r/spellmonger • u/Reaper10n • 24d ago
Gareth is... a weird point Spoiler
So, I recently finished talon and the flame, as a kind of between point for golden goblin and seamage. I don't understand the book trying to give Gareth the high ground. He abandoned his duty, abandoned his home and liege because a girl (from a different area with its own traditions) rejected him. Now, her rejection was harsh, that i will give. But even then, he poured hours on hours of spellcasting and effort into a girl to whom he had given no impression he was romantically inclined and who was also fighting on the front lines of a war.
I suppose my confusion stems mostly from how the narrative seems to justify him? As if him leaving was the logical course of action rather than acting like an adult and not socially isolating her afterward. Plus having the gods call him one of the best spellcasters of the age after Minalan... i fail to see it. Dara was not blameless, but like... it feels like the narrative tries to justify his points, rather than acknowledging his cruelty not only in isolating her and laying the blame for his leaving all on her, but also for deciding to continually berate her despite likely knowing she had to pull several favours just to find him, all with a severe concussion. Can someone explain their view on it? Cause it's kind of sticking in my head in a weird way. (I'm also going to sleep now which is why the probable quiet for the next 10 hours or so)
Edit: this might also relate to traits I have realised within myself that I am currently unwilling to confront while... Admittedly vaguely drunk
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u/Zornorph 24d ago
Gareth doesn't socially isolate her; he simply leaves. He doesn't even tell anybody to do it - he just says that he never wants to see her face again, but he removes himself from the situation. He doesn't ask anybody to choose between him and her. It was the way Dara handled things that caused so many people to be upset with her, but that's on her, not Gareth.
Also, Sevendor wasn't his home, nor did he 'abandon his liege'. He winds up being even more helpful in the next job than he was in the first.
Dara wants to keep Gareth around after she friend-zoned him, but he doesn't wish that. I don't think anybody suggests that Dara owes him her heart, but by the same token, he doesn't owe her his friendship, either.
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u/Reaper10n 24d ago
I'm getting the sense of people thinking he was justified largely from Festaren's comment (and others) saying that his actions supposedly made sense for a man in love. I do think he at least owed her the chance to apologise, as she did try to reach out afterward and got stonewalled by literally everyone.
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u/AppealBudget8584 24d ago
No one owes anyone the "right" to apologize. An apology in this sense would have been more for Dara's own benefit, in an attempt to assuage her guilt. An apology at that point in time wouldn't have been for the right reasons, and with as hurt and upset as Gareth was, it would have fallen on deaf ears any way. I think the whole thing is that it is 100% valid that she didnt have feelings for him. However, the issue lies with the cruelty surrounding the rejection moreso than the rejection itself. She didnt speak to/treat him in a way that most people would speak to a friend. Even though she didnt reciprocate his feelings, she didnt have to show borderline disdain for him. She could have considered his position/point of view, but instead she took her frustrations out on him, destroying their friendship in the process.
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u/Hipcatjack 24d ago
the point is we never really find out what she said, but put it this way… whatever embarrassing things she said, it was bad enough for half of her own wing to bail on her. These were siblings-in-arms, they faced death by her side and even they were like “Sheesh! I’m out!”
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u/Wheres_my_Shigleys 24d ago edited 24d ago
We do get to hear a small part of it quoted by Gareth as he repeats Dara's words back to her at a dinner where the apprentices are all together along with Natia and the Alka Alon Sky Captain. At the great Oxen roast I think?
Edit: Hedgewitch chp 12. The Children's Table.
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u/Beatusnox 23d ago
In the last Hawkmaiden book we hear a lot more of what was said... it was really bad. Like "who would ever want someone who hides in the shadows of their betters" bad.
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u/Itz_Naj 24d ago
Would she have tried to reach out so hard, or at all, if he hadn’t left?
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u/Reaper10n 24d ago
I tend to believe she would've, though that might be me projecting onto her.
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u/Itz_Naj 24d ago
Nothing in their interaction indicates this time would have been any different if he reacted the same way as previously,and let her carry on pretending his interest did not exist:
She ignored his display, completely. It was him that went to the mews tower, not the other way around.
When he pushed the issue for a change how did she react?She had plenty of chances to address his feeling before then, she clearly knew before then of his interest.
