Anguin

The Orphan Duke at Tavard's Wedding

Anguin first appears as a bitter, closely guarded young heir at the wedding of Prince Tavard. Minalan picks him out from the dais, identifying him to Pentandra mind-to-mind:

Min, that's Anguin. Heir to what's left of Alshar.

— Pentandra to Minalan, Journeymage

Minalan mishears the name as “Enguin,” and Pentandra has to correct him: Enguin was Anguin's great-grandfather, the Black Duke, a tyrant who had half his own family killed. The boy was deliberately named to break that association, and the Alshari are touchy about the pronunciation. He is already publicly nicknamed the Orphan Duke, his parents murdered at the close of Warmage by the same aunt and uncle to whom he must now feign loyalty.

Pentandra's Audience

Pentandra secures a private interview. Anguin has not been let out of sight of his bodyguards in three years and is deeply distrustful of magi. He is intelligent but arrogant from his sheltered life, and his bitterness is close to the surface:

You speak of conquest, when I don't even have my own sword. Nor castles, armies, or knights of my own.

— Anguin to Pentandra, Journeymage

Pentandra explains he has inherited dozens of estates in Alshar, Castal, and Remere on his mother's side, and may call upon any of them. The lad warms to the idea that authorising the Kasari evacuation would be his first real act of sovereignty. Father Amus, the high priest of Huin and chaplain to the Alshari ducal house, agrees the move is small enough to escape notice but real enough to establish his right.

If I am duke enough to allow this evacuation, then I am duke enough to reclaim my legacy. And this manner of exerting my sovereignty, in a far-off region of the realm, will be of little concern to those who look elsewhere for foes.

— Duke Anguin II, Journeymage

Minalan reads him with a courtier's eye:

Here was an intelligent young man well-educated and prepared to rule, yet whose native enthusiasm for that task had been frustrated by his unfortunate exile. Anguin wanted desperately to do something, I realized. Anything. Anything that made him matter.

— Minalan, Journeymage

Out of the meeting Anguin grants Minalan a written commission to evacuate his subjects through the Wilderlands and names him a Marshal of Alshar. The seal will be used in the field to arrest the rebellious Lord Garway and conscript his garrison — the first time in years Anguin's name actually compels a sworn man to obey.

By book's end Minalan has gifted him an Alshari Ducal Mirror, opening a private channel between Sevendor and the Orphan Duke against the day his minders aren't watching.

The Plan to Seize Vorone

The strategy hatched in Journeymage ripens. Pentandra, Count Angrial (a courtier with a troubled past), and Count Salgo (the dismissed royal warlord) become the core of a shadow government around the boy duke. Pentandra is selected as his Court Wizard:

We care because we might need a duke someday. Anguin's father was an idiot, but he wasn't evil. He just got in his sister's way. I've heard the boy is intelligent. Someday he's going to consider claiming his throne. When he does, I'd like him to be well-disposed to us.

— Minalan to Pentandra, recalling the original brief, Enchanter

Rather than contest the rebel-held southern heartland of Enultramar, Anguin will quietly seize Vorone, his only surviving Alshari capital, at Yule. Inexperienced and self-deprecating — he has “never run anything before” — he relies utterly on Father Amus of Huin and the new magi allies who have committed to keeping him alive long enough to wear his coronet.

Minalan keeps him at distance from the Castali court for his survival, conscious that the Family's assassins are always within striking distance, but lets him drink, joust, and enjoy a summer before the larger task ahead.

The centerpiece Anguin book. He arrives in Vorone in secret on the eve of Yule, about seventeen years old, leading the Orphan's Band through frozen drifts to the locked summer capital.

“Summer Is Coming”

At the gate Ancient Randaw recognises him on sight. The young duke confirms it formally:

“Aye,” Anguin nodded. “This is the summer capital, is it not?”
“Aye! Aye, Your Grace, but . . . pardon me for saying it, but is this not the eve of Yule?”
Anguin smiled at the man. “Summer is coming, my friend. For all of the Wilderlands. Now, in my own name to my own sworn man in my own city, will you please open that godsdamn gate and let us in before we freeze on the spot?”

— Court Wizard

Inside the wall a drunken lieutenant insists the duke is a Castali prisoner and tells the rider on horseback to wait until morning. Anguin gives his answer cold:

Your liege lord and master of this town, Anguin.

