"I called him Beloved" The use of names in Realm of the Elderlings, Part 5

time to talk about our favorite genderfluid jester

Beloved, probably the second most important character in Realm of the Elderlings, is also one of my favorite characters in all literature. For a series that started in the 90s, the way Robin Hobb handles Beloved’s gender identity is truly impressive. Queer representation in fantasy has been, in my experience, a mixed bag, which is why I’m so excited to dive into Beloved’s gender identity, something that is tied heavily to the names that they¹ use throughout the story.

Part 5: “I called him Beloved”

‘What did you call your friend?’

I stood quietly. My heart went to a very still place inside me. ‘He was a jester at King Shrewd Farseer’s court. Everyone just called him the Fool.’

‘Not everyone.’ She gathered her strength. ‘What you called him?’

I swallowed fear and regret. This was not a time to lie. ‘Beloved. I called him Beloved.’

A discussion of Beloved and their many personas can’t be entirely separated from a discussion of their relationship with the main character, FitzChivalry Farseer. While the nature of their relationship can be interpreted in many ways, it is undeniably the most important relationship each of them has in the series, and Beloved’s gender identity is most explored through their interactions.

The Fool of King Shrewd.

The gender of the Fool has been disputed. When directly questioned on this matter by a younger and more forward person than I am now, the Fool replied that it was no one’s business but his own.

So I concede.

We are introduced to Beloved as the Fool in the very first book of the series, Assassin’s Apprentice. He’s presented as a mysterious character, who stands out both due to his ambiguous gender and his pale coloring (people often forget that the Farseers are dark-skinned). The Fool has no name, no family, no background, and few allies at court. He’s as much an outsider as Fitz himself, even more so due to his “freaky” appearance.

They never even saw me in the first place. They saw only a jester and a freak. I deliberately took no name when first I arrived here. To most of the lords and ladies of Buckkeep, I was just the fool. They heard my jokes and saw my capers, but they never really saw me.” He gave a small sigh. Then he gave me a considering look. “You made it a name. The Fool. And you saw me. You met my eyes when others looked aside, disconcerted.”

Just as “the fitz” evolved into "Fitz," “the fool” evolved into "Fool." Both nameless children end up identifying with the roles that they play at court: the bastard son of a prince and the weird jester. The Fool’s gender is deliberately up to interpretation, unlike that of the two next personas that we are presented with.

Lady Amber.

Amber sat in the figurehead’s finger-laced hands. Her hands rested lightly on his thumbs and she swung her daintily booted feet, ankles crossed, over the empty fall to the cold, acid rush of the river. Her knitted cap allowed a feathering of short hair to frame her face. Powder and paint had smoothed her scarring and the scaling that the dragon’s blood had triggered. In Amber’s guise, the Fool became a very fetching woman.

At the end of the first trilogy, the Fool leaves Buckeep and the Six Duchies in mysterious circumstances. For the next decade, the Fool disappears entirely, and a new character emerges in the merchant city of Bingtown: Amber, the weird bead maker whose wood carvings seem to have special qualities. The name itself is quite self-explanatory. The Fool may have been as pale as snow, but Amber is tan and honey-colored. She still has that vague off-putting aura that the Fool had, but she’s remarkably more well liked than him, probably due to looking "more normal," and while she still jokes and makes witty remarks, she’s no entertainer. Amber has a more direct and frank personality; she is more open with her emotions than the Fool.

While Amber's gender is not really questioned, her sexuality is the matter of furious gossip, and her friendships with other women are heavily scrutinized. She is feminine while still being gender-non-conforming enough to raise eyebrows. Talking about gender non-conformance…

Lord Golden.

His skin was a sun-kissed gold, as was his hair, and his features were fine. The tawny man approached silently save for the rhythmic striking of his horse’s hooves. When he drew near, he reined in his beast with a touch, and sat looking down on me with amber eyes. He smiled.

Something turned over in my heart.

Lord Golden is different from the previous two because he exists solely for three books and is rarely brought up afterwards. While Lady Amber and the Fool are both true sides of Beloved that remain relevant throughout their life, Lord Golden is entirely abandoned after he’s no longer needed. He is more of an alias than the other two, less tied to Beloved’s sense of self.

The name represents exactly who he is meant to be seen as: flamboyant, vain, and beautiful. It fits into his story of being an exotic foreigner trying to fit in with the Six Duchies nobility. Lord Golden has a clear purpose for his creation.

Lord Golden leans into his weirdness; he highlights his tawny coloration and effeminate looks, and this makes his odd appearance all the more attractive to others. Beyond the uncanny valley there is desire, and Lord Golden is also the most open with his sexuality, flirting and teasing both men and women. The Fool’s gender is up to question, and Amber’s sexuality is scrutinized, but Lord Golden blurs the line between the two things.

