On The Lady of The Lake and Why She Might Be Ranald's Daughter But Maybe Not
This post is meant to discuss the hypothesis that The Lady is Ranald's daughter, which was first properly formalized by
@Redshirt Army and
@Godwinson [R&G]
here. The Lady of the Lake is the regional Goddess of Bretonnia, the Goddess of purity and chivalry. Redshirt originally proposed her as a joke as far as I can tell, but R&G later discussed the theory at length and came up with a number of arguments for why it might actually be true. This was still mostly taken as a joke, judging by the number of 'funny' reactions to that post, and I myself mostly considered it humorous at the time. Still, I added it to my
theory compilation, where I gave my opinion that it is "shockingly plausible but my money is on no." But since then I've had time to consider it more carefully, and I've come to a different view.
I will start at the end and say that my conclusion is that it's actually a very plausible theory. However, it does have some key problems which makes me reluctant to accept it as fully as I accepted the Halétha theory (
which is obviously correct). I myself was initially resistant to the idea of considering this theory seriously, and I suspect many readers will feel the same, so I'll try to start with the strongest parts of the theory and only then move on to the weaker points, while ignoring those points that I feel are so speculative they can't be taken seriously. Note that this post takes as a given that Halétha is Ranald's daughter; if you (somehow) don't believe that you may ignore those parts, as the argument doesn't rely on that.
Part I: The Daughter of Shallya
The first thing we must note when we consider the question of Ranald's daughters is that the phrasing of the question is misleading. We think of the daughters as being Ranald's because Ranald is the God Mathilde worships and Ranald is the one that told us about Them, and the very name of the new face of the coin emphasizes Him. But of course the daughters have two parents, and They could just as easily be thought of as Shallya's. In fact, since the hint we have been given is that one daughter resembles each parent, it could be argued that one of the daughters is better thought of as Shallya's daughter. With that change of framing in mind, is The Lady of the Lake a likely candidate for Shallya's daughter?
One could argue there is a lot of similarity between The Lady's ideals of chivalry and Shallya's strictures. Knighthood as thought of in Bretonnia is a fairly self sacrificing endeavor, with questing knights and Grail knights in particular devoting themselves to their mission to the extent of everything else, not unlike Shallya's clergy. One of Shallya's strictures is to never refuse healing to one in need; questing knights vow to never refuse a plea for help. Shallya teaches Her followers to not waste energy on their own pleasures; The Lady tells Her questing knights to leave all earthly possessions and titles. Shallya is opposed to violence while knighthood is all about righteous violence, but Shallya does accept self defense and the knights of Bretonnia are supposed to use violence against the wicked and in defense of the innocent. And of course we should mention the Damsels, The Lady's priestesses and servants, which have healing powers as well as the power of prophecy. Shallya is the Goddess of healing, and the God of prophecy is said to be Shallya's father. The Damsels also have powers relating to nature, which could just be an example of The Lady growing beyond her origins but could be yet another relation to Shallya if Shallya is Isha as some suspect.
I could go on, but I see no need to, because I think the best argument for The Lady resembling Shallya is the prominence of Shallya's worship in Bretonnia.
Despite the fact that Bretonnian worship is obviously dominated by The Lady, Couronne is the heart of the Shallyan cult - not the heart of the Bretonnian worship of Shallya, the heart of the Cult of Shallya in all of the Old World. This
wiki article on Bretonnia describes the cult of Shallya as second in importance only to the cult of The Lady is Bretonnia. While it points out that there are some differences between the two, it also mentions '
A common and growing heresy among peasants and some commoners, is the belief that both Shallya and Verena are merely aspects of the Lady, whom provide comfort for the peasantry and guide the nobility towards their protection.' The source for this is Knights of The Grail, but the version I found actually says something slightly different:
A common heresy among the peasants is the belief that the Lady of the Lake is a servant of Shallya, who guides the nobility to protect the peasantry. The indisputable fact that Grail Knights treat peasants better than almost any other noble lends some weight to this belief. So the heresy is specifically about Shallya and not Verena, and it paints The Lady as subservient to Her.
That some the worshippers of Shallya find Her similar enough to The Lady to argue they are one and the same, or that one serves the other, is really all the argument we need to draw a link between the two. Once you are aware that Shallya does in fact have a daughter, the obvious conclusion is that if The Lady does have a connection to Shallya then that connection is a familial one, rather than one being an aspect of the other. And there is one more connection between the two Goddesses: the Grail and the Chalice.
