in this essay, i want to discuss harrowhark's religious beliefs as an integral aspect of her character, how that intersects with the political landscape of the locked tomb, personal identity, and what i believe to be the text's major indictment of christianity as a social, political, and ideological force. when reading this essay, i want to pull a quote from the end of ntn to keep in mind:
the main ideas i want to take away from this quote, to start, are about harrow's identity (the child of the nine houses, the reverend daughter, mother, and father), how that identity demands action from her, and her drive to find something divine within the contexts of ninth religion.
religion is inextricable from culture—to varying degrees, but on ninth, the religion is their culture. it is a theocratic state: daily life is in accordance to religious custom and all citizens are required to attend religious services; all time, money, and energy is spent on the upkeep of religious iconography, vestments, and treasures; and the heads of state are also the heads of the church. the society's ultimate goal serves a religious purpose: to guard a sacred tomb and the corpse inside of it. they are separated from the other houses through deep cultural rifts and class disparity, require strict adherence to their culture even for outsiders, and maintain a deeply orthodox society. the ninth house is a cult of religious extremists who dedicate themselves entirely to death. their culture is stuck in a dark past they do not understand. they are obsessed with the apocalypse, concern themselves solely with a corpse whose identity is hidden from them, and they blindly dedicate themselves to this worship.
this is the society that created harrowhark. harrow was beget from mass death, and from infanthood she was raised to dedicate herself to the death that created her and the death that is the core of her society. it is her entire identity. it is also at odds with who she truly is at her core; the moment harrow is able, she commits her religion's biggest taboo—rolling away the rock that is to never be rolled away, despite its prophesied apocalyptic consequences. harrow becomes a heretic at age ten, defying the foundational tenet of her religion, and then she is punished and shamed so thoroughly for it that she keeps it a secret into her adult life. the consequences of this are permanent, and they are personal. it shapes her forever.
(also, she kisses the corpse, the corpse who she decides is a girl. in-universe, the sin is breaking into the tomb, but allegorically, this is entirely about lesbianism, falling victim to temptation and desire, and defying the law of the patriarch—that is, the church. she also refuses to conceive, which is the only thing that can save her society from finally dying. harrow's lesbianism is a major aspect holding her back from being truly dedicated to the religion she is so obsessed with. her lesbianism is stuck between her teeth; it is something she can pass over, but she can't ignore it. she rolls away the rock and it ruins her life, and it shapes her life, and it's something she is deeply ashamed of and it's what made her a leader and a lyctor. she is being pulled in different directions, one where she is a devout religious leader, one where she is a traitor to her faith, one where she is a monster made out of a genocide, and one where she is a victim of the religion as a whole. her identity is scattered yet firm. she cannot let any of this go. she is pathologically obsessed.)
to be honest, this post is about more than just harrowhark. this post is also about christian reformationists, both in this fandom and in our society as a whole. in the quote that i pulled, harrow mentions that she might be able to find a new god, but this time in alecto; to me, this rings of politically progressive christian reformation and redirection. how can harrow find a "new" god when every other aspect of her religion is the same? does picking a new object of worship, but still working within the religious scaffolding created by john, change or heal her? does it have an impact on ninth society? does it stop the cancerous spread of necromancy, which is the core of the empire and its faith?
harrowhark cannot reform this religion. she cannot reconcile an extremist, death cult version of christianity with any lifestyle that encourages...well, life. if harrow does dedicate herself to the body in the tomb, she is still defining herself through death, but instead of the death of 200, it is the death of billions, the entire planet. not only can she not reform ninth religion, she can't reform house religion, either, because its main tenet—necromancy—is entirely focused on death and how to exploit it. and, beyond that, no one person can reform a society; john felt that he alone was qualified to change the world, and the john chapters themselves are heavily critical of the myth of jesus christ and the "chosen one" narrative. no one person can change society, there is no chosen one, and anyone who thinks they are is a demagogue whose power will spiral out of control. to me, the john chapters and harrowhark's rejection of his narrative is a scathing criticism of christianity's fundamental ideology: that the divine power of god is channeled through individuals, and that those individuals are special and elevated above the rest of humanity—and, therefore, the people who worship those individuals are superior to those who do not. john believes in his own superiority, has set up a society to keep him all-powerful, but harrowhark, in all of her contradictions and self-suppression, is finally disillusioned enough to walk away—but walking away is simply the first step, not the last.