— Duke Anguin II of Alshar, Court Wizard

The Orphan's Band secures the palace within the hour. Anguin establishes an independent court that night with Count Angrial as prime minister, Count Salgo as warlord, Pentandra as Court Wizard, and Father Amus as steward.

The Stone Hall and Baron Edmarin

His very first court session is convened in the dust and cobwebs of the Stone Hall at midnight, on the throne his father once occupied. The interim warden, Baron Edmarin of House Eith, is dragged from his bed in his nightshirt and forced to his knees:

They call me the Orphan Duke of a Broken Duchy.

— Anguin, addressing the empty Stone Hall, Court Wizard

He coaxes Edmarin into a courtier's elaborate self-defence about the value of a baron's honest counsel, then runs him through with the traveling sword at his hip:

He also said that foolish and unwise counsel should be ripped out ruthlessly. . . . In my opinion, Baron Edmarin, that was very bad counsel you just gave me. My father may have depended upon the advice of his great nobles, but he is dead now. I am not.

— Duke Anguin, executing Baron Edmarin, Court Wizard

By ancient Alshari custom the duke holds power of life and death over his vassals; failure of service equals treason in war. The Stone Hall judgment is the moment the Orphan Duke ceases being a captive symbol and becomes a sovereign.

Holding the Half-Ruined Duchy

He spends the rest of the book contending with bandits, refugees, the Brotherhood of the Rat's slave ring, and the daily realities of governing a duchy that holds only the slice of land between the Land of Scars and the Penumbra. Recovery of Vorone is disrupted when a dragon destroys his palace, fodder for mocking Castali ballads about the “hapless Orphan Duke” — precisely the underestimation Minalan and Pentandra cultivate.

Tyndal and Rondal infiltrate Enultramar and document Anguin's standing there. The rebel Count of Rhemes publicly claims Anguin is a Castali captive while privately fearing his return; the Shadowmage shows the boy duke is no longer a useful fiction.

Rondal speaks openly of “His Grace Duke Anguin II” and his independent rule of the Wilderlands. Still formally loyal to Rard and Grendine — the aunt and uncle who orphaned him — Anguin is emphatically not the Family's puppet, and Castal can no longer pretend otherwise.

The Hapless Orphan Duke (As the Castali See Him)

At court Tavard and Count Moran snipe at him relentlessly. Songs about the “hapless Orphan Duke” whose own palace fell to a dragon are popular at Castabriel. Minalan welcomes the underestimation:

None of that was known at the Castali ducal court. They saw Anguin as a young backwoods buffoon, weak, poor, stupid and pretentious, barely scraping by in the rustic Wilderlands. And they saw the remainder of his rebellious realm as ripe for conquest.

— Minalan, Necromancer

Behind that mask the duke buries himself in court details, pays his men on time, gets the local estates planted in spring, and has Salgo drilling a credible Wilderlord force in the city. Pentandra reports him to Minalan with measured pride:

Anguin isn't content to be known to history as merely the Orphan Duke. He plots to restore his rule over all Alshar.

— Pentandra, Necromancer

Sovereign Permission for Olum Seheri

Because Olum Seheri technically lies in Alshari territory, Minalan must seek Anguin's sovereign permission to mount the operation. The council convenes at Carmella's newly-built Anguin's Tower — a holding she has named for him — with Pentandra, Salgo, Angrial, the Estasi Order, and the Tera Alon delegation.

Minalan reads the boy across the table:

Anguin looked in good health and fine spirits, I was gratified to see. . . . He looked cocky and ambitious, not tired and overwhelmed. That was a good sign.

— Minalan, Necromancer

Anguin overrules Angrial's caution and grants permission — on one explosive condition. He intends to go on the raid himself and personally rescue Princess Rardine from her Olum Seheri cell:

This threat is to my realm. It is my cousin who is held hostage, in my own lands. It is my duty to see to her rescue and to see for myself the festering sore that overlooks the only route connecting the Wilderlands to Enultramar.

— Anguin, council at Anguin's Tower, Necromancer

If I am to claim the reward, it will be because it was my hands that broke her fetters. Honor demands it.

— Anguin, Necromancer

The reward, of course, is the three Gilmoran baronies Rard pledged to whoever brought Rardine home alive. The Orphan Duke has spotted that owning rich Gilmoran ground would put a Castali king in the awkward position of granting an Alshari duke a foothold across the border.

He grants Timberwatch to the Estasi Order for use as a remote training and evaluation site, on condition that they also train his own men there. Pentandra also reports he has survived eleven or twelve assassination attempts since taking Vorone.

