skull_bearer | I just finished Westerfeld's Leviathan Trilogy (Reply)

My reaction:

Okay. Let's all sit down and have a little talk about the ending to this fucking series.

To you who have read His Dark Materials, imagine if at the end of the Amber Spyglass, Will and Lyra had decided to close the door to the afterlife and instead keep a door between their worlds so they could be together. Wouldn't that be disgusting? Wouldn't you lose all respect for these characters for their utterly selfish actions? Wouldn't it cheapen everything they had gone through, all the sacrifices they and others had made?

Yes?

Because that's EXACTLY what happens at the end of this fucking series.

To put it context, one of the characters is the son of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. He is widely belived to be inelligable for the throne, as the Archdukes' children were IRL, but in this world, he has a letter legitimising him by the pope and is the actual heir to the throne.

Most of the books are about him gaining allies, influence and knowledge so as to be able to put in his claim once Austria-Hungary is sick to death of WW1 and looking for a way out. Although the character himself is rather bland, it is interesting how he slowly comes into his own as a commander, gains the respect of his men (including the forever wonderful Count Volger, who I love to bits) and generally comes to be seen as a folk hero to the people of Austria-Hungary.

So far so good. So, when his romance with his best friend (a Sweet Polly Oliver stereotype only made bareable by her constant swashbuckling adventures) comes to fruition, the two have to deal with the fact that they will never be able to marry. His best friend being a commoner and so on. I was expecting it to be a bittersweet ending with the two parting. The heri to his duties, and his friend to join the equivalent of the secret service, with the knowledge that they will meet again, they will always have something together, but the world has bigger demands on them than one teenage romance.

LOL NO he throws away his birthright and dooms Austria-Hungary to a crippling defeat and Europe to an even longer war because it's TRWOO LUV DON'TCHAKNOW

I mean, have you ever had this, when an author ends their book on what's meant to be a positive note but you can see the nightmarish reprecussions of such an action and you just want to grab the characters and shake them screaming WHAT THE HELL DO YOU IDIOTS THINK YOU'RE DOING!

I mean, I spent the entire time imagining what Count Volger would do. He's by far the best character in the series, a snarky arsehole of a Count and fencing master who's way too clever for his own good, not afraid to use underhand tactics, but in the end utterly dedicated to the heir and to his country. Kinda like Snape if Snape was less of a bully and his loyalty was never really in question.

And this guy, who's given up his lands and title, who's faced down armed horsemen and crew and a lightning-wielding Nikolai Tesler, all the name of his old friend Franz Ferdinand's last wish for his son to inherit the throne, has to watch that little dogfucker throw it all away, doom his country to ruin and occupation, condemn thousands to miserable, bloody deaths, in the name of a childhood crush.

This is not a happy ending. This isn't even close to a happy ending.

I now want to write a bunch of fic about how five years later, where after the death of the Emperor, with the succession so screwed up and no popular heir to the throne, the entire empire has fallen to infighting and squabbling, and are powerless to resist the invading forces of German machines- thwarted in the West but with their strength still intact- and the horrific power of the Russian fighting bears.

And as always, it's the people who are stuck in the middle of these titans, and so you have Count Volger- who left the ex-heir and his managerie in disgust and went back to his homeland for a lack of better options- finding himself roped into running a last-ditch resistance force.

Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, made up mostly of farmers and townspeople who've lost their homes and families to the invading forces, Volger is about the only one who has any proper tactical training and so ends up as their de-facto leader.

Not sure what happens after that. Maybe the Resistance ends up hiding and abetting Russian Communists who are struggling to start their revolution in the hopes that troubles at home will force the Russian army to fuck off and stop feeding the locals to their giant bears. And doing a whole sabotage operation against the German Clanker machines- derailing trains, stealing walkers, blowing up bridges- generally making the country too much of headache to want to control. And as they gain traction and popularity with a population who has had more than enough of these ruinous wars, perhaps managing to coordinate with the remains of their armed forces to stage a full-blow push back to the borders.

And in the middle of this is Volger, surrounded by commoners and anarchists, wondering how the everloving fuck he came to be in this position, and how things could have gone so very, very wrong.

And maybe he gets to watch when a bunch of his people get hold of mr ex-heir, try him for desertation of duty and string him up by his eyeballs.

And that would be a happy ending.