Seeker of Thrones 1-2
Chapter: 1
“[…] then there is the one [called] Ghost Maker, a man of great repute and peculiar habit. It is said he is so skilled with an edge, he killed the great iron-skinned Champion of Urash with a scissor blade. None who are present at the duel dispute this account other than to say the scissors also did not survive the conflict.”
– Histories of the Yellow City, volume 4
Why is this comic so good? I demand to know!
And the KING wields the name SCISSORS to cut herself into finer shapes still.
The ruler on her throne with her scepter commands her subjects.
let us all make obeisance before her.
all that stray hair is going to be an itchy bitch to clean up
this is quite sudden and rude of allison. “right to be here” – they earned that by saving her life. it’s right of her to want answers, but this feels like the power is going straight to her head … which perhaps it is
When confronted with an angel or a demon, it is the height of folly to assume anything is given out of benevolence. White Chain told Allison that she should have handed her over to the concordance, who would have killed her to take the key. Ciocie tried told White Chain to do just that when she realized what the key was in her head, and Allison knows she stole one before. Princess was a former Ebon devil that tried to cheat and kill her, and who isn’t technically bound to her. Nyave doesn’t even know about the Tree of Woe, as far as Allison is aware, she has no reason to believe that she was saved from anything or owes Allison anything. Finally, both White Chain and Cio have been very unwilling to give her straight answers about themselves.
Allison is Royalty, and like any monarch, she must careful about her courtiers. None of them owe her anything, and more than half have tried to use or kill her. They don’t even own the ship. She is right, none of them have the right to be there.
I would be surprised if it didn’t! It is, after all, already there, in the Star upon her Brow.
I think it’s more the running frustration of being out of the loop. Since she’s embarked on this whole adventure, she’s been surrounded by people who are infinitely more aware of what’s going on and who are keeping secrets which frequently are very, very germane to what’s going on.
Right now, we probably know more about Nyave than she does. Now that she’s sober, she probably has plenty to wonder about why Princess Mamoru Moonshine is along for the ride. Meanwhile, Cio and White Chain are the freaking embodiment of what I was talking about last paragraph.
At the very least, Allison has resolved to stop being a peasant or puppet, and if the others have some sort of secret designs or intended uses for her, then she’s going to know about it.
I don’t know.
She went to someone’s home, survived solely due to the evil godess deciding not to murder her, murdered the evil godess husband (fine, he was an undead evil demon tree anyway), likely ignited a multiversal war, tried to run away, failed, and now she’s threatening the comrades that pulled her ass out of the fire and saved her life from her own poor decision making. Cio specifically saved her how many times now? Three? Five?
I’d be cooler with the potential multiversal war if she at least acknowledged it might be a bad thing(‘okay there’s an incoming war, but fuck that tree needed to die. Sides Mottom possible exaggerated due to her fears. Or. I’ll need to deal with the rest of the seven anyway… somehow.’).
It seems less like any kind of sovereign and more your classic rpg murderhobo.
“Kill some stuff. Ignore any possible consequences. Treat your party like crap.”
Reach heaven through emotional violence!
Mottom still lives, so multiversal war has yet to happen, and Allison has at least stopped the bloodshed from the Tree of Woe. Also, her goal is to find Zaid, so that means she will have to but heads with the Seven. Also, though Allison has the Key of all Kings shoved in her head, she can’t use it’s full power consistently, so fighting Mottom would have been a bad idea, and though her compatriots here did get her a ship, it was ultimately her use of the key that got them out of that situation.
Also, thanks to White Chain and Cio, she now has a horde of mercenaries after her. White Chain and Princess have both expressed a desire to simply kill her, and Cio has consistently prioritized her fanfic over actually helping Allison. Really, the only one there who doesn’t deserve this is Nyave, but she had the opportunity to simply go home or wherever she wished without entering to chaos of Allison’s life. After everything that has happened to her since coming to throne, Allison has every reason to be suspicious and irritated. And for all the mistakes she made, she is still at least on equal footing morally with the rest of them.
And really, it’s entirely reasonable for a person to ask, “Please tell me everything that could potentially cause trouble for us down the line”.
Hell, it’s entirely reasonable for her to ask who they are and what they want from her. They’re the ones who have been lying and/or keeping secrets.
She might have been saved by Cio, but the point is that she still was dragged into this whole thing by force. Doesn’t matter if she’s accepted it, she’s tired of the lies and coverups and wants straight answers for once, and if not, she’ll go solo with the one person that hasn’t lied to her yet, herself.
She has lied to herself most consistently. This story, like all, is about learning which lies are worth believing in.
Well, look at the Blade of Want, the continuous cutting motion of Royalty, ignorance as enlightenment… the whole philosophy here seems geared towards making you a genuinely terrible person. It makes you powerful and gets you what you want (and makes you really cool to write a comic about, apparently), but it also probably turns you into what we’d recognise as a villain at the end.
