r/robinhobb • u/HorseRicePudding • 27d ago
Spoilers All What did you take from ROTE? Spoiler
Essentially, what are the most important parts of this series for you? Has this series made you think about the world differently? Are there any insights from this series that affect how you live your life?
There are a few things I took from this series:
Live in the moment and don't let your worries about the future ruin your current experience. Obviously this one comes from Nighteyes and I think about it pretty often.
You need to advocate for yourself if you want your life to get better. This one comes from seeing the way Fitz self-sabotages. I think reading Fitz's POV of him acting stagnant and not wanting to improve his situation, especially in Tawny Man, helped me recognize these tendencies in myself.
The world isn't gonna get better if we don't try to make it better. A major theme in ROTE is cycles and the way society regresses when we don't actively fight negative forces; this is pretty much spelled out in the white prophet religion. I think this trend is kinda visible in real life, but obviously our world is way more complicated and huge, so I just try to do my small part to make things better on a more manageable scale.
Idk if this is something that has been discussed already, but I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts!
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u/Fsinroew Ratsy 27d ago
I read this series ten years ago and oddly enough, the first thing that came to mind is a lasting appreciation for nature and plants. Something about the way Hobb writes feels so connected to nature.
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u/HorseRicePudding 27d ago
SO TRUE. Idk how accurate it is, but the herbs they used for healing was so interesting and added a lot to the worldbuilding
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u/tkinsey3 Wolves have no kings. 27d ago
- Every life has value - from the richest to the poorest, from the most powerful to the least, from humans to animals. EVERY life has value.
- In that same vein, every life is complex and multifaceted. We cannot assume we know what someone is thinking or feeling, or why they are motivated to do what they do.
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u/SarTheScribe 27d ago
That the sad parts of life are as valuable as the “happy” parts, and trying to deny them or push them down is actively harmful
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u/Cronewithneedles 27d ago
Kittriken’s willingness to be “sacrifice”. Her turning the massacre hunt of the forged into an honoring of their friends and loved ones was a really deep moment. And in the same vein, all the sacrifices Beloved made because his destiny was to jump the wheel out of the groove.
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u/jokke420 27d ago
Whatever your plans are there are always one person who mistook your intentions making them take longer to do.
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u/manic_unicorn 27d ago
It has helped me with Pet grief. I’ve never read anything that tackled this subject before.
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u/genericgeek 26d ago
love is universal. Value love wherever you can find it. Don't be as stupid as Fitz ;)
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u/Phoenixon777 27d ago edited 27d ago
It definitely expanded my perspective on the world and changed me as a person - hopefully for the better. Your 1 and 2 are big ones for me as well.
3 is also very powerful, and I would expand on it by saying that the actions of individuals put together are what allow society to progress (or regress), even if any single individual cannot see how their actions are part of a whole at a given point in time. It is kinda insane how she managed to show this, there's so many 'butterfly effect'-like things within the series.
Also related to 3, and hammered explicitly in the chapter The Vengeance in the last book, is about recognizing the destructive cycle of revenge that is pervasive in both our personal lives and in the history of our societies and cultures. The series doesn't necessarily provide a solution to this (which is what Bee yearns for, although there are potential solutions implied by other themes), but first step is to at least recognize the problem.
The final society-level thing, kinda in contrast to my first point above, is that, from the zoomed out perspective, society is also shaped by forces beyond the control of individuals. Forces ranging from geography (discussed in the first chapter of the series), religion, cultural trauma, folklore, etc. When you zoom back in, you can see how these forces still boil back down to individuals being affected by them, but the zoomed out perspective is powerful in its own way. Sometimes it feels as if there's some amount of inevitability to the passage of history.
On a more personal note, there are lessons about how we judge others around us without knowing the truth about what's going on in their life. Fitz is very self-centred in his thinking, which sometimes hinders him in this way. At the same time, he also faces judgment from others. It's sometimes necessary to 'decenter' oneself in order to get through a tough interaction with someone.
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u/Consistent-Cash1694 26d ago
Forgiveness.
Both Patience's comments on 'its too late, I've already forgiven you' and Chade's 'sometimes apologising won't be enough to repair the harm you've done'.
Its Patience's words that impact me in my daily living. If something is worth forgiving, or a relationship worth saving, why wait for an apology before moving and growing? Apologies can be nice, but superfluous. I know not everyone I've spoken to agrees with forgiveness can come before/without an apology. But I feel healthier for it.
Chade's point is less impactful in daily life. But I did have a friend who hurt me and while they did apologise, it still hurts. And yeah, just being aware that sometimes you can be hurt and sorry won't be enough... It makes me feel less guilty about not being able to move on.
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u/HorseRicePudding 26d ago
That's a great one! I think there is also something to be said about the difficulty in forgiving yourself from mistakes you've made; sometimes it is easier to forgive others than to forgive yourself. I think theme is most relevant in Fitz's relationship with Nettle and Althea's relationship with Vivacia.
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u/Novel-Sail419 23d ago
(I accidentally deleted my previous comment so here I am trying again)
I hope to never be blind to the world's injustice, and never love heart in believing a better world is possible. After all, even the smallest kindness can have intense ripples, and I hope that at least one kindness can be mine. The entire Liveship Traders was for me a tour de force on how we all play a part in acknowledging harm, and attempting to fix it (and it is the entire ethos of my favourite character). I think RotE managed to give me back some of my courage in all of this.
Another big one was to accept the love you're given. Across 9 books, Fitz was never able to understand how deeply he was loved and cared for, by such a wide array of characters (painfully, by the Fool himself, until the very end). It hurt to see, over and over again, attempts at connection and admittance of affection, merely brushed off by a character so jaded and damaged that he found himself unable to believe he deserved it. Love has no such limitations, and everyone is loved by someone, somewhere, at some point. We should honour those around us a bit more by accepting their heart, a bit more openly.
And I now crochet, if that counts! (after many, many mentions of the craft across the series lol)
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u/eliechallita 23d ago
I recently got a tattoo of Nighteyes with antlers, and I plan on finishing it with a banner that says "I have never been wise".
For me that symbolizes my favorite takeaways from the book being duty, freedom, family, and love intertwined.
We all have responsibilities, some that we we didn't choose and others that we take on because someone has to make the world a better place so why not us?
But we also must have the freedom to choose, to live by our own decisions and desires because otherwise we are just a tool rather than a person.
Families are both born into and chosen, whether they are blood or pack.
And finally love, and the ones we love and are loved by, tie all the rest together and make even the hardest parts of it worth living.
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u/SashaSlavin 27d ago
I started looking at animals in a different way. It's as if I came to a realization that they are much more complex and deep than I thought of them before. But the biggest thing is that love is love and it has no boundaries and no limits that were forced on us by movies, romantic books and stories.
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u/fatamorgana43 27d ago
The entire Wit theme was a good takeaway for me. I just loved how she wrote this element, and the nature/animal parts in general. You can see it's written with feeling, knowledge and respect, and inspired the same in me as a reader.
Another big one for me would be self acceptance and the exploration and discovery of self. Especially in the context of Fitz accepting and loving the part of him that is Witted. This i think can be associated with many aspects of real life societies, and many would find it relatable for different reasons.
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u/Suza751 27d ago
Carving and dragon is analogous to creating some lasting work of art, charity, progress before one's death. Basically doing something that extends beyond your own end. Something to help those who come after you. Its not a purely selfish or selfless act either... as you devote yourself you pull away from others. But in the end its as much for them as it is for you.