This chapter begins by introducing us to Helda.  Helda had a kid who was a graceling, but King Stupid Pants didn’t think that swimming was a useful trait (…well, they are a landlocked kingdom, I guess) so he got sent home.  So…Helda came to work at the nursery?  …did she do this when her kid was taken, or after he was sent home?  And if his mother worked in the nursery at the time he was sent ‘home,’ does that mean he actually stayed put, or did Helda send him packing back to their hometown by himself?

You know what, this book is bad enough.  If we’re going to be forced to make assumptions, let’s make nice ones for a change.  I decree that Helda came to work at the castle after her kid was an adult.

Helda takes a special interest in Katsa for absolutely no reason.

“The first man you killed, My Lady,” Helda said. “That cousin. Did you mean to kill him?”

It was a question no one had ever actually asked her. […]

“No,” Katsa said. “I only meant to keep him from touching me.”

“Then you are dangerous, My Lady, to people you don’t like. But perhaps you’d be safe as a friend.”

Again, why was everyone not asking this stuff?  I mean, it’s not really a matter of sympathy or empathy, it’s actually self-serving to ask this.  You want to know why the little murder-touch-girl did it, so you can avoid whatever her trigger is.  And if she did it for no reason, you want to know that, too, because you’re going to approach that differently.

I am not impressed by characters that are nicer, smarter, or whatever-er simply because everyone around them is too broken to live.

Anyway, so Helda decides that she’ll be Katsa’s servant, because Katsa needs a girl to tell her about girl things like menstruation.  Because…boys are incapable of saying “hey, you’re going to bleed once a month, but don’t freak out because that’s normal”?  I mean, yeah, it’s nice to have the advice of someone who’s actually experienced it, but guys are not incapable of discussing that stuff, and it would be great if people would stop implying otherwise.

Also, I guess all those kids that Helda was caring for in the nursery just…aren’t special enough to keep her attention anymore.

She didn’t know what one did with a contradictory servant; she guessed that Randa would go into a rage, but she was afraid of her own rages.

You know what would be handy?  Katsa actually having a rage.  Because she doesn’t.  At all.  Ever.  None.  There is no rage.  How the fuck is she scared of something that doesn’t exist?

I mean, that’s possible.  She’s got (what everyone claims) is a killing grace, so she could be afraid of any emotion and just assume it’s a rage because everyone freaks out when she so much as raises a hand.  But we don’t get to see that, because this is extremely inefficient writing.  There’s lots of chances for showing, lots of information we could be getting from character interactions and such, but the flashbacks and infodumps are heavily focused on non-character facts, and if there’s any interaction at all it’s always positive.  We’re told that Katsa has this or that trouble, but anything we actually see is people being nice to her while she keeps perfect control of her actions and has only appropriate responses. 

Hell, last chapter she even bantered with Raffin and threw stuff at him, so the ‘every little aggression is rage’ theory doesn’t hold water there.

This subplot doesn’t hold water because the book can’t stand to give Katsa any actual faults or show any actual consequences.  The best it can manage is to tell us they exist, just, you know, off page, out of sight, in the past.

By the way, this whole chapter has been flashback so far.  We’re still in it.  Did anyone really need this whole backstory to justify the fact that Katsa…has a servant?  Seriously, you could have just said “and this is my servant, Helda.  I went through a lot of them because they were scared of me, but then Helda got assigned to the spot and she don’t scare easy, so she stuck.  We’re cool now.”  I would have rolled along with that.  I didn’t really need an explanation for why someone was magically able to stand Katsa presence, especially since Katsa has yet to do anything scary.

When the flashback is finally over, we see Katsa in her room complaining about having to look nice.  She doesn’t want to wear the red dress Helda picked out.

“If there’s anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I’ll hit him in the face.”

First, heh.  I like snarky Katsa.  Second, aren’t you supposed to have rage issues?  I know funny lines are funny and all, but characterization doesn’t take a back seat just because you want to make a joke.

She held a tangle of hair before her eyes and pulled at it, savagely. “I should like to cut it all off,” she said. “It’s not worth the nuisance.”

Well, why don’t you?

“If you ran a brush through it once every day while you were traveling, My Lady, this wouldn’t happen.”