The Restoration of Enultramar

Eight hundred loyal Wilderlords (the “Glorious Victors”) infiltrate the rebel south, spark a counter-rebellion against the Five Counts, and return Anguin triumphantly to Falas. The capital lines its streets to cheer the Orphan Duke into the city of his fathers. The Four Counts are deposed and mostly executed or exiled, and the Coral Seat is his.

On the seat of Alshar, Anguin formally elevates Minalan to Count Palatine of the Magelaw — the legal foundation for everything Vanador and the Magelaw later become:

For good or ill, Anguin virtually gave me this entire land to rule as I saw fit. It is to be the abode of the magi, our own lands and our own ways.

— Minalan, on his palatinate, Thaumaturge

The Wedding to Princess Rardine

The wedding follows just after Midsummer at Falas, used by Anguin as a tangible sign of his rule over the once-rebellious capital. The bride wears Alshari blue and green:

Princess Rardine handled the meeting with grace and poise I was unsure she possessed. She was wearing the colors of Alshar, blue and green, with a newly-wrought crown befitting her rank. . . . She looked almost a wife to Anguin, already, a duchess-to-be and bride.

— Minalan, Thaumaturge

Pentandra describes the political reality of the match to a sceptical Minalan:

Anguin is no puppet! He's overruled Rardine a dozen times in matters of policy. In open court. . . . She seems to welcome the correction, and she supports her intended husband all the more forcefully. It matters not what Anguin does. Where Rardine is concerned, his word is law, and she is the enforcer of that law.

— Pentandra to Minalan, Thaumaturge

Minalan also notes how the man Anguin has become carries the room:

Over them all, Anguin ruled both in practical terms and socially. The Orphan Duke strode and spoke with full confidence, greeting us all by name and laughing at casual jests as they were inevitably made. He was a man of good humor, for one who had been so touched by tragedy. And he seemed genuinely happy when he spoke of his bride.

— Minalan, Thaumaturge

At the boar hunt the day before the ceremony, a slip of his heel sends Anguin within striking range of a seven-inch tusker; he kills the boar himself and earns the gentlemen's respect. Minalan and Alya lodge with Pentandra at her Tower of Sorcery in Falas (her official seat as Court Wizard) for the week of festivities, with House Bimin pulled awkwardly through the Ways for the ceremony. The wedding stabilises Anguin's relationship with the Castali crown, irritates Grendine, and challenges Tavard's position as heir.

Anguin's decision to peel off the Magelaw and the Wilderlaw as palatinates reduces the slice of duchy he must personally administer and lets him concentrate on a still-bubbling Enultramar. Pentandra calls it shrewd: “It will take years for the duchy to properly recover. But the wedding will help. Everyone likes a wedding.”

Anguin now formally rules both the Wilderlands and reconquered Enultramar from Falas, occupying the Summer Palace at Vorone periodically. His and Rardine's “lusty union” is a frequent (and resentful) subject of Tavard's letters from Castabriel.

Alshar–Castal tensions simmer because his duchy reclaims Gilmoran lands the Castali crown had been quietly annexing during his exile. The duke who was once a stage-prop is becoming a regional power.

Plots against Anguin continue. Pentandra reports he is on perhaps his eleventh assassination attempt of the year. He is consolidating rule in Enultramar against former slavers, the remnants of the Brotherhood of the Rat, and Nemovort-aligned cults probing the Shallow Sea.

Although Anguin himself is offstage in this Footwizard expedition, his Tower Arcane in Falas (the rebuilt court wizard's seat) is the Alshari operations centre against the undead, and his quiet authorisation underwrites Pentandra's campaign at Caramas.

Two Years Restored

Anguin and Rardine have been ruling from Falas for two years, the streets of the capital still occasionally gossiping about the cheering throngs that lined them on his return. The southern nobility struggle to submit to his authority while pleading loyalty:

How were we to know that the Orphan Duke would return? The Five Counts had secure control over the government. They were executing dissenters every week. Anguin was in exile. Prisoner of Castal. We had no choice. We had to do what was best for our houses.

— Falasi nobleman to Pentandra, Hedgemage

Pentandra answers with the duke's working policy:

Duke Anguin, by Trygg's holy grace, has not sought to punish those who did not rise against the rebels, only those who boldly sided with the usurpers. They are dead or dispossessed from their patrimony, now. . . . Be thankful you were not so stupid as to support the Five Counts when there was a live duke ready to return.

