Legendborn

“Some truths only tragedy can teach. The first one I learned is that when people acknowledge your pain, they want your pain to acknowledge them back. They need to witness it in real time, or else you’re not doing your part.”

This passage speaks to the theme of grief. When Bree encounters people offering platitudes regarding her mom’s death, she notices they want her to perform sorrow on the spot. This is counterintuitive to the actual processing of grief: The experience of it changes over time, and it is not a performative act.

“Magic. Real. Here.”

After seeing Sel and Tor fight an isel (demon) and resisting Sel’s mesmer, Bree realizes magic exists. It is no longer something on TV and in books, but something with consequences in Bree’s life. Her coming-of-age moment is gaining her mom’s magical powers when her mom is killed in a car accident, and it is in this moment that Bree begins to see and smell magic.

“If I bring you in, you’ll only be a Page. You’d have to compete against all the other Pages to become Legendborn. The tournament lasts months, and all of it is rigged. It’s a setup to favor certain families, certain kids.”

Here, Nick warns Bree about the classist and racist nature of the Order: It is a system of privilege and power weighed against her. This is the introduction of the tournament arc—a narrative device used in many works of young adult fantasy. However, it turns out Bree is truly Legendborn—the heir of King Arthur himself—but this doesn’t keep the racists from still trying to deny her power.

“Legends are dangerous, Bree. Don’t underestimate them.”

Nick explains that much of Arthurian legend has been created by members of the Order, demonstrating their control of the production of knowledge and disinformation about magic. Nick turns out to be the heir of Lancelot, and Bree is the heir of Arthur. The irony of this moment is that Nick underestimates Bree because they do not yet know about her lineage and powers.

“Merlins don’t just hunt demons. They hunt people.”

As Bree tours the Order’s Lodge, she finds Merlin’s manacles in a glass case. She begins to realize the connection between the Round Table and her enslaved ancestors here but does not discover until much later that an Order member raping one of his slaves is how she is the heir of Arthur. Merlins are also enslaved by the Order because they are part-demon.

“I could be back in the real world, where there are no ritual slabs and robes and magical Oaths. But it isn’t the real world is it? It’s the surface the Order works to maintain while they operate below, on its edges, and in the shadows.”

Right before Bree takes her Oath to become a Nick’s Page, she has doubts about being in the middle of the woods with a bunch of white people in robes. However, it is her presence in this exclusionary space that reveals the underlying system of power. Reality for non-magic users is a societal construction by the Order’s magic users.

“Vassal friends [...] are the Order’s lower limbs [...] Pages are the left hand [...] granted Sight in order to hold the shield while we fight in the shadows. Merlins are the right hand, the sword and fist of the Order [...] The Legendborn Scion and Squires are the heart [...] Regents are the spine [...] king is the head and the crown itself, leading us to victory by divine right.”

This is a description of a body politic: an aligning of a realm (the Order of the Round Table) with a physical body. This Greek concept was used by writers in medieval French courts where Arthurian poems were produced (where Lancelot was invented). Davis often quotes Malory—who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur at the end of the English medieval era—and Tennyson, locating the Order as preferring the English tradition over the French. The English concept of the body politic evolved into the king’s two bodies: physical and political.

“I can’t tell how old she is, of course, because Black women are magical like that.”

When Bree meets Patricia for the first time, she references a very different kind of magic from the Order’s magic. Black Girl Magic is a movement from the early 2010s celebrating the beauty of Black women. This includes celebrating natural curls (like Bree’s) and “graying locs” (160) (like Patricia’s), as well as skin that generally does not wrinkle as prominently as white skin does. Sensing a magic around Patricia also foreshadows that Patricia will teach Bree about Rootcraft.

“This type of knowing is an expensive toll to pay. I can’t forget the knowledge just because the price is high. And yet, sometimes we have to tuck the reminders away today in order to grow power against them tomorrow.”

This passage is Bree’s thoughts about the Unsung Founders Memorial at UNC; she is commenting on how the figures seem to still be “working” (161). Generational knowledge of the peculiar institution of slavery changes the perception of Black women. The reminders of shared trauma have to be stored and used as fuel for future revolutions.

“We don’t call it magic.”

When Patricia begins to talk about Rootcraft with Bree, there are some clear differences in language reflecting the differences in practices. What the Order calls aether, Rootcraft calls root; the Order controls this energy with blood, and Rootcrafters borrow energy from their ancestors. The word magic is part of Bloodcraft—a system that tries to own aether with premature deaths of its members.

“Bree, if I get all of that, it means that Camlann is inevitable. I don’t want the world to need a king.”

Nick believes he is the heir of Arthur and would be the last Knight to Awaken. Only in wartime has Arthur been Awakened and, unlike his father Davis, Nick does not want war. The irony here is that Bree is the heir of Arthur, and Nick’s sentiments about war are similar to the knight of whom he is the Scion: Lancelot.

“I like disruptors and rhythm breakers.”

During dinner at the Lodge, Greer stands up for Bree against Vaughn’s racist comments. When Bree asks Greer—who uses they/them pronouns—why they are helping her, Greer’s answer includes the statement above. This is the beginning of an alliance between a queer character and a Black character in a fight against a normative patriarchal organization.

“The Line of Morgaine are Merlins gone bad [...] If the Regents found out about me, would they treat me like I’m from the Line of Morgaine?”