The Tawny Man trilogy, more than any other part of Realm of the Elderlings, is hyper-concerned with the question of masculinity and gender performance. It is commented multiple times that Fitz feels out of place at court because of the way that men dress nowadays compared to the fashion trends of “his time.” Men are too feminine; their clothes are too flowy, too loose, and too extravagant for Fitz’s taste. Lord Golden is the ultimate expression of this, wearing only the most fashionable clothes and using makeup to highlight his exotic beauty.

Fitz and Lord Golden are at opposite ends of masculinity. Despite this, Fitz has little issue with Lord Golden, but once he finds out that his best friend has led an entirely different life as a woman, Fitz has a major freak out.

I believe part of the reason Fitz is so quick to dismiss Amber as “fake” is that Lord Golden *is* fake. He understands, and accepts, that Lord Golden is a mask that Beloved wears, a performance. But Amber is not so easily cast aside; she is real, and she is here to stay. While Fitz can separate the Fool from Lord Golden, he can’t separate the Fool from Amber. Was the Fool always a woman? Did he lie to Fitz all this time? Not only that, but when Amber is revealed, another truth comes forth: she is in love with Fitz. At this time, rumors about Fitz and Lord Golden’s relationship have already spread out, and Fitz has been fighting for his life, denying that there’s anything sexual between them. Amber destroys that entirely.

They end up having a terrible quarrel. It is during this fight that Beloved speaks plainly about their identity:

‘You know who I am. I have even given you my true name. As for what I am, you know that, too. You seek a false comfort that I define myself for you with words. Words do not contain or define any person. A heart can, if it is willing. But I fear yours is not. You know more of the whole of me than any other person who breathes, yet you persist in insisting that all of that cannot be me. What would you have me cut off and leave behind? And why must I truncate myself in order to please you? I would never ask that of you. And by those words, admit another truth. You know what I feel for you. You have known it for years. Let us not, you and I, alone here, pretend that you don’t. You know I love you. I always have. I always will.’

I think this paragraph is super important because it ties into the bigger theme of names as things that define people. This theme, which I have been talking about for over a month now, is central to Realm of the Elderlings, and here is Beloved challenging the notion that words and names can capture the true nature of a person. Beloved is more than the identities that they wear—more than the Fool and Amber or Lord Golden. They are all these people, and more.

Ultimately, Fitz makes peace with Amber and with Beloved’s gender identity. It takes a lot of time and effort, but he gets there. Amber reappears later on during the Fitz and the Fool trilogy, and Fitz is respectful of her identity. He does say that he dislikes Amber as a person and that he prefers the Fool, which is… an interesting way to look at things². Regardless, Beloved’s gender identity is treated with respect and we have to celebrate that.

Another important detail I would like to mention here is that we never find out “the truth” about Beloved’s biological sex. Upon questioning, Fitz says that Beloved is “a very private person,” and the matter is dropped. I think that Robin Hobb refusing to answer this question is a brilliant choice, because ultimately it doesn’t matter, and giving a definite answer would only subtract from the wonderful work she did with Beloved’s gender identity.

The Beloved.

“The name my mother gave me, I give now to you, to call me by in private.” He took a breath and turned back to the fire. He closed his eyes again but his grin grew even wider. “Beloved. She called me only ‘Beloved.’ “

“Fool!” I protested.

He laughed, a deep rich chuckle of pure enjoyment, completely pleased with himself. “She did,” he insisted.

[…]

“Well, if you cannot call me ‘Beloved,’ then I suppose you should continue to call me ‘Fool.’ For I am ever the Fool to your Fitz.”

In Fool’s Errand, the first book of the Tawny Man trilogy, Fitz and the Fool are reunited after more than a decade apart. To say they are happy to see each other is a great understatement. After doing some catching up, Fitz asks the Fool a question that has been at the back of his mind for a long time: what is his “real” name? After all, Fool is just a title.

The Fool concedes, and we get the above interaction. His mother named him Beloved. He was a precious child, one that his family treasured and filled with love. Fitz thinks that the Fool is joking—he can’t possibly call his best friend Beloved! That would be far too romantic; it would completely destroy the careful lies that Fitz has been telling himself about their relationship. Or perhaps, knowing that his friend was a loved child hits too close to home for Fitz, who has felt unwanted by his parents his entire life. Perhaps it is both. Fitz refuses to call the Fool “Beloved”, at least for now.

