"I set no limits on my love" - magic, queerness and the disruption of binaries in Robin Hobb's Real of the Elderlings

From the world of BBC's Merlin to the comic book pages of the X-Men, supernatural abilities have been used as a repeated allegory for discrimination and the importance of community. These examples, paraliterary as they are, provide a means of engagement for contemporary audiences to bond, relate and identify with these characters, long before they understand what is being suggested. In this sense, they can blend into our pop cultural consciousness, seeding questions about our assumptions regarding different races, sexualities, genders and abilities.

Robin Hobb's Realm of the Eldering' s series, which began with the bestselling Farseer Trilogy, explores this capability with a level of nuance that demands investigation and analysis to uncover all of its potential; from its explorations and deconstructions of the binaries, to its questioning of what it means to be in love with someone. In this, we will be building upon the work of Peter Melville and Lenise Prater, expanding beyond their original readings. Chapter One begins by analysing the binary magical system in place and the ways in which Fitz disturbs this system and the assumptions which are built into it with his unique ability to wield both magics -- paying particular attention to the ways this unsettles Burrich as he tries to enforce his own hatred of their shared gift of Wit onto his ward. During this, we shall draw upon Julia Kristeva's work with Abjection as a potential source of understanding for Burrich's fear of Wit as well as considering the pride displayed by Burrich in his masculinity and the ways in which his fear can be viewed as an attempt to protected that masculinity, influenced by Judith Butler's work, Gender Trouble. Chapter Two proceeds to explore the ways in which the Kingdom of the Six Duchies parallels our reality's patriarchal leanings, before analysing the ways in which The Fool serves to disturb this with zeir unique presentation of gender, rooted in zeir magical ability as a White, and how this, in turn, serves to unsettle Fitz as a direct effect of Burrich's teachings. Finally, Chapter Three will consider the relationship between Fitz and The Fool, the ways in which they are bonded by their love and care for one another, and the different forms this bond may take -- this shall be explored through both a magical lens befitting the world in which the character belong to, as well as drawing upon theories around radical care as proposed by Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart and Tamara Kneese, and Edmund Husserl's work on inter-subjectivity.