— Pentandra, Hedgemage

“Good Duke Anguin”

Commoners further south remember him better than the magnates. In Farise an old grandmother tells her grandson:

Yes, we do hate the bloody Censors. Thankfully, good Duke Anguin chased them away.

— Farisi grandmother, Hedgemage

Rardine's captivity at Olum Seheri is publicly used to fuel Anguin's anti-slavery campaign in the Shallow Sea. Rondal is now seated permanently at Skeldor Hall as a trusted member of the Alshari court, helping Pentandra run the Tower Arcane and keeping the Coastlords with rajira in line. Rardine has begun openly using Pentandra as her right hand.

Anguin sits on the High Council as Count of Falas as well as Duke. He leads the push to ban tournaments and festivals in order to pay down the counts' arrears, an unpopular but disciplined fiscal stance from a man who watched his own treasury rebuilt out of stolen Rat gold.

His ambitious Alshari shipbuilding programme is draining shipwrights south from Castal and Remere, a quiet economic shift the Castali crown only half-recognises. The man Castabriel still mocks as the “hapless Orphan Duke” is, in this novella, the council's most fiscally conservative voice.

Anguin and Rardine are the joint rulers of a consolidated Alshar and have a daughter. Pentandra carries messages between Minalan and them; Rardine, now a fully-formed political operator, challenges Pentandra's reports about Minalan's conduct on her husband's behalf and even Pentandra acknowledges her growing reach inside the duchy.

Anguin's court has become the model of the post-restoration Narasi state: a duke who rules in earnest, a duchess feared by the high nobility, a Court Wizard who is also a baroness, and a Tower Arcane that is an open ally of the Magelaw to its north.

Anguin as Counter-Heir

Minalan's deal with Queen Grendine for tutoring Prince Tavard in statecraft includes a pointed proviso: any lessons given to Tavard must also be given to Anguin and Count Camavon of Remere.

If Tavard should get himself accidentally killed on the tournament field, for instance, who would become regent of the realm? The law says that it would go to one of the other ducal houses. The same law Rard invoked when he took Anguin under his protection after the unfortunate, untimely, and completely unexpected demise of Duke Lenguin. In that case the regent would act as sovereign. So I want to prepare both of the other ducal houses for that eventuality.

— Minalan to Queen Grendine, Preceptor

The god Slagur, in the chess metaphor he uses with Minalan, places Anguin's knight on the board as a credible alternative monarch:

Then there is Duke Anguin, who has nearly the same claim, not just because he's Rard's nephew, but also his son-in-law. He is also your liege lord and an ally of yours. . . . He has the benefit of a very clever wife who shares much of the power and understanding of Queen Grendine, as well as her ambition.

— Slagur, Preceptor

Slagur warns, however, that Anguin's ascension would create its own problems — he is Castal's liege only by accident of survivorship, and his rise would not necessarily mean an easier reign:

As much as you favor Anguin, I think you know his rise would involve other difficulties for you and your goals. The others might be better rulers than Tavard, but they seem more valuably placed where they are, not on the throne.

— Slagur to Minalan, Preceptor

Pentandra, more bluntly, accuses Minalan of being compromised:

You are compromised! You want Anguin and Rardine on that throne, not Tavard and his idiot wife!

— Pentandra to Minalan, Preceptor

The Surprise Visit to Falas

Minalan ports unannounced into the palace at Falas to recruit Anguin's aid against the Nemovort Vichetral and the Caramas swamps. Once he has produced the Magolith from a hoxter to prove his identity, the duke listens out an entire ten-minute briefing and signs on:

That . . . that might actually work. And it would, indeed, be enough to motivate my men, I think.

— Duke Anguin, agreeing to commit Alshari troops, Preceptor

Minalan reflects on Rardine, now seated beside Anguin in court, with Slagur's description ringing in his ear: “a very clever wife who shares much of the power and understanding of Queen Grendine.”

Anguin is established nobility now: duke, father, and an effective political partner to Rardine, who is pregnant again at another royal wedding. Remnants of the Brotherhood of the Rat and Alshari exiles still trouble his coasts, and rebel ships still occasionally challenge the Alshari fleet, but the duke the Family once hoped to swallow has outlasted its attempts.

The Orphan Duke who arrived in Vorone on the eve of Yule with a borrowed traveling sword has, by the close of the main series, become the keystone of a tripartite kingdom — a sovereign whose wife Pentandra openly compares to her own mother, and whose Magelaw vassal is the Spellmonger himself.