‘I don’t know. I wish you were the Fool,’ I said quietly. ‘But I think we have come too far to go back to that pretence. Yet, if we could, I would. Willingly.’ I looked away from him. I kicked at the end of a hearth log, pushing it further into the fire and waking new flames in. a gust of sparks. ‘When I think of you now, I do not even know how to name you to myself. You are not Lord Golden to me. You never truly were. Yet you are not the Fool any more either.’ I steeled myself as the words came to me, unplanned but obvious. ‘How could the truth be so difficult to say?’

For a teetering instant, I feared he would misunderstand my words. Then I knew that he would know exactly what I meant by them. For years, he had shown that he understood my feelings, in the silences he kept. Before we parted company, I had to repair, somehow, the rift between us. The words were the only tool I had. They echoed of the old magic, of the power one gained when one knew someone’s true name. I was determined. And yet, the utterance still came awkward to my tongue.

‘You said once that I might call you Beloved, if I no longer wished to call you Fool.’ I took a breath. ‘Beloved, I have missed your company.’

The first time Fitz uses the name “Beloved” is towards the end of Golden Fool, after the big quarrel between them. This is yet another turning point for their relationship. It is an admission that the Fool is but part of who Beloved is. While Fitz continues to use the name “Fool” most of the time, “Beloved” is utilized during intimate, important moments between them. Before, I said that Beloved rejects the idea that names and words can define a person, but here we understand the power that the name Beloved has for them. It’s a precious secret, something sacred. Also important to note is that, in Beloved’s culture, to call someone by their name is a declaration of love, something that we don’t learn until later on in Fool’s Fate and that recontextualizes every instance of them calling Fitz “Beloved”.

“Oh, Beloved,” I said. I bent and kissed his brow in farewell. And then, grasping the rightness of that foreign tradition, I named him as myself. For when I burned him, I knew I would be ending myself, as well. The man I had been would not survive this loss. “Good-bye, FitzChivalry Farseer.”

At the end of Fool’s Fate, Fitz returns Beloved’s love by calling Beloved “FitzChivalry”. At this time, Beloved has died and Fitz is about to burn the body, when he decides to go against the forces of nature and resurrect his best friend. Completely platonic stuff here. During the process, he’s finally able to understand Beloved in their entirety.

That night, I confronted completely his strangeness. I thought I had known him. In those hours of rebuilding, I realized and accepted him as he was. That, in itself, was a revelation.

The first thing Fitz says to Beloved when they are back from the dead is their name. Like the final touch in a magical spell, Beloved’s name seals their return to life.

And the last word Fitz says in Assassin’s Fate, right before he and the Fool join their souls to spend eternity together, is Beloved.

Yeah, sorry, I think I forgot what I was going for here. They make me insane³.

As a little fun fact, the name Beloved was translated to “Tesoro” (Treasure) in Spanish, which was pure genius. It has the same meaning of someone who’s cherished and loved, and I think that Fitz calling the Fool “his Tesoro” probably hits as hard as in the original.

Final thoughts.

The many names that Beloved uses throughout the series explore their gender identity and serve as a parallel to our main character, FitzChivalry Farseer, who also has many different names. They are the Fitz and the Fool, the White Prophet and the Catalyst. While Beloved argues that words don’t define a person, which is something I agree with (think of the discourse surrounding labels in the LGBTQ community), I think the way the name “Beloved” is used does fit into the larger theme of names as holding power over the characters of the series. Not in the sense that “Beloved” shapes who they are, but in that the name symbolizes the progress of their relationship with Fitz, and it has power in that it forces Fitz to accept Beloved as they are and to accept the nature of their relationship. They are an inherently queer character, regardless of what name and face they wear at any point. Congrats on the funky gender, my Beloved.

Next up is their other half, the one and only FitzChivalry Farseer. That analysis will probably take me a bit longer to get it done, because there are a lot of things to talk about.

1. I will be using they/them pronouns for Beloved, but I will also be using the canon pronouns used for each persona. So he/him for the Fool/Lord Golden and she/her for Lady Amber. While Hobb doesn’t use neutral pronouns in the books, I do think these are the most “accurate” when one talks about Beloved in general. This is just my personal opinion tho.

2. Fitz’s unease around Amber is mostly caused by the circumstances they are in during this trilogy, which are very stressful. They end up having to act like they are married, and people assume that Amber is the mother of Fitz’s child, which he sees as a slight to Molly, his wife, who passed away recently. It’s a very complicated situation that I don’t think takes away from Fitz's growth as an #Ally of the queer community. He also shows respect and understanding for another gender-fluid character, Ash/Spark, which is very neat.

3. I was going through the 5 stages of grief writing this part.