This passage foreshadows the Order’s mistreatment of Merlins. Sel and other Merlins are led to believe they won’t be able to control their demonic nature if they are not Oathed; however, Bree and Sel discover that Sel’s mom was in control of her powers despite the Order’s claims that she was not. The Line of Morgaine in conflict with the Order is an unresolved thread in Legendborn that seems to be setting the stage for book two of Deonn’s trilogy (yet to be published as of June 2021). 

“Bloodcrafters don’t borrow power from their ancestors, they steal it. Bind it to their bodies for generations and generations.”

When Patricia warns Bree about the Order here, she is unaware that Bree is the heir of Arthur. The price for wielding the power of a Knight is Abatement: a shortened lifespan for the Scion and their Oathed Squire. Rootcrafters don’t pay such a high cost, but their powers are more limited than the Order members’ powers.

“Colonizer magic. Magic that costs and takes. Many practitioners face demons. Many of us face evil. But from the moment their founders arrived, from the moment they stole Native homelands, the Order themselves gave the demons plenty to feed on! They reap what their magic sows.”

Patricia’s indictment of the Order’s system of magic is both an indictment of the foundation of America as built on near-genocide and a tradition of magic belonging to an older colonial nation: England. The ceremonial magic of the Order directly references grimoires: occult books of magic, commonly used by alchemists whose magical goals often included obtaining wealth. The implication here is that the Order’s use of magic is attracting demons, as well as opening Gates for the demons to start a war.

“I desperately wish I’d asked Patricia to point out the grave marker during the day, because searching for it at night is like looking for a certain shade of blue in the ocean.”

This is part of the tournament arc; here, Bree is searching for items in Sel’s scavenger hunt, and a clue written in a riddle leads her to the graveyard where she met with Patricia. This is a turning point for Sel and Bree’s relationship; he sets a monster made of aether on her as part of an interrogation about her magical powers but when they are both attacked by real demons, he realizes she has yet to discover what she is. The simile that connects the graveyard with an ocean gives this moment a gothic romantic aesthetic.

“Alice is my safe space, my home, and that would never change. But it’s been months since I’ve held space with only Black women and it’s not just safe, it’s…a release.”

Alice and Bree’s relationship experiences strain when Bree becomes involved with the Order and lies to Alice to keep her away from the magic practitioners. Before she reveals her powers to Alice, Bree talks to Patricia and Mariah—two Black Rootcrafters—because they are part of a community that has experienced a specific kind of oppression. For instance, Alice does not have the same feelings about the police that Bree does, due to the disproportionate policing of Black people in relation to Asian and white people.

“The six competing Pages wear fitted pants for maximum mobility, and tunics in the color of our sponsor’s Line, adorned with their sigil in the center. I am the only Page who wears the gold of the Line of Arthur [...] Tonight I have only one focus, and I fight for only one family: my own.”

This passage occurs at the Order’s combat trials: the last tournament event. At this point, Bree does not know she is the heir of Arthur, so she believes she focuses on a different family. However, she later learns an heir of Arthur impregnated her ancestor and caused two lines of magic to become intertwined in her.

“Nick’s mother, Sel’s, mine. How many mothers has the Order taken?”

While the Order did not kill Bree’s mom, it was involved in her life, as it was in the lives of Nick’s and Sel’s moms. All of these women were controlled and disempowered—to various degrees, respectively—by the Order. None of them were able to communicate important information to the children— information of which the men in their families were ignorant or actively suppressing. The absent mother trope applies to all three members of the central love triangle in Legendborn.

“I touch him, and his smoke-and-whiskey scent swirls around us, heavy and burning, but I don’t let go.”

In this passage, Bree hugs Sel after he reads lies the Order wrote in official records about his mom. They will eventually learn that Sel’s mom was in control of her demonic side—even without Oaths—and here, Bree does not fear Sel’s magic. This is one of many examples of how Bree not only sees, but also smells, magic.

“As a Medium, your power is wound tightly with death, and as your family’s Bloodcraft is triggered by death, perhaps the two branches intertwined in you until they became tied together in unpredictable ways.”

Here, Mariah tells Bree what she can guess about her powers after helping Bree become possessed by her grandmother. Not all Mediums are able to be possessed, or as possessed, as Bree is; they later learn about Arthur in her body. With him, her ancestor Vera, and her grandmother, Bree is—at one point—triple-possessed in addition to being able to create her own magical energy (aether/root).

“Alice Chen, no crying. It’s just a dress [...] It’s not just a dress. It’s a gown, fit for a court [...] It’s just that you look like her.”

The descriptions of Bree’s look for the Selection Gala are similar to medieval blazons: head-to-toe descriptions of beautiful women. This trope is reflected in getting ready for the (usually school-related) dances occurring in many young adult fantasy franchises—like Twilight and Vampire Academy. In Legendborn, it is important that the beautiful woman is Black (a famous blazon for a dark-skinned woman is Shakespeare’s sonnet 130), and the dress allows her to reconcile with her best friend over memories of her dead mom.

“What source of aether is in the middle of campus? [...] Excalibur.”

The inclusion of the sword in the stone—Excalibur—illustrates that one of Deonn’s sources for Arthurian legend is the short story collection The Once and Future King by T.H. White. Notably, Disney adapted this story in one of their early, classic films; Bree as a named squire looking for a sword at the last minute reflects both White’s story and the adaptation. Deonn, however, fills the Arthur role with a Black woman rather than a young white boy.