Sadler's Lectures

Ursula K Leguin, Tehanu - The King Of The Archipelago, Order, And Justice - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses the science fiction and fantasy author, Ursula K. Leguin's novel, Tehanu, the fourth of six Earthsea books

It focuses specifically on the early years of the king Lebannen's reign, which involves reintroducing order to Earthsea, and both enacting justice and enabling local communities to administer justice. Lebannen's reign aims to change the dynamic of the strong preying upon the weak

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Duration:: 15m
Broadcast on:: 13 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Sadler Lectures Podcast. Responding to popular demand, I'm converting my philosophy videos into sound files you can listen to anywhere you can take an MP3. If you like what you hear and want to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. I hope you enjoy this lecture. One key development that we see occurring in Ursula K. Le Guine's fourth Earthsea novel is the emergence of justice, or at least the hope that justice and order are being brought back to the lands of Earthsea. And everything is taking place on the island of Gaunt, but Gaunt could be viewed as sort of a stand-in for the rest of Earthsea as well. Now this is coming about because there's actually a king again in Earthsea, which has not been the case for a very long time. And there's a lot of backstory going into the earlier novels, particularly the tombs of Atoon, in which we see the ring of Eryth Ekba restored, and the farthest shore in which we have the young king, in fact, becoming kingly. And we end with the dragon taking him to rock, and this acknowledgement of him as a king, and then get the archmage going off. Now, why is this so important? Because things are so screwed up, and they're not screwed up just in a, well, things are falling apart over here, but they're just fine over here sort of way. Instead, at least at places like Roke, there's a lot of problems that are occurring. And early on, there's this discussion about gangs and thieves, and here's the paragraph. What Lark had said about gangs and thieves was not just the complaint each generation makes that things aren't what they used to be, and the world's going to the dogs. This is a common dynamic, right? In the last several years, there had been a loss of peace and trust in the towns and countryside of gaunt. Young men behaved like strangers among their own people, abusing hospitality, stealing, selling what they stole. Beggery was common where it had been rare, and the unsatisfied beggar threatened violence. Women did not like to go alone in the streets and roads, nor did they like that loss of freedom. Some of the young women ran off to join the gangs of thieves and poachers. Often they came home within the year, sullen, bruised, and pregnant. And among village sorcerers and witches, there was rumor of matters of their profession going amidst charms that had always cured did not cure. Spells of finding found nothing are the wrong thing. Love potions drove men into frenzies not of desire, but murderous jealousy. And worse than this, they said, people who knew nothing of the art of magic, the laws and limits of it and the dangers of breaking them, were calling themselves people of power, promising wonders of wealth and health to their followers, promising even immortality. Ivy, the witch of Gohas Village had spoken darkly of this weakening of magic and so had beach, the sorcerer of Valmouth. And this is what beach then says. I think a time in which such things as this occur must be a time of ruining the end of an age. How many hundred years since there was a king in Hovnore? It can't go on so. We must turn to the center again or be lost. Island against island, man against man, father against child. The ring of Eryth Akba is restored to the tower in Hovnore. I know who brought it there, Tenar. That was the sign, surely the sign of a new age to come, but we haven't acted on it. We have no king. We have no center. We must find our heart, our strength, maybe the archmage will act at last, but no word of any deed of the archmage or any heir to the throne in Hovnore had come and so things went badly on. Now this is of course before the events in the third novel, the coming back to Turok, of young Lebanon and Ged, Lebanon is going to become the king, but that hasn't happened yet. And so things are disintegrating. Things are falling apart. It is a moral disorder. It is a cultural and political disorder. It is a disorder among relationships. It is also a cosmic disorder. Magic is no longer working the way that it's supposed to, either it doesn't work or it goes awry. And this is the situation that we're looking at. One of the central problematics with this is the stronger praying on the weaker and the condition of Theru's parents and the other two men, the company, them, all beggars, all scoundrels, is kind of an example of this. Theru is terribly abused over the course of her life, not just at one point, but the entire time that she's alive, she's