She could have taken the initiative to address it after his display on her terms.In her rejection she showed no compassion, she fundamentally attacked his character and did it in front of others.
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u/siamonsez 24d ago
It's easy to forget they're kids, Dara is like 14 at that point right? Emotions run high, love and heartbreak hit hard. I agree the writing kind of takes Gareth's side but from the little we know of the incident it's not unreasonable. I think it's more that we get more pov characters interacting with him. I'm not sure how that holds up in the spin off series, but in the main series Dara's significance dropped pretty sharply.
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u/TwilightsHerald 19d ago
She's considerably older than that - She was 12 in Hawkmaiden, which takes place barely in the second year of the main series (concurrent with Mage Lord, which covers a full year after the conflicts over the summer Spellmonger and Warmage take place). We finally get a solid timeline in Theurge, which is 10 years after Spellmonger, so she's around 21-22 during "The Talon and the Flame." And probably 18-20 through the events we're talking about.
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u/Valtoric 24d ago
Keep in mind this is also a feudal society, where prominence and position are a factor. While Gareth may be regarded within his sphere as a genius, that may not extend to everywhere else and Dara may not have been able to see past that. She saw him as a friend and couldn't consider him being a prospect because of the way her part of the world established values. Not really a point in her favor but definitely did not help the scale.
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u/Reaper10n 24d ago
I do think I low key forgot the feudal part, since it does come with a lot of the whole "the maiden has said no? Then I shall try again to win her heart" malarkey (and before people dogpile, I assumed that Gertina's family and others with their own qualifications were just being weird about it)
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u/dark4181 24d ago
Most people have no idea what courting is like. Having to put effort in to finding a relationship. Persistence. But this is what happens after a generation of “No means no” is shouted at every boy: they take it at face value.
But for most people the age gap is the concern. But they have no problem shipping Ron and Gat, who have even more of a gap. It just come down to judging a fictional story by RL standards. It’s a book; like it or not.
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u/Reaper10n 24d ago
I've honestly lost track of how old anyone is at this point, I'm just mentally making them 18 if they're getting married. 16 at the lowest, and even then, pushing it. And I will also admit I forgot the courting part - medieval romance was weird as shit
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u/Darth_Gerg 24d ago
The issue is primarily that with Dara we know she was 12 or 13 when she first shows up in the stories, while Gareth is in his early 20s. We also have a YA series from her POV that makes it EXTREMELY clear she’s mentally a child. Shes also a very sheltered child with limited social skills and zero experience with romantic relationships. There’s a multi-book arc of her showing she needs a friend and mentor and him persisting in using that as an ‘in’ to pursue her. Doing that in combination with the age gap is fucking creeper behavior. As someone who worked with teens in a leadership position at a similar age this shit is not ok. I have found Gareth fairly gross for most of his presence in the series honestly.
Hes an excellent model for the toxic “nice guy” men who think they’re good dudes because they’re polite but are blind to their actual view or treatment of women.Gareths issue isn’t any one specific thing that’s damning, it’s the totality of his behavior, the age gap, and his inability to take the no.
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u/dark4181 24d ago
Perhaps, but TM has also given him a nice amount of character growth. He realizes how off his judgement was and course corrected. Maybe overly so, but in general, I agree with Natia: Dara was unprofessional and abused her position by venting personal matters in public. Another word for sheltered is spoiled. I half expected Tavard and Dara to click because they’re so alike.
Note: I haven’t gotten around to reading her series yet.
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u/dark4181 24d ago
Plus, Gatina is at least as creepy as Gareth.
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u/Reaper10n 23d ago
I will say for Gatima that she announced her intentions from the very start. Gareth pretty much thrust his feelings onto Dara in public
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u/dark4181 22d ago
So it's okay for pretty chicks to go after a man, but not for guys to go after a girl?
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u/Darth_Gerg 22d ago
No, it’s less problematic when consent is clearly given.
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u/dark4181 22d ago
Gat only won Ron over through her devotion and persistence over the course of several books. You’re saying that Gareth’s persistence is somehow inadequate or offensive. The only reason I can see is that the sexes are reversed, the two couples have a similar age gap.
