Exploitation of Women in ITKS

[Raksha the Demon]

I had forgotten that reference of Jessamy's point of view. (I've only read ITKS once all the way through, several years ago. Clearly I need to go back and review it and CM again prior to the next book's release!)

I took ITKS and CM out of the library and read them each several times.  Just the other day, I found a shiny like-new paperback copy of ITKS in one of my boxes in a storage unit; so that's one less book I'll have to buy or unearth.  I wish KK would write more about Stevana and Keryell and the period in which they lived; also more after Kelson's marriage...there's so much that hasn't been covered. 

[drakensis]

Let's just add in Charissa here.

She was by no means an innocent party but by the age of 16 she'd been orphaned, adopted, married, had two children, lost both of them, was widowed and declared she would have no further children, nor wed again. Granted she was also complicit in at least two murders in that time. Let's just add she was only 26 when she died.

[Evie]

The second childbirth might have made her incapable of conceiving, or at least carrying a child to full term.  That could explain how Charissa might be so certain she would never bear children.  It would also explain why she seemed to have little worry that she might bear an illegitimate child as a result of her affair with Ian Howell, which you might think would be a concern for a would-be Queen engaging in a dalliance with her henchman. 

[Jerusha]

I don't remember where I read this (it may have been in an early fanfic and not in the Codex) but I know I read somewhere that Charissa's husband beat her almost to death while she was pregnant.  She lost the child and could never conceive again.  She quietly made a deal with Wencit to have her husband "removed" permanently.

[Evie]

I remember reading that too.  It might have been in the semi-canonical "Lover of Shadows" story in the published book "Deryni Archives" (as opposed to the fanzine of the same name from which I think the stories in the book were drawn).  If so, I think the events in that book were also included in the Codex, so you may have read that from either source.

[drakensis]

Ah, Charissa's husband Aldred II's entry states he had Charissa beaten in front of him while she was pregnant, leaving her permanently barren.

...yeah. I think I can still spare her quite a bit of sympathy. Destroying the Haldanes was probably all she had left to live for, however ignoble a goal it might be.

Wencit offered to marry Charissa five years after this in 1115 - which is remarkably generous of him dynastically speaking given he had only one living child* and must have known Charissa couldn't give him a son.

* His daughter died in childbirth along with her first child, in 1119. Her husband was Wencit's brother-in-law, Mahael, making him rather more important than he may have later appeared.

[Fukiyama]

That sits much better - must reread both ITKS and CM which I have to confess were spoilt for me a bit by the issue it raised for me. Hopefully I'm wrong...

Your first impression goes along with mine.  The secret name Donal gave Alaric along with the atmosphere of the entire ceremony/ritual in the Culdi garden chapel struck me the same exact way.