Shining Light on Our Ladies - Cont'd: Part II Marian L. Thorpe and Lady Dagney

A series where my guests are female writers 

talking about their female characters

(and yes, I'll be doing the chaps next!)

Continued from Yesterday:

Marian L. Thorpe's

The Ladies of Empire’s Legacy II

The Lady Dagney 

We meet the Lady Dagney in the second book of my trilogy, Empire’s Hostage. Lena, the narrator of the trilogy, is standing as hostage to her country in a treaty with the northern land of Linrathe, and has been sent as a result to the school (Ti’ach) where Dagney teaches.

“Did the Comiádh say who your tutor would be?”

“I am to work with him.”

He looked mildly surprised. “Then it is history, and politics, that interest you?”

I considered. “I suppose. History, anyway. What does the Lady Dagney teach, then?”

“Languages, and music, and the danta.”

“What are danta?”

“Long poems set to music,” he explained, “that tell stories about past kings, or battles, or other things; our history, in a way, but with a lot of other things—magic, and giants, and winged horses—mixed in. Sometimes they are fairly horrible, like the song about Ingjol, who killed his enemies by burning down the hall they slept in, and sometimes they are more like stories for children.”

Dagney is called the Lady Dagney for several reasons: she is a land-holder’s daughter, but she is also the Lady of the Ti’ach, not only a teacher, but the house-mother, essentially, which also carries the honorific. And she is the head of the bardic (scáeli’en) council, which gives her yet a third right to use the title!

When we meet Dagney she’s in her late fifties, serene and wise; she reminds Lena a little of her own mother, and so she warms to her immediately. She’s unmarried. Picture her being of medium height, with dark hair beginning to turn grey, and calm blue eyes. She’s not an old woman, though. When the leader of Linrathe commands Lena to accompany him north, Dagney also invites herself. A chaperone is needed for propriety, she tells Lena, but she has songs to collect:

    “The songs are not written down, or not all the versions of them, anyhow. Almost each village or torp has a slightly different version, of the words, or tune, or both. I visit, and talk, and sing with the people, and write down what I hear. I have recently turned my thoughts to a set of ballads about two sisters, and so I will do my research while we travel. Two pots on one fire.”

She also has a wonderful sense of humour, revealed in this passage where she and Lena are talking about why Linrathe’s leader wants Lena’s company – and her thoughts.

“You know it will be about how women of the Empire live, about your right—or lack of it—to marry, to raise children with their father present, to be part of a family.”

“Or,” I argued, “about the constraints put on the women of Linrathe, to marry, to have and raise children only with a man, and to believe that is the only family.”

“Well,” Dagney replied, her face impassive, “even your villages haven't found a way for a woman to have a child without a man, have they?”

Dagney plays an important role in the life of more than one character in my series, and she reappears in later books. She’s one of my favourite supporting characters, a woman who has built an independent life for herself in a country where that is rare. Dagney’s not without her secrets, too, although that won’t be revealed in the first trilogy.

Empire’s Hostage: https://relinks.me/B073YGWHYK

Empire’s Legacy omnibus: https://relinks.me/B08154VVP1

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next: Part III

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