Tripod

Lady Lackless Hat

We have many pages of clues regarding the Lackless so we should be able to create the biggest storyline so far. However, flicking between all of their assorted names can only confuse matters unnecessarily so I will put my faith in a line from Caudicus as a truth we can trust and use Lockless for everything from this page onwards. 

'The family was called Loeclos or Loklos, or Loeloes.They all translate the same. Lockless.'

 If the Lockless family name is the eldest family name (and trust me it is) that means that their name must have also been the first family name which at the time made them the only noble name that there was. They ruled the land from the mountains to the sea, until some ot the 'squabbling sea kings'  became powerful enough to steal bits off their land of them. Now modern history, 4Corners history, which is a religious history, began the day after Tehlu and Encanis burnt together on the wheel in Artur and this important date would technically have recorded as year#1 of everything that has happened since. That Tehlu angle draws a parallel with how we count our own years as being since the time of Jesus.

But with Tehlu having just left this mortal world, who would the people look up to for bring order to this demon-free land and to tell them all what they should do next. Lots of people would say this job went to the first king of Modeg and that answer clearly has a lot of support. Some KKC readersvmight suggest Lord Selitos would make a  return to power and run for a second term in office, but he had other fish to fry with his Amyr. According to Kvothe, the first kings of Tarvintas were the Calanthis family and that might well be true, but I reckon if you change the question to the first Queen then the only possible candidate would have been Lord Tehlu's mother, the Lady Perial who became the first Lady of Temerant. Why the Lockless part is a task for further down the path.

Back to the more recent Lockless family members then and I still remember when I was still new at this kkc game and my very first bell ringing, penny dropping moment was when I thought about Kvothe’s mum, who we are specifically told was once a noble woman. That one clue to the past fitted very nicely in many small ways with passages elsewhere in the text, such as that among her life skills is a glimpse of a noblewoman’s education that includes a flair for classical language alongside a comprehensive knowledge of court etiquette and protocol in high circles.  So we have a woman of noble birth who was suduced by cords of chorded song, fell in love, and ran away with, an Edema Ruh trouper. By an amazing coincidence, this exact same thing also happened to the previous Lockless heir who we discover was called Netalia, who also ran away with the travelling ravel. Could it be possible that Netalia had simply changed her name to Laurian for the usual reasons and that in all actuality these two people were one and the same person? A bit like how Kote has changed his name from Kvothe only that his name change was for a few unusual reasons, too. Unsolved mystery concerning the re-naming of older names does seem quite normal in the Lockless family.

The more I thought about it, the better it sounded and I was convinced I was onto something big… I later found out that I wasn’t actually the first to think up this theory, just the latest in a long line of newcomers to the game who have spotted this easy clue first of all and this was the most common theory that most people who were reading the books closely had arrived at so far. It's also the only theory than everyone agrees on. But we all have to begin somewhere, so this part takes me right back to a time when I didn’t even have a proper kkc notebook to scribble my mad ideas in. This is a Triangle problem and it goes something like this. 

We are trying to establish a three way link between ‘Dark Laurian, Arliden’s wife' and Meluan Lackless, the heir to the Lackless Family name and the classical character ‘Lady Perial’ from the play For All His Waiting

Linking them all together correctly will allow us to arrange them more permanantly in a block of three things with all the other bricks in our wall, a bit like sygaldy only with triangles. The three points we shall call L M and P. for obvious reasons and firstly, we are trying to justify that L=M until we are over a third convinced in our heads that it is true. If this was sympathy you would be focussing upon your Alar. OK? Then off we go.

Laurian {Lackless} Meluan

Sister Piece

Meluan passionately hates all of the edema ruh for their part in her sisters’s infamy, although what she thinks of her sister herself is not known, Shame? Anger? Respect? The truth is well hidden but the story is well rumoured. Even history books tell of the eldest heir abandoning responsibility which means that if this is a recent publication and is not talking about a previous member of the family from years ago, then the story of Netalia Lackless eloping with a Ruh trouper is pretty widespread news and not just a hushed up family secret. Court gossip and rumour might even put the name Arliden the Bard as the other half of the equation. Scandal does seem to happen rather frequently in this family’s long history. Perhaps Meluan wants to believe that her sister was tricked, or lied to, or kidnapped even, or perhaps underneath she really just hates her wayward sister for breaking free from her chains of duty thus dumping all of the eldest childs family responsibilies onto her own shoulders instead. After all, in a parallel universe it might well have been Netalia Lackless who would go on to court and narry the Maer. But Kvothe’s mum is called Laurian, even the Cthaeh calls her that, so where did Netalia go to?

The big clue here comes along in the aforementioned song that Arliden wrote about his wife which got him into her bad books enough for her to throw him out of their wagon to go sleep by the fire instead, as a lesson to mind his tongue in future no doubt. It seems likely that she prefers the life of an anonymous trouper on the open road and does not wish to be identified as noble to any unfriendly, ears. She certainly didn’t appreciate the remarked upon appalling meter that Arliden had used in order to force his chosen songwords away from their natural pronunciation pattern.

