4.2.1 Surface meaning of Queen Attolia’s love
The most important thing in this study is about Queen Attolia’s feelings. The writer finds that Queen Attolia starts falling in love with Eugenides, the thief,
when she observes Eugenides with his one hand. She feels something different for the thief and she really cares about the thief. She loves him though she hates him
and his queen at the first. It is because she feels jealous of what Queen Eddis has. She is always jealous of what Queen Eddis has done for her life; Queen Eddis
always does what she likes. She envied Eddis, who could fight in her own battles if she chose. Not
perhaps as dangerous as a souldier; still, she was trained and had been trained since she was a child.
“I have always envied Eddis,” she said to herself as she stood up to pace. It was true. Eddis and she had been both the younger sisters of crown
princes, but always it seemed to Attolia that Eddis was running wild in the mountains while she was carefully kept and groomed in the king’s palace
of Attolia. pp. 290-291
Queen Attolia cannot do wild things with more challenges, she just sits in the palace. She cannot learn to ride a ponny as Queen Eddis does. All of the things
Queen Eddis does always make Queen Attolia jealous. She also hates Queen Eddis about it.
Eddis was learning to ride a pony, Eddis was learning to use a sword with her male cousins, Eddis was hunting at the summer retreat, while Attolia
was dressing in velvets that stifled even in the winter, learning to ape the costume and courtly manners of the continent, and learning to salut just so
when entering the main temple. p. 291
The thing that can make Queen Attolia really hate Queen Eddis is when she tried to give advice for Queen Eddis at her coronation. She gave advice about
how to hold the throne when being a queen, but Queen Eddis did not take the
advice. Queen Attolia also hates Queen Eddis because Queen Eddis has the thief, the people, the army and Eddis’s loyal ministers to serve Queen Eddis. This is
also makes Queen Attolia think to not let Eddis’ thief back. At Eddis’s coronation Attolia had poured her advice like vitriol into her
ear of the new queen, watching her face whiten , viciously satisfied to be the one to tell the girl what world was like when you were a queen. And
the none of that advice had been needed. Eddis had gone on as free in her mountains as Attolia had ever been enslaved. Eddis, with her loyal
ministers, her counselors, her army, and her Thief to serve her. “At any rate she won’t have her Thief back,” Attoliamurmured, wrapping
herself in her robe and sitting back down. p. 291-292
She also hates people who betray and attack her. After her father’s death, she believes in nobody, she hangs people who want to attack, betray, and lie to
her. It happens to the thief, Eugenides, who tries to steal the precious thing from the queen. Then, the thief is captured and finally arrested by Queen Attolia’s
guards. She will hang the thief but she changes her mind to cut his right hand instead. She wants to hurt him and Queen Eddis more little by little, she is very
cruel. Even after cutting his right hand, she hopes for the water of Arachtus from Eddis. She also will not let Queen Eddis get her hope.
For Attolia, the death of the Thief was worth the loss of season’s harvest, but his death was the least Attolia could accomplish and the best that Eddis
could hope for. There was no reason to satisfy Eddis’s hopes, and she had every desire to confound them. p. 24
Yet, as time passed by, she sees the thief in his cell. She looks at Eugenides’ eyes. There is something different in his eyes. She never finds it
before from her other prisoners. She can feel the pain of the thief through his eyes. Then, she starts to think about the thief.
She dismissed thoughts of the Thief lying on the floor of his cell, but found herself thinking instead of her favorite amphora, broken, and the oil
spilled. p. 35 He lay on his side in a corner of the cell with his injured arm cradled
against his chest and a knee pulled up to protect it. He sweated in the damp cold of the cell and didn’t move until Attolia prodded him with one
slippered foot. p. 33
She starts to feel pity for him. She starts to feel sympathy and empathy for him. She hears the thief crying in his cell, she can feel his pain, which is different
from what she feels for the other prisoners. Even, she has never cried for herself, or at the time of her father’s death.
“The second night you repeated the same words over and over. I think the fever had set in by then. Do you remember what you said?”
“No” She knew every one of them. His voice, broken and stumbling, had filled
her dreams until she had wept in her sleep, crying tears for him that she’d never been able to cry for her father or for herself. p. 245
She really feels pity for him, so she goes to his cell. This is the process of how the queen started to fall in love with the thief, Eugenides. It is due to her
feeling pity for him.
4.2.2 Deeper meaning of Queen Attolia’s love
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