That said, Allison just woke up after a battle with a god. I think introspection will come later. Right now, she can be excused for just wanting some god damn grasp on the situation.
You all make good points.
And it’s true trying to be leaderly and assertive when you are not used to that and don’t quite know how often actually makes you an arrogant bit of a douche.
So maybe it’s just that she has more to learn.
Though if she does go full Aesma/seven on us, there could a cool crossover here with Discworld’s Samuel Vimes.
“Royalty you say?” The grimey old man coughed, his cheap cigarr spreading a rancid smell trough the room. “Never been much for kings.”
The small letter of the last word hung in the air like an anti-syllable.
“I can make your head explode.”
The man nodded. “I can see how that is an important part of governmental administrative power.” He said, absent mindedly patting the rather oversized crossbow at his hip. “More importantly I can make coffee. Only recently perfected my recipe actually. Do you want some?”
Alison considered. A king was not slave to temptation or want.
But she was already halfway trough the seven and a cup would be really fucking great right now.
And then together they fight crime!
Well, it’s hard to say anything concrete when Zoss is the only one who’s used the Blade of Want and all we know of his rule is what White Chain, Cio, and Juggernaut have said. Was he a Napoleon, Hitler, something inbetween, something better or worse? Impossible to tell at this point, though White Chain’s account seems to imply that he was a fair ruler who kept things stable until the Demiurge War.
Yes! Can’t wait to find out why Vladok-cum-Princess is along for the ride
Can’t wait to find out why Vladok-cum-Princess is along for the ride!
it would seem to me that by naming & taming the beast our rising king aliceUN has become her master as well
Which makes me wonder who named Cio. If it was Praman Nand, how did she walk away from her job so easily? If it was someone else, how did she end up with Praman Nand? And who could have possibly (aside from AL-YISUN) named and tamed a black?
I am so attracted to this woman.
Sounds like I’ve got competition!
When One who has had power thrust upon them by Another finds the reins, One is prone to taking the power where One wills, not where Another desires or commands. YISUN help those who stand in One’s way.
For someone almost half empty, she has alot of sass. I love it.
All this blood loss and you’ve chosen to be salty
Al-Yisun is truly learning the Art of Cutting. See how she her hair in one stroke, using the dull edge of the scissors.
A good queen should always have few threats of execution up her sleeve. Impulsive threats of death if you are not obeyed works wonders on royal servants, treasurers, your top generals and loathsome would-be suitors.
In the light of YISUN, needles flash like spears, butter knives glint like axes, and scissors glitter like swords. It is perhaps a comfort then that few believe this, and thus are these deadly implements sheathed in the scabbard of lies.
A character is cutting her hair, here comes character development~
Yea that’s pretty much what I thought too. Why does it always come to cutting hair.
Why not grow a beard? People grow beards when they want to become badass. Or maybe an 80’s porn stash.
Al-YS-UN would look rather odd if she grew a beard.
Yes, but you do not deny the porn stash. Just imagine. The new conquest of heaven being lead by a Freddie Mercury.
“He looked up from where he had been carefully smoothing the embroidered cover, and seeing his face, Costis felt the shock like a physical blow. If Attolia could look like a queen, Eugenides was like a god revealed, transformed into something wholly unfamiliar, surrounded by the cloth-of-gold bedcover like a deity on an altar, passionless and calculating.”
Turner, Megan Whalen. The King of Attolia (p. 228).
Upon my youth I was given a writer, Mills
who would by habit list names and minutes.
I hated that about him.
True Royalty
Princess’ face. “You what?”
Did she cut her hair with the blunt edge of the scissors? How….
The Royal Art is to cut.
True royalty could cut Throne with a finger, should they desire. Cutting one’s hair with the dull edge of a cutting implement is child’s play in comparison
Yeah — at first I thought the lines around her hands and arms were “shake lines”… but they’re also around her forearms, when those are resting on the bed.
It looks to me like as of panel 2, she’s tapping her Key to display an aura of power, then channeling the same though the scissors to cut her hair with the visibly closed scissors.
Good reason for her shipmates to be intimidated and do as she says… if they’re smart.
It’s a scissor blade. We have them back on Earth. Well, my Earth anyhow. The insides and the outsides are sharp.
MAKE OVEEERRRR
It’s still a cutting motion, even if it is on a smaller scale.
I’m slightly disappointed that she didn’t finish in a single cut though.
The scissors are glowing. Is Allison learning to use the Art, perhaps?
Kingly Allison goes straight to adding a new addition to her demesne, nice.
Now where’s her horse?
Allison.
No, stop.
You’re going to get hair all over the bed, Allison.
It’s going to be irritating as hell at night when you try to sleep on it.
I’m here mostly for teh lulz. I’d like to spend the rest of my minute with death metal.