Earthsea: Who has Prince Arren's heart?
My last two posts were about Ursula LeGuin's fantastic 'Earthsea' series. Books 1 and 2 introduce this rich world, the central characters of Ged and Tenar, and the recurring theme of identity; Books 3-5 ask and answer even more philosophical questions amid the adventures, and all our main characters get happy endings. Or, at least, they seem to. The possible exception is Prince Arren of Enlad/King Lebannen. To understand what I mean, it is important to remember what LeGuin establishes regarding wizards and romance in this series. First, because wizards believe their power to be enhanced by a singleminded focus, they cast a spell that basically makes a little asexual/aromantic bubble around themselves. However, that doesn't prevent strong bonds of admiration or friendship from forming that can be transformed into romantic feelings if the spell is ever removed - as happens for Ged and Tenar. So...let's talk about Arren, because the way he and his feeling for Ged are described is very interesting.
In 'The Farthest Shore', Arren first impression of Ged is as a "short, vigorous figure in a hooded cloak of white wool...his face was reddish-dark, hawk-nosed, seamed on one cheek with old scars. The eyes were bright and fierce. Yet he spoke gently."
A bit later:
Now he saw the Archmage: the greatest wizard of all Earthsea...the only living Dragonlord. There he knelt beside a fountain, a short man and not young, a quiet-voiced man with eyes as deep as evening...Arren scrambled up from sitting and knelt down formally on both knees, all in haste. 'My lord,' he said stammering, 'let me serve you!' His self-assurance was gone, his face was flushed, his voice shook.
When Ged basically tells him "I appreciate it kid, but I don't need your sword right now" and gives him a little push in the direction of the refectory:
He felt the Archmage's touch as a thrill of glory. For Arren had fallen in love...he had never given himself entirely to anything...he had played at loving. But now the depths of him were wakened...by honor, danger, wisdom, by a scarred face and a quiet voice and a dark hand holding, careless of its power, the staff of yew that bore...the Lost Rune of the Kings. So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.
All of that takes place within six pages and less than half an hour of time within the story. Ten pages later Arren thinks: "I would rather sweep his room than be a prince in Enlad...I would stay near him, even if he lost all his power and his art. Even if I never saw him. Even if he never said another word to me."
Given the anti-romance spell we find out about later, this logically has to be classed as a hero-crush. But, hot damn, is that one powerful hero-crush! He hasn't even seen Ged do anything yet. Tenar, while also immediately drawn to Ged, doesn't have nearly as intense a reaction even after she sees him hold back an earthquake. And Arren's feelings don't get any weaker as the story goes on, though they evolve a bit. For instance, mid-way through:
His heart went out utterly to his companion, not now with that first romantic ardor and adoration, but painfully, as if a link were drawn forth from the very inmost of it, and forged into an unbreaking bond. For in this love he now felt there was compassion: without which love is untempered, and is not whole, and does not last.
Excuse me while I fan myself for a moment.
Arren tends to instinctively throw himself between Ged and potential danger, even when he doesn't have his sword, although though Ged is - as he well knows - the world's most powerful wizard. Ged questions one of these actions: grabbing a bag of money and running to lure robbers away from the unconscious wizard. Arren says that he didn't think of what might happen to him, or that Ged might be dead already. "You are the one that matters...who can get to wherever it is we must go." But he didn't reason that out at the time, he just acted. It turned out to be correct; the robbers kidnap Arren as a slave, but by then Ged has recovered and is able to rescue him. This protective instinct proves to be especially useful in the last part of their quest, where Ged actually does need defending while he repairs the hole in the world, and help getting out of the underworld afterwards.
The prince's devotion does briefly falter. When he is under the influence of the other wizard, "Arren saw now what a fool he had been to entrust himself body and soul to this restless and secretive man." Even then, his doubts melt away whenever Sparrowhawk/Ged speaks: "He would look at his companion and see that hard, harsh, patient face, and he would think 'This is my lord and friend'". Despite his despair, he manages to row the boat out of danger when the locals throw spears at them, and saves the water for an injured Ged as they drift helplessly at sea. It never occurs to him to drink it himself. They are rescued by people who live on rafts in the open sea; when he recovers the second sentence out of his mouth is: "Will you take me to my companion?"
And they do:
Sparrowhawk's shoulder had been skillfully bandaged...He looked at Arren and smiled the sweet, joyous smile that was always startling on his hard face. Arren felt suddenly like weeping again. He put his hand on Sparrowhawk's hand and said nothing.