Part II: The Grail, the Chalice, and the Coin
The goal of every questing knight's quest is to find the fabled Holy Grail of The Lady, that sacred cup which all Bretonnian knights hope to sup from. To do so is to become something more than human, as to drink from The Grail is to receive a portion of The Lady's power and forevermore be known as a knight of the Grail. Coincidentally, the myth of Ranald's ascension tells that Ranald tricked Shallya into allowing him to drink from her holy chalice, granting him divinity.
As R&G point out, there is a striking similarity between the chalice of the myth and the Grail. According to
the wiki, they aren't the only ones who noticed the similarity:
Locals claim the magical waters were once poured there from the same chalice Shallya used to grant Ranald immortality, which they claim is the holy grail of the Lady, the patron Goddess of Bretonnia. This may not be quest canon - the wiki cites a WHFRPG 4e book and those aren't quest canon by default - but at the very least it is confirmation that the similarity between the myths isn't just a product of R&G's feverish minds. And let us not forget that the medium through which Ranald told us of His daughters is the picture that Mathilde had of Ranald and Shallya, a picture representing one interpretation of Ranald's ascension myth where that very chalice plays a central role.
Another thing that should be considered is the symbol on the Father face of the coin - Ranald's X symbol bisected in two, creating a V and a chevron. It has been suggested that perhaps the two symbols are meant to represent each of the two daughters, so I asked Boney what each symbol represents in religious symbols used by the Gods of the Empire:
Shapes like V are used to represent trees, flowers, springs, cups, lakes, and a yonic symbol, while shapes like chevrons are used to represent mountains, roots, sunshine, rivers, and a yonic symbol.
Emphasis mine. So, while it's not very clear how the chevron might represent Halétha - might just be a yonic symbol, symbolizing Her aspect of fertility - the V symbol could easily represent The Lady of the Lake: Her Grail, Her lake, and the Fleur de Lis (a lily sacred to the Lady) could all be represented by the V.
Admittedly this is all circumstantial evidence, but it does lend some support to the theory in my opinion.
Part III: A Hint of Ranald
So, a connection to Shallya has been established, and there's a connection to a myth involving both Ranald and Shallya. How about a connection to Ranald specifically?
In their seminal paper on the subject R&G offer a number of different possibilities for a connection between Ranald and The Lady. They are:
- The society of Bretonnia is dependent on polite fictions, a connection to the Deceiver. The best argument for this are the words of Boney on Brettonia:
I'm a fan of the idea of Brettonia as the land of polite fictions, where, for example, it's true that women can't be knights, but women dress up as men to be knights anyway all the time and nobody says anything about the beardless lad with the high voice who's oddly private about bathing, and if the truth does come out in a way that nobody can pretend it didn't, then the 'punishment' is to Seek the Grail which gives them knightly status anyway.
I also feel compelled to note that our one interaction with Bretonnia in this quest was a conversation where every other sentence was a thinly veiled lie meant to keep up appearances, and where the Fay Enchantress - the avatar of The Lady's will - sent us a message telling us we can do something forbidden as long as we make sure we hide it.
- When working as intended, the system of Bretonnia is one where individuals - knights and Damsels - protect the common folk from tyranny and injustice in a manner resembling Ranald in his aspect as the Protector. In fact, Grail knights and Damsels sometimes overthrow nobles that they deem corrupt, in a kind of religiously sanctioned mini-revolution which seems to fit the Protector. Mathilde herself, when theorizing on what a child of Ranald and Shallya might look like, says:
A territorial child of Ranald and Shallya would originate in a conceptual subset of one or the other, or perhaps one on the cusp of both. Righteous vigilantism? Protection of the weak?
- Knights on the quest for the Holy Grail are guided along by random signs, which is to say by random luck, a connection to the Gambler. And Lileath is the Goddess of fortune among other things.
Now, you may not be convinced by some or all of those arguments. But keep in mind that The Lady is the daughter that resembles Shallya, if she is a daughter at all. She doesn't need to resemble Ranald closely, but only have 'a hint of Her father', according to the hint we were given. So really, it is sufficient for only one of those connections to be correct, and it is perfectly fine if that connection is a small one.
