Prince Arren

Detail of Prince Arren in House of Enlad.

The House of Enlad

Prince Arren with his parents - Rose and the Prince of Enlad. Fanart for Usrula Le Guin's "The Farthest Shore", though the Arren depicted here with his parents a little younger than he is when he was first introduced in the novel.

Inspirations used for the clothing and designs of Enlad: Coast Salish and Qing Dynasty Chinese.

Ogion the Silent

Detail of character from Ogion in the Valley of Yaved.

Fanart for Ogion from Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series. This is a depiction of a younger Ogion in "The Bones of the Earth", which takes place before the timeline of the Earthsea novels.

Real world cultural inspirations I used for envisioning Gontish clothing styles: Navajo, Tibetan, Uzbek, Kazakh. See Ged the Goatherd for the reasons behind this selection.

Ogion in the Valley of Yaved

Fanart for Usrula Le Guin's short story "The Bones of the Earth", collected in Tales From Earthsea.

The story takes place before the time of A Wizard of Earthsea. Ogion was in his 40s then.

Cultural inspirations used for envisioning Gontish clothing styles: Navajo, Tibetan, Uzbek, Kazakh. See earlier post for why these inspirations were chosen.

Same-sex unions in Earthsea

An interesting excerpt from "A Description of Earthsea" in Ursula Le Guin's Tales from Earthsea :

"Women who work magic may practice periods of celibacy as well as fasting and other disciplines believed to purify and concentrate power, but most witches lead active sexual lives, having more freedom than most village women and less need to fear abuse. Many pledge "witch-troth" with another witch or with an ordinary woman. They do not often marry men, and if they do, they are likely to choose a sorcerer."

I wonder if this aspect of Earthsea was inspired by some Native American societies, considering that Le Guin's parents were anthropologists who studied Native Californians.

• Masahai, a 19th century shaman and witch of the Mohave Tribe (whose reservation is in California, Nevada and Arizona), was serially married to 3 women and also had male lovers.¹
• A report from the 1890s mentions a Quechan kwe'rhame (female-bodied person with non-cisgendered status) married to a woman. The Quechan live on Fort Yuma reservation in present day California and Arizona.²
• An anthropologist recorded reports of a lesbian couple among the Apache imprisoned at Fort Sill, Alabama in the late 19th century.³

For more on two-spirits in indigenous North America, check out NativeOut.com.

Notes:

Tehanu

Detail from "Therru's Star", Fanart for Ursula Le Guin's "Tehanu". The titular character Tehanu (aka Therru), is a survivor of horrific childhood abuse.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading "Tehanu". The pages provide continual reminders of the ever-present threat of rape and torture directed towards women of all ages and social circumstances: innocent children born into abusive families; young women who run away from home, only to run into abuse and exploitation; and middle aged widows whose only crime was to be female.

You don't have to read a fantasy novel to see stories like these. Just read the news from around the world.

On a more positive note, you don't have to read a fantasy novel to find people who triumphed over their experiences of childhood abuse. Here are some real life Tehanus. Some transcended their trauma and went on to impact the lives of many other people in a positive way. Some may be more controversial figures. But none of them allowed the rest of their lives to be defined by past victimhood. Like Tehanu, they became dragons, each in their own way :

Therru's Star

Fanart for Ursula Le Guin's "Tehanu". The titular character Tehanu (aka Therru) lived on the island of Gont.

Available as prints, iPhone/iPad cases and other products on RedBubble.com.

For painting the "shelf of reddish sandstone" north of the village of Re Albi, I looked at numerous references of sandstone formations in the United States. Some of these sandstone cliffs were from Navajo Land. Coincidentally or not, the Navajo were one of my inspirations for envisioning Gontish clothing styles.

Other real world cultural influences on my design of Gontish attire: Tibetan, Uzbek, Kazakh.

Reasons for looking to these particular cultures:

• Presence of a sheep herding/goat-herding economy, which is practiced on Gont.
• Use of clothing elements mentioned in the Earthsea Cycle's description of Gontish people, such as jerkins, aprons and ruffles. (Not necessarily common or native to each of the societies mentioned, but between all of them, there is the use of such items, or something pretty close, in traditional clothing.)

Ged the Goatherd

Fanart for Ursula Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea". The protagonist Sparrowhawk (aka Ged) spent his childhood on the island of Gont.

Real world cultural inspirations I used for envisioning Gontish clothing styles: Navajo, Tibetan, Uzbek, Kazakh.

Reasons for looking to these particular cultures:

• Presence of a sheep herding/goat herding economy, which is practiced on Gont.
• Use of clothing elements mentioned in the Earthsea Cycle's description of Gontish people, such as jerkins, aprons and ruffles. (Not necessarily common or native to each of the societies mentioned, but between all of them, there is the use of such items, or something pretty close, in traditional clothing.)

Use names and true names in our world and Earthsea

Fans of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea fantasy series are familiar with the concept of true names and use names: All things have a 'true name'. People are generally given a use name at birth, the name they use in public life. When a person comes of age, his/her true name is revealed to him/her by a magic practitioner,¹ but this true name is generally kept secret and only shared with trusted individuals.

Anyway I find it interesting that the concept of private 'true names' in Earthsea has its parallels on our mundane world of Earth. Anthrolopologist Theodora Kroeber, mother of Ursula Le Guin,² wrote: "A California Indian almost never speaks his own name, using it but rarely with those who already know it, and he would never tell it in reply to a direct question."³

The Tohono O'odham people who inhabit Arizona and northern Mexico also have an Earthsea-like naming tradition. Karen Liptak wrote in "Indians of the Southwest": "In times past, a Tohono O'odham mother and her new baby would stay in a special house for a month after the birth. Then a sunrise ceremony was held, at which the medicine man gave the baby a name that had come to him in a dream. This name was never spoken. Instead, nicknames were used."⁴

Notes:

1. "The Rule of Names" on wikipedia
2. Theodora Kroeber on wikipedia
3. Ishi apparently wasn't the last Yahi, according to new evidence from UC Berkeley research archaeologist
4. Karen Liptak, Indians of the Southwest, p52