The word Eldren is very similar to the word Eldritch, which these days means otherworldly and unnatural, but originally meant elf-lands (from the middle English word Elfriche). Eldren is also similar to the world Elder, which is likely referencing how the Eldren are older than humanity is.
In the 3rd book, a character uses the word "fairy," indicating that the concept is not foreign to this world.
The Eldren left behind magically beautiful and dangerous structures all over the place, including at the bottom of the ocean. When Jean breaks his nose in the 3rd book while trying to escape Sabetha's Gilded Cage cruise ship, he nearly drowns while looking at the Eldren lights beneath the waters. Will-o'-the-wisp are a type of magical fairy light that lures travelers to danger by hypnotizing them. When Locke pulls him up, Locke says how he hates the Eldren:
- “I hate ’em. I hate whatever they did, I hate the shit they left behind, I hate the way none of their mysteries ever turn out to be pleasant and fucking good-neighborly!”
Since Locke specifically mentions that he didn't die, he just left. It will also turn out that the father's name actually is Locke, and Locke did in fact name himself after him: at that point, Locke's real name will be revealed.
- As of book 3, it's been revealed / retconned that everything Locke tells people or seemed to remember about his early childhood in the first book was a complete fabrication. He has no memory of his father at all, and only a very vague impression of his mother. And if what Patience told him is true, we'll probably never find out anything about his parents - either the ones who were the parents of Locke's body, nor the original parents of Lamor Accanthus - since it's not relevant for the plot and they're all most likely dead of old age / the Catchfire plague anyway. And it's unlikely that we'll ever be told the name that Accanthus was born with, either, since his parents are unlikely to be still walking the Earth, and nobody but them or maybe a now elderly childhood friend would know.
Crazy, witty, doesn't play by the rules, wears trousers, swears almost first thing we meet her, unusual coloring (red hair/black hair and blue eyes), good posture, fond of slightly dangerous physical activity (climbing on roofs/riding and driving), and has a habit of running off to foreign countries and leaving behind a celibate protagonist who is eventually reunited with her. In The Hundred Days Diana Villiers drowns when she drives a carriage off a bridge and in The Republic of Thieves Locke is told that Sabetha fell into a canal and drowned. Diana's even described as "gentlemanly."
- Though I highly doubt that Lynch went to all that trouble to create such a mysterious and interesting character just to kill her off in such a lousy, anticlimatic manner. Her red hair that she was so set on hiding has to be a Chekov's gun, and it's rather mysterious that she "died" in a manner that had so few witnesses.
- I never got the impression that Sabetha was actually dead; only that little Locke believed she was. And I may as well mention that the original WMG was Jossed, though I'm too lazy to go and find the link.
- It's explicitly established in Lies that she was one of the Gentlemen Bastards before even Locke became one, and the "death" Locke witnessed in the preview chapter was during his time at Shades' Hill. So as far as we know, she's very much alive at the end of Red Seas.
Well, as of the end of the second book, Jean has Ezri, while Locke has potentially two, since Nazca, while not truly a love interest, had a little Ship Tease going on between her and Locke at times, and, apparently, Sabetha may have drowned, though it seems very, very unlikely. This will add to just how unlucky and totally screwed the pair are. They just can't catch a break.
- Sabetha isn't dead. The prologue of Republic of Thieves takes place before Locke was bought by Father Chains, and also before Sabetha was bought by Father Chains. Since we already know she was/is a Gentleman Bastard, it's impossible that she drowned before leaving Shades' Hill. Most likely it was a coverup for her purchase by Chains.
Or as head of the Nightglass Company. I mean look at the title of Book 7!
The world is clearly another terrestrial planet with three moons, where a past civilization known as the Eldren left behind gigantic engineering works impossible to modify or duplicate, raising entire islands of a substance hard as diamond. Yet the world has humans, horses, dogs, cats and other Earth animals in human cities, while the wilderness host a dangerous and hardly known fauna. The humans had to get there from somewhere - the original civilization might have been an Earth colonizing mission which evolved over millenia first into an Empire and then in a quasi-feudal world after the breakup of the said Empire. Even the word "Therin" might have been a corruption of "Terrian".
