[Glorantha] Re: Queen Ernalda

[Joerg Baumgartner]

Peter:
>>In addition to this, I note that the myth of "How Peace was Made"
>>(KoS p73) has the Guards about to sell Ernalda to Troll Slavers
>>before her rescue at Orlanth's hands.

Donald Oddy:
> A troll slaver, I wonder who that could be? Perhaps Argen Argar
> who turns up elsewhere as another of Ernalda's husband/protectors.
> Looks like the particular husband/protector that Orlanth saves
> her from depends on the myth.

And Argan Argar's plan to buy Ernalda's freedom (or at least queendom)
gets thwarted by that upstart Orlanth.

> I'm sure Ernalda was properly
> greatful to Orlanth each time, not that she arranged the contest,
> oh no of course not.

That's how a queen reigns in a world dominated by men...



> Another case of taking Orlanth's viewpoint as the authoritive one.
> We know myths vary between viewpoints and if we take Orlanth's
> view of Ernalda as described in KoS she appears as nothing more
> than the wife who bears him children and causes him problems
> with her demands. I'm looking at the Ernaldan viewpoint in an
> attempt to discover what her myths are - what makes her Queen
> Ernalda.

> Orlanth is powerful enough to free himself from the underworld
> and return from the dead in spite of having no life powers
> whatsoever. Ernalda who is intimately associated with the life
> rune just sits around waiting to be rescued. How plausable is
> that?

Eminently so: Ernalda has a problem that needs solving. Husband Orlanth
ranges about fighting a useless retreat against the Bad Things. She needs
him to do something else, so she enters a magical sleep which finally
motivates Orlanth to set a couple of things right. Note that she manages
to support the LBQ while sleeping, sending a feather of hope in deepest
despair.


>>Given that the Esrolian culture was formed in the Great Darkness
>>and formed by rejecting the traditions of the Storm Tribe, their
>>myths are comparatively late (as late or later than the Vingkotlings).
>>As a result, I'm not convinced then that Ernaldan myths of Esrolia
>>can be used in recover the mythology of the original Ernalda.

> You are assuming that the myths of the Earth tribe were lost when
> Ernalda married into the Storm tribe.

They weren't, but then a lot of them were Green Age myths which lost their
meaning in a world where the changes caused by them already existed, and
required different answers.

Green Age myths are delivered in "how things got wrong, but less wrong
than possible" mode, not in "everything was bright and shiny" (wait,
that's Golden Age, rather "everyone was well-fed and comfortably warm").


> Given that Ty Kora Tek is a
> keeper of valuables against future need it is far more likely that
> even if they fell in disuse the myths were remembered. It is also
> possible to HQ to before Ernalda's marriage to find them.

Most Ernalda the Healer myths are set in the Golden Age and tell about
life in the Palace, and righting wrongs.

The Heortlings have a fairly full assortment of fire deities as husbands
of various Ernalda's handmaidens. I wonder whether any male Heortlings
worship any of these directly, other than Gustbran.

> So I
> assume that they are still known but not talked about to avoid
> pointless arguments - let Orlanth thinks he knows it all. Whether
> these are the mythology of the original Ernalda is irrelevant just
> as we don't know or care whether the Sartarite myths of Orlanth
> are his original mythology.

Some of us do care, you know...

> The myths I'm looking at are those of
> Ernalda today which I suspect vary very little between Sartar and
> Esrolia.

Especially since one of the most powerful earth temples in Quiviniland
possibly was founded by a mixed group of Heortlings and Esrolians, to wit,
Colymar and his affinal kin who seem to have had Esrolian origins.

> Probably the key difference is that in Sartar Ernalda for
> the most part trusts Orlanth to rule with her influence whereas
> in Esrolia she doesn't.

Or rather that Sartar doesn't offer any alternative kings, except for a
few Elmali clans and one even stranger Argan Argari group.