The Daughters of Ys

Adrift on roiling seas, Gradlon, King of Kerne, lies in the wreckage of his ship, bleeding and bereft of crewmen and fellow soldiers. A beautiful woman, mounted on a proud black steed, approaches him and offers assistance. Gradlon may be a wounded warrior, but he is gallant: “Madame, I would not refuse a favor.” Malgven is direct: “Kill my husband with me and you will find that all Kerne thanks you. As will I.” Gradlon considers her offer, and, upon learning that Lady Malgven is the wife of the Wizard Duke of Wened, a sorcerer, he asks to meet her “noble husband.” (Pp. 2-3)

The two ride off to the castle of Wened, and, in a contest of sword and spell, Gradlon slays the Wizard. After the confrontation, he offers to take Malgven to Kerne, and Malgven seizes the opportunity to propose that they rule Kerne together Gradlon demurs, but she tempts him with the promise that she will use her faerie powers to create a new capital for Kerne, a city “more beautiful than any city made by the hands of men,” and that she will “build walls to push back the sea and will spin . . . a palace of domes and towers.” (p. 11) A magical touch of her hand heals the grievous wound bleeding out of his side, and with that, the bargain is sealed.

Malgven fulfils her promise. Fifteen years later, Gradlon, his two daughters, Rozenn and Dahut, are standing on the walls of his beautiful city, Ys, watching Malgven drift off to sea in a burning funeral pyre. Gradlon is awash in grief, “lost in a darkness deeper than the sea beneath her burning body.” (p. 17) The girls run down to the seashore, and, as they gather flowers, they talk about their parents’ romance and Malgven’s untimely death. Rozenn, the older of the two, is reflective; their father’s incessant demands to “build and build” ultimately “wore her out”, (p. 19), as if the power that Malgven expended also took her life force. Dahut, the younger sister, is a feisty little redhead; she misses her mother terribly and is concerned about the sea monster, a creature of the deeps which sinks ships off the shores of Ys. Malgven controlled the monster, and the loot that washed up on Ys’ shores made Gradlon a rich man. Dahut states that they “need the sea monster. That’s how we make the world tremble at our command.” Rozenn replies, “I don’t want the world to tremble. And the roaring wakes me up.” (p. 23)

They ride back on Morvech, the beautiful black horse that Malgven was riding when she first encountered their father, and, as they fill vases with the flowers they gathered, more personality differences emerge: Rozenn is softer, gentler, and loves things that are quiet and subtle while Dahut craves colour and excitement. They run off to find more flowers in the hanging gardens of the palace precincts and, suddenly, in a clearing, they find her father and two women of his court; all three are naked and have been enjoying wine, food, and each other. All are shocked and surprised. Rozenn is embarrassed but wants to leave quickly, Dahut is so angry and filled with hate that she physically attacks her father, and Gradlon’s response is, “Life is short, Dahut. We must grasp what pleasures we can.” (p. 28) Barely a week past his wife’s death, his dissipation has begun.

Back at the castle, and still in a rage, Dahut, while clutching a magic stone of her mother’s, shakes her fist at a statue of her father. The stone cracks in two, and a little bird perched on top of it tumbles to the ground. Rozenn picks it up, cradles it lovingly, and decides to take it out to the fields where it might heal. Dahut offers to go with her sister, but Rozenn doesn’t want her company. Like the crack in the statue, a breach in the sisters’ relationship has begun. As the two grow up, their separate paths are cleverly depicted in a series of facing panels of uncaptioned drawings. Dahut immerses herself in books and spells, learning her faerie mother’s sorcery, while Rozenn finds peace and solace in the world of nature, the little bird she rescued being her constant companion. Dahut enjoys the glitter, splendor and intrigues of court life while Rozenn prefers to spend time with the peasants and farmers of the countryside. On the evening of the spring equinox, a royal banquet is held; guests from afar have been invited, including an ambitious young prince who is smitten by Dahut’s beauty. As usual, Rozenn has spent the day in the countryside and arrives late, not quite dressed for the occasion, with no time even to fix her hair. The prince sizes up both young women: Dahut is beautiful, but, as the younger daughter, she’s not heiress to the kingdom, while Rozenn is described as “beautiful, too, but crazy. . . she lives out in the moors.” (p. 47)

The pre-banquet entertainment is a pageant. Dahut holds the key to the city gates, and, after she unlocks them, water pours in, and members of the court ride the sea creatures as if in a marine park. A sumptuous dinner follows, and various guests speculate on how the court finances these extravagances. A man in the prince’s entourage states, “No one knows. But behind every fortune, there’s a dark secret.” (p. 55) Meanwhile, King Gradlon watches the festivities from the gallery. Depressed, he retires to his bedchamber, his gold, his crown and trusty wine goblet being his only companions. Rozenn departs the palace for the freedom and peace of open space, and the prince makes his move on Dahut. But she is ready for him, supplying the prince with a mask to conceal his identity when he comes for their tryst in her tower.

