The Locked Tomb: Harrow & Gideon Explained

The great, the glory and the gore of the series' foremost relationship

Welcome to the Ninth House

Today's post continues from my previous The Locked Tomb articles – on John/Alecto, Lyctors & Gender Dysphoria Part 1 and Part 2, and Commander Wake – so consider reading those if you haven't! I will again be going into major series spoilers as I explore the progression of Harrow & Gideon ('s bodies?) in the series.

Last week I discussed how the dying Commander Wake used her last moments to ensure her (and God's) daughter survived her failed mission to open the Locked Tomb. It so happens that the Ninth House watches over that Tomb, took in the orphaned child and named her Gideon (the only word they could get out of Wake's corpse, naming and cursing her murderer).

I've also previously established that Harrowhark's parents pinned all hope for their Ninth House on their daughter, sacrificing the lives of two hundred children in a necromantic ritual to empower her. This left her with a lot of emotional and magical baggage and (for some reason) few peers her own age while growing up in the isolated Ninth House on Pluto; really only Gideon, whose half-God DNA mysteriously saved her from the ritual.

Harrow & Gideon, by RosieVernonArt

Reverend Daughter & Indentured Servant

The period of Harrow & Gideon's childhood and adolescence, including what we see in the first few chapters of Gideon the Ninth, wasn't great. Harrow ends up with the blood of her parents also on her hands (explanation here) and takes all of her guilt out on Gideon:

“You apologise to me?” she bellowed. “You apologise to me now? You say that you’re sorry when I have spent my life destroying you? You are my whipping girl! I hurt you because it was a relief! I exist because my parents killed everyone and relegated you to a life of abject misery, and they would have killed you too and not given it a second’s goddamned thought! I have spent your life trying to make you regret that you weren’t dead, all because —I regretted I wasn’t! – Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

Harrow & Gideon's relationship starts off in an outright abusive and toxic place; sadly it is a place plenty familiar to queer people, so the idea of The Locked Tomb going on to romanticize these characters sparked some heated discussion. I certainly held some mixed feelings about it for a long time, until I found this lovely article by Gwen Katz defending and arguing for the value of Muir's portrayal.

Harrow & Gideon sketches, by Phobic-Art

With that aside, the characters themselves: Harrow is haughtiness personified, the result of both single-handedly running the Ninth House for years (knowing that all is doomed if her mask slips) and genuinely being one of the most powerful necromancer adepts ever. Gideon is simply a delight to read; joyfully mocking and down-to-earth in a world full of pretension and gravity.

Necromancer Adept & Cavalier Primary

The plot of Gideon the Ninth sees the two paired as necromancer and cavalier after the death of Harrow's nominal swordsman Ortus Nigenad. As Gwen Katz discusses in her article, Harrow and Gideon slowly confront their tragic history as they learn to depend on and respect each other while facing the tests and competition of Canaan House. This culminates in a heartfelt scene where they talk things through and vow to be 'One Flesh, One End'; emulating a note they found of Gideon the First's and Pyrrha Dve's and foreshadowing lyctorhood.

Gideon & Harrow (in the style of Hades II), by corvophobia

This period still feels far too short in retrospect, with the pair spending so much of the book exploring, mingling and learning separately from one another. The climax sees Gideon sacrificing herself in a slightly ill-conceived hope of empowering Harrow, shattering the latter and opening discussion about doomed queer relationships in fiction.

Lyctor & Ortus

Between the first and second books, heartbroken possible-lyctor Harrow decides her best path forward is to erase Gideon from her memory. This is the underlying reason for Harrow the Ninth's incredibly confusing narrative, which sees her both navigating the present and subconsciously attempting to reconcile her time at Canaan House, where we now see Ortus Nigenad alive and serving as her cavalier (this also unintentionally replaces Gideon the First's name with "Ortus the First" in Harrow's present).