Arren feels deeply ashamed of his doubt and despair, but Ged offers his trust, as Vetch did for him when he was at his lowest: "You have strength enough...What you love, you will love. What you undertake, you will complete...But seventeen years give little armor against despair."
Ged doesn't seem to reciprocate any romantic feelings that might exist...and thank goodness, because the 30+ year age difference would make that a little questionable1. The rare times where Arren's youthful beauty is mentioned, it seems to be the narrator's perspective or a more impersonal observation on Ged's part. For instance:
Golden and supple, the boy played and basked in the water and light until the sun touched the sea. Dark and spare, with the economy of gesture and terse strength of age, the man swam, and kept the boat on course...and watched the swimming boy and the flying fish with an impartial tenderness.
Ged loves Arren, but seems to think of him more in the "son I never had" kind of way. When Ged rescues Arren from the slavers, he remarks rather smugly: "He took the bear's cub this time."
And later on, the wizard thinks:
I have found none to follow in my way...none but thee. And thou must go thy way, not mine...And if I fall, you fall, and all the rest...Oh, but I should like to see thee crowned in Havnor, and the sun shining on the Tower of the Sword, and on the Ring we brought for thee from the dark tombs, Tenar and I, before ever thou wast born!
At the same time, Ged is aware of Arren's passionate nature, and even admits to using that on their quest:
You are my guide. You in your innocence and your courage, your unwisdom and your loyalty, you are my guide - the child I send before me into the dark. It is your fear, your pain I follow. You have thought me harsh to you, Arren; you never knew how harsh. I use your love as a man burns a candle, burns it away, to light his steps.
After he has returned to Gont with his power gone, Ged doesn't see Arren again, even when the young king visits the island. The reason given in the text is that Ged is still figuring out who he is now, and it is deeply painful to have other people treat him as if he were still a great mage, as if he could just be that again for them if he tried hard enough. Just one of Arren's intense hero-worship looks would be a stab to the heart. But I can't help but wonder whether he worries that, if they met now, any other underlying feelings Arren has for him would make themselves known. They did with Tenar, who also loved Ged since she first met him, but didn't know the full nature of that love until the spell was broken. Such a realization on Arren's part would be a bit awkward for everyone involved, and highly inconvenient for a young king who is supposed to be getting married and ensuring the succession. Or perhaps there wouldn't be such a realization, now that now that Ged is old and lacking his magery, which would be just one more wound to his pride!
Arren, who starts going openly by his true name, Lebannen, after his coronation, somewhat takes after Ged, as he grows older. When Tenar meets him in 'Tehanu', this is how she describes him:
His hair was dark and soft, his skin a clear bronze-red; he was dressed plainly and with no chain or ring or outward mark of authority. But he looked the way a king should look.
Besides that authority in quiet and simplicity, he has acquired much the same mix of fierceness and gentleness too.
His face was too sad for a young man's face. 'You came to find him,' she said. 'The archmage. Sparrowhawk.' 'Ged,' he said, looking at her with a faint smile. 'You, and he, and I go by our true names.' 'You and I, yes. But he, only to you and me.'...Lebannen said, 'He and I were in the dark land together. We died together. Together we crossed the mountains there...but the name of the mountains is Pain. The stones...the stones cut, and the cuts are long to heal.'...'Why does he hide from me?' the young man cried in grief. Then, quietly, 'I hoped indeed to see him. But if he doesn't wish it, that's the end of it, of course.'
Lebannen is oddly startled when Tenar tells him that Ged is proud of him, but he appreciates it, and Tenar finds herself sharing Ged's parental feeling toward the young man:
'Lady Tenar, you say you fled from one enemy and found another; but I came seeking a friend and found another.' She smiled at his wit and kindness. What a nice boy he is, she thought...Her heart yearned to him. He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it. And therefore he would not...do the easy thing to do...My son, my king, my dear boy.
And Lebannen seems to accept that kind of love, at least to some degree:
'But you will be safe?' 'Oh, yes...I won't be alone.' Their eyes met for a moment, but neither spoke the name they both thought. 'Will they be coming again, from Roke?'...'Not for him. That, if they propose again, I will forbid,' Lebannen said, not realizing how much he told her in those three words...'They'll be welcome at Oak Farm,' she said. 'Though not as welcome as you would be.' 'I will come when I can,' he said, a little sternly; and a little wistfully, 'if I can'.