Away from the court, Rozenn wanders along the shore with Morvech, and, in a clearing, she sees a circle of upright stones, illuminated from within by a fire. Her pet bird flies in towards the light and settles on the shoulder of a Corentin, a “holy hermit who lies among the standing stones.” (p. 64) A truly gentle man, he enjoys the peace of his hermitage and is gifted with wisdom and insight. As they sit quietly and talk, he catches his daily meal, a fish, of which he eats only half. The other half will regenerate into a whole fish the next day. Rozenn is aghast at the idea that he “murders” the fish every day, but it is a life lesson. This miraculous fish defies the laws of nature, but it is a reminder that nothing lasts forever, and that includes the luxurious city of Ys. Sooner or later, a price must be paid.

The ambitious prince who spends the night with Dahut soon pays his price. He thinks that he has won her, that she is “signed sealed and delivered.” (p. 76) As he leaves, Dahut enjoins him to don the same mask he wore when he arrived so that their encounter remains secret. The secret is deadly: the ties on the mask tighten, decapitating him. The guard outside her chamber wraps the body in a cloak and flings it into to the seas where it joins the headless corpses of many other young men.

The next day, readers see Rozenn sitting in the woods with her pet bird. Behind a tree is Briac, a young man, armed with a bow and arrow. Rozenn sees him and responds with unexpected ferocity: “shoot the bird and I’ll skin you like a rabbit.” (p. 85) They’ve met before as Briac lives in a village nearby, and, in classic romantic tradition, after a bit of testy flirting, they set off together to find Briac’s blind cat for which the bird was to be a snack. Their romance is sweet and charming, but, at the palace, the mood is anything but. Six days have passed, and the ambitious young prince is missing. When the prince’s chamberlain speaks of rumors of mysteriously missing young men, Gradlon threatens him, telling him to return to his homeland. As he fills his wine cup yet again, the King states, “So much sadness on this earth. And now his ship will disappear, lost at sea. The prince’s parents will never know he even reached these shores.” (p. 91) Dahut looks grim, but it’s her responsibility to “arrange” that the seas and its creatures will swallow up the ship on which the prince and his entourage arrived.

Down by the sea, Dahut sings to the waves; as a child, the seas were her playmate, and now it is the source of her riches. Suddenly, she spies Rozenn and Briac fishing in his boat. It’s clear that they are in love, and, although he is not royal, in the best chivalric tradition, Briac pledges his faith and asks Rozenn to consider him as a future consort. Her answer is encouraging: “Sometimes old rules have to change, if we want to grow.” (p. 100) He takes her to visit the chapel of Our Lady of the Tempest where sailors and fishermen bring models of their boats and entreat protection. Rozenn loves the tiny boats’ simple beauty, but then, at the feet of Our Lady, she spies a sea monster and is overwhelmed by its ugliness. Briac is her safe harbour, and, for a while, Rozenn is secure, away from the “noise and riot” of court life.

But not for long. One day, at the seaside, Dahut encounters Rozenn, and the two young women meet and have a vicious argument. In Rozenn’s view, Ys is a corrupt place, and Dahut is wasting her time at feasts and celebrations. As Dahut sees it, Rozenn is avoiding the inevitable responsibility of future queenship: “I have to do everything! You don’t know –” (p. 112) Anger always motivates Dahut, and she realizes that she can use Briac to hurt her sister. She entraps him by a combination of magic and wiles, leading him to her tower while sending the guard of her bedchamber to collect Rozenn and to take her back to the castle so as to arrive just in time to see Briac enter the door with Dahut. After the seduction, Briac is filled with guilt at his betrayal and gets ready to leave. As always, Dahut asks him to wear the deadly mask, and he dons it, speaking of his love for Rozenn. Dahut responds, “Life is short, fisherboy. We must grasp what pleasures we can”, (p. 130) as did her father. In a sudden frenzy, whether from guilt or a flicker of love for her sister, Dahut wrests the mask from Briac’s face. As he is leaving, Rozenn confronts the two, pushing Briac aside and calling her sister a monster. Full of contempt for Briac, Dahut tells her sister to forget him and reminds her that, in saving his life, Dahut was kind.

Court life continues, and one evening a mysterious stranger arrivers from a far away place. He is obviously wealthy, claiming to be a merchant, and he is welcomed to a banquet at court. He has a certain presence, and he is on a mission. At the banquet, he notices Dahut; Dahut notices him, and the flirtation begins. Meanwhile, in a seaside cottage, Rozenn is nursing her wounds. An unnatural storm rages outside - her pet bird is upset and rouses her to go to the palace. At the banquet, the merchant has made a conquest; he arrives at Dahut’s room, unmasked, and once there, readers learn that he is a buyer of souls: he and his evil partners made a contract with Dahut, and, in failing to deliver Briac to the sea, she missed a “payment.” You don’t make a deal with the devil and not pay, and, although Dahut tries to kill him, the merchant, a malevolent spirit, a demon, seals her in her room, taking with him the key to sea gates.

