History Literature / TillWeHaveFaces

* SmiteMeOhMightySmiter: The Book.

* TheVictimMustBeConfused: Istra/Psyche claims to have been rescued from her intended HumanSacrifice by the god of the mountain and lives in a palace with him, but her sister Orual, who is unable to see the supposed palace at all, is convinced she is delusional and being manipulated by some unscrupulous person - or else under the thrall of an evil god rather than a good one. [[spoiler: Orual realizes far too late that a lot of her motivation to rescue her sister was about wanting to keep her for herself and seeing her as a child without autonomy.]]

* StayInTheKitchen: The King of Glome hits Orual during an argument. Later he feels remorseful about it, but he puts the blame on his daughter, stating she should refrain herself from meddling in masculine matters such as politics. Ironically, Orual ends inheriting the throne of Glome.

* ThatManIsDead: Orual attempts this with her persona of "The Queen" taking over for Orual, who she describes as throwing down a well and bricking it over. Her attempt at this becomes less successful after she has her HeelRealizaion.

* HaveAGayOldTime: Upon her first victory in combat, Orual enjoys the proceeding celebrations much more than she thought she would, and she finally feels joy from something she accomplished.

* HeroicSelfDeprecation: Played with. By the end of the book, Orual realizes she ''has'' done awful things to the people she cared about, and is appropriately chastened. However, it gets to the point where she's puzzled her subjects grieve her impending death. The priest Arnom appends her book once he discovers it and declares her the most just and merciful ruler Glome had ever known.

* AssholeVictim: Batta, the gossipy nurse who is implied to have started the rumours of Istra having offended Aphrodite and attempted to have The Fox murdered, is hung in one of Orual's first decrees as queen. Orual notes that she was unmourned and forgotten in the grand scheme of things.

* TheBlank: The Queen's favorite InUniverse bit of WildMassGuessing about her veil is that she wears it to hide the emptiness where her face would be. This theory in particular helps her intimidate wily politicians and brave soldiers into ceding to her demands.

* TheFaceless: The narration emphasizes the importance of faces, but almost never mentions her own. Outside of a traumatic incident with a mirror, the narrator's face goes largely undescribed and spends most of the book hidden behind a veil. Plot-wise, the narrator does this because she's ugly; thematically, the hiddenness of her face reflects her inability to honestly assess her motivations and character, especially she has a divine encounter.

* BeautyEqualsGoodness, [[SubvertedTrope subverted]]

* IJustWantToBeLoved: Arguably Redival; almost all named characters hold her in contempt, and her flirtatiousness could be seen as a desperate attempt to find ''somebody'' who likes her. Hammered home close to the end.

%%* InsaneTrollLogic: The gods, according to Orual. If they wanted her to believe they were good, why didn't they make it obvious to her? They were content to leave riddles for her to puzzle over instead of actually helping her.
** This then [[ZigzaggedTrope zigzags]] back to Orual herself, when she realizes that if she had an ounce of trust or love for other people, then what little signs she received from the gods should have been enough.

* ItsAllAboutMe: The king complains that Orual is making too much of a fuss over ''her sister being sacrificed'' when she should be thinking about his reputation. Everyone in the palace knows that he believes the world revolves around him.
** Once she became queen, Orual freed the slaves of Glome and gave them freedom, which in turn made them loyal to her, and from her point of view she gained a small army at no extra cost. She worked Bardia ragged to keep him away from his wife, and she never let the Fox return to Greece. From the outside, she seemed like a breath of fresh air compared to her father, but internally she was no better. To her credit however, Orual comes to realize just how selfish she was.

* TheVictimMustBeConfused: Istra/Psyche claims to have been rescued from her intended Human Sacrifice by the god of the mountain and lives in a palace with him, but her sister Orual, who is unable to see the supposed palace at all, is convinced she is delusional and being manipulated by some unscrupulous person - or else under the thrall of an evil god rather than a good one. [[spoiler: Orual realizes far too late that a lot of her motivation to rescue her sister was about wanting to keep her for herself and seeing her as a child without autonomy.]]

* LoveMakesYouEvil: Orual, our protagonist and narrator, has confused her own affections and selfish impulses as actions of love, and she is extremely clingy. Any eagle-eyed reader will clearly see the irony as she blackmails her sister, keeps her mentor from returning to his home country, and works her crush to death so thy won't leave her, and all the while telling us how much she loves them.

* LowFantasy: The setting is fantastic, being a fictional city-state in greek times, but is very grounded in reality. There are kings and princesses, but there's also bloody human sacrifice, cruelty, and violence. No one other than Orual actually sees a god, and their worship is bizarre and pagan, and we don't even know if the sacrifices accomplish anything.

* MyBelovedSmother: Orual takes on the role of Istra's dead mother, but as a young girl, lacks the maturity or honesty to realize that she doesn't always know whats best for her. In fact, what Orual most wants is often the worst thing for Istra and herself, like when she [[spoiler:stabs her arm and threatens to commit suicide in order to force Istra to betray her divine husband]].

** In Glome, the people worship and fear an obsidian rock that they call Ungit, a LoveGoddess and mother of the divine [[EldritchAbomination Shadowbrute]]. The gods are associated darkness, the rotting smell of their sacrificial lambs, and the plagues they send to punish blasphemous mortals they known as the Accursed. This person is devoured and/or married to the Brute in a ritual like a HumanSacrifice. Bardia and most of the characters find these gods real as air, far more than any type of "Divine Nature."