Katsa snorted. “Giddon would get a good laugh out of that. My attempts to beautify myself.”

…that’s not an answer.  If her concerns were pragmatic, she’d cut her hair and not care what anyone things, or else she’d brush her hair because there’s more reasons than just beauty to do that.  It makes it more manageable, plus, she should be putting her hair up if she’s concerned with fighting/etc.  Hair that flies everywhere and gets in your face is not conducive to physical activity.  But no, Katsa’s only concern is that she’ll look like she cares about appearance, and that’s it.  She keeps her hair because…reasons, but then she won’t take care of it, but then she’ll complain about the result of not taking care of it.

God, you are such a teenager, Katsa.  I really wouldn’t mind if someone would just at least point out that you’re saying stupid shit.

Dear Helda. She saw what Katsa was and what she did, and Helda didn’t deny that Katsa was that person. But she couldn’t fathom a lady who didn’t want to be beautiful, who didn’t want a legion of admirers. And so she believed Katsa was both people, though Katsa couldn’t imagine how she reconciled them in her mind.

…I kind of hate you, book.

It’s the ‘person’ part of this that really sticks in me.  “She acknowledges my personhood but also thinks I like girl things.  How can this be?  Everyone knows that girl things and personhood don’t go together!”

Also, the fact that you refuse to chop off your hair despite complaining about it and spend more concern on what Giddon thinks of your grooming than you do on actual grooming seems to indicate that you actually do care, you just have self esteem issues.  So there.

It wasn’t that [Randa] was unjust, except perhaps to those who wronged him. It was more that he wanted things the way he wanted them, and if things weren’t that way, he might decide that he’d been wronged.

“He’s not unjust, he simply has no sense of justice and instead rules by his arbitrary wishes and desires instead.”

Book, I think you need a dictionary.

You know what?  Randa’s kind of growing on me.  For as much as the book keeps trying to paint him as a bad guy, he’s coming off more chaotic neutral.  He’s got power, he uses that power to administer his kingdom and doesn’t shirk said duty, but he’s got his selfish side, but he doesn’t apply it maliciously.  He rests in this grey area of being not a bad guy, not a good guy, but simply a guy with a lot of power that goes every which way.  That’s…actually rather fascinating as a character concept.  One that, while logically should be the most common kind of king, doesn’t get seen in fiction often enough.

At this dinner, Katsa does indeed have to sit next to some stranger noble named Davit.  He’s described as being initially nervous around her, but quickly warms up to her and has a pleasant, easy conversation.

Wow.  Yeah.  Your life is so hard, Katsa.  It takes all of a couple minutes for people to adore you, instead of that happening instantly.  I feel so bad for you, poor dear.

Prince Hot Eyes is at the dinner, too, but they still don’t talk.

Davit asks to talk to the Council, and through a bit of round-about sly talking implies that he has information about Prince Old Guy’s kidnapping. 

Katsa overhears Randa telling some story of her exploits and laughing and decides she needs to leave because she just can’t take it.  Okay, that’s cool.  When she stands up, all the gentlemen stand up as well, because polite.  Giddon shows concern for her and offers to go with her, but backs down when she gets miffed.

…so, what part of this is supposed to show how Katsa is universally feared and reviled and has no friends?

She crossed the marble floor, pulling pins from her hair. She sighed as her curls fell around her shoulders and the tension left her scalp. It was the hairpins, and the dress, and the shoes that pinched her feet. It was having to hold her head still and sit straight, it was the infuriating earrings that brushed against her neck. That was why she couldn’t stand to spend one moment longer at her uncle’s fine dinner.

I get what’s going on here, really.  She’s upset, and instead of facing what she’s upset about because it’s indistinct, she latches on to whatever distinct thing is annoying her as a substitute.  “I’m not crying, I’ve got something in my eye.”  But…this sort of thing really works better in first person, because right now it’s not Katsa saying she’s really mad at her dress instead of her feelings, it’s the narration saying that.

This book is trying to have it both ways.  It wants the infodumping abilities and the lyrical, distant style of a 3^rd person fantasy, but it also wants to get inside Katsa’s head the same way a 1^st person story would.  Each POV has limitations, but those limits are part of what make them actually work.