raped, she's beaten, she's malnourished, she's not being raised in any way that shows anything to a child. And she's thrown living into a fire to die there. Fortunately, she doesn't. Theru's mother is actually going to die in this as well, abused by the very, say, men that abuse Theru. So the stronger pray on the weaker, people of power, pray on those who don't have power. Prime example of this is the Wizard of Ray Albie, Aspen, who is helping the Lord of Ray Albie to pray upon his grandson, to take the vital energy from the boy and give it to the old man promising immortality. And so there's a question, is this the end? Or will order be restored? A little bit later, when they're on the ship together, Tenar and the king and several others are talking. And so she ends up saying, "There is no archmage of Earthsea, "but there is a king, the king Labanin." And the mage says, "In whom our trust and hope "are well founded with a warmth that became him well, "Labanin watching and listening smiled. "In these past years, Tenar said hesitant, "there have been many troubles, many miseries. "My, the little girl, such things have been all too common, "and I have heard men and women speak of the waning "or the changing of their power. "That one whom the archmage and my Lord defeated "in the dry land, that cob caused untold harm and ruin, "we shall be repairing our art, healing our wizards "and our wizardry for a long time, yet the mage said. "And then Tenar says something else. "I wonder if there might be more to be done "than repairing and healing, though that too, of course. "But I wonder, could it be that one such as cob "could have such power because things were already altering "and a change, a great change, has been taking place, "has taken place? "And it's because of that change, "we have a king again in Earthsea, "perhaps a king rather than an archmage." And so maybe it's a transference to political power rather than something like priestly power that's going on. The King Lebonon and his subjects are at the center of this. The king is a bringer of order and indeed of justice. He is part of this process of healing, but in a way, it's not always medicine that everybody wants to take because those who are praying upon those who are weaker than them are going to resist this and, in fact, even fight against the king. So what we see is the king himself has a number of subjects and the king can directly intervene as he does when he brings Tenar and Thero up on the ship, taking them away from Handy, who had wanted to take Thero away and punish her, abuse her yet again. There's also the king's men protecting Tenar, at least for the moment, from the evil wizard Aspen of Rey Albie. He is about to cast a curse upon her. Something like a stroking touch went up her spine, her hair lifted on her head. She turned round to see the wizard reach out his staff towards her and the dark lightnings gather around at his lips part to speak. And she thought in that moment, because Ged has lost his major. I thought all men he had, but I was wrong. And then a civil voice says, "Well, well, what do we have here?" Two of the men from Hovnore, the king's men, had come out onto the road from the cherry orchards. They looked from Aspen to Tenar with bland and courtly expressions. As if regretting the necessity of preventing a wizard from laying a curse on a middle-aged widow, but really, really, it would not do. "Mr. Scoha," said the man with the golden broid and shirt and bowed to her, indicating her status. The other, the bright-eyed one, saluted her, also smiling. "Mr. Scoha is one who, like the king, bears her true name openly, I think, and unafraid, living in gaunt. She may prefer that we employ her gauntish name, but knowing her deeds, I asked to do her honor. For she wore the ring, no woman wore since Elpharan. He drops to one knee, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Took up Tenar's right hand very lightly and quickly and touched his forehead to her wrist. Ah, so Tenar flustered and warmed right through. There's all kinds of power in the world, thank you. These men, in their courtly way, are telling the wizard, "Hey, back off, buddy. This is an important person." She is somebody that the king cares about. You better watch it, wizard. There's also a talk at one point, where Ged and Tenar are talking, and she says, "Yeah, the king's men are going out. Some of them are just these courtiers or warriors, and some of them are actually mages going around. What's this about?" And Ged says, "Well, you know, they're seeking out wrongdoers. Maybe they're also seeking out the people who are wrongly using magic, and by this time, Aspen has cast a spell on Tenar, and she can't quite remember who it is that they ought to be going and looking for. There's also a great discussion about what the king's commands are. Before the month was out, the villages of Middle Valley had met at the round barn of Sodeva to appoint their own bailiffs and officers of the peace, and to levy attacks upon themselves to pay the bailiffs wages with. Such were the king's orders, brought to