Robins are associated with rebirth, and Robin was essentially reborn into an Englishman after being raised by Professor Lovell.
Ramiz means “one who communicates well”, and Ramy is described as being a charismatic and witty speaker.
Letitia comes from Latin and means joy or gladness, and unlike the rest of her cohort, she subconsciously enjoys the benefits of being white and English.
Victoire comes from, well, victory, and she was one of the few survivors of the fall of Oxford.
In mythology, Griffins are associated with strength and leadership, which makes sense considering Griffin’s willingness to fight against Britain and how he led Robin into joining the Hermes Society.
Moreover, griffins are part bird, alluding to the fact that he is Robin’s half-brother.
In chapter one, Lovell violently beats Robin on the chest using an fire poker, which is repeatedly called back to throughout the book. And how does Lovell end up dying?
The reason Pendennis dismisses poetry translation as derivative and lazy isn’t just to intimidate Robin, it’s because his is awful with little to no thought put into it.
Fridge Horror
The combination of Robin's and Griffin's existences suggests that Lovell regularly impregnated Chinese women with the goal of producing prospective future Chinese-speaking Babel scholars who would be under his control.
This theory is also validated by the names in Griffin’s letter: Martlet, Oriel, and Rook. Two thirds of those names are also birds, linking them to Robin and Griffin.
While we’re never given specific details as to what happened in Burma (now called Myanmar), we do know that Sterling Jones caused the deaths of many innocent civilians. Sterling tells Robin that the cuffs he’ll use to torture him “needed some experimenting.” It’s heavily likely that Sterling tested the cuffs (which cause unknowable degrees of agony) on Burmese citizens, and the experimentation likely caused several deaths.
When Lovell had Robin cure himself using silver, that was him deciding if he was fluent enough in both languages to be accepted as a ward. If the silver hadn’t worked, 11-year-old Robin would’ve been left to die from cholera.
And how many children Lovell brought into existence were living under similar circumstances, but couldn’t pass the test? How many kids did he leave to die?
After the cohort meet, Victoire opens up about how she was harassed by a white Oxford resident who tried to rip off her gown. That’s terrifying enough, but even more so when you realize that her attackers didn’t realize she and Letty were women. Imagine what would have happened if they had succeeded in removing her gown.
