Tolya and Tamar

[peanutlord]

Tolya and Tamar......

[[deleted user]]

Walking arsenals

[peanutlord]

Elvina wrote: "Walking arsenals"

Hahaha, love that. :)

[Dreams At Dusk]

How do you think Tamar and Tolya fell in with the Apparat's plans? Tolya told Alina they were "raised in the church". Alina's thought in response: "Lots of children were raised in religious homes, but that didn't mean they could read liturgical Ravkan." I'm wondering if he meant it more literally than she seems to have taken it. But still, if they were raised in Novyi Zem, how did they come to be involved with the Sun Cult?

[Dreams At Dusk]

As per the above, I’ve more than once wondered what circumstances combined to yield Tolya and Tamar and explain their story. Following a recent reread of Siege and Storm, I’ve put together the few pieces we’re given in the story and come up with some ideas. They could be totally off, but hey, I’m fond of them nevertheless.

Tolya told Alina he and Tamar were “raised in the church”, as reason they can read liturgical Ravkan. Alina’s thoughts on that suggest being raised in a religious home alone does not explain knowing liturgical Ravkan.

Tamar told Alina that she and Tolya’s mother had been a Grisha stationed on Ravka’s southern border when she met their father, a Shu Han mercenary. ‘“When she died,” Tamar explained, “she made my father promise not to let us be drafted into the Second Army. We left for Novyi Zem the next day.”’

Later, she also said: “My mother told me that Grisha power is a divine gift.” She also tells Alina of a notion that had been the cause of excommunication of believers in the past: the belief that all of the first Saints were Grisha. We also know that Tamar and Tolya seem to truly have faith in Alina as a saint.

The hints we see in the books are that religion isn’t really a touchstone for the Grisha or the nobility, but can very much be so for the peasants.

The twins learned to use their Grisha abilities, but are also excellent fighters in other ways. They held positions of trust aboard Sturmhond’s ship (even to the point of knowing is true identity), suggesting that they hadn’t just joined his crew. Yet they were at some point recruited by the Apparat as holy warriors, to keep an eye on the Sun Saint and bring her to him when need be.

My current headcanon about the two is this:

Their mother came from a heavily religious peasant family, one in an area that in the distant past had played host to a belief that was now considered heresy: that of Grisha saints. It was no longer spoken of overtly, but strains of such an idea twined through the religious character of the nearby communities.

When the Grisha Examiners came to their little village, even as young as she was when taken from her home to the school at the Little Palace, she struggled to reconcile her early upbringing with her new life. Unlike many Grisha, she never cast aside her religious beliefs. But the idea of “miracle workers” as soldiers under the thumb of the King and the man descended from the one who broke Ravka was difficult.

As an adult, stationed at an outpost on the Southern border, nearby little villages reminded her of her home. She was drawn, not to another Grisha, but a Shu Han mercenary who had been hired by the First Army for his familiairity with the area. When the twins were born, she found she could not bear the thought of them possibly being taken by the Second Army were they to turn out to have Grisha talents. She contrived the story that they didn’t survive birth and hid them with the priest of a local chapel. She spent as much time with them as she could, as did their father. She hoped for her children to follow a path that she had not been permitted to.

Fatally injured in an attack by a Shu Han raiding party when the twins were around the age of ten, her dying wish to their father was a promise from him that he would not let them be taken by the Second Army. Knowing that his homeland was no place for Grisha children, and that the raid on what had been a previously sleepy outpost would bring the First and Second Army in greater numbers very soon, he took Tolya and Tamar and set out for Os Kervo as quickly as possible.

As their mother had taught them what she could of the Small Science since they displayed their aptitudes, the twins’ father had taught them to fight. In Novyi Zem, they also began to learn ways of Zemeni combat and how to handle the sorts of guns of which Ravka could only dream.

They lost their father when they were in their teens, the risks of a mercenary lifestyle ever-present as they were. But it didn’t stop them from taking up a similar path. They had no interest in coming to the direct attention of the Ravkan military and so fell in with the less than legal sorts, cultivating a reputation amongst smugglers. They also re-established ties
to the Ravkan church and though they did not at first know of it, word of two talented Grisha, out from under the control of the Darkling and cleaving to the ideals of the church, reached the ears of the Apparat through his network of informants.

They eventually fell in with Sturmhond. When word of the Sun Summoner first came to light (…oh dear), the Apparat cultivated more of a connection with them. Tolya and Tamar in turn, were well-positioned to bring Sturmhond into play when the Darkling went to search out Alina in Novyi Zem. A chance go get hold of the Sun Summoner was just what the prince wanted…as did the Apparat, though the former didn’t know it.

Unfortunately for the Apparat, Tolya and Tamar’s faith ran even stronger and deeper than he realized: they began to believe in Alina herself, more than in following him.