so, the fandom's tendency to celebrate harrow's stated goal at the end of ntn to find her own religion still within the context of ninth's religion, but ✨on her own terms✨ reminds me of a very real and pervasive phenomenon of queer people joining "progressive" churches and no-true-scotsman-ing christianity; those other christians are wrong, my church doesn't do those things and therefore christianity as a whole is absolved—completely disregarding the foundational ideological underpinnings of the faith, its historical (and modern!) usage as a tool for conquest, and its inescapable hegemonic force over western society and thought. if harrow chooses alecto as her new god, nothing changes. ninth religion and its extremist, bioessentialist beliefs will still be a part of harrowhark, and she will forever be totally defined by a religion that prioritizes death over life, even if she finds someone else to worship. i don't find this satisfying, and as political commentary, i don't find it productive.
i have discussed this before, but i believe that tlt's political core is about radical change. john failed to reconcile 21st century issues because instead of aiming to dismantle the system that caused his predicament, he worked inside of it and tried to use its own tricks against it; when that failed to the worst degree, he rebuilt that society with its same issues intact. i don't think that tlt is going to have a happy ending, but i do think that harrow and john, as protagonist and antagonist, are diametrically opposed to one another, and i can only hope that she will make a choice that will ultimately tear john down.
so this brings me to my last point: there is a deeply political dimension to harrowhark's choice regarding her religion. religion is often framed as a personal choice, which, in some ways, it is; but religion is also hegemonic, and by choosing to participate in a major world religion, one upholds hegemony in some way. and harrow is not just a follower of the religion, she is the reverend daughter, a religious leader who was actively fulfilling the role of a theocratic dictator. she used her position as a religious leader to oppress people beneath her—in fact, harrow textually uses her religious authority to perpetuate homophobia against gideon. she quite literally silences gideon using this theocratic authority. to me, the core of gideon and harrow's relationship arc in gtn is two very traumatized, thoroughly dehumanized people realizing that the other is a human person. their power imbalance that grew from a society split between indentured servants and people with a divine right to rule begins to break apart when they realize that they are not their society, they are simply shaped by it. harrow, of course, regresses in htn due to her lobotomy, and we see in her narration that she absolutely thinks of herself as her society—she is not a person, or even 200 people, she is the ninth. once again her personhood and humanity is robbed from her due to this divine belief that she represents a political body. all that is to say: if harrow chooses to maintain the religion as it is, she gains no autonomy, at odds with a central theme of the series, and she perpetuates the same cycle that hurt her and so many generations before her. and perhaps that what tamsyn muir will choose to do! but if she does, i don't think it will be framed as a positive, but as a tragedy.
and one last thing before i go—a note about ianthe: ianthe is not religious. she refuses to say the group prayer at the beginning of gtn, she blasphemes casually and pointedly throughout htn and ntn, and she obviously does not respect john as a god the way harrow does. i bring this up because ianthe is the saint of awe. she is a religious leader in every way that harrowhark is, but it looks very different, because she is thoroughly academic and political about it, no faith required. lyctors are god's inner circle, and they carry out his wishes—and we see ianthe do just that. ianthe comes down to lemuria with the strength of the cohort behind her and declares martial law. she has been given the divine right to do this. there is no untangling religion from politics from culture from military from legislation. just like ours, this is a world deeply shaped by enormously powerful religions. even people who are working within the system while being ostensibly atheist are abiding by and perpetuating religious rule. there are cultural variations, but everyone in the nine houses share the same basic beliefs: that their leader is a man who became god by bringing necromancy to mankind, and he should be worshiped and served by spreading this practice and ideology. in the minutia of the ninth, they practice this by maintaining the tomb, but in the grand scheme of the empire, this is practiced through brutal expansionism and colonialism. these practices are inherently tied to the religion, and necromancy is their religious praxis.
there is a near-ubiquitous agreement in this fandom that one of tlt's major themes is colonialism. despite this, there is a tendency of both cultural christians and practicing christians to become extremely defensive when the religious aspect of that colonialism gets brought up. it is framed as a personal choice, and therefore all political implications become invalidated by the divine. but i think that tlt is incredibly critical of christianity and its integral role in colonization, as well as its long-lasting ramifications on the psyches of people raised within it who cannot possibly meet its standards. i have no idea what is going to happen in alecto—i don't make a habit of theorizing, because whatever tamsyn muir chooses to do will be beyond what i can imagine, i think—but i don't think harrow is going to completely abandon spirituality as a whole. spirituality and faith is a central aspect of her character, and religion is something that has shaped all of us, for better or for worse, even if you weren't raised in it. my hopes, though, are that we get a deep questioning of the faith, its power, and its merit, and that, in some way or another, harrow achieves the autonomy she has been denied for so long.