There are some other indications that, chivalrous impulses aside, Arren doesn't quite conform to traditional straight masculinity. We are mostly looking through Arren's eyes in 'The Farthest Shore', and he never notices female beauty, as Ged sometimes does, and in fact never pays much attention to anyone other than the wizard. Villagers they meet on their journey refer to Arren as "that girlish lad of yours." By the time we get to 'The Other Wind' King Lebannen has been ruling for fifteen years (making him 32) and he has shown zero interest in marrying, to the growing dismay of his subjects. He interacts with women happily enough - and indeed is more willing to take their counsel than most men - but though plenty of noble ladies visit the court, "the king had danced at their weddings as, one by one, they settled for noblemen or wealthy commoners." There are rumors of mistresses now and then, but Lebannen doesn't seem particularly attached to any of them. He puts off the demands of his subjects, his court, and his family that he marry. "And because he was well loved and trusted, and still a young man, and for all his gravity a charming and persuasive one, he had escaped all the hopeful maidens. Until now."
Now he has been sent the daughter of the Kargish king, with the clear implication that he should marry her to secure peace. And this sends him into a most uncharacteristic fit of rage:
He slapped the gilded scroll down on a table. 'Cheese in a rat trap,' he said. He was shaking. He whipped the dagger he always wore out of its sheath and stabbed it straight down through the High King's message...Oak stared at him in blank dismay. Prince Arren of Enlad never lost his temper....'They will not use me!' Lebannen said, stabbing the dagger down again, his face so black and blind with fury that the old man drew back from him in real fear.
Lebannen gets ahold of himself a bit after that, but he doesn't even care to find out what the princess might look like behind her veils. As soon as Tenar arrives - for an entirely different reason - he bursts out: "What am I going to do with her? What can I do?"
As far as Tenar is concerned:
He was to her the son who never breaks your heart. But she thought he might yet manage to, if he kept on being so rageful and dishonest about this poor girl from Hur-at-Hur...What was wrong with him? So far as she knew, he had never before rebelled against the obligations of his position.
Tenar attributes Lebannen's resistance to marriage to not wanting to give up his freedom. Which is indeed a common straight male concern, but not one that really seems to fit Lebannen's character. He likes and respects women in general, he took on the responsibilities of a king without kicking up a fuss, as she notes, and - more importantly in this context - he offered devoted service to Ged within about five minutes of meeting him! Lebannen knows he's being unfair to the princess, and to Tenar, who points out that he's not even treating the girl like a person, but still:
These feelings were mere sparks in the huge darkness of his anger at her, at the princess, at everyone and everything that that laid this false obligation, this grotesque duty on him. As he went out of the room he tugged open the collar of his shirt as if it were choking him.
And how does he feel about Ged, now that so many years have passed? Well, when Ged sends the sorcerer Alder to see him, he remarks at the start and finish of their conversation that he would happily welcome anyone who brings word from Ged, is wistfully jealous about Alder gettting to stay with him - "'He wouldn't let me come to him on Gont. He wouldn't come to my crowning.' Lebannen smiled as if nothing he said was of any moment. 'He gave me my kingdom'" - and then immediately toasts "To my lord and dear friend." Mere courtesy toward an admirable person, or so Alder probably took it. But when he finally gets to go to his room - "He had kept ceremony out of his bedroom. His nights were his own" - he takes out a pouch that always hangs over his heart on a gold chain. It contains a rock from the underworld, one that fell into his pocket as he was carrying Ged over the mountains of Pain. He holds it, and thinks:
That was why he felt desolate. The man he called his lord, the man he loved above all others, wouldn't let him come near, wouldn't come to him. Did Ged believe that because he had lost his wizardly power, Lebannen must think less of him?...Was it that, having been truly Lebannen's lord and guide, Ged could not bear to be his subject?...But Lebannen remembered very clearly how Ged had knelt to him, down on both knees, on Roke Knoll...He had stood up and kissed Lebannen, telling him to rule well, calling him my lord and dear companion...And that was why Ged wouldn't come...He would not even seem to meddle, to cast his shadow across Lebannen's light.
Good lord, this is so sad it hurts!