* OverlyNarrowSuperlative: When listing her achievements as queen, Orual takes pride in having built the library of Glome, "what was, for a barbarous land, a noble library-- eighteen works in all."

%%* BeautyEqualsGoodness, [[SubvertedTrope subverted]]

* TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask: Orual, both literally and figuratively. She hides her face to conceal her ugliness, which has the unintended side-effect of making her seem mysterious and powerful, which gives her greater authority as queen. But she also feels that underneath her queenly persona, she's still the same ugly, sad, greedy, and desperately lonely person she was when she was growing up.

** Once she became queen, Orual freed the slaves of Glome and gave them freedom, which in turn made them loyal to her, and from her point of view she gained a small army at no extra cost. She worked Bardia ragged to keep him away from his wife, and she never let the Fox return to Greece. From the outside, she seemed like a breath of fresh air compared to her father, but internally she was no better.

* WorldsMostBeautifulWoman: Istra. In keeping with the [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Greek]] tradition, this causes problems when she receives BlasphemousPraise as "prettier than Aphrodite herself."

* TitleDrop: "How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?" A slight subversion in that the title was chosen from this passage after the fact. Lewis originally wanted to call the book ''Bareface'', but this was vetoed by his publisher on the grounds that it sounded too much like a [[TheWestern Western]]. [[note]]Lewis suggested it might do readers some good to pick up what they thought was a Western and instead find a book of Greek mythology to broaden their horizons, but that didn't fly either.[[/note]]

* CutLexLuthorACheck: The King of Glome often sentences people who particularly displease him to hard labor in his silver mines. As Orual notes, his tendency to have them worked to death is incredibly inefficient for the purpose of actually mining silver. Even as be bewails Glome's ill fortunes, he never considers any kind of labor reform. When Orual becomes queen she takes special care to make sure the slaves in the mines are well-treated and healthy, and gives them a viable path to freedom; in a few years the silver output skyrockets, becoming a pillar of Glome's prosperity.

* LegendFadesToMyth: Orual lives long enough to see her sister's life become the Eros and Psyche myth.

* LoveMakesYouEvil: Orual, our protagonist and narrator who sabotages her sister's marriage, keeps her mentor from returning to his home country, and works her crush to death all so that these loved ones from her won't leave her.

* LowFantasy: The fantasy world is very grounded in reality, with only the gods serving to add mystery and magic.

* MidBattleTeaBreak: Orual comments how occasionally, in the heat of battle, she would share a few brief seconds of friendship with an enemy soldier if something such as a gust of wind happened to distract them both as they fought, before killing him.

* SelfServingMemory: Pretty much the entire first part of the book.

* SmiteMeOhMightySmiter: Ditto.

* {{God}}: The Divine Nature is thought by Greek intellectuals (like Fox) to be a single, [[TheOmnipotent all-powerful]], and unemotional power who created all things and assigns their destinies. While Fox's logical proofs and scholarly arguments suit the needs of priests and politicians, the old Priest of Ungit maintain that gods must be found in mystery and sacrifice rather than writing and navel-gazing. Every worshiper in the novel affirms the Priest's criticism of Fox.
* GoMadFromTheIsolation: What Oruel assumes has happened to Istra after being abandoned in the wilderness for months.

* GreenEyedMonster: Ungit demands Istra be sacrificed for being more beautiful than her. [[spoiler:Also, Orual herself, as she realizes at the end]].
* HaveAGayOldTime: "Glome" has since come to mean a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-sphere four-dimensional analogue of the sphere]] in geometry.

* HeelRealization: When Orual realizes just what the true cry of her heart is, beneath the fine words she'd used to cloak it from herself, she is properly disturbed by it.

* HeroicSelfDeprecation: Played with. By the end of the book, Orual realizes she ''has'' done some pretty awful things to people she cared about, and is appropriately chastened. However, it gets to the point where she's puzzled her subjects grieve her impending death. Whatever else, by the priest Arnom's reckoning she was still a great queen.

%%* InsaneTrollLogic: The gods, according to Orual.

* ItsAllAboutMe: The king complains that Orual is making too much of a fuss over ''her sister being sacrificed'' when she should be thinking about his reputation.

* LadyOfWar: Orual, as queen, becomes a successful commander of Glome's armies and is also skilled in single combat.

* LoveAtFirstNote: Downplayed -- but at one point, the beauty of Orual's voice persuades a man she's beautiful. (Not much annoyed at being rebuffed, though.)

* LoveMakesYouEvil: Lewis believed that human love -- absent divine grace -- is selfishness in a pretty mask, which ultimately destroys the object of affection. In the novel, this selfish love manifests both in Ungit, a goddess who has those her worshippers love in her stead starved to death, and Orual, our protagonist and narrator who sabotages her sister's marriage, keeps her mentor from returning to his home country, and works her crush to death all so that these loved ones from her won't leave her.

* LoveMakesYouEvil: Lewis believed that human love -- absent divine grace -- is selfishness in a pretty mask, which ultimately destroys the object of affection. In the novel, this selfish love manifests both in Ungit, a goddesswho has those her worshippers love in her stead starved to death, and Orual, our protagonist and narrator who sabotages her sister's marriage, keeps her mentor from returning to his home country, and works her crush to death all so that these loved ones from her won't leave her.