In the song, Kvothe’s father refer’s to his wife as ‘My sweet Tally’ which is clearly a private and personal nickname between them but which doesn’t fit with the name being Laurian by any stretch of the imagination. Yet this nickname is later compounded with the line that he made his wife ‘Not Tally a lot less’ a very forced line which clearly plays on words sounding suspiciously like the names Netalia and Lockless both which is enough to convince me of her trueborn identity.

Many other clues exist, not least when Kvothe causes affront to Laurian when he sings another song about the Lackless family women, one which can be taken in all sorts of lewd ways if you disect it enough, and begins with the line ‘Seven things has Lady Lackless.’

This also shows the infamy of the Lackless family since this song, and it’s sister piece which turns up in book two, are both ascribed to kids chanting it in  The Commonwealth which is a long, long way from Vint. No wonder she was upset to hear her family name being mocked in rhyme by her own, ignorant son. Or perhaps she knew more about it’s meaning and import than she lets on, If she is Netalia Lackless then yong Kvothe is obliviously chanting a song which insults his own mother.

There is also the moment when Kvothe meets Meluan for the first time and is absolutely convinced that he has seen her before, although such a meeting was declared nigh impossible. The best answer to that would be some subliminal family resemblance that suggests she looks like his mum. It might be possible that the once remarked upon visit to ‘relatives at three- rivers’ was actually a meeting of these two sisters and baby Kvothe could well have been present at the time. That’s about as far as we go as far as the Lackless link is concerned, enough to convine most folk that Yes, L=M is a solid link. It cannot ever be 100% proof, but we only want it to be 33 1/3% to do it’s job today.

Perial (Lady) Lackless

Relativity

Introducing P to the equation is much less obvious. But if we are to have three legs to stand upon…

When we get to the family fall out from the ‘Seven things’ song, young Kvothe, rather conveniently for us, compares the allusions that his songs words made as being no different from those used in the play ‘For All His Waiting’ when Fain asks ‘Lady’ Perial about her hat.

‘I heard about if from so many men I wished to see it for myself and try the fit.’

It’s pretty obvious what he’s really talking about.’

‘The difference is’… explaination given was beautifully, and probably deliberately, interrupted whilst Laurian sent Kvothe to go and get the Tripod!!! HA!!! before she reitterrated that the difference is  all about being rude directly to someone’s face or from out of earshot , and Kvothe had unwittingly just done both by insulting her without even knowing it. Her explanation tells us that as far as Laurian herself in concerned at least one of these two people is actually there in the present company. Almost certainly confirming her own title as the Lady (Laurian) Lackless. She bangs this nail further on the head by giving another difference (which means that Laurian was officially telling Kvothe three times!) that one is a real person and the other is just a character. But elsewhere in these pages we read about how two supposedly different people can still be the same person with a memory of Laurian once telling Kvothe that she knew a man having two separate titles which by a quirk of fate meant that he now owed fealty to himself. Bredon confirms that this happens more than you would think, especially among the old families, and you don’t get much older than the Lockless family. That small and otherwise innocuous inclusion in our text could imply that a noblemans title may be a useful legal ‘hat’ which can be donned as and when  required.

I suggest that you could make it up to both lady Lockless and myself if you found some sweet nettle for the pot tonight.

This last line puts Laurian herself firmly into the cauldron of this tripod shaped equation straight from her own mouth as if this answer implies that she herself is currently the injured party that needs making up to. 

 If Laurian was not involved in any way then she would not personally feel insulted and nor would she have any need to be included in the sweet nettle apology. Yet she has clearly placed herself within this three legged tripod of names as being one of the injured parties.

The question of who is Laurian really is quite like a costume drama where she used to be the Lady Lockless the heir to the family name, but now she is now more comparable to Lady Perial, who is one of the  Historical heirs to the same family name, making that she is both and neither, it really depends which 'hat' she chooses to wear today.

Trying to correlate The church Perial more closely with my Lady Perial is tricky work but thankfully Pat is nothing but consistent across all of his writing in that none of his characters share names, each one is a clearly defined and individual name tag for one person only because Names are important. However, Perial is the exceptions to this rule and that is a pretty good indicator that as far as he is concerned ‘All Perial is One Perial.’

I’ll be the first to admit that the veracity of these latest ‘P’-links are not nearly as strong as that of L=M, yet if it was that obvious a theory then it would likely be common knowledge among fans and like L=M be considered as ‘old hat’ by now as well. It would be folly to insist that any such Perial link was definitely Not possible as that would enter the territory of faulty logic since you can’t prove non-existence and I am quite convinced that L=M=P

Depending on how much faith you have in each link, that Perial was the original founding Lockless, that Larurian was the previous heir to her house’s legacy and that Meluan is the current encumbent of Holy Perial’s historic position will dictate your Lockless triangles strength. It may be perfectly equilateral, or it may be unwieldly and Scalene or maybe part-skewed into an Isosceles shape by over reliance upon only one part. In order to shore it up into a more solid building block we need to dig a bit deeper and stand a bit further back as we dig deeper into the Lockless question.