Part IV: Halétha and The Lady
A few words on The Lady and Halétha. First, there is no contradiction between the theories, as Halétha resembles Ranald and The Lady resembles Shallya, so they could easily be the two sisters. One might be discouraged by the fact that there is little to no similarity between the two, but it's not clear that we should expect there to be any similarity: in the picture each looks like a different parent, and from this we deduce that they don't look like one another (unless Ranald and Shallya look alike, but if that were the case how would we know that one resembles Ranald and one resembles Shallya?). Two known examples of sister Goddesses are Shallya and Myrmidia and Hekarti and Atharti, and they don't really resemble each other either.
There is the fact that The Lady being a daughter rules out Haleth as Halétha's sister, but we already have evidence that Haleth is likely a guise of Halétha rather than a distinct Goddess:
Nordland Haleth is simple enough, the general explanation is that those in central and western Nordland adopted her from those in eastern Nordland, which is within the Forest of Shadows, as a general hunting Goddess. Middenland Haleth is more puzzling. It looks like both arose at about the same time as the Cults of Taal and Rhya were expanding their influence in Ostland, so it might be a result of a Haléthan diaspora.
The two Goddesses are both regional Goddesses, as R&G point out the geographic regions in which they are active are somewhat close. Both are associated with forests (the Forest of Shadows for Halétha , obviously, and The Lady is associated with the Forest of Châlons). Finally, both are intimately related to the magical traditions of their followers (less clear cut in Halétha's case but pretty likely, especially after Mathilde's description of the feelings she got from Hedgewise magical energies). All in all I would say there isn't any particular synergy between the two theories, but there is no conflict between them either, and so we should not be overly surprised if both are true.
Part V: If This Theory Is So Great Why Don't You Marry It
There are two problems with this theory. The first, and the more minor one, is the issue of The Lady's connection to Ranald. Halétha's connection to Shallya is a small one, but it is definitive: fertility isn't the first thing you think of when you think of Shallya, but she is a Goddess of childbirth and Halétha does have a connection to childbirth. In contrast, The Lady has numerous possible connections to Ranald but it is not obvious that any of them is real. Is the Lady connected to luck? Kind of, through Her quest, maybe. But many things can be said to be connected to luck, and it doesn't look like The Lady has some particularly strong connection to it. Is the society The Lady created dependant on lies? Maybe in some sense, but an army marches on its stomach, and that doesn't mean every God of war is also a God of farming; it's not at all obvious that The Lady supports or is in any way a Goddess of deceptions, rather than deception being something she grudgingly tolerates when it is needed. She is connected to protection, yes, but any regional Goddess is likely to have some connection to protection as she protects the region she is a patron of - though I would say the Protector connection is probably the strongest one, since Her particular brand of protection fits that one quote by Mathilde about what a territorial child of Ranald and Shallya would look like remarkably well. A small connection to the Deceiver and a small connection to the Protector are probably good enough to count as a hint of Ranald, and I personally think those connections are fairly likely, but I can certainly see how others might disagree.
The second and more major problem is the issue of The Lady's opinion of Ranald, which seems to be very negative, as Ranald is proscribed in Bretonnia. A God having hostile relations with his progeny isn't unheard of - just ask Ellinill - but the Father face of the coin makes the daughters trust us. How could Ranald's word that Mathilde is trustworthy sway The Lady if She doesn't trust Her father?
There are two different explanations I can think of. The first is that by turning the coin to the Father, Mathilde sacrifices the divine blessing Ranald would normally give her, and Ranald goes on to use this divine power as a peace offering to his unruly daughter, in a "here's a gift, now play nice with Mathilde" kind of way. I find this explanation kind of lame, to be honest.
The second possibility I came up with is that The Lady doesn't
actually dislike her Father, and in truth it is all an act to distance Her from Him. For whatever reason, the parentage of Ranald's daughters is kept a secret. Halétha, a minor and fairly unknown Goddess, is protected by obscurity. The Lady on the other hand is far more widely known and she must actively distance Herself from at least one of Her parents to hide her parentage. There is at least some evidence that The Lady doesn't outright despise Ranald:
"Oh, and there is another thing. Morgiana said, what was it... 'your friend can visit with you as long as he makes no plans to stay'. Something about a colleague of yours, I suppose?"
"I understand what she means," you say with a nod. You'd heard that Ranald is outright proscribed in Bretonnia, but you didn't have any plans to broadcast your faith of Him so didn't think it would cause problems. But it is nice to have that outright confirmed.