First off, his characterization and background are suspiciously elaborate for such a minor character (so far, he’s just been used as a basic henchman foil for the Spider to talk to so the reader can listen in as they figure things out – so why make him an immigrant who grew up among the nobility when “ordinary if unusually bright career soldier” would be perfectly sufficient to explain his trusted position?), so the author presumably has further plans for him in future books. And the background as he recounts it in the first book also doesn’t make a lot of sense: If Stephen was the child of Vadran trade ambassadors who was suddenly orphaned during a trip to Camorr, you’d think he would have relatives back home who wanted him back, and substantial wealth and maybe a minor noble title waiting for him to inherit. (Depending on whether the “trade mission” his parents were supposedly on was a private venture, or official government business. The term “mission” sounds more like the latter, or at least like they were working in the name of some wealthy and powerful organization, like that wine grower combine Locke was pretending to work for as part of his con.) Instead, he was adopted as if he was some anonymous foundling – by the Duke’s secret-keeper, no less. This sounds more like either his family wanted to get rid of him (likely for reasons of succession) but had unusual-for-the-books’-setting scruples about killing a child, or more likely that the Duke decided to keep him as future political blackmail material while reporting him as dead back in the Kingdom of the Seven Marrows. The story about the ambassadors might even be completely false – Stephen was a baby when his parents died, so he wouldn’t actually remember them. Though an ambassadorship is also a credible position for some minor cousin of the royal line. And then there’s Locke’s compliment that Stephen looks “the very picture of the kings of the Seven Marrows” – which sounds very much like foreshadowing by way of oblivious truth-telling. The “crown” Locke is supposed to “pick up and lose” as per Patience’s prophecy could refer to Locke becoming kingmaker as he helps Stephen get his throne, or perhaps even impersonating Stephen during the coronation for some reason. note
She and Locke had sex at the end of book 3 – ‘off-screen’, so there must be a plot reason for it, not just romance / titillation. And Patience prophesized Locke that one of the 3 things he “must pick up and lose” is a child. Since he’s highly unlikely to father a child with anyone else (assuming the author doesn’t extend his love for torturing his main character to rape), Sabetha must be the mother. Let’s hope the odd phrasing “must pick up” doesn’t mean that the kid will be half-orphaned by the time he learns about its existence…
Sabetha’s origins and upbringing before Shades Hill have been kept almost entirely in the dark so far, aside from her mentioning cryptically that she was “protected” and not wanting to elaborate – which sounds like she hadn’t actually been with her parents for some time, but had been looked after by other people. She was about 8 years old when the Catchfire plague happened (she’s several years older than Locke, who was 5 or 6), so there’s time enough for her to have a memory of her parents even if Accanthus took a few years to go over to the Dark Side after her mother died. It would provide a reason (other than sheer jerkassery) why Patience was so insistent that Sabetha needs to know that Locke is a sort of reincarnation of Accanthus, and why she decided to interrupt them right before they had sex. And it would explain why Sabetha fled after seeing the portrait of Accanthus and his wifenote , despairing so much that she couldn’t even write Locke a note of explanation. Incest seems a more valid reason to despair so completely after just having fixed her relationship with Locke - and for why she can’t tell Locke why she’s breaking up with him again - than some vague worry that Locke’s love for her is based on some kind of magical imprinting on the first redhead he laid eyes on. note … On the other hand, Patience didn’t give Sabetha the picture until after she had sex with Locke. (Then again, she probably was busy with her coup.) And why wouldn’t Patience have told Locke exactly who he just had sex with, if only to make him suffer? (Then again, it seemed like she thought the worst she could do to him was leaving him unsure if anything she told him was true or not. Perhaps she also thought leaving Locke guessing why Sabetha had run away would be a more fitting punishment as well.)
Consider: she goes to meet with the three alone to complete the last steps in the punishment she tailored to Locke and show him just what she has done. She never returns. Her body is eventually found in the harbor. Is the most likely culprit going to be (a) a maimed cripple trapped in his own room with no ability to use magic of any sort, left with a method of suicide and who would be expected to follow through and thus quietly "disappear," or (b) the two people who have already demonstrated the ability and willingness to defeat another Bondsmage in a most humiliating manner for the organization as a whole, who she has just taken the perfect revenge upon, and one of whom seems to be a former necromancer reincarnated into a young body. While the timing isn't explicitly stated, the fact that she met with Locke and Jean on the very night she was to leave Karthain before her death while hurrying to meet someone suggests that the timing of said death was after her punishment was complete. Her body is left to be rent by carrion crows, but signs would still remain of her death being in a similar manner to that visited upon the last Bondsmagi defeated by Locke and Jean: eyes and tongue gone, hands not chopped off but still pulped, and everything tailored to stop a mage from using magic.
Oh, and just to make things even better, said pair even flees the city that very same night as well, albeit for entirely different reasons.
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