Started reading this week, really enjoying it. I thought it was funny, given the real world situation, when Kelmomas asks:
“When will Father return?”
...
“Not for some time, Kel,” she said. “Not until the Great Ordeal is completed.”
I might be reading too much into this but I found it interesting how the first chapter begins:
The tracks between whim and brutality are many and inscrutable in Men, and though they often seem to cut across the impassable terrain of reason, in truth, it is reason that paves their way. Ever do Men argue from want to need and from need to fortuitous warrant. Ever do they think their cause the just cause. Like cats chasing sunlight thrown from a mirror, they never tire of their own delusions.
It goes on to describe how the great Ordeal was prepared for the rest of the first section. On the one hand, it's a cynical assertion that Earwans don't actually care about the No-God or the Apocalypse, it's just the rationalization they use to take what they want from others, purge the non-believers, and eventually sack cities like Sakarpus. At first I actually thought it was about Kellhus and wondered what whim or want, as opposed to the need and reason of averting apocalypse, would cause him to call the ordeal. Either way, it confirms what the Judge suggests before the prologue and what many of the characters and ourselves suspect, that the Ordeal not exactly what it claims to be.
As far as Esmenet, it seems she's already been driven to the brink at the beginning of TJE. Her control over her ministers is tenuous at best, the world knows her as a tyrant, and she admits to having episodes where the gravity of it all floods in and overwhelms her while conducting affairs of state. At the end of WLW, she and Maithanet suspect Kellhus does not care if the new empire falls but this reread pushes me more to the idea that he willfully intended for it to happen, Which makes this all the more horrifying:
Short of the No-God’s resurrection, nothing can save Golgotterath. The Consult’s only hope is to fan the embers, to throw the New Empire into turmoil, if not topple it altogether. The Ainoni have a saying, ‘When the hands are strong, attack the feet.’”
Much like the first holy war, Maithanet suggests the Consult might be exacerbating political strife for their own gain. That they could be goading or assisting Fanayal and Psatma Nannaferi. The mysterious significance of the Satyothi skin spy in this chapter could be to confirm they have agents in the Zeumi court, the last true rival to the new empire, and who we know is considering throwing their support behind Fanayal.
We know the Interdiction was likely imposed to keep the soldiers in the dark about the conflict that would surely erupt about the power vacuum. But what would it do to morale if it went one step further and the Consult actually truly destroyed these cities? And what are the implications of Kellhus opening the door for the Consult to do so? Perhaps he had no other choice if Golgotterath is to be destroyed but at again, it really feels like he went out if his way to set Esmenet up to fail.
