Why Did She Fight Calum's Corpse? Why Did She Challenge Cytherea? Why Not Just Grab Corona And Run? - Tumblr Posts

Some good points, and if anyone in this series is playing 5-dimensional chess, Ianthe is.

But I also think the simple motivations make sense.

Ianthe is a pragmatist. She explicitly said sucking up to Augustine was a survival strategy - ingratiating herself so that he'd think twice about leaving her to be eaten by an R.B.

John is exponentially more powerful. Helping him in a rare moment of vulnerability is a completely in-character, strategic move. She saw a chance to make the most powerful man in the universe her grateful benefactor and she seized it. I buy that.

And also… she just found out John's death means her home solar system will be destroyed!

I don't know why everyone's overlooking that. When Mercy and August were talking about watching their people die up close, she seemed horrified.

If there's any one on third, or any place even, that she doesn't completely hate... or if she even idly suspects Corona might be near harm's way... her choice to save John makes perfect sense.

This too is part of her pragamatism. She doesn't care what he's done. She cares what his death will do.

“Based on various Ianthe analysis I have seen floating around lately, today’s Locked Tomb meta thought is: what does Ianthe think Augustine can do in the stoma?

The more I think about it, the more I conclude that Ianthe’s reason for tipping the fight between Augustine and John the way she did cannot have been out of desire to protect John.

Reasoning:

-She didn’t join in the prayer to John in the first scene at Canaan House. Previous meta I have seen discussing why Ianthe would have saved John has pointed to culture/religion, but from what we’ve seen, Ianthe is actually much less religious than is typical in the Nine Houses. It seems odd that she would feel more religious after living around John, and witnessing Augustine and Mercy confront him.

-Ianthe respects Augustine as much as she respects anyone. We see her seek his praise and wilt in the face of his criticism. She is genuinely interested in learning about necromancy from him. He is probably the second-to-last person I would expect her to sacrifice. (Corona obvs being the first.)

-Ianthe’s necromantic interest in the river and stomas. This ties neatly into previous mention of Augustine’s knowledge pool. Ianthe does not seem content with the idea that stomas are just garbage collectors. She wants to know what it’s like inside them. She is convinced there is an inside them to learn about. And based on her respect for Augustine, she would trust him to figure it out.

Final thought, more speculative than the rest of this, is, What if Ianthe not only trusts Augustine to explore the inside of the stoma, she doesn’t want John to learn more about them??