The Shattered Chain
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The Shattered Chain is a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley in her Darkover series. The Shattered Chain is the first Darkovan novel to explore the world of the Renunciates - the Free Amazons or comhii letzi. The Renunciates are women living in a deeply patriarchal and feudal culture who have renounced both the protection and control of men, cutting their hair and living apart, vowing never to marry di catenas with a man. The Shattered Chain is divided into three parts, the first titled 'Rohana Ardais: Comynara', the second 'Magda Lorne: Terran Agent' and the third, 'Jaelle n'ha Melora: Free Amazon', and each follows one female character's experiences with the Free Amazons of Darkover.
- “While only women can command the power of the matrix and he secret sciences which keep Darkover from Terran hands, in most respects they are still chattles. Yet there are bands of pledged women known as the Free Amazons, equal to men and outside the laws that keep the rest of their sex subservient. And in THE SHATTERED CHAIN, it is these Free Amazons who will prove the key to the Terran-Darkovan Dilemma.” -Taken from the back cover of The Shattered Chain, written by Marion Zimmer Bradley and published by Daw Books Inc.
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[edit] Plot
[edit] Part I: Rohana Ardais, Comynara
In the first section, Lady Rohana Ardais, a middle aged Comyn woman - nobility by birth and possessing the psychic powers of laran, or telepathy in Rohana's case - travels with a band of Renunciates to the city Shainsa to free her kinswoman Melora who had been kidnapped ten years before. Rohana chooses to cut her hair and travel with the women as a Renunciate, into the desert heart of the Dry Towns where women are literally kept in chains by the men who own them. While the women manage to free the heavily pregnant Melora and her ten year old daughter Jaelle, born in Shainsa to her kidnapper-husband, Melora dies giving birth to her son Valentine in the desert, leaving Jaelle in the care of her childhood friend Rohana. The young Jaelle chooses to stay with the Renunciate Kindra, rather than be fostered by Rohana, and the section ends with the child's request: "Foster-mother, will you cut my hair?" and we are left with the very clear impression that Rohana's experiences with the Renunciates and in the Dry Towns have profoundly changed her self-perception as a woman, and of the relationship between the sexes.
[edit] Part II: Magda Lorne, Terran Agent
In the second section of Shattered Chain, twelve years later the Terran agent Magda Lorne assumes Renunciate garb and haircut under the direction of the now middle-aged Rohana. Just as Rohana's journey to rescue Melora was prompted by her male kin's refusal to jeopardise the Domans' political relationship with the Dry Towns by rescuing a woman, Magda is travelling into the Hellers to ransom her kidnapped ex-husband Peter, whom her employers and people - the Terrans - have refused to rescue, again for political reasons.
Magda, however, travels alone, yet coincidentally - or fatefully - comes across a band of real Renunciates led by the now-adult Jaelle, who has chosen the life of the Renunciate, forgoing the privilege, power and cloistered life of a comyn lady. Magda's deceit is uncovered, and the traditional punishment for a woman who takes the guise of a Renunciate without taking their oath - to make the lie truth - is meted out to Magda by Jaelle and her Renunciate sisters. Magda chooses to travel with Jaelle alone to the Nevarsin Guild House to begin training as a Renunciate, though she plans secretly to escape her responsibility and continue on to rescue Peter. Shortly after the other Renunciates part ways with them, Magda and Jaelle are attacked by bandits and Jaelle is seriously injured. Magda must choose whether to abandon Jaelle and hold true to her responsibility to her ex-husband, or to uphold her oath to the Renunciates and to the injured Jaelle. Magda chooses to do both, taking Jaelle with her into the mountains, rescuing Peter, and then travelling with both to the Ardais estate. Magda's conflict and eventual decision to abide by her oath to Jaelle and to the Renunciates echoes Rohana's earlier inner conflict in choosing whether to leave her life for the Renunciates or to continue in her life as comyn nobility. Whereas Rohana chooses to continue as a noblewoman, yet takes advantages of her high social position as head of a domain, taking her ill husband's place in the comyn council and running her estate and domain, Magda eventually chooses to pursue the life of a Renunciate.
[edit] Part III: Jaelle n'ha Melora, Free Amazon
In the third and final section of the book, Jaelle, Magda and Peter shelter the winter at the moutain estate of Ardais, home to Rohana, her husband and children, including the aggressive and intimidating Kyril Ardais, for whom the bandits originally mistook Peter when kidnapping him. In this section, Jaelle chooses to become freemate to Peter, and questions both her choice to become a Renunciate at a young age, and her decision to ignore her developing laran. By the end of this section, the two women and Peter return to Thendara, where Jaelle is forced to face her responsibility as an heir to a comyn domain with powerful and untrained laran, and Magda must choose whether she honours her oath to the Renunciates and to her now-dear friend Jaelle or returns to the Terran zone to continue her work as translator and agent.
By the end of the novel, Jaelle has chosen to live with Peter as freemates in the Terran zone in Thendara, fulfilling Magda's role as translator and honouring her responsibility to her employers. Magda has chosen to seek out her Renunciate training at the Thendara Guildhouse, to remain cloistered in a house-bound year where she must learn what it means to renounce the traditional place of a woman in Darkovan society.
[edit] Gender and society in The Shattered Chain
As the first book in a series of three following the Renunciates in great detail, The Shattered Chain presents Renunciate charactes in greater detail than other books in the series, developing characters such as the Renunciate love interest of Jason Allison in The Planet Savers from charicature to complex experiments in separatist feminism. The Renunciates are one of the most popular character groups in the Darkover series, attracting vast quantities of fan fiction and also fan group activities, such as the founding of Renunciate Guildhouses in the 'real world'.
Shattered Chain is perhaps most interesting as a distinct deviation from the male-dominated narratives of Bradley's previous Darkovan novels, and also as an experiment in feminist writing for an author who had previously written very conventionally male-dominated fiction. Later novels in the Renunciate series, especially Thendara House explores issues of female sexuality and matriarchal social structures, with particular emphasis on the character Magda's developing sense of herself as a lesbian woman, and as an independent woman raised to be a 'traditional Darkovan woman' and yet living a liberated, autonomous life beyond the rule of fathers and husbands. These novels could be read as a Bradley's exploration of her own sexuality and relationships with the men and women in her life, a point given credence by her own real-life arguments that Darkover served as her most personal and most treasured world, where she explored ideas and fantasies. This is not to suggest that Bradley was a lesbian, but more that the Renunciate characters of Magda and Jaelle offered the author an opportunity to explore the world of women-centred communities within a patriarchal context, and that lesbianism was a part of this. It may be more useful to point out that the Renunciate stories are more stories of loyalty between women, and of the development of woman-centred community than of homosexuality.
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Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover book series The Founding The Ages of Chaos
Recontact After the Comyn
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