just rereading the whole thing to counteract some of those effects.

On the other hand (back to Cat) she may have some underlying problems that we don't see... some kind of post-traumatic thing that's going to flare up at some point. But that could be months or even years away in our time...

I think there is a potential in Cat for great wisdom (witness the spark in her eye when Osh told her what he did about a baby crying and no one hears) but it may be slow in coming to her. It may even be that her snooping and prying and meddling is actually a way for her to impose her will upon a world that seems chaotic and frightening to her.

As for Gunnilda, she is definitely a victim of too many storylines, not enough time. I have strayed very far from some of my founding families. In her case, the chapters I have chosen for her recently have tended to make her look like she's retrograding too. Hopefully we will see some of the wise old Gunnilda in her upcoming chapter or chapters. She's definitely still in there, we just never see that any more.

I think the day that I decided Brude was no ordinary man, and Flann was carrying his child, that was a critical turning-point in the story. So many very heavy things have been added to the story because of that -- not "heavy" in the gloomy sense, but they've become a real burden for me to work under now. The whole thing with Dantalion and Eithne. The whole thing with Flann and Araphel. The whole thing with Connie and Malo. There are some good chapters in there, and it wouldn't be the same story if they hadn't been written, but looking back, I wish I hadn't done it. The story has strayed so much from what I originally planned, and it's getting strained in places because of it (as you are finding).

Anyway, thank you so much for your feedback, and for listening to my angsty tooth-gnashing! One criticism helps me improve my writing more than ten compliments.

Uh, yeah, "Your writing stinks" would only help me improve my writing if totally quitting writing would be an improvement in my writing. Your call.

I challenge you to find a grammatical error in my story. Go for it. *shoots starter pistol*

As long as you aren't nesting parentheses you are in safe territory.

Interesting that you thought of Osh and Eirik since they are the two characters whose grammatical misadventures are the most fun for me to write. Eirik just wails away at English or Gaelic or whatever he's misspeaking at the moment -- and I think he does it intentionally -- but when I'm writing Osh I feel like I'm merely dabbing at his words with a soft brush and blurring the edges. Something about his grammar mistakes is akin to poetry. None of the other elves (who admittedly all speak English better than he) have that effect on me.

(Or maybe you just thought of Osh and Eirik because you love Osh and Eirik? )

That is certainly possible, I occasionally catch those myself. More often I find duplicated words though... "and and", "the the", etc. For some reason my brain just flits right over those no matter how many times I reread. I just found a totally bone-headed mistake of that genre the other day in "Malcolm goes out into the rain" which is surely one of the chapters I have reread the most. (I think it was a missing "he" in fact! You need to poke me when I do that!)

But dammit I know how to conjugate! *brandishes +5 Pitchfork of Conjugation* Beware my subjunctive moods!

Well that's EMBARRASSING. The very latest chapter. If we extrapolate from this I am in trouble.

Thanks though. Vash's fingers are now his own!

*wanders off, wondering just how often this happens*

Thus began my karma-nabbing career in corrections.

I love this post!

Except for the anti-Vashlaina tendencies.

I kinda wish you had too. I'm pleased to report that you've improved on the latest chapter. NO TYPOS!

(At least I hope I wasn't blinded by all that shmexy!)