The Gilded Ones

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-8

Chapters 9-17

Chapters 18-25

Chapters 26-31

Chapters 32-37

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Armor

An important motif, or trope, in the early roots of fantasy—medieval romance—is the arming sequence. A couple examples include the Roman de Silence: a poem about a cross-dressed woman becoming a knight who saves the king with a Moorish sword, and the Amazon warrior Camille being outfitted for battle in the Roman d’Eneas. The arming sequence usually includes a long description of separate pieces of armor as well as weapons. When Deka goes on her first raid, she is given heavy leather armor without much fanfare or description.

However, Deka receives a more formal arming sequence after Calderis makes golden armor out of her blood. Deka’s narration includes:

All the girls leaving today gleam from head to toe in golden armor. Mine has scales to mimic Ixa’s drakos form and jagged spikes all down the back. It’s strangely light and cool, considering that it covers every part of me but my eyes. It vibrates subtly whenever I near it, as does all the other infernal armor (320).

The armor upgrade also coincides with Deka’s growing magical powers. This technique of giving characters better armor as they level up, so to speak, comes from not only the Middle Ages’ tales of Arthur and his knights, but also Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop roleplaying game.

Deka gains a third set of armor with even more description and fanfare. This time, she receives celestial armor from the goddesses: “shimmering white armor [...] It’s infernal armor, I know, but this is a type I’ve never felt before. If regular infernal armor tingles, this explodes like fireworks. A thousand colors ripple across it, like a rainbow reflecting in a lake” (379). This armor is not for battling deathshrieks, as was her gold armor, but for battling the emperor and his jatu. The change of armor symbolizes the change of her opponent and objectives; this is the armor made by women specifically for the liberation of women.

No arming sequence is complete without a description of a character’s weapon. Deka looks in the lake after being outfitted in white and can “barely recognize this girl wearing winged armor and carrying shimmering double swords” (379). While these two shimmering blades are significant in regard to her physical prowess, Deka also has another weapon—her magic. Early in the novel, she thinks, “I’ve been terrified of my ability. But what if it’s a useful weapon—a sword to unsheathe when the situation requires?” (140). This foreshadows how her greatest power is not the ability to physically defeat the emperor and other men with phallic weapons, but to use her magic blood to unite the deathshrieks and alaki, as well as awaken the goddesses.

Masks

In the patriarchal religious texts, the Infinite Wisdoms, women are required to wear masks in public after reaching puberty. These accessories are considered “sacred coverings of purity” (73), signifying that a woman does not have gold blood, and cover the face from forehead to the tip of the nose. Occasionally men wear masks, such as the “courtiers [who] wear masks to show their submission to the emperor the same way women wear masks so as not to offend the eyes of Oyomo” (268). The emperor himself wears a war mask with a sun motif in battle.

The symbolism of the mask changes as Deka learns the true history of her people. At first, she longs to wear a mask and to be pure. Masking would be a mark of acceptance in the village of Irfut. However, once she starts her training as a warrior in Warthu Bera, she “can only imagine how impractical those masks would be during training, with all the sweating and dirt” (147). When visiting the palace, she has to wear a war mask, which makes her hot and sweaty, as well as wondering “why did I ever want to wear these things?” (269). Deka wears a different face covering—a helmet—when she begins to manifest deathshriek features during her magical workings.

After she learns that the Infinite Wisdoms were created by men who imprisoned goddesses and taught that they were demons, Deka becomes completely unmasked. Her acceptance of her divine lineage allows her to show her true face symbolically and literally to the world.

The Sun

There are several sun symbols in the novel. Elders in the religion of the Infinite Wisdoms wear tattoos of “kuru—the symbol of the sun” (17) and temple maidens have a “red sun” (106) tattoo on their hands. However, the most important sun symbol is of an eclipsed sun. Deka sees this seal around Warthu Bera, such as “on the largest stone above the entrance” (107). Eventually, she realizes: “I’ve touched that symbol before, touched it a thousand times before I ever saw it on the seal [...] It’s the same symbol that’s on my mother’s necklace, the one I could never make out because it had become so worn” (123). Through this symbol, Deka learns that her mother wore “the umbra, the emblem of the Shadows” (123); Umu was one of the emperor’s spies.