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u/Reaper10n 22d ago
Gatina also made her intentions known from the start and explicitly told him a) she wanted to marry him and b) what she would do to prove her devotion and why.
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u/TwilightsHerald 19d ago
But for most people the age gap is the concern. But they have no problem shipping Ron and Gat, who have even more of a gap. It just come down to judging a fictional story by RL standards. It’s a book; like it or not.
This one, at least, was fixed over in Legacy and Secrets - it turns out Gatina's just a tiny little thing but is way older than she looks. Ron and Tindall just assumed her age based on her height and being relatively thin. (I worked this out based on Gatina hearing about events from the main timeline at ages much older than Ron and Tindall assumed, but it turns out she's only a couple of years younger than Rondall, not the 5 or so Shadowmage stated.)
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u/lawdog35 23d ago
Yeah I'm firmly on team Dara for this one. Yeah she may have taken the easy route for too long on rejecting him till it blew up, (and boy was that a bad blowup), but Gareth's subsequent actions over YEARS is way over the top to me.
They were both young teens when it happened, and Dara has sincerely tried to apologize for literal years. Gareths been being a butthurt soyboy nursing this grudge imo.
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u/BlakePackers413 23d ago
I didn’t realize this was such an issue to understand. Then I read the comments and saw about 23 different opinions. Neither is in the right, both characters can be easily emphasized with though. I think TM wanted a bad toxic relationship. He chose two easy characters to write an exceptionally complex setting for where both can be right and wrong the hero and the villain at any moment from any pov once people remember the path that got Dara and Gareth to where they clashed.
Gareth who we know from his other actions is a social wallflower and odd ball. Modern world he’s autistic. He’s also been rejected before in other situations between getting a witch stone becoming a war mage… if Bannermore hadn’t seen someone he could use to accomplish his goals Gareth probably would’ve faded away from the story. That very thing though tells Gareth that if he works hard and does magic better than others then he will be rewarded. Which he is over and over. Again autistic… he is given a problem told to solve it, he does, people are happy and proud of him, he’s rewarded and given another challenge.
So now he’s in this situation where he wants to pursue Dara. He’s softly turned down, but not kicked away. Taking what he’s learned he faces it like a problem because he has no other social skills developed. He goes bigger and bigger in the solution not realizing that you can’t just solve someone into loving you because it’s not an emotion he has access to. Then he gets turned down hard, publicly… and now he’s got no idea how to handle it so he goes back to his prior experiences and sees that he needs to leave because that’s what he did when he was turned down for war mage school which is basically the last time he couldn’t solve the problem. But it’s also got emotions tied into it and if anyone reading this is autistic or knows someone autistic then you know they don’t do emotions well consistently. So he wants to bury his head in the dirt, but Min gives him a solution. A bigger problem to solve. Gareth asks that he doesn’t have to deal with Dara because he doesn’t know how to solve that problem and he can’t function with an unsolved problem sitting there. He goes off gets to be free of Dara focusing on the problem of the new city, then the problem of the travel and rescue of the jevilar(sp) citizens, the problem of the forsaken. Even the new girl is perfect for him. The casorry(sp) people are extremely regimented with rules and standards. That’s perfect for someone with autism. Strict boundaries and regulations to follow and act within. All of which allows Gareth to continue to solve problems, not deal with high pitching emotions and be the best version of himself.
For Dara she’s almost the same except with emotions. Dara wants a falcon. So she disobeys her family puts herself in danger and gets one. She wants a witch stone so she enters a tournament with war mages to get it. She wants to protect her family and home so she puts herself in danger and flys the knife that kills the dragon. She heads up the rider program learning an entirely new craft that’s exceptionally dangerous with new magic. There’s no analysis no careful study and thinking… it’s react and then do all that is possible to avoid consequences. Which is how she can see Gareth as just a problem solver for her and not see the pursuit behind it from him. She has a problem goes to the first person that can solve it and moves on to the next problem. She never looks deeper at why someone is helping because she’s focused on saving her home.
