I came to them in a cry...

[Lillie]

Well, if no one else is going to start posting I might as well.

I'm still thinking about the prophesy.

In particular I'm thinking about the following line
"I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood"

This line is used as the chapter title where Drawlight dies, and his death is foreshadowed in a vision in Venice where firstly he becomes the earth and then is crucified on the trees.

I assume that the 'I' is the Raven King, so how does this line of the prophesy relate to Drawlight's death and, more particularly, how does it relate to the vision Drawlight experienced in Venice when he became the English earth and spoke to the stones etc.

Drawlight always comes across as just a very nasty little git, but somehow I think his death has a significance that I can't quite grasp.
In the vision he became the earth, he heard the stones speaking, he answered them.
And as we know that 'tree speaks to stone, stone speaks to water' stuff was the message that Drawlight was to bring back to the magicians of England, the message that never got delivered.

So, what I was thinking is that somehow, by his death, by his becoming part of the earth Drawlight delivers the message not to the magicians, but to England itself, that his death was, in part, the return of magic to England.

So, what does anyone else think, if anything?

[Doktor Estrella]

I always equated it with a "caw" because he was the Raven King...sort of a challenge/announcement of return. Of course there are several other ways of looking at it as well; the use of the word cry in particular seems to indicate that in order for the Raven King to return, he would be heralded by a sound of anguish. While Drawlight was, as Lillie points out, a nasty git, does he really earn a cry of anguish at his demise, or is it a caw that announces that he is a feast fit for ravens?

[Whitmore]

Drawlight has become definitely unhinged by that point. In Venice he's already "headin' out," and by the time he's back in England, he's all but mad. And madness--at least a partial separation from normal, everyday rationalism--seems to be the entrance fee to the magical. Yes, CD does seem to be the messanger.

As one writer said, "Who ever went mad expecting to find only...madness?" But in CD's case, he is driven like a sacrificial lamb, not like a JS who purposely sought that unhinged state to get to the next level. Perhaps madness is a last-ditch effort, a desperate gamble to escape the crushing nothingness of non-magical modern times. CD's end seems very fateful, though, as if he was really doomed from day one. In some of those later chapters you really get this lovely dark pagan, witchy, Nature uber Alles vibe--and it's not a New Agey John Denver "friends around the campfire and everybody's high..." feeling at all. Nature, deep and dark, seems to be in retribution mode, and CD is sacrificed as a matter of course.

Right. When I first read CD's end, I thought it a fitting end for a silly fop-git. But the law of Nature is the honor code of 'Eat now unencumbered, for later you too will be on the menu.' Life lives from life. Yet we modern humans consider ourselves exempt. And when we die we still keep our carcasses out of food chain with fancy, high-tech coffins and burials or cremations. CD, however, has a very honorable end vis-a-vis Nature: to become one with the land in a Merlin-esque way. I'm a Euro-pagan type, and I'd consider it a great finish to go out into a wood and have CD's end.

As I said in another post, towards the end, we see a twist on the Gaia Theory, where the whole of the land is one big organism of magic. It's impressive how SC has people like CD just fall into the maelstrom.

[Lillie]

You might want Drawlight's end, but he didn't.
He was terrified of it.

I don't think he was mad, by the way.
Very afraid, but not mad.
Or at least no madder than he had been.

[Whitmore]

Right, he was definitely an unwilling sacrificial lamb. But I do think he was a little loose at the screws. His dress and behavior in Venice belied a bit of the mental strain, I'd say. And no, I'd like a long, fruitful life before I go out in the forest to have my pagan end. ;)

[Lillie]

He was always a little loose at the screws!

But his dress in Venice was all to do with his inability to afford what he would like to wear and his attempt to keep up his 'standards'.
It was very in character for him to do that.
He had always cared about his appearance and followed fashion. In Venice he was just trying his best to continue.

Also his behaviour, I thought it was very normal for Drawlight.
The gossip, the spreading nasty tales...
Just normal for him.

I never felt that he was in anyway different, except for the reduced circumstances.

Which was why it was interesting that he has that vision out side the church in Venice, where he saw the spirits in the buildings and became the earth.
I assume that this was due to the proximity of Strange after he had taken the madness potion, though why it would rub off on Drawlight but not on anyone else I don't know.
And why Drawlight should have a vision of his own end, an end that seems directly related to the Raven King's prophesy.

And that, I suppose, is my point.
Drawlight's end appears to be linked to the Raven King's prophesy.
And if that is the case then the death/end (technically his death was caused by Lascelles blowing half his head off) has some significance to the working out of the prophesy (the restoration of English magic).

[Doktor Estrella]

I have to agree with Lillie's perception of Drawlight's state, he merely is attempting to continue his "normal" foppishness, but struggling with the inability to do so in his financial straits.