So, at the very least, the worship of Ranald - and his 'visit', which I assume means Him exercising His divine power - can be tolerated in Bretonnia under the right circumstances as long as it isn't made public. We also know from Boney's responses to questions regarding Bretonnia that Ranaldites aren't persecuted in an unusually vicious manner, and when they are punished for their faith it is generally because they were caught while committing other crimes. And there are the Herrimaults, a group of outlaws active in Bretonnia that Bretonnian society resolutely avoids noticing are obviously Ranaldites:
That said, there is a curious complete lack of anyone formally connecting the dots with the Herrimaults, a gang of Robin Hood knockoffs who are incredibly thematically Ranaldian.
This might also fit with the idea of The Lady being partly the Goddess of polite fictions.
Of course, the fact that I could only come up with those two explanations doesn't mean there isn't some other and better explanation. Still, I maintain that this is a serious problem for the theory.
Even so, I believe that The Lady is currently the leading candidate for the daughter of Shallya, with her only real competition being Haleth (or some secret Hedgefolk Goddess, I suppose - but the Hedgefolk don't seem very Shallyan to me). While I'm not nearly as certain about Her as I am about Halétha, I definitely think there's enough for us to give her serious consideration, and if you take one thing away from this pointlessly long post I want it to be that this theory should be considered as more than a joke. But I think we should check Halétha first, as it is still possible that her sister is Haleth or some other Goddess related to Halétha, in which case investigating Halétha might give us a hint as to her identity. Should our investigation of Halétha fail to lead to her sister, I will consider that very strong evidence for the theory of The Lady.
Part VI: What About Recruiting Damsels:
My post on Halétha wasn't just about the possibility of Her being Ranald's daughter but also about why we should go ahead and recruit the Hedgefolk who worship Her to the Waystone project. Why am I not making the same pitch here? Wouldn't recruiting Damsels on the same turn we get the Hedgefolk be the best way to test both theories at once, maximizing the potential benefits of the Father face of the coin?
When we considered basing our project in Carcassonne we were offered having a Damsel on our project in exchange for assisting Carcassonne in their war against the Iron Orcs. That was already a hefty price tag, and now that our project is based in Laurelorn it's safe to assume that any deal we'll get will be even worse. If the coin works that will help, of course, but I don't feel comfortable counting on it, and even if it does work it's hard to say how the bonus from the coin will compare to the malus from basing our project outside Bretonnia. The Damsels I believe will be hard to recruit before the point where the Waystone project already has some results to tempt them with, and even then I suspect getting them on board will be a fairly AP intensive affair.
Are there other actions we can take to test the theory? Well, I would like to try and get Bretonnian contacts for our library. Any suspicion from our Bretonnian contacts will demonstrate that they don't feel Mathilde is 'worthy of trust and faith' which would falsify the theory, but getting a good book deal wouldn't really prove anything. We could spend a social action talking with Soizic about her fate, I guess, but that probably wouldn't prove anything either. The problem is that the Hedgefolk are a persecuted group that fears the Colleges of Magic in particular, while Bretonnia is a neighboring nation that has decently good relations with the Empire. Any show of trust from the Nordlander Hedgefolk will pretty much prove the Halétha theory on the spot, while the only way to really test The Lady theory is to ask for something that really tests the Bretonnians' trust in us, and the only thing we want that fits that criteria is recruiting the Damsels.
What we can do without expanding AP is get books on Bretonnia and The Lady, as well as Bretonnian books on Shallya. There is a lot of canon material on Bretonnia but Boney's take on it is differs from many of its depictions in canon sources, so detailed information on The Lady and Bretonnia as it exists in the context of the quest could greatly change the plausibility of this theory. And since we'll probably end up trying to recruit Damsels at some point in the future, books on Bretonnia are a sensible purchase anyway.
Unless...unless we are so convinced that The Lady is Ranald's daughter that we are absolutely sure the coin will work. In that case we could probably get the Dasmels to work for us on credit: the coin makes them believe we are worthy of trust and faith, so they will trust us when we say we will eventually get around to paying whatever price they demand for their help. But that's quite the gamble, and at the moment I don't believe the balance of evidence is enough to make it a wise gamble. The evidence is good in my opinion, but not quite that good. Right now I suggest buying books first, and if the evidence seems really promising we should go ahead and try to get some Damsels. Otherwise, I fear that The Lady will have to wait.