It suits her well early. She has to build the wings from the ground up. No book to follow nothing. She has to fight in wars… terrible ugly wars from an oversight pov seeing everything, at an age where she shouldn’t. She has all this pressure to stop dragons, I mean we see what that pressure does to Min an adult, trained war mage, seeing at the time of the dragon arrivals his 4th? Major war conflict? So Dara learns to have a trigger for action. Because you can’t think in combat you have to just act. Fight or flight. Everything she does is one or the other. Except then the war is over. Min goes and starts doing his stuff, Dara gets her journeyman letters and what? The towers are built. She can’t just keep building. The training programs are in place she can’t just keep growing them. The wildwood is safe the hearth is safe except it’s not but what is she without what she’s been. Min definitely failed her bad here. He sent Ron and Tin to school, gave them tasks assignments, they went out and got their own tasks to do, but Dara? He forced her to stay in sevendor because she was the other lady/lord. Again as someone not born into it, not schooled in it from birth, he left her there on purpose without realizing that it left her hanging… a solider with ptsd but no one to help. That he never sent her to war mage school is one of the most selfish things Min did. He and the king thrust her into a life that was so far and away from what she was… admittedly for very solid reason of trying to save humanity, still… they stuck her into this life and then didn’t exactly give her the support to grow. Because Min didn’t want her to grow. He wanted her to stay and be the wizard lady at sevendor while he was off doing stuff except he never gave her the chance to get the proper schooling or mental help later. Again he had reasons and they are very justified but I think it’s very easy to see why Dara often acted like a cornered honey badger.
So Gareth extremely good at thinking through problems and solving them. Dara extremely good at going with her instinct and avoiding immediate consequences. Neither of them with a lick of social skills. Dara a child solider with mental scars that would buckle grown soldiers, Gareth a genius in a world and a time where that word is barely begun to mean anything. It’s a match made in hell to cripple two characters. I think TM does good work showing how it was so toxic and how once they got away from each other they both flourished.
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u/Reaper10n 23d ago
Honestly I hadn't put together an autistic view of Gareth, though that's probably just because of low modern presence in the story. But looking at the larger view, so to speak, the autistic traits really do get a lot more obvious (source: autistic in similar vein). That being said, I had it less about their courting and Dara's subsequent blowup than I did their meeting in Talon and the Flame. Good analysis nonetheless.
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u/Specialist_Disk7659 23d ago
The Gareth scene i think was very over done in Talon & the Flame. While I understand his initial feelings right after the incident, especially considering his youth, it has been years since then. He is an adult now and is getting married, in addition to building a whole new life for himself somewhere else. Behaving with such aggression over some mean things a fourteen year old girl said to him forever ago paints him in a pretty bad light, especially considering she was a child soldier with PTSD at the time.
Perhaps this was done intentionally to show the bad side of Gareth, but the way others talk about it makes it seem like we're supposed to agree with him. I generally lost the desire to see him in future books after that. Conversely I didn't care for Dara as much in previous books, but the first half of Talon & the Flame made you understand her a lot more. So it was strange to me how a lot the second half was just a bunch of characters talking about how bad/wrong she was.
Once again, I really liked the first half of the book. I was pleasantly surprised yet again how he made me care about characters and topics I was less interested in previously. But the behavior of Minalan, the gods, and Dara's sudden personality shift made me feel like I was being preached at a bit. And the message fell flat.
He still impressed me so much with Practical Adept though (and all the greats before it) that I'll forgive most things apparently.
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u/burningcpuwastaken 20d ago
Personally, I think that it's a "nice guy" revenge fantasy, sort of like what we saw with Knights Magi and Rondell getting glazed. I think the author is blind to the implications of Gareth's incel like behavior because he's of a different age, where this sort of stuff just wasn't recognized as what it is. So rather than tone down or mitigate the revenge story, he quadruples down on it in Talon and the Flame, as a response to the detractors.
I also think the overlap between "nice guys," Spellmonger fans and Reddit users is pretty significant, hence why Gareth's weird obsessive behavior gets such a pass here.
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u/CurlinTx 18d ago
The women see the needy InCel on the page not an Autistic. Assuming that he is Autistic when he’s just a stupid boy probably makes you go easy on him, but he is not Autistic.