Lebannen eventually goes to see the princess, Sesarakh, and asks her to go to Roke with him, on behalf of the Kargad lands, to meet with Irian the dragon-woman and the wizards, as Tenar had suggested. He finally sees her face, through the curtain of her veils, and realizes her dignity and courage. His anger at her begins to melt. But he doesn't immediately seek her out again on the ship, though he has no trouble chatting with Irian. A sailor friend jokes that he should take care not to be like the man who had a dragon lover in an old legend and got himself eaten up when he slighted her. "No fear," Lebannen replies lightly. After all, it is clear to everyone but this horny seadog that he just likes Irian as a person! Tosla persists:
'You and she were talking there so free and easy. Like making yourself easy with a volcano, to my mind. But I'll tell you, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of that present the Kargs sent you...' Lebannen felt his face turn grim, and turned aside to keep Tosla from seeing it. 'If anybody gave me a package like that,' Tosla said, 'I'd open it.'
The king is curious when he sees Irian talking to Sesarakh, wondering what a dragon woman and a sheltered harem girl could possibly have to say to each other. He starts to find her somewhat intriguing, with her honey-colored hair and skin, and her fierce defiance masking her fear. Finally she tells him a story that comes very close to answering their questions about the connections between dragons, people, and death. Afterward:
'I thank you to listen, Lord King.' She dipped her head and shielded her eyes in a formal sign of respect...speaking some formula in Kargish. 'Please', he said, 'Tell me what you said.' She paused, hesitated, thought, and replied, 'Your - your, ah - small kings? - sons! Sons, your sons, let them to be dragons and kings of dragons. Hah?' She smiled radiantly, let the veil fall over her face, backed away four steps, turned and departed, lithe and sure-footed down the length of the ship. Lebannen stood as if last night's lightning had struck him at last.
Still, he doesn't speak to her directly again. They arrive on Roke and the question of what to do is finally answered. Lebannen goes with the wizards and the dragon women to break down the wall between life and death; only Sesarakh and Tenar are left behind. As Lebannen watches the dead cross the wall, he looks at the mountains called Pain, "and saw, as he and Ged had seen them once above the western sea, the dragons flying on the wind of morning." He is slow to return. Sesarakh has become protective of Lebannen, guarding his body with the young king's dagger from the wizards she is sure have killed him. The Patterner says she should try to hold him and call him back. The Patterner waits, and eventually the princess comes to him:
'Lord Azver, the king would speak with you.' ...'Thank you, gainha,' he said. 'I am not queen,' she said with a laugh. 'You will be,' said the Patterner.
Tenar describes what follows to Ged like this:
'There'll be a grand wedding and all, of course, but I don't think I have to go. Because that was truly when they married. With Elfarran's Ring. Our ring.' He looked at her and smiled, the broad sweet smile that she thought, perhaps wrongly, perhaps rightly, nobody but her had ever seen on his face2...'Lebannen took it in his hands and kissed it and gave it back to me. And I put it on her arm, it just went over her hand - she's not a little woman, Seserakh - Oh, you should see her, Ged! What a beauty she is, what a lion! He's met his match. And everybody shouted. And there were festivals and so on. And so I could get away.'
This ending for Lebannen troubles me. Ged and Tenar's reunion glows with happy, comforting love. Tehanu gets to be her true, whole self as a dragon, and though we aren't privy to her thoughts her exuberant flight shows them. But while we've been in Lebannen's head for most of this story, we don't get to see his reaction to waking up in Seserakh's arms, or the moment when he decides to marry her after all. I'd like to think he and Seserakh can be happy - if the rumors of previous mistresses are true, it could be an option. He doesn't seem as indifferent to her beauty as he often is, and they are a decent match in personality. But we've had three books in which at least 75% of his thoughts involve Ged, including the last direct thought that is reported. In fact, if Lebannen is truly OK with that resolution, it seems odd that he didn't send a message with Tenar for his old companion, something like: "I know you probably aren't going to come to the wedding, but I want you to know that I'm happy, and that you'd be welcome."
It reminds me of something Ged tells the sorcerer Alder, who is mourning his dead wife:
Sometimes there's a passion that comes in its springtime to ill fate or death. And because it ends in its beauty, it's what the harpers sing of and the poets make stories of: the love that escapes the years.
Lebannen is clearly a romantic, and it is entirely possible that he has been nursing a hopeless, bittersweet love for a decade and a half.
1. Not that a relationship absolutely CAN'T work with such an age difference. My grandmother set her sights on my grandfather despite him being at least 35 years older, and they seem to have been very happy. But that is rare, and even so they only got 10 years together before he died, leaving her a widow at 31 with an infant to look after. And Arren is 17 in this book, so any responsible adult ought to go: "Uhh...thanks but no thanks, kid."
