Story for the Day: Connlaith Arrtacht

I have a document which contains every nation's history, leaders, customs, government, and holidays across the Two Continents. This is an incredibly large document and serves as my groundwork for many chapters throughout the books. Characters often discuss the history of their given nations with one another, venerate holidays, and even enjoy reenactments of their nation's legends and myths. Today is Connlaith Arrtacht, the day that Frewyn won the First Galleisian War with the help of a woman named Connlaith, one of the Nnodainya who was captured by a Galleisian knight and happened to overhear all the Galleisian strategies while serving as a thrall at the knight's table. To Frewyn, she's a hero and Frewyn's first ever female commander, but to the Nnodaiya, she is quite something else.  


Connlaith Arrtacht, known amongst the Nnodainya as Connlaith’s Folly, was a day upon which the chasteness and submissiveness of their women was to be commended. Connlaith, once a queen of Frewyn, had when young absconded from her clan to escape marriage and security only to be captured by Galleisians and thrown into the throes of vicious thralldom. She remained a thrall to a Galleisian knight only to be deprived every comfort that a life married to a prominent Nnodainya chief might have granted. Beaten, defiled, and a scandalous for having stabbed her betrothed with his own knife and for having betrayed her family’s wishes, Connlaith was left to die in Gallei, to endure a life of penance for the horrid mistake she had made until war between Frewyn and Gallei had broke out and Connlaith was saved by her own tenacity and by the kindness Brave King Breian. Disheveled and imbued with the enemy’s child, Connlaith had made herself forever a pariah to Nnodainya society, but while her clan mourn and lamented her mistake, the rest of Frewyn had gloried in her redemption: though beaten and with child, she had escaped her captor, had taken up a sword, had wandered onto the battlefield, had killed her aggressor, and in so doing had won the favour and admiration of the king. He released her from her bonds, promised to care for her and assist her in raising the child, and through his attention and admiration of her had formed an attachment unshakable. He made her his queen and fought every ensuing battle with her at his side. She was a hero to Frewyn, the image of one who, despite her history, her various misfortunes, and her circumstance, had triumphed over all adversity. The legend, though beloved with many, bore a very different character with the Nnodainya: Connlaith was a traitor who was duly punished by the Gods for her disobedience and who merited all the calamity her diminished consequence had occasioned. She was a horror to them, the worst of women who belied the wants of her family, dishonoured her parents, shamed her clan, and made herself a criminal to gain her freedom. She was vile to them, and thus her faults and failures were used as an example to all Nnodainya women, a lesson from which must be learned the importance of familial loyalty, needful chastity, and marital obedience. 

Comments

  1. What's that old saying? "It's all in how you look at it."

    I do not think the Nnodainya quite got the moral of the story here. Ha! Ha!

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