Catriana d’Astibar: Character Connection

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them.

I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless.

Be sure to post the book’s title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters.

Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.

Guy Gavriel Kay writes these historical fantasy epics that will just take your breath away. Along with a sweeping, involved, twisting plot, he peoples his stories with characters that become real to me. Tigana is one of his best books.

It’s hard to pick one character from Tigana to write about, but this time, I’m going to choose Catriana.

Background: An evil sorcerer (don’t be put off by that, non-fantasy fans; there’s very little actual fantasy in most of GGK’s books) has taken his revenge on a country he conquered, Tigana, by making the world forget the name. Well, all the world except for the former residents. They can speak it, but only others who were born in Tigana can hear it, and they’re widely dispersed. No one else can remember that the country ever even existed. A group of Tiganans are working to defeat the sorcerer and bring their country back.

Catriana is one member of that group and she’s so tough she’s brittle. She’s super-focused on her task and has little attention for anything else. She would literally do anything to help her group succeed. She comes across as cold, but there’s a deep passion underlying her cold exterior. She is a red-head after all. 😉

She is traveling with a group of men and she fits in. It helps that the men are all chivalrous and would lay down their lives for her, but they know that she would do the same for them. She gets them out of some situations in ways that only a woman could manage. They are traveling as a minstrel troupe and she is their female singer. She can sing to make grown men cry. She never quite realizes that she fits in though. She has some tough family history to deal with and she always feels like she’s trying to make up for her family’s shortcomings.

Catriana comes across as a world-class *itch at first, and it takes a while for her to grow on you, but she manages it. Once you start to see what makes her tick and why she is like she is, she weasels her way into your heart. And, like all the other major characters in the book, she breaks it. I might be fuzzy on some details, but I distinctly remember the characters and how I felt about them. My gosh, they give me goosebumps just sitting here thinking about them.

Annette Bening is just about exactly how I pictured Catriana.  Replace that faint smile with a look of concentration and you have her.

I don’t feel like I’ve done a great job describing Catriana, but if you like your characters to stick with you–and if you’re reading this, I assume you do–you have to read Tigana. And then come back here and thank me. 🙂

Who did you connect with this week? Link your post on Mr. Linky, then be sure to go check out the other Character Connections!