2. She IS mistaken: Arren too saw that smile and thrilled at it when Ged woke up on the raft.
Overall, I'd have to put Arren/Lebannen's storyline at about a 1.5 on the 'Good Omens' scale of queer coding. The phrasing and imagery are such that even reading these books as a clueless teenager I was like: "Huh. That seems like an uncomfortably intense way to think about your mentor...unless you do in fact have crush on them." For comparison, I'd put the much-discussed Frodo-Sam relationship in 'Lord of the Rings' at a 0.5 - meaning you can read romance there, but you don't have to - because A: I'm fairly certain Tolkien was aiming at "comrades in arms" and just overdid it a smidge, and B: Sam is the only member of the fellowship besides Aragorn who actually has a girlfriend who we know about from the start - he may not be as frequently effusive about Rosie, but he seems happy to marry her and they end up having about a dozen kids. So did Ursula LeGuin intend to write Arren as if he is head over heels in love with Ged? Well...
On the one hand, LeGuin is an author who really likes to explore human variation in her stories. Several of her works address gender and sexuality directly, most notably 'The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), in which the characters are asexual and androgynous most of the year, and only become male or female when they go into a mating state called kemmer, and the short stories 'Unchosen Love' (1994) and 'Mountain Ways' (1996), in which marriages are a four-part institution where each person has one same-gender and one opposite-gender sexual pairing (and anyone who prefers one or the other might have to get a bit creative!). Queer people do exist in Earthsea, too: witches never marry a man, even if they dally with them for a while or have children, but they sometimes marry another witch3. But 'The Farthest Shore' was published in 1972, and LeGuin seemingly had enough of a struggle getting publishers to accept that the characters in this fantasy story weren't white; things were a bit better by 2001, but it still might have been awkward to move the subtext to text.
On the other hand, if LeGuin was fully aware of what she was doing - and it is hard to picture her writing one male character describing another as "the man he loved above all others" or his feelings as "romantic" without realizing the implications - it makes that ending even worse! Again, I'm not necessarily opposed to Lebannen marrying Seserakh; it would actually be pretty cool to get a bisexual prince in a fantasy epic4. But it is a rather sudden shift from feeling trapped, desperate, and angry to "Never mind. Let's get married". Possibly LeGuin started identifying with Seserakh and focused on her coming to care for Lebannen, forgetting that she hadn't clearly shown the reverse. In my more cynical moments, I wonder if she didn't realize halfway through 'The Other Wind': "Oh, crap! I really like Lebannen and I don't want the end of his story to be sad, but I've made the ending he probably wants impossible. Ged is married and isn't into him, and a king isn't allowed to not have a queen. And romance in a political marriage isn't that likely anyway. Hmm. Well, my readers have been conditioned to assume 'hot guy and hot girl who used to hate each other but now don't' equals romance. Maybe if I just don't show his thought process they'll buy him marrying Seserakh as a happy ending..."
I'd like to think better of LeGuin than that, though. Unlike many authors of her generation, she tried to depict all the variation we see in humans (plus some) in an open and compassionate way. She didn't always get it right, but she generally acknowledged missteps, at least eventually. For instance, in an essay on 'The Left Hand of Darkness' she notes that she was chagrined to realize that readers tended to think of her ambisexual Gethenian characters as male because they are referred to as "he"5 and are in an adventure story setting. The book also accidentally implied that you only get male-female pairings when Gethenians are in kemmer. She tackled both issues in the short story 'Coming of Age in Karhide' (1995) that shows everyday life for Gethenians and what it is like in the kemmer-house. It's a shame that we didn't get something like this for Earthsea. But LeGuin had moved on to other worlds, some of which were more conducive to exploring "non traditional" relationship structures than a medieval-inspired fantasy setting. And in doing so she gave us a wealth of well-written LGBT+(+) characters. Still, though...I do wish we knew for sure that Prince Arren finally got the kind of love he wanted and deserved.
3. The terms for it, 'witch marriage' or 'she-troth' echoing the term 'Boston marriage' for two women of independent means who lived together in the 19th century.
4. Well, we've got Oberyn Martell, I guess. He's still not the main character, though!
5. The use of 'they' as a singular neutral pronoun was not something that was in the discourse much, if at all, back then.