Harrowhark, by Caio Santos (Right, Left)

The book, narrated in second person by the part of Gideon's soul within Harrow, sees Harrow learning from (and barely surviving) God and her fellow lyctors while also experiencing Commander Wake/The Sleeper's attempts to possess her mind through the Canaan House narrative. Given her mental state it's hard to really even call her the same character, let alone say that she makes much emotional progress.

Gloom Mistress Harrowark, by Trevor Henderson

Gideon's voice plays a huge role in maintaining an emotional connection to the first book, even if it's hard to tell that's what is happening for most of a first read. This is especially true when Harrow takes her necromancy to the River and leaves Gideon in charge of her body, prompting one of my favourite lines of the series:

Harrow, I heard it. It fractured your fucking skull. I was so terrified. I was undergoing the kind of shit that I had only undergone once in the happy knowledge that it was all going to be over soon. Child, that bee smashed you. A skull should not have made those sounds. The sound of it un-smashing was even worse—like an egg blowing back out again—but as it was saving your only skull, it was music to my ears. I cleaved that bee open from the thorax down, and it disgorged huge amounts of reeking guts and bones and green blood all over me and the carpet. At the end, we were left in a sea of dead space bees, and you were impossibly okay. Your arms didn’t even hurt, not anymore. You didn’t have your original thumb and I’d touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date, but you were fine.

Nona & Kiriona

If Harrow made fans long for the days when our pair could actually interact with each other, Nona the Ninth turned that feeling up to eleven. I'd argue that neither Harrow or Gideon are really in this book; Harrow spends it washed up on banks of the River listening to John's story and it remains fully unclear where her portion of Gideon's soul ended up. But just because their souls are out at the moment doesn't mean their bodies can't be central to the narrative!

Nona & Kiriona Gaia, by CandenceLewisArt

Nona is the amnesiac soul of Earth/Alecto, squeezed into Harrow's tiny frame after the chaotic ending of Harrow the Ninth. She's simply the best: innocent, loving, perceptive, friends with Varun the Eater and Noodle alike. Harrow would be nauseous at all of it, but most of all because Nona never even considers putting on Harrow's skull paint.

Kiriona Gaia is the chunk of Gideon's soul – lot of snark, little heart – that Harrow didn't consume, restored to her long-dead body by John (though he didn't heal her fatal wounds):

“My father has made my body’s bones denser than titanium plex,” said the Crown Prince coldly. “My father has made my skin turn away bullets. I am the perfect sword hand and the final expression of the art of the Nine Houses. Don’t you get it? I am the Emperor’s construct.” Pyrrha said—“Shame he didn’t get some spackle for your extra holes, right?” “Those are my speed holes. They help me go fast,” said Kiriona quickly.

John's reasons for creating Kiriona and sending her to Blood of Eden's doorstep, despite the fact her blood could still be used to open the Tomb, remain utterly mysterious. Muir's reasoning is a little more evident in my mind: this lets at least a version of Gideon join Harrow in having agency for the final book. We get a hilarious taste of this in Nona's epilogue, written from Alecto's perspective and in almost biblical prose:

So Alecto, wearied of talking, kneeled upon the rock and offered up the sword to [Harrow], and placed the child’s hand upon the blade, so that it received also the red blood of the child. This made the child exceeding faint, but it did not swoon of weariness. Which strength pleased Alecto, who said: Notwithstanding, I offer you my service. To which a voice on the opposite side of the shore was raised [by Kiriona/Gideon], exceeding wroth, and Alecto heard it shout in a very great shout: Get in line, thou big slut.

I truly cannot guess how these characters will progress in Alecto the Ninth, beyond a prediction that they will not go the way of Palamedes and Camilla and form a single gestalt soul. Will Gideon be fully restored, in such a way that they can live happily ever after? Probably not. Will they both die? Also probably not. I suppose my best guess is that necromancy ends and they live out mortal lives together... but this is Muir we're talking about, so probably things will be far gayer, stranger and awesome.

Thanks for reading! Until next time <3