rocky41_7

I can’t believe I’ve never posed about this but Jod’s baby fingers crown was such an excellent way of Muir telling us he’s not the nice guy he seems to be. Gideon repeatedly notes the “infant finger bone crown” that Jod wears. Like, a notable number of tines. And the first time you hear it, any reader from our world is horrified. Baby fingers?? He’s wearing baby bones? That is a horrible awful grotesque thing to do! It feels particularly disrespectful to co-opt parts from a baby that died, worse somehow than taking adult bones.

But having just read through GtN, my first thought was “it’s probably not that weird for the people in the book though.” They are surrounded by death. They worship death, they glorify death, they use death. To Harrow and Gideon, the infant finger bone crown might be noteworthy because the Emperor is wearing it, but possibly not for any other reason. The use of bones and other body parts or spiritual energies is everyday stuff for them. Maybe it was even considered an honor to donate your baby’s bones to the Emperor. So after my own initial squick I brushed it off.

But then...Gideon keeps mentioning it. And implies that Harrow keeps noticing it.  Which to me, says one of two things:

a) I was wrong, it actually is upsetting to them

b) Muir keeps pointing it out so we remember it

Obviously the crown comes up as a symbol of Jod’s power and Downtroddendiety did an excellent meta on his use of the crown, but I feel like there’s some additional symbolism going there: it’s a warning of how dangerous he is.

If Harrow and Gideon are upset by the use of infant finger bones--although they wouldn’t say so because this is the Necrolord Prime they’re talking to here--it makes sense they keep noticing it, and this is one of those things that has the potential to make you instantly mistrust someone. So this one little observation may suggest that the hairs on Harrow’s neck are up about Jod and she doesn’t entirely trust him...which leads into point two:

Even if Gideon and Harrow don’t find the infant finger bone crown especially upsetting, Muir knows that we, the readers, do. If you met someone wearing baby finger bones as jewelry, that would be one of those things so instantly, viscerally upsetting that it would be hard to ever trust that person, or believe they were a good person, isn’t it? Especially if they were someone in a position of power. It would be hard to look them in the face--it would be hard to do anything but keep noticing that they’re wearing baby bones. It would be hard to stop wondering how they got those, and why they choose to wear them as a symbol of power. It’s such a massive red flag it’s more like a warning road flare.

So one way or the other, Muir is communicating with this one small detail that this guy is bad news. Obviously she does this a number of other ways too, but this one started to seem so glaring to me. The dude is wearing baby fingers on his head, as a symbol of his power. This is not a nice guy. This is not a guy who was brought to power by democratic means.  This is not a guy you can trust.