I think that it's likely that in Strange's madness, his heightened perceptions targeted Drawlight because he was a known enemy/detractor, which then made Drawlight a vehicle for the prophecy.

[Catherine of Winchester]

I'm not certain that it was necessary that Drawlight was a 'known enemy/detractor', that made him useful as a 'vehicle for the prophecy'. I think that is more that he was just there, and that he would, theoretically, have had access to Norrell and England at large.

[Bullfinch]

...I should be house hunting, but...I think the "I" is definitely JU and the "cry" is Drawlight's cry when Lascelles shoots him. Though JU is not there personally at the time , he is there in the sense that an element of his prophecy / spell has been realised .

The wood has always made me think of St.Serlo's Blessing (or one of the other magical woods that helped protect JU's kingdom ) in it's ability to absorb CD so swiftly..If JU had entered England himself at a juncture so close to the realization of his prophecy, it could have resulted in his premature recognition by the land and interfered with the working of the whole Stephen Black / nameless slave scenario.

Of course Lasc. and CD are the murderers and theives that Norrell is prophesied to surround himself with..so they're not just getting swept up in the prophesy , their presence and characters have been foreseen and JU's spell adjusted or expanded to take them into account.

Speaking of CD in Venice, even to him the different constellations of stars in The Dark looked like.." gigantic , glittering letters - letters in an unknown alphabet. For all he knew the magician had formed the stars into these letters and used them to write a spell against him. "..Ch.59
Well, he had the wrong magician...but I think the essence of his premonition was right.

Back to the classifieds for me..:p

Oops! I meant to say that I agree that as far as Strange's magic affecting CD in Venice was concerned I think that he intended to draw to him anyone who could carry his messages, not necessarily CD...although there's no reason he couldn't have known CD was there.

[Lillie]

.

The wood has always made me think of St.Serlo's Blessing (or one of the other magical woods that helped protect JU's kingdom ) in it's ability to absorb CD so swiftly..

Oooh!!!!
I never thought of that!!!!


Of course Lasc. and CD are the murderers and theives that Norrell is prophesied to surround himself with..

Yes, clearly they are who the prophesy refer to, but this has puzzled me, because which one is a murderer?
Drawlight is a thief but not a murderer (he wouldn't have the bottle to do that) unless he has driven someone to suicide.
Lascelles isn't a thief, not really, he can afford not to be.
And clearly Lascelles has never killed anyone before he killed Drawlight.
Childermass is also a thief, for that matter, but again, we have no evidence of murder.

Good luck with the house hunting!

[Doktor Estrella]

I think that Lascelles is the only one that can be labeled a murderer, though little is known of Childermass's exploits before working in the employ of Norrell other than he was a child pickpocket and was in Genoa at some point. However, based on the way that Childermass chose to handle Vinculus's removal from London, he seems to prefer trickery and subterfuge to achieve his ends rather than brute force. Also, he didn't retaliate when Lascelles attacked him, choosing instead to take the cut in order to pocket the box that was the colour of heartache.

And Lascelles did engage in thievery because he was keeping the box and Drawlight's message from Childermass.

[Lillie]

I think that Lascelles is the only one that can be labeled a murderer, though little is known of Childermass's exploits before working in the employ of Norrell other than he was a child pickpocket and was in Genoa at some point. However, based on the way that Childermass chose to handle Vinculus's removal from London, he seems to prefer trickery and subterfuge to achieve his ends rather than brute force. Also, he didn't retaliate when Lascelles attacked him, choosing instead to take the cut in order to pocket the box that was the colour of heartache.

And Lascelles did engage in thievery because he was keeping the box and Drawlight's message from Childermass.

Yes, Lascelles was a thief at the end, just like he was a murderer at the end.
I meant before that.
'Governed by thieves and murderers' would imply that he (Norrell) was governed by people who had been thieves and murderers for some time, not just for the last couple of days of their connection.
Also both are plural.
More than one thief, more than one murderer.

I would agree that there is nothing to suggest Childermass was a murderer. I only mentioned him because he, to some extent, governed Norrell for far longer than the other two.
Also it makes me laugh when he tells Lascelles 'Better a whores son than a thief', when in fact he was probably both.

When was Childermass in Genoa?
I can't find that.
He may have been as we know he spent some time as a sailor, but the only genoa mention I can find is that he borrowed the cards to copy from a sailor who had got them from Genoa.
However, when Childermass saw them he was in Whitby.

[Doktor Estrella]

Ack...sorry, I garbled that reference to Genoa in my head...:o

I agree with you that because it is plural, we are meant to assume that there was more than one murderer; perhaps one of Drawlight's many ruinous machinations lead to someone's early demise, but it's rather a stretch. And I don't recall that Strange ever murdered anyone in the course of his campaign with Wellington...though that one soldier did die (albeit by another's sword) after Strange took his life force/light of animation? from him.