the mayors and elders of the villages, and readily obeyed." Now, this is very interesting. It shows that institutions that have been allowed to fall away, to disappear, are now being brought about. And it's coming from on high, the command of the king, but he's commanding that local entities exercise some autonomy. He's delegating to them and saying, "You've got to raise your own taxes so you can pay for people to protect the weak against the strong, to restore the order that's missing." And he goes on, "There were many sturdy beggars and thieves on the road as ever, and the villagers and farmers were eager to have order and safety." Now, there's another interesting thing that happens in this passage. Some ugly rumors went around, such that Lord Hennell had formed a council of scoundrels and was enlisting all the black guards in the countryside to go about in gangs, breaking the heads of the king's bailies. But most people said, "Just let 'em try," and went home telling each other that now an honest man could sleep a bed at night and what went wrong, the king was setting right, even though the taxes were beyond all reason and they'd all be poor men trying to pay them. So there's this acknowledgement that it is better to have some good authority, some order, some justice. And if people want to get in the way, then instead of just saying, "Well, the mighty do what they want to the weak," which people were saying about the Lord of Ray Albie praying upon his grandson, instead now they're saying, "Yeah, let's knock the teeth out of these bad guys. The king will do it, we'll do it." They have a restored confidence. Now, this affects some people differently. We find out, of course, that in 10 hours' son, when, you know, he comes back, why is he back in the house? Well, because she asks him, "What ship are you on, still the gall?" No, my ship broke up. The crews broke up, King's men took her over. Why? If it wasn't a pirate ship, and he says, "They said the captain was running some goods they wanted." And a little bit later, she says, "This guy, you know, he's lying. He's afraid to go back to the sea." He didn't tell me the truth, not all the truth about a ship. He was second mate. I suppose he was involved in carrying stolen goods, second hand piracy. I don't care. Gaunchest sailors are all half pirate, but he lies about it. You know, her son is not a good man, and is exactly the sort of person that the king is going to set straight. We also find out that the king is appointing courts of law to be held, and the men who abused Theru, they are going to be held accountable for what they've done. Ged, of course, nearly kills one of them, and they have the witch Ivy take him in, and we find out that the witch is saying, "Well, he'll live, he'll live to hang." Why? Because there are now going to be courts of law, right? There are now going to be ways of punishing and protecting. So she says, "It's up to the king's courts of law, "now that they're meeting again, "hanged or set to slave labor." Ged says, "They must be punished," right? And what have they done? Well, we find out that they've not only horribly abused Theru. Clarebrook tells the story, "The four of them had been traipsing "and camping and vagranting about near Khadan, "and he said the woman would come into the village to beg, "all beat about and burns and bruises all over. "They'd send her in, the men would see like that to beg, "and she'd go back to them and she told people "if she went back with nothing, they'd beat her more." So they said, "Why go back?" But if she didn't, they'd come after her. She said, "See," and she'd always go with them. But they finally went too far and beat her to death, and they took and left her body in the old shambles, where there's still some of the stink left, you know, maybe thinking that was hiding what they'd done, and they came away then down here just last night. So they were trying to, they've already committed a murder. They tried to murder Theru after horribly abusing her. They were coming back to finish the job and probably to also kill Tenar. These are the sort of people that the court of law is going to impose hanging or being condemned to the slavery of the gallows. Doesn't sound like something good, but it is good within the grand scheme because it is restoring justice. It is restoring order. And we see that one of the key thematics of this is, what does it mean to actually do these things? It is to keep the stronger from praying upon the weak. And so the king is absolutely central to this, but he can't do it alone. He has to have others come along with him. His subjects, his servants, his delegates. He has to produce a kind of consensus that this is better than how things have been going. Special thanks to all of my Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. You can find me on Twitter @philosfor70 on YouTube at the Gregory B. Sadler channel and on Facebook on the Gregory B. Sadler page. Once again, to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. Above all, keep studying these great philosophical works. [ Music ] (gentle music)