As the merchant heads for the gates, Dahut makes a daring escape through the tower window, and, as the demon-merchant prepares to crank open the gates, Rozenn arrives on Morvech, kills a guard, grabs his spear and becomes a warrior princess. A spear is useless against supernatural evil, and, as Rozenn fights the demon, the gates open and unleash a torrent that drowns the city. Dahut manages to find her father who helplessly witnesses the destruction of his dream city. She, in turn, is furious at having been used by him. Amidst the torrents of sea water, Rozenn finds them both, and the three gallop away on Morvech. In his fear, Gradlon calls his younger daughter a “a demon girl . . . a devil” (p. 177) and pushes her off the horse. Dahut plunges into the seas and is swallowed up in the maw of the sea monster that she once commanded. Gradlon and Rozenn ride for days, far away from the seas, arriving at Corentin’s hermitage where they join other refugees. The former King of Kerne is delirious and devastated at the loss of Dahut, but, over time, he recovers sufficiently to travel with Rozenn and Corentin to Quimper, Kerne’s original capital.

At Quimper, Gradlon is once again a king, but he is an old and broken man. Soon, Rozenn suffers two great losses: her little bird dies, singing its final song as autumn leaves wither and fall, and not long after, so does Gradlon. A royal progress takes Queen Rozenn to Briac’s village and, once again, he pleads his case. Rozenn refuses him. She has taken on the mantle of queenship, and it weighs heavily on her. She cannot accept a man who once betrayed her, and she will marry “as [she] needs to – as the kingdom of Kerne requires” (p. 195) Briac has lost his love, and Rozenn has lost the innocent young woman she once was. After their brief meeting, the queen stands weeping at the shoreline, lamenting her sister, wondering who they were and “what might [they] have been?” (p. 197) As for Dahut, she lies deep beneath the seas in the ruins of Ys, captive of the sea monster who once obeyed her command. The final pages of the book bring the story forward, fifteen centuries later. The city of Quimper stands as the capital of Brittany, France, and between the spires of the cathedral of St. Corentin stands a statue of King Gradlon. The seas still crash on the shores, and fishermen claim that they can hear the singing of a maiden, beneath the waves.

The Daughters of Ys retells a classic Breton folktale set in the Middle Ages; it is a timeless tale of two sisters whose lives are changed irrevocably by the death of a parent. It’s a story pattern familiar from many folk and fairy tales, the most recent of which is Froze. However, there is darkness in this story which defies Disneyfication. Dahut changes from a spirited little girl to a young woman corrupted by riches and by using for evil purposes the faerie powers she inherited from her mother. Rozenn’s maternal inheritance is a love for the wild things of the natural world and of open space. Together, the two young women could have been a strong and powerful team, but their essential differences make that impossible. And Dahut’s willingness to pander to her father’s need for more and more wealth makes her his pawn even though she has power. The women in this story are strong, and the men are weak; enslaved by their desire for wealth, power, and sex, they are all the authors of their own ruin.

The Daughters of Ys is a story that has it all: romance, dark secrets, and battles of sword and spell against the forces of evil. Dahut is a sexual being and uses her charms quite ruthlessly although she doesn’t really seem to enjoy the encounters. She knows that, on some level, she’s a royal prostitute.

M. T. Anderson and Jo Rioux’s collaboration make this a quietly powerful graphic novel. The illustrations use the soft, muted palette of medieval art and are rendered in the almost two-dimensional style of that era. Although the story is set in a time that is many centuries past, the dialogue is sharp and current. Rather than speaking formally in an archaic discourse, the girls refer to their parents as “Mom and “Dad”, and, when Rozenn thanks Dahut for arranging the sea pageant, the younger sister replies, “We have to dazzle. Your boots are covered with mud.” (p. 52) As well, much of the story is skillfully “narrated” in un-captioned panels. The eight pages charting the change in Dahut and Rozenn’s relationship, both as sisters and as individuals, wordlessly detail the diverging directions their lives will take.

Readers of fantasy and lovers of myth and legend will really enjoy The Daughters of Ys. Yes, there’s some nudity, and when Dahut throws the prince’s head into a subterranean pit, she yells, “There’s your payment, you bastards.” (p. 81) But there is also much in the story that is reflective and moral; the gentle hermit, Corentin, instructs quietly, calmly reminding that glitter and glamour exact a price. With The Daughters of Ys’s strong female characters and honest depiction of the rivalry that is sometimes the reality of sisterhood, young women are the primary audience for this graphic novel. Definitely a worthwhile acquisition for high school libraries.