payment page
I couldn’t care less whether or not I have Lantsov blood. In fact, given all the royal inbreeding, being a bastard is probably a point in my favor.
In Chapter 11, along the Vy on the way to Os Alta, Nikolai shares one of his deepest secrets with Alina, telling her that he might not be the legitimate son of the King of Ravka. While the news comes as a shock to Alina, Nikolai has lived with it all his life and copes by behaving as if he does not care. Instead of taking an honorary military title, he served with distinction. Instead of spending the royal coffers on horses, like Vasily did, he went abroad, taught himself to build ships, led a crew, and used piracy to bring home much-needed supplies for his people. Instead of consorting with nobles and their servants on hunting adventures, Nikolai hobnobbed with foreigners in their own countries, learning their cultures and values. Compared with his immediate family members, he is much better suited to rule the people of Ravka should they give him a chance.
Age and birthright don’t matter to the Grisha. All they care about is power. I’m the only Grisha to ever wear two amplifiers. And I’m the only Grisha alive powerful enough to take on the Darkling or his shadow soldiers. No one else can do what I can.
Alina is a relentless optimist, and she firmly believes that her amplified power makes her qualified to lead the Grisha. That belief and her confidence earn her Nikolai’s trust, and in Chapter 9, he agrees to give her command of the Second Army if his family consents to it. That’s a tall order, given that his family consists of generations of royals, raised to believe that they are better than everyone else simply by virtue of their ancestry. As aristocrats, the Ravkan nobility are more likely to side with Nikolai than with Alina on this question. As an orphan, Alina has no verifiable lineage. Thus, regardless of her merits, she is highly unlikely to be accepted as a leader either by the royal family or by the Grisha, despite her bold proclamation otherwise. Of course, as events prove, Alina and Nikolai are both right. They are better suited to lead Ravka than Nikolai’s brother Vasily or the mysterious Apparat, demonstrating the failings of aristocracy.
He pointed an accusatory finger at me. “She wasn’t even raised here.”
“That’s right!” called out a Corporalnik. “She’s been a Grisha less than a year!”
“Grisha are born, not made,” growled Tolya.
Contrary to Alina’s boldly optimistic claim to Nikolai that the Grisha care only about power, Grisha clearly place deep and unsupported, almost superstitious, confidence in a person’s lineage, just like the rest of Ravka. In Chapter 13, when Alina claims command over them, the Grisha remind her of the circumstances surrounding her arrival in Ravka. They remember Alina as an orphan whom they trained in the Small Science, not as a powerful Sun Summoner with two amplifiers capable of wielding the Cut against the nichevo’ya. Other Grisha, such as the Shu twins Tolya and Tamar, have a different perspective. They hold that being Grisha is an innate part of a person’s self, and they believe that people should be judged based on their accomplishments, not the circumstances of their birth. It’s this same belief that compels Alina and Nikolai to believe that they would make good leaders for Ravka. This belief turns out to be correct, given the weakness and rot that has infected the Palace under the King and Queen, the church under the Apparat, and the Grisha under the Darkling.
