Empire's Heir

Like everything that we experience, this book is part of a wider picture. The art of the author is to take this segment of time, shape it as a thing unto itself, and yet at the same time allow it to play a meaningful part in the wider whole. Isn’t that what we are all constantly trying to do with our lives?

Marian Thorpe does this well.

We are introduced to Gwenna, a well schooled and mature eighteen year old. a princess who is heir to a principality that itself is part of a wider empire. Opposite her is her father, the now ailing Princip, along with her mother (both queen and warrior), her brother (who would rather study diligently as a doctor than be a pampered prince), and a lattice work of other characters whose relationships to father, daughter and each other are precisely and delicately drawn.

Her father is coming to the end of his reign. Gwenna must protect him – for she clearly loves him and he faces political threats as well as failing health – but also prepare for his inevitable death and the challenges that this will bring. In the precarious balance of power across the wider empire, she will need to exercise great diplomacy. As a woman, she will have to face distrust from others whose culture expects a man in her role. And as a young woman she needs to choose her future partner - carefully, balancing emotion and strategic interests, the personal and the political. The book traces this complex, precarious dynamic as she travels with her family and their retinue to the dangerous capital city of the empire, where the empress's son may – or may not – be Gwenna's successful suitor. Gwenna’s lover, Lynthe, a princess in her own right but also Gwenna’s bodyguard, is travelling with them. Her claim on Gwenna is tentative and untested, and her fierce loyalty is very poignant.

The world building is historically informed, and within its wider framework the “special” cultural qualities of Ésparias are elegantly set out. It is done so thorough-goingly however, that I felt it was occasionally at risk of slipping into self parody. So Gwenna AND her father AND her mother AND most of the significant characters in the story have same sex lovers and are only doing heterosexuality for the sake of succession? Yes, I get it, and it’s fine and inclusive, but all of them? Similarly, I liked the emphasis on their deep and loving family ties, their courtly, cultured and civilised interests, their benign and dignified outlook, their very delicate approach to the inequalities of class and rank on which their postition depends…. but I found these virtues a little relentless, like one of those Christmas round robins where one learns that Natasha has qualified as a barrister and Inigo has secured his PhD in Mandarin, and Claire and Martin are going to Africa to do VSO together, and one ends up almost hoping that when one turns the page the difficult middle child will have just been done for dope dealing… . Do these people never unwind? Do they never bitch or bicker or banter a little, or get a bit sweaty without taking an elegant bath, or make a selfish wrong decision or otherwise let themselves down? It’s very very courtly.

These are small and small-minded criticisms however, and I probably shouldn’t disgrace myself by harbouring them. Virtue is all too rare in the novels that I read, and, to be fair, it’s actually quite refreshing. The characters are deeper no doubt than their manners, anyway, and if I really feel the need for a bit more conflict I can allow myself an unseemly speculation as to what jealous bodyguard Lynthe might do to her privileged rival prince Alekos…. In the next book maybe….