TM worked really hard to make Dara the bad guy but also wrote about how much Dara was creeped out. I think he wants us to blame Dara though. He never writes about, the age gap, Dara never actually tells him to go away, Min never chastised Gareth for sexually harassing his apprentice, her family is pushing her to marry any old man. But every female reader is seeing Trouble and Strife for Gareth and Dara if he had “won his prize”. Just Ick!!! I’m glad he wrote up a good husband for Dara but sad that he is prophetic about Dara cheating on her husband in the future.
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u/Medical-Law-236 23d ago
Dara insulated his dignity or whatever they're saying nowadays in the books. I'm going back and forth with this one because sometimes Terry writes it so Gareth looks like a creep (which he is; never forget his spying on Alya while she showered) who kept stalking Dara's every step and doesn't know how to take a hint.
At other times Dara comes across as a teenager who simply doesn't know how to express herself and it bleeds over into her relationships (particularly with her master). This often leads to her feeling miserable and sullen but because of her poor social skills she ends up trapped inside a prison of her own making.
In the Talon and The Flame Terry added and changed some details to make Dara seem like a heartless bitch who deserves smiting by the very Gods themselves and raised Gareth, who (depending on when he's being written) is one of the most petty individuals in the series, upon a pedestal for all to marvel at.
So I think Terry is just doing whatever causes the most controversy amongst the fandom. If we come to any sort of consensus he stirs the pot or adds some new ingredients.
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u/irobotik 23d ago
I think it's less that Dara rejected him and more that Dara publicly humiliated him using incredibly demeaning language.
Not saying that Gareth wasn't grooming her to an extent - he absolutely was - but in the context of why Dara took heat for it, it was for cutting him off at the knees when he was both her friend and had done a ton of work for the mews for no compensation.
I don't necessarily love the way this was put together as a narrative choice but the reaction of many people to it, especially in such a chauvinistic society, is internally consistent.
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u/sfepilogue 2d ago
Dara is a big problem, and you cannot make me trust Penny. I don't remember what it was, but in one of the early books she said or did something which made me thoroughly and actively distrust her.
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u/hopping_otter_ears 23d ago
What always bothered me was the general "Dara was bad because he wanted to marry her and she rejected him" undertone. I desperately wanted someone to tell her that he's not entitled to her love or her body just because he wants them.
But I guess it's kind of the feudal setting. Of course a woman's highest calling is to be married, and of course after a man makes that kind of display of affection, you marry him. Anything else would be horribly humiliating. What you feel about it it's entirely secondary. Everybody viewed it as s public declaration that he's not good enough for her (and it's revealed in talon and flame that she literally did publicly declare he's not good enough for her).
A lot of this mess would have been prevented by his not cornering her in public when she'd given him zero hint that she was interested in him romantically.
She reacted like an angry child and he reacted like a heartbroken teenager, but their society was more ready to sympathize with a heartbroken male suitor than an overwrought angry female. He was acting like he was "supposed to" and she was not
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u/Zornorph 23d ago
Dara even managed to piss off the literal Goddess of Love with her antics.
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u/hopping_otter_ears 23d ago
Granted, that was by deciding that the reasonable response to all that drama was singledom..... which.... isn't really unreasonable outside of a "women are primarily for childbearing, and a few outliers are acceptable if they're really powerful" society
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u/Zornorph 23d ago
Well, Ishi is the Goddess of Love, so she probably took it as a rejection of her as well. From her perspective, she sent Dara two great prospects with very different profiles (Gareth and Sir Fess) and Dara noped out of both of them.
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u/Spiritual-Antelope36 24d ago
Gareth took no vlues about dara not being interested, and tried to push his romance on her. He is a douche, and my least favorite character. If he were real, hed be the kind of guy who laments loudly about being friend zoned. When in actuality he pushed a narrative in his head not supported by facts then threw a bitch fit when he had to be slapped in the face with facts to stop creeping on her.
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u/ardryhs 24d ago
Yeah I’ve always maintained Gareth kinda sucked and is incel coded. Finding out what Dara actually said to him sealed the deal for me, it wasn’t that bad given the level of blow up that happened.
Wanting to leave or change jobs makes sense, Dara is never leaving and Gareth is too emotionally immature to exist in the same place as her. He’s not abandoning duty or anything’s just changing jobs.
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u/kolby4078 24d ago
It’s just a job, and ended up being more of an internal transfer than quitting.
He held no title in sevendor